US Tech Firms Recruiting High Schoolers (And Younger)

ShaunC writes: Is there a glut of qualified American tech workers, or isn't there? Some companies like Facebook and Airbnb are now actively courting and recruiting high school students as young as 13 with promises of huge stipends and salaries. As one student put it, "It's kind of insane that you can make more than the U.S. average income in a summer." Another who attended a Facebook-sponsored trip said he'd "forego college for a full-time job" if it were offered. Is Silicon Valley taking advantage of naive young workers?

Comments

What is the use of school to Facebook?

[glennrrr]

Mark Zuckerberg got into Harvard, he recruits heavily from people who got into Ivy League schools. Why? Because IQ tests are banned for employment purposes, and he has to use the proxy of SAT scores which allowed people to get into competitive schools. Any actual benefit of attending said schools is purely secondary. Here he's found another way to find the smart kids, and they don't have to spend $30,000 a year to prove they are smart kids. It's a win, win.

Re:What is the use of school to Facebook?

[sumdumass]

IQ tests would pretty much fall under aptitude tests which under tort law seems to have been banned. It's also why a high school diplomas became necessary for trivial jobs- if someone had a high school diploma they met certain minimum job requirements. This also led to the schools becoming training camps for local employment opportunities also.

Employers used to give aptitude tests before everyone graduated high school or even before schools had real standards for a diploma. Eventually, these aptitude tests were applied to discriminate against people based on race or sex and so on and there were quite a few lawsuits over it that with employers losing. I believe the big one was Griggs v. Duke Power Co 1971 and there is a history after that including addressing a ruling in the 1991 civil rights act.

It's not specifically barred- but there is a high risk of being sued over their use- especially if the employment space is not diverse enough to "prove" they are unbiased (quotas).

Re:What is the use of school to Facebook?

[ShanghaiBill]

but there's nothing even close to a ban.

The Supreme Court of the United States disagrees with you.

Re:Not new

[russotto]

In 1999, my company offered an 18 year old summer intern a programming job. He turned us down to attend college. Spending 4 years doing calculus and reading The Count of Monte Cristo was not going to improve his earnings potential. Spending 4 years in a real office doing real programming would have improved his earnings potential.

Short term. But when he tried to change jobs, he'd find a lot of opportunities closed to him because just about every company wants a degree. I've known a number of non-degreed programmers who have gone back to get one for that reason.

Quitting school to found a startup might make sense; at least it's honest gambling. Quitting school to take a regular job doesn't; the job or one like it will still be there when you graduate.

actors and athletes get paid at 13

[turkeydance]

why not nerds?

Re:actors and athletes get paid at 13

[slew]

Yes, but 13yo actors and athletes need special work permits and still need to attend to school whilst working.

In many localities, they must have part of their earnings put directly into trust funds (e.g., a Coogan account in California) so neither they or their parents will blow all the money on something, or up something...

Also, when the sums of money are large enough, many reputable employers require profession agent representation (so they don't claim to have been taken advantage of and sue later).

I doubt any of these internet companies are doing any of these even minimal best-practices/policies for these 13yo nerds (and these minimal things don't even prevent the Lindsey Lohans and Tracy Austins of the world)...

Re:Not new

[Austerity Empowers]

For every 1999 there's a 2001. Jobs like that tend to get either very competitive or just abandoned when the market contracts. Or they just replace you with some other youngin', since that seems to be the way that job segment is working.

Calculus + coding = Job for life, it's a combo that works really well and it's a market where age adds, rather than subtracts, value.

Re:Not new

[Kylon99]

Oh yes, definitely, very not new...

During the Industrial Revolution, factory owners were declaring that it was a waste of time for children to be going to school when they could better be spent making money mining for coal or scrubbing pots in factories. Why waste their time learning when clearly a child's life is better spent earning profits?

So...

What about their next job?

[Moof123]

It may not have changed his earning potential, but it greatly improves his opportunities if your company lays him off, goes bust, or just sucks. Having a degree on your resume is often needed just to get past the HR filter. I've met several folks who did very well despite their lack of degrees, and all want their kids to get one. You have to really sell yourself and rely on luck much more to get that next good job if you do not have a degree.

Re:Not new

[AuMatar]

But equivalent work experience is a lot longer. I might believe that someone with no degree and a decade plus of experience is as good as someone with a degree and 3-4 years, but he'd have to prove it. I find almost nobody without at least 3 years of college has a decent grasp of the fundamentals of computer science- data structures, algorithms, critical thinking and design. The people without degrees tend to just know how to google for answers and copy the results, and god forbid you change frameworks or languages on them- they're hopeless. Its to the point that no degree and less than 6 or 7 years of experience isn't going to get an interview over a guy right out of college because the odds favor the college grad having a higher ceiling.

Re:Not new

[Austerity Empowers]

I guess I don't agree. School is for the young and unattached, it is not an easy thing to go back to at some later date. I'm not saying that no one can do so, I'm saying that no one I know has done so, but continue to either wish they had, or try to make it work but can't find the time between a day job to keep the mortgage paid and kids fed, and the vicious hours studying and doing homework.

I would make the opposite argument: there are always jobs and they always pay money. Unless you're talking about an opportunity with such a high compensation that you can afford to not work for 5 years and pay for school, it's a bad decision for most people. There are cases where it does make sense, but they seem to be the exception. Taking a wage slave job at FB versus going to school seems like a really bad gamble.

Re:Employers used to train people now they want sc

[__aaclcg7560]

I worked at a Fortune 500 company that refused to train to workers because they would get certified and make more money at a competitor. Never mind that most people got frustrated from the lack of training, trained themselves and got certified on their own time, and made more money at a competitor. Corporate dysfunction at its best.

I want voters to go to college

[silvermorph]

I wasn't ecstatic about all the non-major courses I had to take when my primary worry was getting a programming job after I got my degree, and I might have taken an $100K out if it was available. But now 10-15 years later I'm glad I that my formal education included a psychology class, a statistics class, a history class, and others. Maybe I would have picked all that up on my own, or maybe I'd have a giant black hole in my world view.

There's a training side to education and there's a wisdom side to education, and they're both important in the long run. Telling young people to get jobs right out of high school because being well-rounded isn't necessary for "smart" people just means it's going to be a crap shoot as to whether their decisions repeat history or learn from it.

Re:Not new

[AuMatar]

I've been doing technical interviews for 15 years. And any day of the week I'd take someone with a degree over someone with 5 or 6 years more experience without one. Oh, I'll miss a few good hires that way, but I'll miss out on more bad ones. And that's what far more important- its better to miss making a good hire than make a bad one. In those 15 years I have seen perhaps 4 people without a degree have even a basic knowledge of the fundamentals of the craft-- and 2 of those I'm thinking of dropped out their senior year of college for medical or family reasons. The rest have all been language of the week cruft who I wouldn't hire to write webpages. I won't even interview them anymore- too many have failed, the small percentage of useful hires you'd find aren't worth the time.