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269 people join class-action lawsuit against Google claiming age discrimination
- micahbright 9y agoIronic, coming at the heels of Google firing someone for being "anti-diversity".
- victor9000 9y agoThat's because diversity doesn't actually mean diversity. It's mostly newspeak, but it amounts to a dynamic set whose members are defined by the fashionable morality of PC culture.
- 13124452 9y agowhat now we're claiming google is some champion for PC culture? they're in the middle of a massive investigation by the department of labor for systemic wage discrimination against their female employees, I don't see how that's exactly championing the kind of PC culture you're talking about. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/04/dol-google-pay-discrimination/522411/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/04/dol-goo...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- victor9000 9y agoNo, Google is not championing PC culture, Google is championing "diversity" which is then defined by PC culture. Also, the wage gap argument is a different argument from the diversity argument. I'm happy to discuss either, but would you mind stating your point more clearly? Lastly, please use your real account when discussing hot button issues because it's hard to differentiate trolls from new accounts. Edit: For those who disagree then ask yourself this, are all religions equally represented at Google? Are all age groups? All political affiliations? All body types? Are all ability types equally represented at Google? Etc, etc. If not, then why not? And more importantly, why is there no industry-wide effort to correct the injustice that stems from these differences?
- 13124452 9y agoyeah, so's the fact that they're under investigation by the DoL for wage discrimination against their female employees but I'm pretty sure everyone who agrees with that rant probably thinks it's just because of some supposed biological reason. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/04/dol-google-pay-discrimination/522411/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/04/dol-goo...
- micahbright 9y ago>but I'm pretty sure everyone who agrees with that rant probably thinks it's just because of some supposed biological reason. I sense someone is still operating from the ignorance of not having read and understood the scientific reference supporting the diversity memo...or a troll
- pottersbasilisk 9y agoIs google going to go thru what uber did? These kinds of articles do make alot of clicks.
- danso 9y agoWhat are you referring to?
- jackvalentine 9y agoSix months (plus!) of negative articles about alleged XYZ discrimination at the company.
- matt4077 9y agoI don't quite get what your second sentence is trying to insinuate. Is it: - The media is lying to you: there actually is no lawsuit? - For the last 12 years, the media and Google colluded to discriminate against anyone above 30 years of age to drive clicks with the inevitable lawsuit, and their payday has finally come? - 300 people suing the most prominent internet company for employment discrimination isn't important enough to warrant news coverage? In case you want to chose option (3), you'll need a cut-off for what's newsworthy. I propose scanning the headlines of important newspapers for the most boring article you can find. Boring articles don't generate many clicks, so that article must have been included "on the merits", and presents an upper bound for the required "newsworthiness". Doing this exercise on the WSJ right now yields "New GE Chief Delays Part of Boston HQ". More or less newsworthy than this lawsuit, or Uber's bromance with bankruptcy? You decide!
- taneq 9y agoI think it's option 4: The media may have just found its next horse to beat, and will continue to do so for as long as people keep clicking on new stories about it, no matter how thoroughly dead and decomposed that horse may become in the meantime.
- AstralStorm 9y ago
- islanderfun 9y agoHard to fathom not hiring your future self. Especially if they are qualified and experienced. At 32 yo, terrified I'll be in this situation soon.
- devrandomguy 9y agoIt is the one minority that we all inevitably become. "Respect your elders" has all kinds of reason behind it.
- pfranz 9y agoThe alternative is less appealing.
- AstralStorm 9y agoPetty big minority of about a quarter of the population nowadays and that is only if we're counting retirement age. If you go above 40 then it is somewhere around half of population which does not compute as minority. This means companies are effectively excluding huge swaths of potential workers.
- collyw 9y agoIts a minority in the tech workplace.
- briantakita 9y ago> At 32 yo, terrified I'll be in this situation soon. I think people begin to become less tolerant of the indignities of the modern corporate atmosphere as one matures. Fortunately, one can distinguish oneself by building up IP, consulting, remote work, building assets, etc.
