Google Settles Age Descrimination Lawsuit (forbes.com) 120
Long-time Slashdot reader sfcat quotes Forbes:
Almost a decade ago, courts sounded a clear warning bell that Google's culture was tainted by illegal and pervasive age discrimination. Inexplicably, Google didn't listen.
And so the Los Angeles Times recently reported that Google has agreed to pay $11 million to settle a federal lawsuit alleging Google engaged in a systemic practice of discriminating on the basis of age in hiring. Some 227 plaintiffs will collect an average of $35,000 each.
Google actually agreed to settle the case in December but the final settlement agreement was presented to a federal judge on Friday. The lawsuit was filed by Cheryl Fillekes, a software engineer who was interviewed by Google four times from 2007 to 2014, starting when she was 47, but was never hired.
The lawsuit alleged Google hired younger workers based on "cultural fit."
In the settlement Google also agrees to train its managers about age bias and create an "age diversity in recruiting" committee. Forbes points out that the median age for all Google employees in 2017 was 30, "a decade younger than the median age of U.S. workers."
"On its web page, Google says its mission is to 'organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.' But for some reason Google has failed as a company to organize and use the information that age discrimination is illegal."
And so the Los Angeles Times recently reported that Google has agreed to pay $11 million to settle a federal lawsuit alleging Google engaged in a systemic practice of discriminating on the basis of age in hiring. Some 227 plaintiffs will collect an average of $35,000 each.
Google actually agreed to settle the case in December but the final settlement agreement was presented to a federal judge on Friday. The lawsuit was filed by Cheryl Fillekes, a software engineer who was interviewed by Google four times from 2007 to 2014, starting when she was 47, but was never hired.
The lawsuit alleged Google hired younger workers based on "cultural fit."
In the settlement Google also agrees to train its managers about age bias and create an "age diversity in recruiting" committee. Forbes points out that the median age for all Google employees in 2017 was 30, "a decade younger than the median age of U.S. workers."
"On its web page, Google says its mission is to 'organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.' But for some reason Google has failed as a company to organize and use the information that age discrimination is illegal."
That will teach them (Score:5, Insightful)
Paying 11 million dollars once per decade will surely teach Google to behave!
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It's already a thing. I've been looking on and off for a better job, and there are very, very few employers willing to hire someone full-time. Most jobs are either limited-term contracting or outsourced (through a third party). job market has gone to shit.
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We were both making a confusion there. My fault, I started.
I meant "direct employment" or whatever it's called. You know, when you apply for a job at Microsoft and the job is:
- directly for Microsoft
- full-time
- unlimited time contract (no 6 months temporary or something)
Unfortunately, the law in many places allows for an employer to create contract-based jobs and renew them until Kingdom Come, which translates to an indirect threat. If you don't fully behave, we could just not renew your contract anymore.
Full time employment? (Score:2)
"The full-time employment rate is 98.7% for the tech industry at large."
Is gig-economy tech jobs that last a few months really full-employment? And while most of them seem to offer "benefits", those benefits seem to have a big fat asterisk next to them (such as: no vacation or 401K until you've been a year on the job, offering health insurance but at such steep rates as to be unaffordable for a temp employee, etc).
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They'll just hire a few older folks, let them work a few months, then fire them and say they weren't able to complete the assignments they were hired for. When asked what assignments they were, they'll pretend to look and then say the paperwork got lost...
Re: That will teach them (Score:1)
^^^
And if you ask them for related emails, there will be nothing, because all illegal stuff is done off record now, corporations adapted.
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You should do like they do in the UK. As well as the fine there is a legal requirement for the company to fix the problem, or face further fines and other special measures like close monitoring. Make life difficult and annoying for them if they don't actually improve.
It's proven effective.
Loose change (Score:2)
More than $11 million falls out through a hole in Larry Page's pocket every day, unnoticed.
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That's what I was thinking. That's so small his secretary can simply write a check.
Now - go away... $35 grand a pop? That's amazingly low for something like this. I expected much more.
Descrimination? (Score:1)
Seriously?
In a press release, Google said: (Score:5, Funny)
"We simply don't have the resources to hire older workers. There's not enough lawn for anyone to get off of."
