10 ms·
Woman recruited by Google four times and rejected, joins age-discrimination suit
- dudul 11y agoThe title is a little misleading. She was never actually hired, just interviewed.
- dudul 11y agoWhat's this dumb downvote for? The title said she was recruited and let go 4 times which doesn't make any sense. The actual story is that she was interviewed 4 times and then ignored.
- elsherbini 11y agoMaybe the title changed since your comment, but 'recruited and rejected' means exactly that, interviewed and not hired.
- mephi5t0 11y agoDown votes are incorrect. Recruited means enlisted, hired. She was never hired, she was contacted by recruiters and interviewed. "Recruited" doesn't mean "contacted by recruiters" it means hired to do work. Recruiter - who hires/searches for "recruits". Recruit is a person that was recruited not contacted by a recruiter.
- crazygringo 11y agoNot at any tech company I've ever worked at. Recruiters contacting someone is the recruiting -- the reaching out, telling them what a great company it is, getting them in for an interview, and so on. It's expanding the funnel of interviewees. Hiring is actually making an offer. That decision is made by different people higher up, and not the recruiter. Maybe it's different at different companies or industries, but this is my whole experience with it across all sorts of companies in NYC. (And in response to comment about the Merriam-Webster definition -- meanings change. Lots of tech lingo is different from dictionary definitions. You can say "let's offline this" in a meeting, and you won't find that definition in MW either.)
- noja 11y agoThe recruiters _are_ recruiting, but they have not recruited someone until that person is earning a salary.
- vonmoltke 11y agoNo, at it's most strict they haven't recruited someone until the company makes an offer. You can be recruited by multiple groups simultaneously. Happens all the time in college sports.
- slantyyz 11y ago> No, at it's most strict they haven't recruited someone until the company makes an offer. You can be recruited by multiple groups simultaneously. Happens all the time in college sports. Kinda depends on the context, doesn't it? The context can subtly change how the word is interpreted. This is how I would interpret the various forms based on my own personal experience -- your interpretations may differ: Recruiter is recruiting Joe -> Trying to hire Joe Recruiter has recruited Joe -> Successfully hired Joe Joe was recruited x times by Google --> Google tried to hire Joe x times Joe was recruited x times by Google to do Y, Z --> Google assigned or hired Joe to do Y, Z x times Joe is being recruited -> Someone is trying to hire Joe Joe was being recruited by A, B, C -> A, B, C trying to hire Joe We are recruiting Joe to be our representative for X -> Joe has been designated to be the representative Joe was recruited by Company -> Joe was hired Joe is a new recruit -> Joe is a new employee
- plonh 11y agoThese examples show that the language is ambiguous. Coders need to cope with that, not pretend English has a good spec.
- vonmoltke 11y agoThis sub-discussion reminds me of the issues with the phrase "job offer". To native English speakers, it is generally taken to mean "company has offered to hire you with a certain compensation package". To non-native English speakers, particularly it seems continental Europeans, it is generally taken to mean "company has offered to consider you for a job" (as opposed to you approaching them).
- richmarr 11y agoDown votes aren't incorrect because of the definition of 'recruited'. Down votes are incorrect because downvoting someone merely because you disagree is the embodiment of confirmation bias. That makes it the enemy of debate, and of reason itself. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias (Cue a stream of people claiming the thread is off-topic as an attempt to rationalise their downvotes, or down-voting me with equally fallacious reasoning)
- richmarr 11y ago...and downvotes. Pathetic guys, really pathetic.
- ectoplasm 11y agopg said downvoting disagreement is fine. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171
- richmarr 11y agoWell, I respectfully disagree, for the reasons already stated (like most of the on-topic replies to that comment). Even the ones that agreed with pg suggested other mechanics to make up for the down-sides of the current system. At the start of an innovation or social change the majority opinion is wrong, almost by definition. By having a single reward metric, and then structuring your system so that minority opinions get punished, you're creating a culture that's less free-thinking and more monocultural than it should be. I can totally understand pg not wanting to change it, after all, he has a day job, but I don't think his 'up is agreement so down should be disagreement because symmetry' argument is worth much as stated. After all, simple agreement has no worthwhile attribute other than a count of those who agree. Disagreement on the other hand is completely different, there are thousands of reasons why you might disagree with anything but the simplest of comments. Simply recording disagreement as a number is meaningless. Edit: (I upvoted you for bothering to engage and find a link rather than just downvoting)
- informatimago 11y agoNope. Not according to my understanding, and not according to dictionaries such as the Merriam-Webster: recruit verb re·cruit \ri-ˈkrüt\ : to find suitable people and get them to join a company, an organization, the armed forces, etc. : to form or build (a group, team, army, etc.) by getting people to join : to persuade (someone) to join you in some activity or to help you "Recruited" definitely means she was hired. She wasn't, she was only interviewed four times and not given a job offer each time. Check her resume: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cherylfillekes https://www.linkedin.com/in/cherylfillekes
- justizin 11y agoCould you possibly be focusing on a less important facet of what this discussion should be about?
