
Google pays $11M to job-seekers who alleged age discrimination - sandino
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/22/google-pays-11m-to-jobseekers-who-alleged-age-discrimination
======
gregfjohnson
Tangentially related: I just turned 65, and am continuing to immensely enjoy
programming. Current job involves embedded digital signal processing in
medical devices.

My family came up with a new name for my category of programmers: the
gerihacktric demographic.. :-)

I have interviewed with Alphabet twice, no offers. One time apparently it was
a close call..

It would be fun to be the all-time record holder for oldest new hire!

~~~
xiphias2
It's great, that you got to interview stage. What I mostly found that most
discrimination happens before someone gets to the interview phase, which makes
sense, as it makes interviewing cheaper.

Most old people don't learn as many new things as younger ones, which makes it
harder for older people who do to get the chance to prove themselves.

~~~
sjg007
>Most old people don't learn as many new things as younger ones

... are you sure about that? I'd avoid sweeping generalizations, it does not
help your argument.

~~~
xiphias2
As I'm getting older all my organs are working less, and my brain is slower as
well (though I'm able to think just as deeply as before).

At the same time I'm much more concious about spending my thinking energy, and
because of my experience I'm making much more money than when I was younger
_despite_ my slower thinking.

Discrimination involves hate, and I definately not hate old people, just
accept the facts of life (and I'm also hoping for a cure for aging).

~~~
MaxBarraclough
> Discrimination involves hate

Not always, no. That would give an unworkably narrow definition.

------
moksly
Recently the Danish company KMD was caught utilising a no hiring of anyone
above the age of 36 policy. A practice they’ve apparently used for a decade.
That’s illegal and they’ll likely be punished, but the interesting part is
that they are doing terrible.

They have the largest amount of scandals, the largest amount of settlements
for not meeting what they promised and the largest financial drop of any major
Danish IT company.

This could be happening for a range of reasons. With hiring practices like
that, their management is probably questionable, but hiring young certainly
doesn’t seem to have helped them much.

~~~
WalterBright
> but hiring young certainly doesn’t seem to have helped them much.

A proper team has a mix of old and young, because they bring different skills
to the table. Young people tend to be more energetic and enthusiastic, while
older people have already learned that you don't store customer passwords
unencrypted and check that backups are being done.

------
mbrumlow
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
Considering that it is a claim from a _prospective_ employee about the
interview process, the settlement of 35k per person seems relatively generous.

~~~
smt88
"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
If 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
Engineers 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
I 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
It's very demoralizing to be realize nobody wants to hire you because you're
over a certain age. So this is not about the inconvenience of wasting time
with the interview but more generally about age discrimination.

~~~
jaclaz
I perfectly understand the issue, I work (I might say worked) in a field where
- for completely different reasons - the work opportunities are scarce to non
existant for senior people, but the question was more about how the sum was
quantified.

Being the target of discrimination (be it age, sex, race, religion, whatever)
is a terrible experience, but it is not easy to determine the amount of a
monetary compensation.

As the parent noted, the $11 M are a rounding error to google, still the
amount each person received should not be excessive because google is so big.

I mean, let's say that in an alternate world the amount would be calculated on
the gross profits of google and the total amount had been US$ 110 Millions
instead (still peanuts).

Would have it been "fair" that each refused applicant got 350,000 US$? (a
couple years wage)

Or 3,500,000 each (more like 20 years) would have been adequate?

~~~
onemoresoop
I don't have an opinion about the compensation, some could argue that it is or
it isn't excessive. My understanding is that the wealthier the company the
less likely they are to change their bad practices when fined a small amount
compared to their size.

~~~
onemoresoop
Here's an interesting story, somehow related to the size of the fine vs. the
wealth of the person given the fine, though this is in Finland and about a
speeding ticket.

[https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/03/finland...](https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/03/finland-
home-of-the-103000-speeding-ticket/387484/)

------
dvtrn
_Although it has settled the case, Google denies the allegations that it was
unfairly dismissive of older applicants._

Why is Google still making denials and statements after settling the action?

~~~
panpanna
Because last time Google denied doing something like this it turned out there
was a paper trail all the way to the CEO.

(The top email basically said: why are you emailing me this. This is illegal.
Don't create a paper trail!!)

~~~
zippy
Google has a history of age discrimination and losing in court, going back to
the founders of the company.

See Reid v Google where Brian Reid, a key developer of the tech we use, was
told his ideas "were too old to matter" and that he was an "old fuddy duddy."

Google fought it and lost.

[https://www.law.com/therecorder/almID/1202464321723/?slretur...](https://www.law.com/therecorder/almID/1202464321723/?slreturn=20190622134543)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Reid_(computer_scientist...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Reid_\(computer_scientist\))

