> most likely outcome has to do with compensation and productivity than "discrimination" against a class
If you’re overlooking someone because of their short “runway,” and then telling them that, you’re going to get sued. Because you are clearly, provably discriminating based on age.
For what? Youth is not a protected class. Discriminate against them all you want.
> You would need to prove there is any difference in language skill from someone with 15 years versus 35 years, otherwise it is just an age requirement superficially disguised as a needed skill requirement
Age discrimination is different from other discrimination cases. It's really hard to win, for instance[1]. The company doesn't have to prove anything. The worker would have to prove that it was explicit age discrimination. For other types of discrimination, like race, the only thing that needs to be shown is differences in outcomes.
> American age discrimination laws only protect people over 40 from discrimination, they don't protect people under 40 from being discriminated against.
Are you sure about that? Do any lawyers want to weigh in?
Explicitly hiring only 40+ for any given role seems like it would be a lawsuit magnet.
Along similar lines, we have a decent amount of senior (read "older") people at our company that are well paid. But, most of the work we do can be done by less experienced people who are much cheaper. That almost always means they are young. We don't discriminate based on age, but if you just looked at the ages of people that we mostly hire then that data would look like we're discriminating based on age when age is not part of the decision at all.
>It doesn't make sense to me to discriminate against people with more experience. Can someone explain it to me?
It's worth considering that, statistically, the discrimination might be justified. Of course the only way to know for sure is to get rid of age discrimination laws and see what happens to the market. Companies bias "incorrectly" at their own peril, to be outcompeted by companies without said bias.
> IANAL, but it is only illegal to discriminate against protected classes.
Age over 40 is a protected class, and anti-discrimination law protects not only against facially or intentionally discriminatory acts, but also against those with a disparate impact not sufficiently justified by business concerns (though the standard for that is weaker for age discrimination than other workplace discrimination.)
> If a company thinks they can make more money by not hiring me, I don't really want to work there.
What if that same sentence weren't about age, but were about gender or race or sexual orientation? Genuinely curious... seems like it would be the same argument, but then some people feel age shouldn't be a protected class like the other ones are.
Only if you discriminate against old people, it is legal to openly discriminate against the young.
I guess I'm biased because I'm young but it's a little non-sensical since young people are the ones with student debt and record-high housing costs to pay for while 50-year-olds have decades of savings and stock market and real-estate appreciation to fall back on if they find themselves unemployed.
In the US, that would be inviting an age discrimination lawsuit. It's admitting that the company preferentially hires young people (which is illegal), and implying that older people wouldn't "fit in" and would thus be discriminated against.
> Would you consider this to be age discrimination (from a moral perspective; let's ignore legal considerations since those are incredibly vague and convoluted)?
It's straightforward (disparate impact) age discrimination from a legal perspective. The law in this area isn't that vague and convoluted.
> If you are avoiding older candidates because of presumptions about them in terms of work ethic or compensation expectations, you are wrong. If you are advertising below-market salaries and expecting >40 hr work weeks and only attract younger people, there is nothing wrong with that.
You don't seem to understand how discrimination works: the advertisement you describe discriminates against older workers because of how lives typically evolve with age (e.g. ability to sustain long hours, family or other obligations, etc.). The two scenarios you describe aren't objectively independent or even clearly separable.
1). Same thing that's wrong with racial discrimination and LGBT discrimination, etc.
2). It's illegal.
3). It's stupid and hurts our economy by making it less efficient.
4). Reverse age discrimination: This is wrong and inefficient also, but unfortunately legal. If you face this it's highly annoying but there are strategies to work around it. It might require changing jobs but you can usually find someone who appreciates your talent if it is truly something special.
I can't comment on other jurisdictions, but the United States has a section of legislation called the Civil Rights Act Title VII[1] codifying that discrimination on the basis of a variety of factors (age included) is actually not (legally) right.
I think this is hard to enforce in practice, but just to be clear -- it's not (technically) "right" to be ageist in one's hiring practices in the US.
If you’re overlooking someone because of their short “runway,” and then telling them that, you’re going to get sued. Because you are clearly, provably discriminating based on age.
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