- dudul 11y agoIt is important. The title implies that she was actually hired and let go 4 times - which doesn't make sense and would be a very awkward story. Being interviewed 4 times and passed on is a completely different story.
- richmarr 11y agoor... noun a person newly enlisted in the armed forces and not yet fully trained. • a new member of an organization or supporter of a cause.
- clarky07 11y agohandy you left one off d. to seek to enroll The recruiter, recruited her to join google. just as coaches from many different schools might recruit an athlete. One does not in fact have to be successful to have recruited someone.
- tzs 11y agoThat is only a subset of current common widespread usage. For example, high school athletes who receive offers from more than one school are often said to have been recruited by all the schools. Some examples from Wikipedia articles: Magic Johnson: "Although Johnson was recruited by several top-ranked colleges such as Indiana and UCLA, he decided to play close to home". Fred VanFleet: "At Auburn High School in Rockford, Illinois, he was an All-State player who was mostly recruited by mid-major basketball programs". Marcus Dupree: "Dupree was heavily recruited by the major college football programs, and during the final month of the recruiting period, his high school coach, Joe Wood, answered more than 100 phone calls a day from colleges". Marcus Mariota: "He was recruited by Oregon, Hawaii, Memphis, Utah, Oregon State, Washington, Arizona, Notre Dame, UCLA and USC but was only offered a scholarship by Memphis and Oregon". Chris Taylor: "He was recruited to play college baseball by the University of Virginia and the College of William & Mary". I'm kind of surprised that dictionary has missed this. I'm even more surprised that other dictionaries I checked also missed this.
- chapium 11y agoI would say it is misleading because it misses the entire point of the article. She's part of an age discrimination suit.
- mkempe 11y agoadded this qualifier to the title
- iza 11y agoSo she has good qualifications but poor interview skills.
- mkempe 11y agoAfter the first interview she was re-contacted by the Google recruiters who told her she had done very well in her interview, and that was why they were contacting her for other positions.
- Someone1234 11y agoMaybe. It is very hard to prove one way or another. The only way to "prove" discrimination is to show a pattern of behaviours rather than isolated incidents. That's what lawsuits like this often hinge upon, they will use discovery to primarily prove that discrimination is occurring.
- sosuke 11y agoSeems just strange to keep asking someone you reject to come back. When I am turned away I am turned away no more.
- justizin 11y agoI on multiple occasions have asked Google recruiters to put me on a "leave me the fuck alone" list.
- edroche 11y agoFour times does seem excessive, but I have been called back by companies to interview for other positions in the past. I wasn't a fit for some reason in the first instance, but my information was saved and presented again when another opportunity came up that they thought I would be a fit for.
- potatolicious 11y agoAlternatively, she has good qualifications and Google has interview practices or policies that are - intentionally or not - age-discriminatory. Generally speaking, if well-qualified people are constantly failing your interviews, the problem may not be these well-qualified people and instead might be your interviews ;) Considering that the typical programming interview in this industry does not involve writing any actual code (no, waving your arms against a whiteboard in a coding-like way doesn't count), I'm generally inclined to believe interviews are more problematic than interviewees.
- nickbauman 11y agoGoogle's "interview process" is kind of a Valley joke. The only way you get hired at Google is if you're a "tech celebrity" (i.e. Guido van Rossum), you're a freshly minted grad from the likes of MIT and Stanford or you're an acqui-hire. Of course you have to pass the interviews. But there are almost no exceptions.
- TallGuyShort 11y agoThe initial phase of recruiting is also somewhat of a joke. I've heard the phrase "they interview anyone with a pulse" repeatedly. My own experience: I have a different recruiter contact me every 6 months, I tell them I'd be very interested in speaking with someone about specific teams / positions at my local office, and then 6 months later I get a call from another recruiter at a completely different office.
- Arainach 11y agoThis matches my experiences perfectly. Heck, most recently, they contacted me, said they were interested in talking about my experiences, set up a time, and......never called. Nor did they ever email explaining why they didn't call. As if I wasn't already jaded by the experience of myself and several other friends in onsite interview loops, this has done nothing to improve my opinion of them as a company.
- TallGuyShort 11y agoSpeak of the devil... just got an email from Google. And not from the office I've repeatedly asked to be in touch with.
