
Don't specify X years of experience required - You're breaking the law - Peroni
http://hackerjobs.co.uk/blog/2013/3/26/don-t-specify-x-years-of-experience-required-you-re-breaking-the-law
======
jiggy2011
The article doesn't cite the particular statute that is believed to make this
unlawful. I didn't have time to read the entire equality act, but based on the
linked FAQ this was the closest I could find.

 _"Indirect discrimination occurs where the employer applies a provision,
criterion or practice - such as imposing a requirement for a minimum number of
years' experience for a particular job - that places persons of the claimant's
age group at a disadvantage, is to the claimant's disadvantage and is not a
proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim. For example, it may be
indirect discrimination against a young person to impose a requirement for
employees to have held a driving licence for 10 years. The employer would be
able to justify this only if it could show objectively that it was a genuine
requirement of the job and not based on stereotypes of what makes a "reliable"
and "safe" driver."_

So in other words it doesn't look like it is unlawful to ask for X years of
experience as long as it is a "genuine requirement of the job".

I don't think that would be too difficult to argue, if you are hiring somebody
to be the lead developer of your critical java application, you don't want
somebody who's only experience with Java is reading a Java 101 book over the
weekend.

~~~
hmottestad
How about:

\- Ability to lead a group of experienced java developers

Unless you can prove that X year is a lot better than X/2 or X/4 years and
someone with X/2 years couldn't possibly do the job.

And if you want to wean out those that only read Java 101. Simply state that
you require "work experience with java", or "leadership experience with java
developers" or "java certification".

~~~
jiggy2011
As far as I can tell you would only have to show that you weren't basing your
hiring on stereotypes. So in the example given, asking for someone who has
held a driving license for 10 years to filter out younger drivers.

That has a subtle difference to asking for X years of Java experience or
whatever. Whether this is a good metric is a separate issue, but I am somewhat
doubtful that this is illegal.

~~~
Peroni
More appropriate example:

Developer A - Works for BigCorporate as a ruby dev, left university 5 years
ago

Developer B - Works for the same BigCorporate as a ruby dev, left university 4
years ago

If BigCorporate decided to advertise a new ruby role that specified a minimum
of 5 years experience, would Developer B be less capable of fulfilling the
role? Technically Developer B is under-qualified as a direct result of their
age.

~~~
jiggy2011
Not necessarily, much harder to prove a direct link to age.

It's plausible that Developer B had more experience due to either not going to
university and working as a ruby dev , or perhaps doing freelance ruby work
whilst at university.

It's also plausible that Developer A worked for a corporation as a
Java/Python/Whatever dev for X years and would not qualify despite being
older.

So it doesn't necessarily discriminate based on a person's age, any more than
requiring a university degree will generally discriminate against people under
21.

In the driving license example, you must be 17 or older to hold a driving
license in the UK. Therefor by requiring 10 years of holding one you are
literally barring any person under 27 from the job.

------
shanelja
_A person (A) discriminates against another (B) if A applies to B a provision,
criterion or practice which is discriminatory in relation to a relevant
protected characteristic of B’s._ [1]

I don't think that this is actually illegal, it is only indirect
discrimination if it is based on a certain subset of criteria, of which the
following list makes up:

 _age - disability - gender reassignment - marriage and civil partnership -
pregnancy and maternity - race - religion or belief - sex - sexual
orientation_

And while you may consider age to be valid criteria, it isn't discriminating
directly or indirectly against age, only against the amount of experience
someone has in a particular field - the person could be 60 and only have
started their career the year before.

Personally, I think that the law is left up to interpretation, but in
practice, if someone tried to use this law in court against this practice, I
doubt there would be a positive outcome.

[1]
[http://www.employmentlawsolutionsuk.com/Employment%20Law%20A...](http://www.employmentlawsolutionsuk.com/Employment%20Law%20A-Z/Equality%20Act%202010.php)

~~~
Peroni
_it isn't discriminating directly or indirectly against age..._

That's just it, it clearly discriminates against junior applicants who may
have only a year or two of professional experience as a direct result of their
age.

