
269 people join class-action lawsuit against Google claiming age discrimination - IronWolve
https://www.bizjournals.com/bizwomen/news/latest-news/2017/08/nearly-300-have-joined-google-age-case.html?page=all
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lend000
If age alone isn't a reliable factor in determining success, then why do most
of the big Silicon Valley companies lean young? Shouldn't economics sort them
out if they really aren't getting more bang for their buck with younger
employees? Couldn't I get way more done by gaming the market (and therefore
_win_ ) if I only hired older employees who were rejected by Google solely for
their age? I see lots of conspiracy theories here, but none answer that
question.

It seems to me like young employees may have a few properties going for them (
_on average_ ), that may be less true as they age:

-motivation/drive/desire to put in hours

-low cost

-flexibility

-creativity/fresh ideas

-more likely to bond with other young employees, and participate in company culture (instead of having a family they need to spend time with).

To me, it basically means that for basic software engineering, at a certain
point you actually do (on average) become less valuable as you age, _unless_
you move up into system architecture, specialism/subject matter expertise, or
management.

~~~
mythrwy
Older people are wiser. Young people quite often don't believe this, but that
is because they don't know what they don't know yet.

Problem is, wisdom isn't necessarily a valuable commodity in rank and file.
For instance, after many years and lots of faces a person starts learning how
to work systems and people. Sometimes this takes the place of actually
contributing. An older person who isn't management but who has well practiced
political skills and extensive experience working systems for their own
benefit is a bit dangerous to have around. Particularly if they aren't fully
"on board" (and who is after seeing 20 years of nonsense?). And doubly so if
they don't have good work habits or contribution ethics.

Young people in general have more energy and more stamina. They are faster. I
think this is biological fact. Quite often they do foolish things, but this is
probably overcome by the increased capacity to do. The flexibility. The lack
of jadedness. The ability to get excited. The ability to be directed.

There's a reason the military only accepts younger people. And there's a
reason you have to be a certain age to be president of the U.S.

I don't think we should pretend everything is equal between ages. It
manifestly isn't. But I do think for a certain definition of "old" a person
can perform most programming tasks at an equal or greater level than the
average younger programmer (if they are dedicated and so inclined and have the
experience). But if it's hype and rah rah and running all around and back and
forth (which is not to knock these things, sometimes it is what's needed), ya,
a younger person is better for that.

Over 40 myself. Pretty sure I'm a far better employee than I was in my 20's
but also I wouldn't put up with a fraction of the crap and silly I put up with
in my 20's. So I think there's probably different "best spots" for the place
one is.

As far as Google, I don't know. They sure are a fat target lately. Every
aggrieved group under the sun appears to have the knives out hoping for their
pound of flesh. Which is a cost of getting big and rich it appears. I just
hope the measures they take or are forced to take don't negatively impact
their products. Because I don't really care who they hire so long as the
search is good.

~~~
jaclaz
>Young people in general have more energy and more stamina. They are faster. I
think this is biological fact. Quite often they do foolish things, but this is
probably overcome by the increased capacity to do. The flexibility. The lack
of jadedness. The ability to get excited. The ability to be directed.

>There's a reason the military only accepts younger people.

Sure, they are of course more fit and superior in anything "physical" (which
is actually a large part of what a soldier has to do), more resistant to
fatigue, long hours, etc. and usually much less prone to (say) ilnesses,
backpain, or any other even slightly imparing condition BUT - not so casually
- they are introduced in a very rigid schema with a set of very narrow rules
and usually with a sergeant major shouting at them as soon as they even think
to do anything minimally outside the said rules.

From the outside it seems to me like putting together a bunch of people in the
early twenties with no or little rules and no strict supervision/discipline,
while undoubtedly a "creative" environment tends to resemble more a uni
fraternity than a business place.

I am just guessing, of course, but if you are over 40 and you started working
20 years ago or more you most probably started working in a place where there
was a "dress code", some strict work times, a manager twice or more your age
that would tell you what to do (but also possibly help you advising how to do
it), some more experienced colleagues , etc., in other words some form of
"forced" discipline and of mentoring.

And now I will introduce (being over fifty myself, so somehow self-qualified
for it) another concept, seniority does NOT mean in itself experience,
experience is the SUM of seniority with the attitude to learn, discuss and
extract useful lessons from all the things that happened during the (many)
previous years and be capable of adapt what was learned to changes that
inevitably happen ove the years (be those changes in Law, society or technical
matters).

I know quite a few people my age that notwithstanding having worked (often
with some financial/personal success) for many years, learned nothing, i.e.
are nowhere "wiser" than they were when young.