- islanderfun 9y agoExactly. Current plan in motion is to keep my full-time remote gig while consulting on the side.
- danso 9y ago> In court documents, Fillelkes claimed that a recruiter told her she needed to put her dates of graduation on her resume so the company could view how old she was. That is one (allegedly) dumb recruiter.
- kafkaesq 9y agoPar for the course for recruiters, actually.
- orbitingpluto 9y ago"I'm sorry, I need someone with 8 years experience with Server 2016. 2008 and 2012 are not what the client specified."
- kafkaesq 9y agoI've seriously started to wonder if many of these people wouldn't just starve (or take to begging in the streets) if there wasn't such a profession as "recruiting" laid out for them. Given the alarming cognitive deficits as they are routinely observed to have.
- flukus 9y agoYou know how users never read error messages? I suspect they never read period, they just copy and paste various things and have no real idea of what they're doing, no awareness. The recruiters just know the process of "get this JD, add our generic stuff, remove their generic stuff, post it on a job board". Just last week we had the CFO complain that the kept being notified about something despite having clicked on the button that "makes it go away". The button was grayed out and disabled. They didn't seem worried that the were unable to perform their job duty, just that they couldn't get rid of the reminder.
- rspeer 9y agoI mean, we can snark about recruiters being bad at what they do and not understanding people's qualifications, but this is different. Recruiters being merely bad isn't illegal. Until the point where they ask "hey, before we proceed, can you tell us if you're a member of a protected class?"
- NumberSix 9y agoGoogle and many other tech companies and the investors that ultimately control them fear losing control of their business, in this case an extremely lucrative near-monopoly, to their employees, especially the technical employees. Thus they prefer young, relatively ignorant, naive, hard-working, compliant, inevitably more error-prone employees to more experienced employees, despite the apparent cost. It is a matter of political and economic control. Thus they have an unwritten rule to minimize the use of employees with more than ten years of hands-on technical experience. They will employ more experienced employees if they absolutely must, but otherwise they avoid it. Hence, there are some but very few technical employees with more than ten years of experience. The numbers trail off with increasing experience and age. There are also exceptions for more experienced employees from usually wealthy families affiliated with the investors. It is an irrational and hidden class system. It is costly. It is not fair. It almost certainly makes it very difficult to make technical advances and breakthroughs that require more experience, the wisdom of age, etc.
- valas 9y agoWhat do mean by 'loosing control of their business ... to their employees'?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- taormina 9y agoOP is claiming that they are more afraid of underlings their own age than a bunch of kids fresh out of school.
- hackits 9y agoIs anyone going to actually come to the table with some hard numbers here or is this constantly going to be a dick waving contest? Playing the devil advocate here I bet internally they have metrics telling them there isn't any value that people above 30 add compared to 20 year old straight out of college.
- lend000 9y agoIf age alone isn't a reliable factor in determining success, then why do most of the big Silicon Valley companies lean young? Shouldn't economics sort them out if they really aren't getting more bang for their buck with younger employees? Couldn't I get way more done by gaming the market (and therefore win) if I only hired older employees who were rejected by Google solely for their age? I see lots of conspiracy theories here, but none answer that question. It seems to me like young employees may have a few properties going for them (on average), that may be less true as they age: -motivation/drive/desire to put in hours -low cost -flexibility -creativity/fresh ideas -more likely to bond with other young employees, and participate in company culture (instead of having a family they need to spend time with). To me, it basically means that for basic software engineering, at a certain point you actually do (on average) become less valuable as you age, unless you move up into system architecture, specialism/subject matter expertise, or management.
- ubernostrum 9y agoShouldn't economics sort them out You know the old saying that markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent? http://danluu.com/tech-discrimination/ http://danluu.com/tech-discrimination/ It’s true that markets have impose a cost on firms that discriminate. In the long run, that can put pressure on firms that discriminate, but as we’ve seen, that timescale can easily be longer than half a century. In other words, a generation or more can pass while the discrimination continues. If you're OK with that -- and with the risk that it can happen to you! -- then you're OK with it. If not, consider that sometimes the market needs change forced upon it. Also, tech companies "lean young" primarily because younger employees A) earn less B) put up with more mistreatment.
