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Why are these numbers so small? Even more so to the fine for data protection violations. The point of these sort of things are to make companies think twice. Wh
by mbrumlow 7y ago
Why are these numbers so small? Even more so to the fine for data protection violations. The point of these sort of things are to make companies think twice. While 11m is a lot of cash it is nothing compared to Google's total income, and would not even been half a years salary for those they refused to hire. Seems like they got let off easy on this one.
- eej71 7y agoConsidering that it is a claim from a _prospective_ employee about the interview process, the settlement of 35k per person seems relatively generous.
- josefx 7y agoConsidering what they would have earned the first year at Google if they weren't discriminated against that looks more like a drop in the bucket.
- dmitrygr 7y agoDoesn't your statement assume that they were all good enough to actually be hired?
- shados 7y agoAll good enough to be hired AND that if they were, that the job they eventually did get paid substantially less. That is very possible, but it's still a loaded assumption indeed.
- josefx 7y agoThey were all good enough to get in person interviews at least[1]. If I read that document correctly Google would have been able to argue about the qualifications of various individuals and have them removed from the lawsuit after discovery concluded. Of course I am not a lawyer so I might be wrong. [1]see court document on https://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/bizwomen/news/latest-news/2017/08/nearly-300-have-joined-google-age-case.html https://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/bizwomen/news/latest-news...
- dmitrygr 7y agoPhone screens at google are not foolproof, and some candidates get to skip them for various reasons. I've seem some candidates make it to onsite and then be unable to answer my warmup question of: write a function that takes an integer, leaves all the zero bits alone, changes all the one bits into zero bits, and returns the result.
- pcwalton 7y agoHow is a disguised return 0 anything remotely resembling a good question? I highly suspect most people who are "unable to answer" are actually just misunderstanding the question, since it's phrased in such a bizarre way. The way you phrased it, I'm not even 100% sure that "return 0" is the answer you're looking for!
- ghaff 7y agoThat’s the right return value of course but ignoring everything else doesn’t actually meet the requirements of the question. Of course in a live situation you can ask if that’s ok or if they actually want useless bit twiddling.
- pcwalton 7y agoBut there's no such thing, semantically, as "leaving zero bits alone". The value 0 has no notion of "where it came from". The expression "x & 0" is semantically equivalent to the expression "0", in that they represent the same value. In my view, the fact that the question even lends itself to philosophical debate like this just illustrates how exceptionally bad the question is, even by Google standards.
- ghaff 7y agoOh I don’t disagree. Literally going through bit by bit and zeroing any bit not equal to zero would be grossly inefficient especially if you know it’s unnecessary.
- smt88 7y ago"Generous" is hard for me to have an opinion about. $11M is less than a rounding error for Google. "Fair" isn't as hard. It's not fair, if (as I suspect) Google is guilty of age discrimination. There should be greater consequences than just trying to pay people what they might've lost financially from the discrimination. Or, to put it another way: Google deserves to be punished if this was actually happening.
- jaclaz 7y agoIf you see it from the other side, it is more than 50,000 for each of the 200 people, even if the lawyers will likely get 1/3 of that, it remains 35,000 US$ or so. For what? Having been NOT hired (but making it to the interview). Presumably, even if a bit "old" according to Google standards, these people are anyway "top notch" in programming and almost surely soon found an appropriate job at some other company. So, the compensation is seemingly very hypothetical, covering what? 2-3 months of wages for someone hypothetically getting 140,000-200,000 US$ per year. Or is it because the applicant could have been hired at 160,000 US$ per year but only makes - poor little thing - 125,000 US$ from the company that hired him/her, and so first year is covered?
- mbrumlow 7y agoEngineers at google can make way over 200k in salary and even more in total compensation. Given these guys were over 40, and many of them likely seasoned it is likely they would have made way more than the numbers you are suggesting.
- jaclaz 7y agoI don't doubt that, it was just an attempt to put the numbers in pespective, if you believe that it is only 1 month or 15 days of wage it is ok as well, but what was the actual inconvenience to them? Let's bring it to the extreme, 35,000 US$ for the hassle of making four (fruitless) interviews?
- onemoresoop 7y ago
- uhahahu 7y agoare you saying you know the best interest of the people who accepted the settlement?
- will4274 7y ago> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize.
- tdb7893 7y agoHow much would've it cost to actually litigate this? I'm wondering if this settlement was similar to how much it would've cost to litigate and they just wanted the people to go away.
- ihuman 7y agoIsn't it normal for class-action lawsuits to have a low payout per person?
- thfuran 7y agoIt's definitely normal for the class members to receive little payout per person, but a lot of that tends to have to do with astronomical legal expenses.
- Teknoman117 7y agoThe real winners of the current setup are legal firms. Doesn't matter who is suing who, or who wins or loses. Lawyers are going to get paid.
- lawnchair_larry 7y agoIn a class action, lawyers don’t get paid if they lose.
- Karunamon 7y agoI had it described to me that class actions are less about making the wronged parties whole, and more about forming large enough sticks to beat misbehaving entities about the head with.
- lonelappde 7y agoNo. Lawyers get about half. That's a lot, but class members each getting a pittance isn't much different from getting twice a pittance. Substantial payments to everyone in a class would wipe out the defendant.
- thfuran 7y agoIs that actually bad? I'm not really sure why preserving entities that severely wrong large classes is necessarily a desirable goal.
- jonas21 7y agoThis is just speculation, but... The plaintiffs may have settled because they thought it was unlikely they would prevail if this went to trial, so it would be better take a guaranteed payout. Google may have settled because they figured that the PR hit of a lengthy age discrimination trial would be worth more than $11M, regardless of whether they won.
- mejarc 7y agoI doubt any company, especially in SV, takes a PR hit from age discrimination, which seems to be widely accepted and barely punished. Google just wants to swat away the plaintiffs like annoying gnats.