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Recruiters Use 'Digital Native' As Code For 'No Old Folks'
bizwriter writes: Companies are trying to get around Equal Employment Opportunity Commission restrictions on age-discriminatory language (like "recent college graduate") by saying that they want "digital natives." So far, no one has complained to the EEOC, but that could change. "Since the 1990s dotcom boom, many employers have openly sought to hire young, tech savvy talent, believing that was necessary to succeed in the new digital economy. At the same time, age discrimination complaints have spiraled upward, according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, with 15,785 claims filed in 1997 compared to 20,588 filed in 2014.
Out of the 121 charges filed last year by the EEOC for alleged discriminatory advertising, 111 of them claimed the job postings discriminated against older applicants. The EEOC has said that using phrases like 'college student,' 'recent college graduate,' or 'young blood' violate the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1966. That federal law protects individuals who are 40 years of age or older from employment discrimination based on age."
Out of the 121 charges filed last year by the EEOC for alleged discriminatory advertising, 111 of them claimed the job postings discriminated against older applicants. The EEOC has said that using phrases like 'college student,' 'recent college graduate,' or 'young blood' violate the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1966. That federal law protects individuals who are 40 years of age or older from employment discrimination based on age."
I was born in the 70s and consider myself a "digital native". All computers I have used have been binary based, for example. All in fact based on transistors. I showed my son a picture of me at his age sitting in front of a TRS-80 and my much beloved Commodore 64 and you know what he said? He said "Wow Dad, you had computers!". Indeed, not only did I have them, but he recognized them as such.
I guess my point is that I'm not sure the term "digital native" has any actual meaning, or at least such meaning will have to be proven in court. Was I turned down because I wasn't "digital native" enough? Or was I turned down because I was too old?
"Digital Native" means you're obsessed with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Opentable, selfies, etc.
I was born in the 50's, bought a TRS-80 in '78 or so and have been programming ever since. Mostly device drivers, BSPs, etc.
I know more about computers than most digital natives, yet it's hard for me to get a job because I'm old, don't use FB, don't twit, don't insta, don't have a phone full of selfies, etc.
Disclaimer: I'm nearing 40.
I don't think you're right. Using Google taught me a lot of things I otherwise wouldn't have known. Gone are the days when you could master an IT area without looking up documentation on a daily basis. Before, you had brick-width books which weighted up to 10+ pounds. Now, you have Google AND some books. There is no "better" between the two. I use both.
Self-taught is self-taught, be it through books or online lookup. Memory could only take you so far, and many strains of formal education throughout the world are still following the classic way (learn it by heart or else!) which, let's be honest, is becoming obsolete. But I digress.
Companies are looking to hire young people because:
- they take most shit and are happy eating it. I was there, I've done that.
- they likely don't have a family (so they're more likely to use their free time working)
- they're eager to please (I call it "dog loyalty"). It's not an offensive term, it's just younger people are yet to be screwed over and so they're fully loyal even to a vicious master.
- they're cheaper because employers play on their "lack of experience".
And many other reasons which I'm too lazy to enumerate, most of them being unrelated to technical skills.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
I remember when I installed my first 3.5" floppy diskette drive in my 8088. It wouldn't read 1.44MB disks. It would try, it would start to format, but it would fail partially through a format or partially through an attempt to read an existing filesystem. I had to figure out why that was the case, and if I'm remembering right it took a trip to the library to read about the addressing limits of the 8088 processor. For an eleven year old, the best solution was to tape over the corner of the disk and reformat it to 720K. Not an ideal solution, but back then it was still common to get new software capable of running on an 8088 on 720K disks, so I didn't lose out as much as one might initially assume.
I'm not expecting this exact piece of knowledge to be known by everyone, but given that the OS (DOS at the time) was really of no help to actually figuring out what the problem was, understanding how the technology works top-to-bottom is essential in being versatile in all situations. This particular problem was so abstract that not only was no dialogue box to use to figure it out, but there were no logs and only a few vague error messages. Even categorizing the nature of the error required learning how the processor worked, much lower level than most people are willing to go.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Of course, the reason is quite possibly because the 25 year old supervisor is inexperienced and doesn't take kindly to that being pointed out.
Posting anon because I'm about to talk about a former client I did some consulting for. It's a Valley startup. All a bunch of young guys, mostly with one job behind them. One guy did actually have a family, though. Anyway, at one point we were discussing interviewing and hiring. They didn't seem to think there was anything unusual about asking an interview candidate to spend an entire day doing pair programming with them on their own codebase. I pointed out that this would be fine for college students who could bunk off lectures and spend all day watching the interviewer tap out Go, but more experienced/older guys would probably find this a bit problematic, especially if they already have a job. Google can get away with 8 interviews and all day assessments and still hire very senior people because it has the reputation as a great place to work and with great pay, so people put up with the long process. Not every company can do this.
Their response: "well, maybe we don't want to hire senior guys".
I don't think they'd consider themselves explicitly agist. But they very much wanted to hire people just like themselves, and that almost by definition excluded "old" people (anyone 40 or over). This didn't extend to sexism by the way: they were very keen on hiring female interns and recent college grads to write code for them. But they didn't want some guy in his 40's or 50's turning up and pointing out that maybe some of the modern dev fashions they were following had already come and gone in the 1990's, and perhaps using uncool but tried and tested technology would have some real benefits.