Google settles a four-year age-discrimination battle with 227 engineers by dishing out... $11m Google has settled out of court with 227 people, who had accused the web giant of age discrimination, for $11m. After all the legal fees are deducted, each person will, on average, get a payout of a little over $35,000. Back in 2015, a group of 234 techies banded together to sue Google, alleging that its recruiters “engaged in …
Silly Valley has a fixation on youth because they do not have the experience or maturity to know they being had. The work environments are toxic even if the pay is excellent. Youth will put up this until they burnout and have very little to show for except some resume fodder at best.
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Silicon Valley also has a long history of people hiring those that look like themselves. There is another suit filed by a Korean American against Intel for that.
@a_yank_lurker wrote: Silly Valley has a fixation on youth because they do not have the experience or maturity to know they being had. The work environments are toxic even if the pay is excellent. Youth will put up this until they burnout and have very little to show for except some resume fodder at best.
This isn't just Silly Valley. I'm seeing this in a lot of industries. I'm looking at what my nephews & friend's kids are interviewing for and they are getting the classic "do a great job and things will be better next year" line of lies. The peer pressure is suffocating - my generation would never submit to being the workplace tools these young folks are becoming.
I've said this before, but I REALLY question this one. Yes, I was hired in 2015--as a 48-year old white guy to be an SRE (SWE-side). One of my interviewers was older than I. At no time while I was there did I see anything that smacked of age-discrimination beyond the slightly-creepy-cultish "bring your whole self to work" thing. Yes, they seemed to cater to the single lifestyle a bit more than I prefer. But every company has to make calls as to how to retain their people.
What's more, EVERYONE that I spoke with at Google for any period of time brought up hiring sooner or later. (And the more senior people brought it up the fastest.) To a man (oops--"person"), the company is obsessed with the hiring process. The focus is on bringing in good talent. And they get a million applications a year, so they can afford to be picky. What's more there HR department has an entire section devoted to analytics. These guys scour the data for missed hires and bad hires. These guys blue/green interview questions, and the hiring process itself.
Their interview process was one of the most through I've faced. In fact, I blew one of the interviews as bad or worse than I've ever blown an interview. They recognized what happened, and it did not stop them from bringing me in.
Mental flexibility is a must for long-term success in software. Unfortunately, there are a large number of people whose lose that as they age. Any claim of age discrimination would need to correct for age-related factors that cause people to lose their edge.
Long-termers here know I'm no fan of G, or of much of its internal culture. But this $11M that was pulled out of the couch to just make this whole thing go away doesn't convince me that this was anything other than gold-digging.
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Oh I don't know - interviews do work if they're done properly.
Focussing in on the hugely irrelevant in order to determine "how someone thinks through a puzzle" for example is, I would suggest, mostly pointless and will vary from person to person hugely.
Talking through a CV (resumé to our US cousins) and discussing past roles and experience. Asking questions in areas that the candidate specialises in. Tried and trusted methods, in other words, whilst attempting to gauge whether they will fit the company cultutre.
No interview process is foolproof, though, at the end of the day.
Any claim of age discrimination would need to correct for age-related factors that cause people to lose their edge.
There are no age related factors that cause people to lose their edge, unless you mean retirement.
At 46, I'm far sharper than any of the children that work for my bank. My work output is greater and of higher quality. Sorry folks, anyone can dye their hair silly colours or buy clothes that don't fit, but there really is no substitute for experience - you learn new things and solve new problems by relating them to things you already know and problems you've already solved - time & effort are the primary components of that.
I realise the youth vote will feel this is unfair, but I also know for a fact they'll come to see it as correct in time.
@Lucre
I'm a little older and sometimes I think my mental flexability is declining. It seems I have to work harder to think outside the norm nowadays then I did 20+ years ago. That being said, the amount of work I can clear just because I've seen it before more than offsets that - for now anyway.
When the less experienced staff bother to listen I can significantly reduce their resolution times just because I have either seen the issue before or I can help them troubleshoot in a concise manner. That's what I like to tell myself anyway.
They've already made all that money back in profits. A lawsuit like this needs to extract real pain from a company. This will change nothing about Google's hiring practices. I'm over 40. I go for an interview. Inquire after the interview. "Another person was a better fit." That's all they have to say. The victim has to prove the offense. The words used keep the employer from being sued. The penalty should have been 111 Million or even a billion dollars. Meanwhile, Google claims a shortage of engineers and goes for H1B people. It's BS.
I'm over 40. I've been dealing with age discrimination for the last 20 years.
I'm over 40. I go for an interview. Inquire after the interview. "Another person was a better fit." That's all they have to say. The victim has to prove the offense. The words used keep the employer from being sued.
Simple grouping by role and age, with a count of each group will reveal any age bias. Daily fines until it doesn't. Simple, fair, and leaves nowhere to hide.
it works for the SJW cause of the day does it not? Given the distribution of genders and ethnics in any given department or job tile, the concentration is obvious and all kinds of hue and cry result over the non-representative sample. But 'ageism' isn't worthy of the same political hay I guess.
My dad got enthusiastic job interviews over the phone, multiple interviews no less. That he had near 30 years of experience was plainly OBVIOUS on the resume if they bothered to pay attention. Showed up for the final in-person with gray in his hair, "sorry, pass". It's as blatant as it comes. He dyed his hair black and wore a "younger man's" pants and jacket style. Miraculously offers aplenty.
Youth hire fellow youth because they can be brow-beaten into submission. Somebody with decades of experience isn't going to knuckle under your ignorant demands.
"...Youth hire fellow youth because they can be brow-beaten into submission. Somebody with decades of experience isn't going to knuckle under your ignorant demands..."
Definitely some truth to this.
I often work away from home. I've always stated, categorically, that for the most part when I'm away I don't mind working an hour or two more each evening, since the alternative tends to be a longer and lonely night in yet another faceless hotel somewhere.
However, the flip side of that is that I expect no complaints when I clock off mid-morning on a Friday and weekends, except by the most dire exception are time with my family, without excuse.
Generally it's gone down well, but I've been challenged by the odd boss about why I don't put in the extra hours like he does. Easy answers: I put in plenty of extra hours but I'm not stupid and secondly, I ain't gonna work double my contracted time for free.
He pulled the same trick on a junior who then burned himself out trying to be seen to comply. Of course, the sum total of zero fucks were given by said boss when this happened.
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