The discrimination that dares not speak its name (Score:2)
quote>Forbes points out that the median age for all Google employees in 2017 was 30, "a decade younger than the median age of U.S. workers."
Yes, in must other lines of technical work, you have to turn 40 before management equips your desk with a wheelchair and oxygen tank.
35K each? Did they apply for groundskeeping jobs? (Score:2)
Who gets paid 35K at Google?
11 million divided by 227 is more like 48458. Who's scamming the other 13K? Lawyers?
I'd suggest some punitive damages, like full salary of an average employee with similar skills, for the length of the suit. plus interest.
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Of course it's the lawyers. I'm surprised any money was left over for the plaintiffs anyway. Would not have been surprised if the lawyers took it all, and the plaintiffs each got a $10 coupon for the Play store and a refurbed Pixel phone.
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The government. I believe those sums are taxed too.
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Actual Data (Score:1)
I was hired by Google the year I turned 50. In a tech role. I see zero age discrimination, day to day, at work.
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Prosecutor: Your age diversity is below average. (Score:1)
Google: That's because we work our employees to death!
Prosecutors: Oh, thats fine then.
Descriminiation? (Score:2)
I suppose I'll have to have my CRM-114 Discriminator renamed to conform to this new, improved spelling of Discriminate.
Age discrimination in tech is massive (Score:1)
The younger someone is, the more likely they are to discriminate in favor of the young. Talk casually to young people in tech and they will tell you straight-up that age discrimination is everywhere because old people are annoying to work with.
Re:Age discrimination in tech is massive (Score:5, Insightful)
Talk casually to young people in tech and they will tell you straight-up that age discrimination is everywhere because old people are annoying to work with.
Indeed, they tend to prevent younger to reinvent the wheel because they already know about it. How annoying.
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This. And we also try to stop them reinventing it badly. Concurrency control? No need. Data integrity? Why worry.
Unfortunately, older workers tend to have come from a background of building systems that actually work well, and this doesn't always fit with the current culture. There are companies out there that see the value of having the odd old timer on the books, but it is certainly not the norm.
Neither side does anything (Score:2)
a. They work fewer hours for the same or more pay.
b. They're not as excited to work since they've been doing it longer, leading to workers that want more compensation.
c. They get sick, get surgeries, and raise the cost of healthcare premiums.
d. They don't learn as quickly as younger people.
e. You just don't need that many experienced workers. One guy in his 50s who's been around can watch 50 guys in their 20s who are ready to code.
Re:Age discrimination in tech is massive (Score:4, Interesting)
Indeed, they tend to prevent younger to reinvent the wheel because they already know about it.
I’m an older tech worker, and I’ve been directed to reinvent the wheel many times by people in my general age bracket. Of course those people are often faculty, many of whom seemingly live to reinvent wheels.
Invariably the first thing they’ll say when talking to me is “I am not interested in reinventing the wheel. Now ... (then launches into a textbook definition of wheel reinvention)”.
In any case, my real point is to say that reinventing the wheel is not just the provenance of the young.
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Sometimes building a new wheel is good though. Particularly on the embedded side you can often tell when something is a bunch of library code glued together before you even look at the source, just from the way it performs.
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Discrimination (Score:4, Interesting)
There's lot of discrimination that goes on in this world.
It's so fricking hard to prove, most entities get away with it, without so much as a second thought.
We all discriminate, to a degree. Even when we think we're not.
Let me give you one simple example of blatant discrimination that no one even blinks an eye at: Casinos and the cocktail waitresses that serve drinks to the gamblers. Have you ever seen a male one? I haven't. How about one older than about 30? Nope. Doesn't exist.
How can this be without the casino discriminating in it's hiring for that position?
So I dunno. More egregious discrimination needs to be pushed back against of course. But there's so much small discrimination that goes on every day, every where.. I dunno about this.
All I'm trying to say, is this goes on every day, every where, every one. I'm not sure it's entirely wise to cherry pick from the occurrences and get bent out of shape over the chosen instance.
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Yes. Ever been to Hooters or a similarly themed restaurant? No male waitresses, no ugly women. And it's completely fine.
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act lets companies discriminate on the basis of "religion, sex, or national origin in those instances where religion, sex, or national origin is a bona fide occupational qualification reasonably necessary to the normal operation of the particular business or enterprise."