Experience leads to be wiser, seniority leads to just being older.

~~~
shados
> I know quite a few people my age that notwithstanding having worked (often
> with some financial/personal success) for many years, learned nothing, i.e.
> are nowhere "wiser" than they were when young.

That's a pretty big deal.

Someone straight out of school has expectations matching someone straight out
of school.

Someone with 20 years of experience has expectations matching someone with 20
years of experience.

However, someone straight out of school is, usually, straight out of school.

Someone with 20 years of experience..might have done nothing of value for 10
of those 20 years. Might not have kept up with technology. Might have poor
quality experience. Might be bored with the profession, etc.

So very few people straight out of school are unfit for the job. A much higher
percentage of people with a lot of experience would be unfit for a job (unless
they're willing to take a few step back, at which point, why not take someone
of the same level who is going forward instead of backward?)

~~~
mythrwy
Very good points.

But one doesn't often get through 20+ years without learning "something" (even
if it's not the best things as far as an employer is concerned).

------
danso
> _In court documents, Fillelkes claimed that a recruiter told her she needed
> to put her dates of graduation on her resume so the company could view how
> old she was._

That is one (allegedly) dumb recruiter.

~~~
itg
Filling out online job applications, I noticed they often require graduation
dates and won't let you proceed if you leave it blank. Allows them to quickly
estimate your age.

~~~
drdeadringer
I haven't encountered this yet. What systems are you applying through?

~~~
ubernostrum
Fully-automated forms for gathering that kind of data are common outside tech
and starting to show up in tech at some larger companies, especially those not
seen as "startup" (either current or former).

I know someone who tried to apply to a position at a large tech company and
could not complete their initial forms; this person has a master's degree from
a top-25 university, is soon to have a Ph.D., has studied at the London School
of Economics... but left high school early to go straight to college. Date of
high-school graduation was a mandatory field in their online form, and nobody
at the company could come up with a way to bypass the use of that form (and
entering false information, of course, is not permitted). This person may
literally have to go back and get a GED _after obtaining a Ph.D._ in order to
be able to fill out a job application.

~~~
jboles
Surely they must remember which year they left high school to go to college?
That's graduation, early or otherwise.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Surely they must remember which year they left high school to go to college?
> That's graduation, early or otherwise.

Graduation is when you are certified by the school as completing graduation
requirements, and usually issued a diploma attesting to that fact. Leaving
without doing so, even for higher education that doesn't require a high school
diploma, is not graduation.

------
islanderfun
Hard to fathom not hiring your future self. Especially if they are qualified
and experienced.

At 32 yo, terrified I'll be in this situation soon.

~~~
devrandomguy
It is the one minority that we all inevitably become. "Respect your elders"
has all kinds of reason behind it.

~~~
AstralStorm
Petty big minority of about a quarter of the population nowadays and that is
only if we're counting retirement age. If you go above 40 then it is somewhere
around half of population which does not compute as minority. This means
companies are effectively excluding huge swaths of potential workers.

~~~
collyw
Its a minority in the tech workplace.

------
dandare
Could someone please ELI5 how one proves that he was not hired for an
engineering position "for which she was qualified" because of one's age?

From my experience there are usually multiple candidates that are perfectly
qualified for any opened position but only one (the best?) is hired. What kind
of evidence could we expect to see in a case like this?

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barry-cotter
[https://www.quora.com/Why-are-so-many-people-over-40-in-
Sili...](https://www.quora.com/Why-are-so-many-people-over-40-in-Silicon-
Valley-not-able-to-find-jobs/answer/Mehmet-Fidanboylu?share=1)

How Agesism Works at Google

~~~
WalterBright
> what I have observed is that the majority of people with that kind of
> "experience" are basically doing the same job in the past 10 years. So their
> minds have become stagnant and inelastic.

10 years experience with, say, C brings:

You write far fewer bugs, and when there is a bug, you find it much faster.

You know what best practices are. This only comes with experience.

You know better than to code up another bubble sort. You can recognize
quadratic performance long before it blindsides you in production.

You can identify the "stink" of bad code just by glancing at it.

You're no longer tempted to show off by writing clever code that nobody can
maintain.

You do the boring stuff like documentation and tests.

All this means quicker development, better code, fewer costly bugs in
production, and someone to coach the newbies and into writing better code.

~~~
dx034
But you'll not be able to answer the harder whiteboard questions. And only
those get you hired..

~~~
collyw
Hey you got downvoted, but as someone with 15 years experience, I am
definitely worse at whiteboard stuff than when i was straight out of Uni. I do
write far better software these days though and can usually design things in a
way that avoid the need for too much "clever" code.

------
jv22222
When I'm hiring I don't care about age, but I do care about you keeping
current and being conversant with the general stack that we use.

That said, I'll also consider you if you don't know our stack as long as it's
clear you've been keeping current with 'something' and that you're a great
coder.

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cableshaft
_" In court documents, Fillelkes claimed that a recruiter told her she needed
to put her dates of graduation on her resume so the company could view how old
she was."_

I had a feeling some people reviewing resumes did that. At least that's one
upside of dropping out and finishing my degree years later.

------
mrlyc
Really? I'm 63 and Google in both Mountain View and Sydney are after me.

