Today I saw a job description for a <i>remote</i> developer/analyst position that had the following statement:<p>"Where permitted by applicable state law, [company name] will not hire any candidate who uses tobacco or any nicotine product."<p>I don't know what to say except that minutes ago I was wavering in my decision to leave IT.
I wonder if the company funds the insurance for employees and this is part of a cost reduction effort.<p>My company doesn’t forbid smoking, but smokers have to pay an extra fee each month as a smoker.<p>Of course the logical next question would be, “why just smoking?” Why not charge extra for being obese, excessive alcohol consumption, or any number of other lifestyle based factors which could increase medical costs? Not that I’d want to give them any ideas.
This random company job ad was your tipping point of leaving IT? I think I can point out far worse things large corporations are doing in this industry.
That seems to depend on US state. Would be strange to enforce that for a remote position.<p><a href="https://www.quora.com/Can-an-employer-exclude-you-from-hire-for-the-use-of-tobacco" rel="nofollow">https://www.quora.com/Can-an-employer-exclude-you-from-hire-...</a><p>"Thirty U.S. states have enacted “lifestyle discrimination” statutes that prohibit employers from refusing to hire tobacco smokers, as long as their smoking is limited to times when they are off duty and away from the workplace."<p>"The other twenty states permit employers to refuse to hire smokers."
Replace "tobacco and nicotine" with another addictive substance your environment has taught you to dislike and suddenly it becomes an understandable policy.
If the company can save health insurance for non-smoking employees it sounds pretty logical. Smoking is a important health factor but sure as the other comments say, what about alc, overweight...
25 years ago, when smoking was still accepted and ubiquitous in Europe[1], I studied engineering physics with a focus on semiconductor engineering. Naturally I spent some time in clean rooms and visited companies with clean rooms. They said they had the right to discriminate against smokers when hiring. They also said it was useless to lie, because they could immediately see on their monitoring when a smoker entered the clean room.<p>Not necessarily the reason in OPs case, just saying there can be valid reasons to discriminate against smokers.<p>[1] We once had a visit from a former student of our faculty who went to the USA for his masters. He gave a lecture about his experiences and when asked what the biggest differences were he said, he was shocked to see people smoking in our university hallways. If it wasn't for that event I would have completely forgotten how prevalent smoking still was at the end of the 90s.
I use nicotine patches for my ADHD, would I be excluded?<p>But seriously, name this company so they can be laughed at and shamed for idiotic discrimination practices. And so that one doesn't risk interviewing and working for silly people.