
Google's diversity post makes no mention of age - brianstorms
http://brianstorms.com/2014/05/googles-so-called-diversity-makes-no-mention-of-age.html
======
Shebanator
I'm a google engineer who is _cough_ well over 40. I haven't experienced any
age discrimination. The engineering team for the product I work on, Google
Play Music, is roughly 15% older engineers (rough guess, because I don't
actually know how old everyone is). And across google, many of the most well
regarded engineers (not talking about managers) are also older folks. Should
there be more older engineers? Possibly, but the population is skewed because
google is growing very fast of late and the vast majority of hires come
straight out of college.

Also keep in mind that software engineering is a tough profession, and burnout
is a real issue. Many of the people I've worked with over the years have moved
on to other careers, in high tech or in something completely unrelated. The
luckier ones cashed out on stock options or IPOs, and no longer need to work
for a living - they either have their own little companies where they play
around or they just retire. I'd say probably 40-50% of the engineers I worked
with in my 20s and 30s are no longer doing any coding.

Bottom line: age discrimination is generally not a problem at google. One
discrimination suit means nothing - those happen all the time at every
successful company, and most of them are from folks angling for a quick
settlement. (I don't know the merits of the particular case in question.)

~~~
thrownaway2424
There's only one person on my immediate team who is under thirty. Much of the
company's engineering leadership is on the "ex-dec" mailing list. Let's just
say that there are no 22-year-old engineers on ex-dec.

~~~
cheapsteak
Curious about the "ex-dec" mailing list. Link? Google isn't of much help (top
result is this thread)

~~~
Yunk
Since the discussion is age, I would say digital equipment corporation which
would put everyone at 40+.

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dragonwriter
Google's blog post about diversity stats doesn't say anything about age, they
diversity website does (but not with age stats.)

Of course, there are _lots_ of possible diversity axes for which they don't
have stats, including, among others, veterans status and sexual orientation
(which, also, though they aren't in the stats, are addressed on the diversity
web page.)

Its even weirder that the blog post complains that Google's federally mandated
EEO-1 report includes only the information that prescribed in the federal
mandate.

~~~
brianstorms
That is one way to spin it but not what I mean. My point of the post is that
it is unfortunate that the EEO-1 doesn't care about age, because age is a
problem in Silicon Valley and it's going to be worse as the workforce gets
older. The EEOC doesn't care about age, so we can't count on EEOC to require
companies to talk about age. It's going to have to come from the companies.

~~~
dragonwriter
> The EEOC doesn't care about age

"The EEO-1 doesn't include age" is a readily verifiable fact.

"The EEOC doesn't care about age", OTOH, is claim which requires some argument
beyond merely the observation that EEO-1 doesn't include age. [1]

[1] See, e.g.,
[http://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/litigation/selected/adea.cfm](http://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/litigation/selected/adea.cfm)
[2]

[2] which, I suppose, is also good evidence for the claim that "the EEOC
doesn't care about keeping its website listing current cases particularly
current", but that's a different issue.

~~~
coldtea
> _is a readily verifiable fact_

Yeah, but people can also read behind the lines. We're good at pattern
matching and we have a lot of experience in corporate bs.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Yeah, but people can also read behind the lines.

Or, IOW, can insert their own bias into their interpretations without
supporting evidence.

~~~
coldtea
Or, IOW, can make assesments based on what they know, without necessarily
having some kind of forensic level or mathematical level proof.

Which is an essential skill in real life (even in court actually). Seems like
a lot of people, especially programmers, conflate real life discussions with
theorem proving.

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mark_l_watson
I worked as a contractor at Google last year when I was 62. No age
discrimination :-)

My opinion is that Google is hungry for good people, and they are casting a
wide net.

BTW, a little off topic, it is much easier getting a job as a contractor at
Google, so if you are curious about life at Google you might want to try the
easier route. I think roughly 40% of the people there are contractors.