~~~
shanelja
But unfortunately it's for a "good" [1] reason, most companies use recruitment
agencies to find their employees, and most recruitment agencies are about as
technically capable as my nan.

They don't know how to judge the capabilities of an applicant, _that is the
real issue here_ , if recruiters were able to competently tell the difference
between someone who was capable of doing the job, but had no proven track
record, and someone with a proven and documented history in that position,
then this wouldn't even be a requirement.

Rather than using legislation to attack the companies, it's about time someone
started a decent technology literate recruitment agency.

[1] In their eyes

~~~
Peroni
I have to disagree. Our job board only hosts direct employer vacancies. We
don't allow any recruitment agency listings and yet most of the jobs posted on
our board have that stipulation in the spec so it's certainly not the fault of
agency recruiters (for a change).

 _it's about time someone started a decent technology literate recruitment
agency_

There are a few of those floating around London and ultimately they make
little to no difference. The main issue I'm highlighting in the post is the
fact that the vast majority of people/companies have no idea that stipulating
X number of years experience is detrimental for a number of reasons.

~~~
shanelja
Well surely you are in an advantageous position to do something about this?

There are adverts on your website which have these minimum requirements on
them [1] - why not match against this criteria and pop up a little warning
about the supposed illegality of the situation or " _This practice is highly
detrimental to ..._ "

It seems to me like if any company is in a position to start a trend here,
yours is a pretty good place to start.

[1] [http://www.hackerjobs.co.uk/jobs/2013/3/25/dxi-limited-
php-d...](http://www.hackerjobs.co.uk/jobs/2013/3/25/dxi-limited-php-
developer-position)

~~~
Peroni
Fair point. We're releasing a bunch of new features in the next few weeks and
'job spec guidelines' are one that we're working on. A reference point for
people posting new roles.

I'm sure there's more we can do so I'll give it some thought.

~~~
shanelja
How about a points rating system, for instance, the actual experience is a
pretty big one, so that would be worth the most, but if the person has less
time, but experience with individual parts of the stack they could "earn their
application" like such:

 _Object - value

experience - 50

CSS3 - 10

Photoshop - 10

Go - 10_

And so forth, so instead of it being a blanket ban and saying "it's 2 years
experience or feck off" you could be saying "we normally only accept
applications with a minimum of two years experience, but make exceptions for
talented applications with experience in the following technologies, please
tick any which apply.

Then you let the company know that while they don't meet the minimum
requirements for length of employment, they did score over the points
threshold for "alternative" applicants.

Just an idea :)

~~~
jiggy2011
The problem with these scales is deciding what is a 10 and what is a 1.

I've seen people put these on their CVs , what they tend to do is put the
language they are most comfortable with as a 9 and then scale everything else
according to that.

------
gambiting
Funny how UK has laws against "age discrimination" yet nothing stops stupid
insurance companies from slapping car insurance premiums 10x as big as normal
for people under 25, even if they never had an accident and have multiple
categories. It's one of those things which infuriate me the most about living
in the UK.

