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Google to pay $28M to settle claims it favoured white and Asian employees
- TriangleEdge 2y agolol, wait until the govt hears about Amazon engineering orgs. Or any other big tech company nowadays..
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- quuxly 2y ago$4,221 per employee is not a ton —- less after legal fees.
- sampton 2y agoGoogle is guilty of a lot of things but this is a drive-by shakedown by predatory law firms.
- yieldcrv 2y agoExcept people on Blind brag about doing this under the domains they control. I wouldn't interpret this as a top-level policy, just some individuals in some hiring and pay/leveling decisions with little accountability. This does mean they represent Google though, and one remedy for that is a settlement by the corporate entity. Ideally shareholders would become interested in rooting this out and creating better, less expensive, accountability. It creates an environment where everyone (or some additional subset of everyone) feels they need to elevate their own in-group.
- theflyinghorse 2y agoWhat's the effective difference between unofficial policy of discrimination and individual groups conducting discrimination en mass? Thinking back to a unicorn I worked for we were unofficially told to favour women in hiring. We all thought it was a great idea at that time, but also I do remember a coworker saying how her group has been doing heavy favouring of women in hiring for years already before being told to do so.
- yieldcrv 2y agoThere isn't an effective difference If people want to change anything about it, they need to know the structure of it
- asabjorn 2y agoI've observed orgs go from diverse to turn largely Indian or Chinese based upon who does the hiring, the only group that doesn't seem to do this is Americans of all ethnicities (Chinese american, indian american, white american etc). White americans seem like the ones having the least legal recourse. When these leaders move they pull these buddies into their new companies, and they often form cliques that operate using their groups culture and protect each other over company interests.
- rchaud 2y agoGot any evidence for that? Is Google in the habit of paying out giant HR-related settlements for something other than protecting good ol' boys like Andy Rubin? https://www.cbsnews.com/news/andy-rubin-google-settlement-sexual-harassment-android-creator-310-million/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/andy-rubin-google-settlement-se... Google has enough money to hire the best law firms too. Why would any law firm engage in frivolous litigation against a potential future client? The linked settlement is 10X that of this one, which if paid, would be divided among 6,600 people. Not exactly a huge payday.
- wilsonfiifi 2y agoI wonder why “Black” employees were asked to be excluded from the lawsuit before Google agreed to settle.
- dvngnt_ 2y ago? https://www.statista.com/statistics/311810/google-employee-ethnicity-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/311810/google-employee-e... shows 5 percent black people. not a huge amount
- bitshiftfaced 2y agoSame as the background rate: https://www.careerexplorer.com/careers/software-engineer/demographics/ https://www.careerexplorer.com/careers/software-engineer/dem...
- wongarsu 2y agoBy the same numbers "Latinx+" are actually over-represented at Google and white people underrepresented. Neither by a large amount though. With how close the numbers actually are I wonder if the different biases of different HR people and hiring managers actually cancelled out pretty well.
- ro_bit 2y ago> Adams said the settlement came after Cantu’s lawyers agreed this month to exclude Black employees from the proposed class action, which Google had sought. Does anyone familiar with the case know the context behind this?
- tw923817 2y ago[flagged]
- barbazoo 2y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Throwaway accounts are ok for sensitive information, but please don't create accounts routinely. HN is a community—users should have an identity that others can relate to.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- fallingknife 2y ago[flagged]
- bilbo0s 2y agomeh. I wouldn't confuse plaintiffs with attorneys in class action cases. Class action settlements are generally attorney paydays, rarely class member paydays. That goes for everything from industrial pollution settlements to discrimination settlements.
- vkou 2y agoThe wage fixing case settlements were about that small, despite there being no shortage of merits for that case.
- derfnugget 2y agodoes anyone care if they perform better or does even suggesting that make me a racist in the modern world?
- kweingar 2y agoIf you read the complaint, the allegation is that controlling for performance evaluations, members of certain groups were preferred over others for promotion.
- Workaccount2 2y agoI don't have any insight, but given the culture that google projects, I would be skeptical of the integrity of their performance evaluations.
- skybrian 2y agoWhy would group averages be helpful when making staffing decisions about individuals?
- cubefox 2y agoHe didn't say so
- bradley13 2y agoThat's obvious, no? If group X on average performs better than group Y, then objective hiring will lead to more group X bring hired. Then group Y takes you to court for discrimination.
- skybrian 2y agoI don’t think it’s obvious that summary statistics will be helpful unless they’re particularly carefully done. Where do averages come from? If individual data points are biased in the same direction (that is, not noise that cancels out) then the group average will be too. This isn’t something you can just assume when you see someone quoting statistics. It could be a garbage study.
- kadomony 2y agoAm I interpreting this correctly? It sounds like the lawsuit is filed on behalf of at least 6,632 employees. $28,000,000 distributed amongst that many is roughly $4,221.95. That's not even accounting for the law firm's stake. That seems like an absurdly low amount to pay to folks to say "sorry we screwed your career over". Google can and absolutely should be paying these people more in compensation.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y agoThis looks like a bad faith lawsuit to extract money. Given all the discrimination in corporate DEI programs, especially at big tech companies, what actually happened is almost certainly the opposite - white and asian employees were discriminated against, in favor of a set of groups that were seen as under represented. In reality, without the bias DEI programs created, white and asian employees would have probably been hired at higher rates and promoted more quickly.
- FuriouslyAdrift 2y agoLol... they paid out in a settlement back in 2021 for discriminating against asians. https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/ofccp/ofccp20210201 https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/ofccp/ofccp20210201
- sciencesama 2y agoWho is getting paid
- sgt 2y agoProceeds will be donated to the center of Google Kids Who Can't Read Good.
- kahlonel 2y agoImagine going out, calling someone the N-word, and only getting 0.0379% of your income as a fine.
- thrownaway561 2y ago[flagged]
- waltercool 2y ago[dead]
- nurettin 2y ago"Cantu claimed she performed exemplary work over seven years in Google’s people operations and cloud departments, yet languished at the same job level while white and Asian peers got extra pay and promotions." So this is an "I feel wronged so I'm going to call you names" trial, because the only person in question is Cantu.
- drdrek 2y agoAs much as we lampoon capitalism in western countries, it's interesting the companies above a certain size are treated as public goods and not as a private venture. No one would enforce this on mom and pop shop or even a small chain store.