~~~
lsc
Note, most of the reasons why companies discriminate against old people can be
mitigated by making them contractors, so I don't know if that's a fair
comparison.

There is the insurance issue- not an issue if you are a contractor. (I mean,
on a google Engineer salary, it's less of a big deal, but still, we're talking
a 5x increase in insurance premiums, it's not nothing.)

Then, there is the hours issue; It is thought that old people usually won't
pretend to work for long hours like young people will. But you don't want your
contractors to pretend to work long hours, you are paying them by the hour!
Here, the perceived disadvantage of old people becomes an advantage, if you
hire them as contractors.

Old people expect more pay. Sure, contractors are expected to get more pay.

Then, I think there are some vestiges of "expected loyalty" that are left in
the system. Firing a bunch of old people is seen as worse, I think, than doing
the same to a bunch of young folks. Making them contractors mitigates this
problem, too.

Now, I'm not saying that there _is_ age discrimination at google; I know a
fair number of "greygoolers" or however you spell that. I'm just saying that
almost all of the reasons why a company might discriminate against an old
person no longer apply if they are hiring said old person as a contractor.

~~~
mark_l_watson
That is a good point about using contractors being more flexible, but that
advantage holds across all age groups. Another good point on the increased
health care costs.

------
greggarious
They also don't give a breakdown of what colleges they hire from. (Which is a
good heuristic for social class) Not everyone had the privilege to be able to
go to Stanford.

~~~
koenigdavidmj
Even if Stanford were a _public_ school with a well-developed CS program, it's
still the nearest notable school. Is there a shock that Amazon and Microsoft
hire a lot of UW grads?

~~~
jonlucc
There are many reasons close schools would have an advantage. I would be
surprised if there aren't adjunct faculty at Stanford from Google (and UW from
Microsoft) and interns sometimes prefer local opportunities to those far away.

It might be interesting to look at which colleges they hire from, but just
drop Stanford (or control for the number of miles from Mountain View.

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msoad
One other thing that I notice is that they didn't have an ethnicity group for
Indians and Middle Eastern. Maybe they categorized them as white because their
white chunk was huge.

~~~
protomyth
The instructions are here:
[http://www.eeoc.gov/employers/eeo1survey/2007instructions.cf...](http://www.eeoc.gov/employers/eeo1survey/2007instructions.cfm)

"Asian (Not Hispanic or Latino) - A person having origins in any of the
original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian Subcontinent,
including, for example, Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia,
Pakistan, the Philippine Islands, Thailand, and Vietnam."

"White (Not Hispanic or Latino) - A person having origins in any of the
original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa."

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zellyn
Your "so-called" diversity blog post makes no mention of color-blindness. :-p

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reledi
Perhaps they're not including age because it's a lot more variable than
"static" traits such as race and gender, even when using ranges. Such
information would quickly become outdated, which is dangerous if they don't
release updated stats often.

~~~
coldtea
> _Such information would quickly become outdated, which is dangerous if they
> don 't release updated stats often._

Nothing stops them from releasing it once a year.

It's not like people grow older more than a year each year.

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plantain
Except, it _does_. Click 'At Google' -> Greyglers.

[http://www.google.com.au/diversity/at-
google.html#tab=greygl...](http://www.google.com.au/diversity/at-
google.html#tab=greyglers)

~~~
brianstorms
Yes and I mention Greyglers in my blog post. But Google's tiny mention way
down on a page that there's a group of old-timers in the company is nothing
new and is not part of their new openness about transparency, nor does it say
anything about age demographics across entire workforce or hiring practices.

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roots8000
That is because it is gender diversity that is the sexy topic (for obvious
reasons). Then racial diversity often gets tacked on at the end as just some
motions you have to go through to deflect criticism.

~~~
coldtea
A lot of people overplay the defenders of "gender diversity" to look
cooler/more progressive to their group (which sometimes is ironically
motivated by trying to get laid).