~~~
namwen
Those example are really unrelated though. One is a law against unfairly
ruling out potential employees, the other is about what to charge a driver who
has a statistically higher chance of being in an accident. I agree that the
insurance companies should take into account a driver's other assets(?)
besides age, but it probably shouldn't be law.

~~~
gambiting
It is quite related. It's double standards. In the first case it's about
"let's not discriminate young people, their lack of experience does not really
matter!" and in the other "let's discriminate against young people, because
they are statistically more likely to cause an accident". Well, would it not
be also "statistically more likely" that a person with less experience will be
not as good at a job as a person with more experience?? Only very recently it
has been made against the law to discriminate against males when it comes to
car insurance - even thought it is statistically proven that men cause more
accidents than women. Yet this is against the law, and age discrimination
isn't. If that's not double standards, then I don't know what is.

------
marksg
This is simply wrong in the context of UK law. A requirement for experience
only becomes indirect discrimination on grounds of age if the level of
experience required is unreasonable in the context of the job.

[http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/advice-and-
guidance/your-...](http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/advice-and-
guidance/your-rights/age/what-is-age-discrimination/) gives a good set of
examples of what does and does not constitute age discrimination.

------
fecak
Interesting post. I think the most important change that needs to happen is
the rigid mindset of the gatekeepers (initial reviewers of applicants) that
are often given very specific criteria relative to number of years and the key
buzzwords to look for. I have had clients seeking 5 years of x who refused to
speak to candidates with 4.5 years. These are companies that will never have
good teams, because their basis for hiring is primarily based on time.

I do see this trend changing a bit even in larger companies in the software
world. Part of that may be due to the amount of tech choices available, and
there are more candidates moving between languages more frequently than say 10
years ago when Java and .Net were the two big camps.

Legality aside (in the US), experience in a role (leadership particularly)
should have merit in hiring but number of years needs to be devalued in many
cases.

------
wuest
A good portfolio can be created well before one goes into--let alone graduates
--college. I understand the graphic design industry to be largely portfolio-
driven, and it continues to confuse me that the IT industry isn't the same
way.

~~~
Peroni
Things are starting to shift. More and more employers are looking to see code
repo's prior to even looking at your CV in detail.

On our blog we do a series of interviews called Hacker Jobs Meets... where we
pose ten questions to CTO's, Tech Directors and start up founders across the
UK and almost all place a significant amount of emphasis on the importance of
having visible code prior to an interview.

~~~
walshemj
Which in the UK would belong to your employer in most cases any major piece of
work is 95% likely to have been done at work.

You need to talk to a HR professional and understand how the master and
servants act (as amended ) apply and who owns what.

Startups could be opening up them selves to legal attack by competitors if
they are found to be looking at a competitors code.

~~~
Peroni
I'm starting to wonder if you're actually being serious.

The vast majority of employers (at least the better ones) like to review
developers github/bitbucket repo's in advance. Everything in there is open-
source.

Your master and servants act has literally zero relevance to my point.

~~~
walshemj
Yes I am being deadly serious In the UK if its at all related to your work -
your employer owns your work if its at all "related" even if you do it outside
work on your own equipment.

This is direct from a very senior hr/ir Guy (our GC at the time) when we where
discussing the implications of this for a colleague who had come up with some
advanced algos for improving big iron systems - IBM used to get him in to
consult for them as he was a Mainframe rockstar

And you don't know much about UK and US employment laws as most of it descends
from the original M&S act as both countrys share the same roots for their
legal systems.

------
edent
...And yet two of the adverts on the front page specify years of experience.

"5-7 years of development experience in a working environment"
[http://hackerjobs.co.uk/jobs/2013/3/25/the-amazings-lead-
rai...](http://hackerjobs.co.uk/jobs/2013/3/25/the-amazings-lead-rails-
engineer)

"a PHP Developer, with at least 2 years commercial experience."
[http://hackerjobs.co.uk/jobs/2013/3/25/dxi-limited-php-
devel...](http://hackerjobs.co.uk/jobs/2013/3/25/dxi-limited-php-developer-
position)

FWIW, I agree with the legislation. I want someone with a track record of
success - not a set number of years grinding away.

~~~
Peroni
You're absolutely right. We don't tell employers how to word their adverts but
we do try and provide guidance. The majority of roles on our site (and pretty
much every other IT job board in the UK) have that stipulation somewhere in
the job spec.

------
rgbrenner
This is probably different in the UK... but here in the US, it most definitely
is not illegal.

"The reality is, it isn't an attempt to discriminate against the young, which
in most cases is perfectly legal, as you are only in a protected class after
you turn 40." [0]

[0] [http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505125_162-44942857/are-years-
of...](http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505125_162-44942857/are-years-of-
experience-requirements-fair-to-younger-workers/)

------
bcrecworks
Interesting post Steve. Do you know of any examples in which charges have been
bought against people doing this? As you say:

"The majority of roles on our site (and pretty much every other IT job board
in the UK) have that stipulation somewhere in the job spec."

