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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."
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Google Settles Age Descrimination Lawsuit

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  • by war4peace ( 1628283 ) on Sunday July 21, 2019 @04:35PM (#58961884)

    Paying 11 million dollars once per decade will surely teach Google to behave!

    • by Anonymous Coward

      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...

      • by Anonymous Coward

        ^^^
        And if you ask them for related emails, there will be nothing, because all illegal stuff is done off record now, corporations adapted.

    • It's less a slap on the wrist and more of a gentle touch from an old lover. An old lover that got spurned because Google fantasizes about underage children.
    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      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.

    • More than $11 million falls out through a hole in Larry Page's pocket every day, unnoticed.

      • by ebvwfbw ( 864834 )

        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.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Seriously?

  • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 21, 2019 @04:39PM (#58961902)

    "We simply don't have the resources to hire older workers. There's not enough lawn for anyone to get off of."

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    I was hired by Google the year I turned 50. In a tech role. I see zero age discrimination, day to day, at work.

  • Google: That's because we work our employees to death!
    Prosecutors: Oh, thats fine then.

  • I suppose I'll have to have my CRM-114 Discriminator renamed to conform to this new, improved spelling of Discriminate.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    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.

    • by manu0601 ( 2221348 ) on Sunday July 21, 2019 @05:24PM (#58962064)

      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.

      • by Anonymous Coward

        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.

      • management doesn't like hiring old people because:

        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.
      • by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Sunday July 21, 2019 @07:19PM (#58962522)

        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.

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          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.

      • Reinvent, with an additional layer of, mystical abstraction, even for trivial cases. We do not need to know how the wheel supports weight or rolls or has traction, and we have no idea how to handle problems when that abstraction leaks.
  • Discrimination (Score:4, Interesting)

    by duke_cheetah2003 ( 862933 ) on Sunday July 21, 2019 @05:23PM (#58962058) Homepage

    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.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      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."

      • by Anonymous Coward

        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

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      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

    • 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

  • Grey hair is very scarce.

    My visit was in 2015 - certainly things could've changed.

  • I'd like to see strong measures to prevent age discrimination in the future, rather than throwing some breadcrumbs to a few plaintiffs.

  • F google, f the judges.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    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

    • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

      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

      • While I agree with most of your points, it's still GOOGLE's decision who should be part of them. We are all doing this - selecting our favorite shops, favorite vendors, favorite places, and we are OK with it. Why business can not choose the similar?
        • That is true. Businesses should be allowed to pick their team.

          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.
  • by starless ( 60879 ) on Sunday July 21, 2019 @06:37PM (#58962392)

    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"...

  • Laughable. 11 million dollars after TEN YEARS of litigation, giving each person discriminated against $35,000? That isn't even in the category of cost-of-doing-business. It is more like....there isn't a category. It proves once again that you don't really have rights unless you have the money and time to prove the obvious over and over and over again in a court of oppression (law). The law as an instrument of evil.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Breaking up concentrated ownership, patent cartels, and associated anti-competitive practices would be a good start.

        FDR FTW!

    • Alternative: how about it works correctly. How about people without money have obvious rights obviously.
  • The company _offers_ a position to some _applicants_, and it's the company decision who should get this position. If they want young people, male, thin, or white, I think it should be just announced, to not waste other people time. We all have some expectations about the employees on particular job position. People working with other people (like salesmen, waitress, stewards, etc) should have some specific features, and it's widely accepted. Why we cannot accept limitations for other job positions as well?
  • Now I know why they refused to consider my application out of hand. I wish I had known about the lawsuit. 35k is peanuts to Google... but I sure could have used it. Although I wouldn't have spent it on peanuts!

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