- hn_throwaway_99 9y agoBut your last sentence basically obliterates the reasoning behind the rest of your post: > Also, tech companies "lean young" primarily because younger employees A) earn less B) put up with more mistreatment. That's kind of the point. Companies aren't acting based on irrational discrimination, they are trying to get more output for less money, and if they can pay employees less and work them harder (what you refer to as "mistreatment"), then it's an economic advantage for them.
- barry-cotter 9y agohttps://www.quora.com/Why-are-so-many-people-over-40-in-Silicon-Valley-not-able-to-find-jobs/answer/Mehmet-Fidanboylu?share=1 https://www.quora.com/Why-are-so-many-people-over-40-in-Sili... How Agesism Works at Google
- WalterBright 9y ago> what I have observed is that the majority of people with that kind of "experience" are basically doing the same job in the past 10 years. So their minds have become stagnant and inelastic. 10 years experience with, say, C brings: You write far fewer bugs, and when there is a bug, you find it much faster. You know what best practices are. This only comes with experience. You know better than to code up another bubble sort. You can recognize quadratic performance long before it blindsides you in production. You can identify the "stink" of bad code just by glancing at it. You're no longer tempted to show off by writing clever code that nobody can maintain. You do the boring stuff like documentation and tests. All this means quicker development, better code, fewer costly bugs in production, and someone to coach the newbies and into writing better code.
- dx034 9y agoBut you'll not be able to answer the harder whiteboard questions. And only those get you hired..
- WalterBright 9y agoEmployers get what they interview for. A good team has a mix of talents, from the algorithm wonks to the steady hands to the sticklers for detail to the tweeners to the occasional rogue.
- collyw 9y agoHey you got downvoted, but as someone with 15 years experience, I am definitely worse at whiteboard stuff than when i was straight out of Uni. I do write far better software these days though and can usually design things in a way that avoid the need for too much "clever" code.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- taneq 9y agoSo this is the way Google ends (or at least comes down a peg or two): Not with a bang or a whimper, but the angry muttering of a horde of 'progressives' chewing on each other for not being 'progressive enough'.
- danso 9y agoWhat does this have to do with being "progressive"? It's against American law to discriminate on the basis of age. Is it a "progressive" notion to follow federal and state law now?
- jv22222 9y agoWhen I'm hiring I don't care about age, but I do care about you keeping current and being conversant with the general stack that we use. That said, I'll also consider you if you don't know our stack as long as it's clear you've been keeping current with 'something' and that you're a great coder.
- mrlyc 9y agoReally? I'm 63 and Google in both Mountain View and Sydney are after me.
- randyrand 9y agoI feel that "age discrimination" is not actually due to discriminating against age. It's that some older people are less willing to learn new programming languages and libraries, etc - that is what they will be discriminated against, not their age.
- dandare 9y agoThe discrimination arises when you start to assume that a specific candidate is "less willing to learn new programming languages" because you have this preconception about his age group and he belongs to that age group.
- dandare 9y agoCould someone please ELI5 how one proves that he was not hired for an engineering position "for which she was qualified" because of one's age? From my experience there are usually multiple candidates that are perfectly qualified for any opened position but only one (the best?) is hired. What kind of evidence could we expect to see in a case like this?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- cableshaft 9y ago"In court documents, Fillelkes claimed that a recruiter told her she needed to put her dates of graduation on her resume so the company could view how old she was." I had a feeling some people reviewing resumes did that. At least that's one upside of dropping out and finishing my degree years later.
- everybodyknows 9y agoContext from history, the 2004 "too old to matter" lawsuit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Reid_(computer_scientist) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Reid_(computer_scienti...
- rhubarbie 9y agoIf you are the victim of ageism in tech (fired/not getting hired, etc): I'm writing an article on the subject. Email me at rhubarbie@protonmail.com if you want to share your story. You can remain anonymous if you like.