I'd certainly be interested to read more about any cases in this area if you
know of any.

~~~
Peroni
The ACAS report makes good reading. I'll dig out some case examples.

[http://www.acas.org.uk/media/pdf/i/1/Age-and-the-
Workplace-a...](http://www.acas.org.uk/media/pdf/i/1/Age-and-the-Workplace-a-
guide-accessible-version-July-2011.pdf)

Excerpt:

Avoid references, however oblique, to age in both the job description and the
person specification. For example, avoid asking for ‘so many years’
experience. This may rule out younger people who have the skills required but
have not had the opportunity to demonstrate them over an extended period. A
jobseeker could challenge any time requirement and you may have to justify it
in objective terms.

------
josephlord
I think that the issue is less clear cut than the OP says even in the UK BUT
you do need to think carefully about the requirement AND the impact.

Asking for 10 years experience you would need a VERY good reason why that was
necessary for the role. Asking for a year or two probably would be unlikely to
cause issues especially if the experience could be gained outside of
employment (e.g. open source or personal projects).

I think you would be at very high risk of problems if you specified something
like: "PhD or Masters and 3 year commercial experience or Undergraduate degree
and 4 years commercial experience" as you would be basically saying you want
someone over 25.

On the other hand there might be issues if you specified recent graduates for
a Graduate Training scheme as it may be seen to discriminate against older
people.

------
jsvaughan
This is absolute nonsense.

You cannot infer someone's age from their years of experience (unless you are
stipulating a figure which is a material fraction of a lifespan, say 20+,
which never happens)

* I have 5 years of java experience. How old am I? (55 - I have spent most of my life as a c dev but have done some java over the recent years)

* I have 16 years of java experience. How old am I? (34 - I graduated in 97 and have been working in it since)

I don't understand the whining. Are you upset that someone wouldn't look at
you for a job because you haven't got X years of experience? Have you
considered that actually experience is valuable to a company, and why do you
think they would be interested in training you and being the proving ground
for all the mistakes you'll make as you learn?

~~~
alanctgardner2
It sets a minimum level; if you require 10 years of UNIX experience, you're
saying you don't want anyone in their twenties (unless faffing about in Linux
as a pre-teen counts as work experience). In your Java example I would be
screwed, even if I knew Java inside and out, because I'm only 21. I know it's
hard to imagine, with the '30 is fossilized' viewpoint many people have around
here, but a lot of companies want to pay young people less money, and so give
them less 'senior' positions.

There is value in hiring the right person for a position, regardless of age.
At my current employer we have some very experienced, knowledgeable staff in
their late 40's and 50's. We also have knowledgeable staff who are in their
20's. In my observation they tend to have different strengths, but both bring
a lot of value, and it would be foolish to say that the 50-year old deserves
more money for having been around longer ( and yes, having a longer track
record with the technologies in question ).

------
arethuza
Ironically, job adverts for lawyers often specify PQE (Post-Qualified
Experience) - I think this is less to do with actual legal requirements for
certain roles [although there are some things where this is true] and more to
do with the very strong "up or out" culture that exists in many law firms.

[http://www.ten-percent.co.uk/what-does-pqe-stand-for-and-
how...](http://www.ten-percent.co.uk/what-does-pqe-stand-for-and-how-
important-is-it-to-law-firms)

------
anupj
IANAL, and I maybe wrong here, but if you follow the logic in the article, any
job advert requesting c++ only experience is discriminating against java
developers(or puts them at a disadvantage), and is therefore illegal (?!?),
which doesn't make sense.

~~~
anupj
IANAL => I am not a lawyer

------
largesse
I'm finding myself more and more irritated with this sort of submission to
Hacker News. It makes a bold assertion and does nothing whatsoever to back it
up. Then, half the comments here attempt to do the digging needed to back the
point and typically we find that the point is overstated or false.

The most galling thing is the usually the tone of the original submission.
It's all: "This is the way it is, kids! Run off and use this information
because I'm giving you a scoop on the truth!"

The worst thing is, I don't think there is anything we can do about it. It's
just the way things have devolved.