------
NumberSix
Google and many other tech companies and the investors that ultimately control
them fear losing control of their business, in this case an extremely
lucrative near-monopoly, to their employees, especially the technical
employees. Thus they prefer young, relatively ignorant, naive, hard-working,
compliant, inevitably more error-prone employees to more experienced
employees, despite the apparent cost. It is a matter of political and economic
control.

Thus they have an unwritten rule to minimize the use of employees with more
than ten years of hands-on technical experience. They will employ more
experienced employees if they absolutely must, but otherwise they avoid it.
Hence, there are some but very few technical employees with more than ten
years of experience. The numbers trail off with increasing experience and age.
There are also exceptions for more experienced employees from usually wealthy
families affiliated with the investors.

It is an irrational and hidden class system. It is costly. It is not fair. It
almost certainly makes it very difficult to make technical advances and
breakthroughs that require more experience, the wisdom of age, etc.

~~~
valas
What do mean by 'loosing control of their business ... to their employees'?

~~~
hackits
Is anyone going to actually come to the table with some hard numbers here or
is this constantly going to be a dick waving contest?

Playing the devil advocate here I bet internally they have metrics telling
them there isn't any value that people above 30 add compared to 20 year old
straight out of college.

~~~
HarryHirsch
It's reasonable to assume that a young workforce is a cheap and compliant
workforce, saying that the major employers have run the numbers isn't playing
devil's advocate.

The real question is: _why does the garden-variety stereotype overachieving
Stanford aspie with sociopathic tendencies defend the practice?_

------
rhubarbie
If you are the victim of ageism in tech (fired/not getting hired, etc): I'm
writing an article on the subject. Email me at rhubarbie@protonmail.com if you
want to share your story. You can remain anonymous if you like.

------
everybodyknows
Context from history, the 2004 "too old to matter" lawsuit:

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

------
randyrand
I feel that "age discrimination" is not actually due to discriminating against
age. It's that some older people are less willing to learn new programming
languages and libraries, etc - that is what they will be discriminated
against, not their age.

~~~
dandare
The discrimination arises when you start to assume that a specific candidate
is "less willing to learn new programming languages" because you have this
preconception about his age group and he belongs to that age group.

------
micahbright
Ironic, coming at the heels of Google firing someone for being "anti-
diversity".

~~~
victor9000
That's because diversity doesn't actually mean diversity. It's mostly
newspeak, but it amounts to a dynamic set whose members are defined by the
fashionable morality of PC culture.

~~~
13124452
what now we're claiming google is some champion for PC culture? they're in the
middle of a massive investigation by the department of labor for systemic wage
discrimination against their female employees, I don't see how that's exactly
championing the kind of PC culture you're talking about.

[1] [https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/04/dol-
goo...](https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/04/dol-google-pay-
discrimination/522411/)

~~~
victor9000
No, Google is not championing PC culture, Google is championing "diversity"
which is then defined by PC culture. Also, the wage gap argument is a
different argument from the diversity argument. I'm happy to discuss either,
but would you mind stating your point more clearly? Lastly, please use your
real account when discussing hot button issues because it's hard to
differentiate trolls from new accounts.

Edit: For those who disagree then ask yourself this, are all religions equally
represented at Google? Are all age groups? All political affiliations? All
body types? Are all ability types equally represented at Google? Etc, etc. If
not, then why not? And more importantly, why is there no industry-wide effort
to correct the injustice that stems from these differences?

------
pottersbasilisk
Is google going to go thru what uber did?

These kinds of articles do make alot of clicks.

~~~
matt4077
I don't quite get what your second sentence is trying to insinuate. Is it:

\- The media is lying to you: there actually is no lawsuit?

\- For the last 12 years, the media and Google colluded to discriminate
against anyone above 30 years of age to drive clicks with the inevitable
lawsuit, and their payday has finally come?

\- 300 people suing the most prominent internet company for employment
discrimination isn't important enough to warrant news coverage?

In case you want to chose option (3), you'll need a cut-off for what's
newsworthy. I propose scanning the headlines of important newspapers for the
most boring article you can find. Boring articles don't generate many clicks,
so that article must have been included "on the merits", and presents an upper
bound for the required "newsworthiness".

Doing this exercise on the WSJ right now yields "New GE Chief Delays Part of
Boston HQ".

More or less newsworthy than this lawsuit, or Uber's bromance with bankruptcy?
You decide!

~~~
taneq
I think it's option 4: The media may have just found its next horse to beat,
and will continue to do so for as long as people keep clicking on new stories
about it, no matter how thoroughly dead and decomposed that horse may become
in the meantime.

~~~
AstralStorm
Some things should be flogged to death or they recur.

------
taneq
So this is the way Google ends (or at least comes down a peg or two): Not with
a bang or a whimper, but the angry muttering of a horde of 'progressives'
chewing on each other for not being 'progressive enough'.

~~~
danso
What does this have to do with being "progressive"? It's against American law
to discriminate on the basis of age. Is it a "progressive" notion to follow
federal and state law now?