- bzz01 11y agoCome on, if that was true they would never be able to hire tens of thousands of engineers. They do have high false negative rate (by design) but it is far from impossible to pass. I personally know a ton of people who were hired by Google after standard interview process.
- JamesBaxter 11y agoI imagine it's possible there is age discrimination at Google but I doubt it contributed in this case. Why would Google have contacted her multiple times if age had been a problem before? Like the rest of us she's not getting any younger...
- vonmoltke 11y agoWhy did Amazon contact me to invite me to a hiring event, only to immediately reject me due to "prior interview feedback"? Sometimes the left hand doesn't talk to the right at these large companies.
- alecco 11y agoBecause it's a big organization and recruiters are lazy or out of the loop.
- aesthetics1 11y agoIt's possible to be contacted by multiple recruiters at the same company, no?
- forgottenpass 11y agoWhy would Google have contacted her multiple times if age had been a problem before? Why would Google contact anyone multiple times inf there had been any problems before? Obviously their process must include some sort of returning to potential recruits, or the recruiter just has no data on the previous attempts to recruit her. If it was the case that age was the reason they chose not to hire her, they know damn well not to write that down.
- wobbleblob 11y agoPeople in the US don't put their age on their resume, and many people past a certain age try to obscure data on the resume that would give their age away. It's illegal to ask in an interview, so perhaps they didn't realize until they saw the candidate in person. I remember reading somewhere the average age of google employees (that's all employees, not new hires) is below 30. A group like that isn't likely to hire someone too old for them to relate to any more than a company with an average age over 50 is going to be interested in hiring a 19 yr old. We can't relate to people of a different age, that's the way it's always been. Where I live, if your date of birth (and in some cases recent color photograph) isn't on your resume, they'll assume you have something to hide and you'll get no response. Might as well be upfront about it.
- alecco 11y agoGoogle's gotta fake the H-1B requirements by pretending not to find local people for cheap foreign labor.
- shin_lao 11y agoH-1B imposes that the hire has competitive pay.
- api 11y agoThat's only part of the story. If you lose your job, you might not be able to stay -- and competitive pay may still be lower than a US candidate. So who do you want if you're Google? An H1-B with really heavy golden handcuffs, or a US candidate who will rush off and join the latest hot startup next week after they've tagged 'Worked at Google' on their resume?
- yummyfajitas 11y agoThe golden handcuffs of an H1B are not heavy. Just get in on Google's dime and join the latest hot startup next week after they've tagged "H1B" on their passport.
- makeset 11y agoAssuming the latest hot startup would apply for your H1-B transfer, and that it would be granted.
- skynetv2 11y agoI "succeessfully cleared" full interview loops two times and didnt get an offer, didnt get past phone screens two times. recently i got another call from Google and I said "no, thank you. either i am not a good fit or you are using me to have a reasonable pool of candidates to compare against." the entire process is very lengthy, slow, often interacting with rude interviewers, with no eta on if an offer will be made and no reasonable explanation on why they did not make an offer. One time the reason I got was "we no longer need to fill that position" after 3 months of interview loop.
- wyclif 11y agoThey can't provide a "reasonable explanation" for passing on any candidate because of legal issues. No major company that I know of does that for the same reason.
- samstave 11y agoSimilar thing happened to me.. went through a very lengthy interview process and successfully passed it where they called me the day after and said that they were going to give me an offer the next day! I was ecstatic. They then called me the next day and said "oh, yeah -- we aren't going to give you an offer" and wouldnt give me a reason. The next time, they attempted to recruit me for the same position and I went through several days of phone interviews passing each one. Then I said -- "so you know, I interviewed for this position before and was told I would get an offer, but then didnt" they went back and checked and then said "Yeah we wont be continuing the interview process" Then it happened a third time! Finally I sent the recruiter an email that said "This is the third time you have attempted to recruit me for this position -- Either offer me the job, with a salaray of X or take me out of your system and stop calling me" They haven't called me since -- and I still have no idea why I am blacklisted.
- plonh 11y agoYou told them to stop calling you.... So they stopped calling you.
- 11y ago
- zajd 11y agoI can't believe the number of people defending Google in the comments on that article and elsewhere. I'm sorry, but if you actively recruit someone and interview them in person FOUR times but continue to mysteriously deny them something is horrifically wrong with your hiring process. Beyond that, statistics don't lie.
- clebio 11y agoCompletely agree. Even if the only thing wrong is, they can't keep track of who they've already interviewed (so they don't call them again), that's pretty sad. You're freakin' Google, and you can keep your decided-against list eventually consistent? Poor form.
- plonh 11y ago"No hire" is not a permanent Scarlet letter. Why is it wrong to take a second chance?