~~~
polymatter
I'd agree with you, were it not explicit that this is UK employment law here.
And is probably a UK-only issue. ACAS (crudely speaking, the body responsible
for UK employment law) have explicitly said so.

"Avoid references, however oblique, to age in both the job description and the
person specification. For example, avoid asking for ‘so many years’
experience. This may rule out younger people who have the skills required but
have not had the opportunity to demonstrate them over an extended period. A
jobseeker could challenge any time requirement and you may have to justify it
in objective terms."

(stolen from Peroni at <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5442441>)

~~~
eli
"should avoid" is a bit of a leap from "you're breaking the law."

There are lots of things you should avoid doing when hiring, but few of them
are -- on their own -- illegal.

------
michaelochurch
I'm pretty sure that, in the U.S., this is unambiguously legal. Perhaps
mandating _30_ years of experience with Java would qualify as age
discrimination, but you almost never see that (at any rate, Java's only 18
years old).

In fact, in the U.S., it's legal (but never done) to specify ranges on
educational matriculation. A company could "back-door age discriminate" by
setting a policy of "must be no more than 5 years out of school". When one
attended school is a legal question, although age is not.

The major effect of it is to discourage people who take HR requirements
seriously, who haven't figured out that "5 years experience" means
"intermediate competence" and can be achieved in 1 really good year, or not
achieved in an endless number of mediocre years.

I've been analyzing the MacLeod hierarchy (Losers, Clueless, Sociopaths) over
the past month: [http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/02/19/gervais-
princ...](http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/02/19/gervais-principle-
questioned-macleods-hierarchy-the-technocrat-and-vc-startups/)

MacLeod Sociopaths aren't actually bad people. I'm a MacLeod Sociopath and
don't think I'm a real sociopath. They're a mix of chaotic-good rebellious
rulebreakers, chaotic-neutral people who enjoy problem solving for its own
thrill (and will be very helpful and altruistic if given appropriate
challenges challenges, and destructive if let to rot), lawful- and neutral-
evil liars, cheats, and psychopaths. (Chaotic evil is severely socially
dysfunctional and not much of a presence.) MacLeod Sociopaths break rules and
often live on the margins, and will either rise fast or get fired. There are
"good Sociopaths", but even for the good kind, most companies would prefer to
hire only a _few_.

These HR walls favor the MacLeod Sociopaths who have no qualms about applying
to a job requiring 5 years of experience when they have 6 very good months.
It's not that "rules were meant to be broken" (that's false and insane). It's
that rigid rules keep _so_ many people out that the only people breaking
through are the ones who disregard rules or find back doors. Of course, there
_are_ good rule-breakers out there, but you have to be careful with even them.

The same problem exists around reference checks. For executive hires, larger
and risk-averse companies require 10-20 references. At ten references, you're
selecting _for_ sociopaths. Only a colossal fuckup can't get 2-3 good
references, but most people don't have 10 glowing ones. Ten glowing references
is a sure sign that someone not only coached, but quite possibly extorted, a
few people. It's not a guarantee that you'll get a _bad_ person, but you
_will_ get a rule-breaker if your HR wall is that impenetrable.

~~~
EvilLook
>I'm a MacLeod Sociopath and don't think I'm a real sociopath.

One of the defining characteristic of a sociopath is that they don't think
they're a sociopath.

<It's that rigid rules keep so many people out that the only people breaking
through are the ones who disregard rules or find back doors.

This is the argument that is used when people cheat on their taxes. "Oh,
everyone cheats on their taxes, so it's okay when I cheat on my taxes." Except
not everyone cheats on their taxes.

~~~
VMG
_> One of the defining characteristic of a sociopath is that they don't think
they're a sociopath._

No. People who aren't sociopaths normally _also_ don't think that they're a
sociopath.

------
Nodex
This has been law since 2007 and is not new news

~~~
Peroni
Yet every single day hundreds of UK companies flout the law.

