the problems in tech: a lovely example

[solarbird]

James Nicoll pointed to this post on Scripting News, wherein the author tells a story about a guy he hired who didn’t do any work, had to be fired, then sued on the basis of discrimination, all back in 1985. The author lays out this gem:

[E]very time a company hires someone who is not a young male, they run the risk that the new hire isn’t there to

Comments

[marzipan_pig]

Wow. This is pretty amazing.

The funny thing is, in my experience (in admittedly a female-dominated field) it's mostly the privileged young MEN who approach a student job with less seriousness than one would prefer.

(The non-students overall seem to be here to at least do something RELATED to work, though there isn't a lot of status or money or prestige so no real motive for a scam.)

Even the people who 'work the system' some, ANY workplace is going to have a little of that and it's usually built into the structure a little, that people have to fail pretty hard to REALLY be a problem.

Amazing though that a modern working person couldn't see what was wrong with saying something like that (or the Bitcoin crazy, wow).

[solarbird]

I'm not as amazed as you, to be honest. Or even disappointed. It's what I'd expect, I'm afraid.

[marzipan_pig]

I am so glad I never pursued anything in a tech field really.

Which of course is sad and awful multiplied across a million 'me's, and then good for ME to be able to thrive in situations where I can be supportive of other ppl in tech.

[skellington1]

Kind of feels like all the politicians giving very carefully constructed statements and then saying, in effect, "Dogwhistle? What dogwhistle? I don't know what dogwhistle you're talking about!" while holding said whistle behind their backs.

What else does he possibly think he's advocating for, if not only hiring people not protected by some version of anti-discrimination law? (so straight white cis dudes, at least here).

[solarbird]

Sure, you know. Normal people.

[stolen_tea]

Wow.

"I didn't say '4', I just said '2 + 2'!"

[solarbird]

"And 3+1 and 1+3. But not 4!"

[cdk]

Per the federal government, 40 is where young ends.

I'm really surprised by the story related in the original post. As related, it's basically a perfect example of a case that the author's attorneys *would* advise him to take to trial, and that the employee's attorney would say, "we can send a letter and hope they settle, but if we go to trial, it's a loss without someone having at one time said something about your age."

I love the "if this had happened in 2014, it would be all over the internet." Really? Does that mean that no one who belongs to a protected class has been fired from a tech company in the past few years? Because I haven't seen a single story about anything of the sort - including the dozen or so people belonging to protected classes who have been fired from my own employer in the past few years that apparently didn't realize that all they needed to do was send a certified letter and they'd get an automatic windfall.

[agrumer]

What are the odds someone did say something insulting to the guy about his age, and Winer’s leaving that detail out?

[solarbird]

Yeah, what bet.

[solarbird]

Actually, thinking about it more, I'm not going as much with "someone did say something and this got left out," as "the whole thing never happened, or something vaguely similar but substantively different happened." There's a lot of Just So in that as related.

[harmfulguy]

For some reason, I was wondering just the other day whether Dave Winer was still around. Now I'm sorry to have found out.

[solarbird]

Heh. Don't you hate those?

I keep hating finding out more about David Gerrold these days - c.f. his comments on James Nicole's thread on Facebook about Heinlein. Man, David's turned into a piece of work, hasn't he?