- haylem 11y agoI don't know... They interviewed me 5 times, and I don't mind so much. It's a bit frustrating, but I can understand why. Sure there were a few cases of "oops, didn't realize we interviewed you already" and I'm sure there are cases of "we just don't like you as a person". But I'm pretty sure overall, with Google and most companies, the reason was just "you just weren't good enough compared to our other current candidates." And that's OK. The fact that they re-interview someone they dismiss is a good thing. The fact that they re-interview N times a person they've dismissed N-1 times is just unfortunate and makes it more visible, but it's not in itself a malevolent thing. Maybe it'd be best if they didn't re-interview at all because it makes them look bad (after all, chances are higher they'll reject you again if they already did). But I guess I prefer the view that they don't want to pass on someone that might have improved, or someone that they might have dismissed for the wrong reasons the first time. And I see that as rather positive. I personally re-interviewed some people multiple times - and both people I had rejected before and people I had approved but who denied or who got hired but then left and decided to come back. It doesn't struck me as a bad thing to re-assess people based on your current needs and your current workforce. You just have not to be a jerk about it. I'm sure not everybody shares that view though.
- Phlow 11y agoHaving just interviewed at Google, with 15+ years of experience, spending 2 months brushing up on algorithms and data structures, of which none were part of my interview, leaving at the end of the day thinking they'd be crazy not to offer me a job, I was rejected. Several 20-something kids interviewed me, and I'm pretty sure I've forgotten more than they know. I know they're Google and everyone wants to work there, but if their false-negative rate is so high, I'm not going to bother wasting my time. Don't tell me you're interested in me, create a study surface area that takes months to cover, when in reality the chance of being hired is quite small. It's disrespectful and it pisses people off.
- migstopheles 11y ago> Several 20-something kids interviewed me, and I'm pretty sure I've forgotten more than they know Not saying you didn't have a bad experience, but it's possible that this kind of attitude didn't help your cause much either...
- Phlow 11y agoI had nothing but good conversations. No animosity at all during the interview. That comment is post-interview analysis.
- sssilver 11y ago> I know they're Google and everyone wants to work there If only Google themselves knew how far that is from truth.
- plonh 11y agoYou probably got the "he seems smart, but I would expect someone with this much experience to gave progressed farther in his career, no hire because no trajectory , we can't hire someone with 15 years experience at the '7 years of experience' level he interviewed at". For people who are solid contributors and not "management material", this looks a lot like ageism, but technically maybe isn't. Now, why they want everyone at a 50K engineer company to be management material...seems ill advised.
- api 11y agoThis is normal for Google's byzantine hiring process. I got in once a while back (way before what I'm doing now) with a high recommendation from an insider, successfully cleared the interviews, and never heard anything. They even flew me to Mountain View. The second time they called, I declined.
- ipozgaj 11y agoGoogle is well known in the Valley for having really bad interviewing process, but from this article it's not really obvious that's the case here, nor that she's being discriminated for her age. Her resume does look nice, but that tells us nothing about her skills or performance on the interviews.
- e40 11y agoRegarding the age portion of this. I've visited Google a bunch of times. I'm always amazed how young people are there. It seems more like a college campus than a business. It seems to me, in the Mountain View complex, at busy times like lunch, that 95% of the people I'd see are in the 20-30 range, with a few older people sprinkled in. It's been this way every time I've been there.
- ConceptJunkie 11y agoI worked for AOL in 2005-2006 back before the huge layoffs occurred (and me included) and it had a similar "college campus" vibe. Overall, it wasn't a bad place to work, but upper management was a living testament to Dilbert. The company I work for now has a wide range of ages, including a lot of older people... which is good, because I'm 50 now. AOL's hiring process at the time was similarly dysfunctional. I'd interviewed once a year or two previously, but never heard back (which I didn't realize at the time is now the norm). The only reason I was able to eventually get in was because I had a friend working there who got me past the HR barriers. This friend, who was much more experienced than I was only able to be hired when a technical manager stumbled across his resume. Apparently, he couldn't get past HR either, but when the manager found about my friend his attitude was "Why in the world aren't we interviewing this guy?!" As I said, I got laid off, but my friend is still there. My experience with some companies has been that hiring is run by HR people who have no idea what they are doing, or whom they are looking for, or how to filter resumes by anything other than keywords (e.g., the proverbial "10 years experience with a two-year-old technology" nonsense) and so the hiring managers often never get a chance to see candidates they would be very interested in.
- vinceyuan 11y ago"Google favors workers who are under the age 40" I am thinking about my career path. I don't know if a company will hire me as a software developer when I am 40+ years old. I do understand the companies like young people.
- plonh 11y agoI have been surprised at how many programmers left the industry to become farmers.
- plonh 11y agoI have been surprised at how many programmers left the industry to become farmers.