~~~
pmiller2
Reid v. Google was settled out of court in 2012 for an undisclosed amount.

~~~
zippy
yes and no. they lost on appeal to the state supreme court on whether evidence
about age bias could be used in the lawsuit.

then they settled.

------
bennybob
I'm 37, I'm starting to get worried about my age being a problem. But to hell
with blaming employers who don't want me, it's their call. I think that maybe
the actual problem is that by 40 they expect that I should be leading teams
not just stuck at senior dev. Personally I want out of tech as I see supply
and demand acting on wages (I'm in UK). Pretty soon, as far as I can estimate,
it will go the way manufacturing went in the west: gone or heavily unionised
blue collar like Germany which I don't want to be.

------
atemerev
Anecdotal: was recently trying to apply to one of Google’s engineering
positions in Zürich (I already tried to do that 7 years ago, did not pass the
interview, now I think I am better equipped) Got a referral from one of my
Googler friends.

In 2 days, I’ve got a very dismissive letter from Google, which amounted to
“we decided that your profile and experience is no match for this position —
and by the way, don’t bother applying to other similar positions at other
Google offices. Case closed”.

My CV only got better since my last interview at Google, and while I didn’t
pass it with flying colors, it wasn’t completely bad, too. I wonder if my
current age played the part. Meanwhile, at Google jobs site, there were many
positions marked as “fresh alumni of 2019 only” — perhaps that’s their perfect
target.

~~~
jayd16
Or, you know, they just have entry level positions and don't want to pay for a
senior dev.

------
carmenbr
Last month we launched our website/job board to fight ageism in tech

we had a huge response launching here on HN and I believe it’s a hidden
problem we need to tackle.

[https://noageismintech.com](https://noageismintech.com)

------
trhway
Very fun link inside the article [https://www.businessinsider.com/jk-
scheinberg-apple-engineer...](https://www.businessinsider.com/jk-scheinberg-
apple-engineer-rejected-job-apple-store-genius-bar-2016-9)

"JK Scheinberg, the engineer who spent 21 years working at Apple and is best
known for persuading Steve Jobs to move the Mac from PowerPC to Intel in 2005,
was rejected from a job at an Apple store a few years later. "

I wonder if Woz himself would pass the muster :)

------
tictoc
What's the reasoning behind not hiring older developers? Besides the lack of
flexibility in personality and old guy sentiments, they are usually solid
developers and have a lot of knowledge. I've learned so many things by osmosis
by just being around them. Is it solely that they can grind young developers
into the ground at a low salary? Nearly every young developer in my short time
as a developers thinks they are Mr. Robot, whereas the older guys give a much
better sense of what programming is really all about in the context of
reality.

------
atdrummond
I'd love to hire some talented individuals with this level of experience. Any
recommendations on where I can post positions that don't attract the typical
west coast brogrammer set?

~~~
kvonhorn
> don't attract the typical west coast brogrammer set

Isn't this just discrimination against a different demographic?

~~~
pmiller2
Maybe, but you know it is totally legal to discriminate against people under
40 in the US, right? Not saying it’s ethical or otherwise a good idea, but it
won’t get the DoL on your case.

------
dangerboysteve
$38,500 per person assuming 30% fee going to lawyers. Seems kind of low.

------
solotronics
Will anything happen if you lie about your age on an application? I don't see
how your age, race, or sex should be taken into consideration unless you are
doing a job that requires strenous physical labor.

~~~
redwards510
Even if you avoid providing your DOB, you almost always have to put the year
you graduated college, and that makes it pretty easy to ballpark age.

~~~
rongenre
I leave my graduation date off -- it's never been a problem.

------
zerr
Interesting, their current interview practices is age discrimination - i.e.
they are tailored for fresh grads. I wonder if every non-fresh-grad candidate
is eligible for such compensation :)

------
rdtsc
Technically they didn't admit guilt, but from a PR point of view they did.

So from that respect, they probably opened themselves up for further scrutiny
from future applicants whether they engaged in ageism or not.

I suspect they feared during the discovery process things would be found in
the internal communications that do show some kind of -ism or other things
that would just look bad for them, so throwing $11m at the problem to go away
quickly seemed better.

------
intrasight
I've interacted with several Googlers over the hears who said point-blank that
Google won't hire people over 40.

~~~
nappy-doo
That's funny, I was just rehired at Google. I'm over 40. 4/6 of my coworkers
are over 40. I sat on hiring committee for 4 years before I left a couple of
years ago (FB is a terrible place to work, BTW), and we _NEVER_ discussed the
age of a candidate. Looking around my office (a major US office), and I'd
estimate > 50% are over 40.

------
lazyant
I was offered to join this lawsuit but I didn't because I didn't feel
discriminated or anything.

------
djhworld
How does this work for the claimants, do they get ~$50,000 each (it says more
than 200 people but doesn't quantify it) or do the legal costs swallow up most
of that

~~~
erentz
According to Ars they get about $35k:

> Of the $11 million payout in the settlement, $2.75 million will go to
> lawyers representing the class, Bloomberg reports. Fillekes will get an
> extra $10,000 as the lead plaintiff. The remaining cash works out to around
> $35,000 per plaintiff.

[https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/07/google-
pays-11-m...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/07/google-
pays-11-million-to-settle-227-age-discrimination-claims/)

~~~
ramblerman
That seems kind of low. I would assume software engineers capable of
interviewing at google would be somewhat well off, and take the risk for a
bigger payout.

Perhaps the law firm had final say?