Re: Discrimination (Score:1)
It's actually not fine, and the only reason Hooters gets away with it is that every time someone sues them for discrimination, they throw big money at them to settle lest they get court precedent set that being 25 or less and having big tits aren't essential job functions as conceived by the ADEA for women who are nominally waitresses
The airlines have already lost this battle, which is why flight attendants on U.S. airlines don't look like models like they used to in the 1970's. If you fly Singapore Airlin
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It's because the waitresses are employed for their looks, which is considered a reasonable qualification for that job. It makes sense for some jobs, like being conventionally attractive or not might be required for a certain acting role, but for stuff like waitressing it's getting borderline. I'm sure the casino would say it's part of the attraction, but that's a pretty weak argument because clearly people are mostly there to gamble.
We should keep fighting to fix stuff like that. These people were lucky in
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The other side of the discrimination that I never see talked about in reference to the tech companies are the way they actually conduct interviews. For software positions, they completely discount any and all work experience of the candidates; the interviews are almost entirely predicated upon solving contrived algorithm questions (like the kind you might do in a college algorithms course) in an artificially short time frame. Naturally, this favors kids who just graduated out of school and are freshly pract
I've been to the Googleplex and seen it... (Score:2)
Grey hair is very scarce.
My visit was in 2015 - certainly things could've changed.
That's a terrible outcome (Score:2)
I'd like to see strong measures to prevent age discrimination in the future, rather than throwing some breadcrumbs to a few plaintiffs.
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I might when I'm older (I'm in my 40s now). In the meanwhile "US corporations" are literally paying me 5-8x what I'd be making in Europe.
35k is insult (Score:2)
F google, f the judges.
That's ok. most 30 somethings will be 40+ soon (Score:2)
Well, nothing good will come of this (Score:2, Insightful)
These words alone indicate nothing good will become of this: "In the settlement Google also agrees to train its managers about age bias and create an "age diversity in recruiting" committee"
Any time there's a "diversity" or "bias" committee, it just means there's an overpaid consultant hired to come in and make everyone take a class. It's nothing but BS.
When it comes down to age, it's really more about job descriptions and salaries. If you're wanting to hire more junior and cheaper people, you get younge
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You have got to be kidding. Google avoid older employee because they LOOK LIKE SHIT and google is all about, totally 100% about marketing, they are an advertising diarrhetic arseholes a never ending stream of marketing bullshit. They do not hire old people as a rule because it does not fit in with the marketing image of being uptight SJW freak hipsters, ohh so slimey cool.
They will target old people for marketing, you know, bleed them dry till they die but it will never work with the ugly old filth, does n
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But schools and companies are pushing every child to become a programmer as "the ultimate job" and it never gets mentioned you can't work past "that age".
If they want to portray themselves as age agnostic, fine, but hold them to it.
Connection with Atlassian story? (Score:3)
The earlier story today seemed to suggest that Atlassian are moving away from evaluating employees based purely on technical output,
and more towards grading them on their "cultural fit"...
On Behalf of a Friend (Score:1)
Fuck You!
11 million dollars? (Score:2)
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Re: 11 million dollars? (Score:2)
Breaking up concentrated ownership, patent cartels, and associated anti-competitive practices would be a good start.
FDR FTW!
Re: 11 million dollars? (Score:2)
Obviously it's likewise desirable for the Sandhill Road VC cartel to be broken up as well.
It's pretty lame when the entire field of "startups" are owned by the same handful of tycoons. "Startups" running on free money, making it nearly impossible for legitimate businesses - the kind that have to turn a profit - to enter the market.
Surveillance Valley monoculture needs to go the way of the old Standard Oil monopoly. Break up the cartel, and let real competition and innovation bloom.
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I just don't get it. But I'm not from US. (Score:1)
So That's Why! (Score:1)
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People who use SJW seriously as an insult project their weak little sensitive flaws onto others, while fucking up this world. Retire. If you're lucky no one in your life will recognize you for the horrible person you truly are, and you can live out your days getting silently yet always impotently angry without actually hurting others. You deserve worse.
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People who use SJW seriously as an insult
When the label you have given yourself becomes an insult... look inward, not outward.
Re: Too much HR liability (Score:2)
That's a Social Just-Us Nazi, not a commie. Real commies fight nazis.