

Google age bias suit reaches California Supreme Court - grellas
http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_15148451

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btilly
I wasn't around Google 8 years ago. But I can verify that today Google is
perfectly fine for older workers. The guy who sits next to me is in his 50s.
Absolutely _nobody_ doubts his abilities. Nor does he have any complains about
how he is treated. And the last guy I helped interview who got hired (I'm not
sure for what team, hopefully for ours), is of similar vintage and I believe
will work out well.

The one warning I'll give to older programmers who want to come to Google is
that everyone codes here. There is an attitude that some people get after
decades in the working world. That attitude is, "I'm so senior and experienced
that it makes no sense for me to actually do something so menial as write
code." If you have that attitude, then Google won't have a place for you.
There is no such thing as a non-coding software architect here.

But if you have experience, ability, understand algorithms, and are willing to
code, then Google can be a very friendly place indeed. People here are very
aware of the difference between one year of experience 10 times, and 10 years
of experience. The former has no place here. The latter is highly valued. And
20 years of experience is even more highly valued.

(Disclaimer: I'm only 40, and have only been in the software world a dozen
years.)

~~~
brg
Maybe it differs by location, but it is not true that everyone codes.

Within engineering, about 1/3 of tech leads do not code beyond mocks, and no
one in engineering management codes. Staff and above also have diminishing
coding activity; which is necessitated by the requirements of group leadership
and planning.

You can speak to SRE coding activity. But to continue, many in test only
manage contractors and their coding is no more than small python scripts for
tool automation.

And most importantly, Program Management is the single quickest growing group
in terms of influence and employee percentage. I do no believe most even
remember how to code.

~~~
btilly
I know that in my corner, everyone codes unless their job is clearly a non-
coding position. For instance managers don't code, but you're not going to get
an engineering interview as a manager. You likely know the broader
organization better than I do, so I'll take your word that there are non-
coding people out there.

But that said, I'd be very, very surprised if anyone got through the
engineering interview process without being asked to write code. Multiple
times. So even if you did wind up not writing much code, you're not getting
the job unless you're both willing and able.

------
skmurphy
Some background in his wikipedia entry at
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Reid_%28computer_scientis...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Reid_%28computer_scientist%29)
when they fired him it was nine days before the IPO and he lost out on $10M.

The opinion from the appeals court is here <http://www.gmsr.com/writing/scw-
reid.pdf> he offered a statistical analysis of promotion and compensation that
indicated a pattern of discrimination against older employees, Google did not
offer their own statistical analysis. He has more than hearsay or "stray
comments" driving the case.

~~~
nailer
> offered a statistical analysis of promotion and compensation that indicated
> a pattern of discrimination against older employees

How could statistics possibly indicate causality?

~~~
jacquesm
I don't think he has to prove causality, it is more that if he manages to sow
enough doubt that he was wrongfully terminated by showing that in the
statistics he is an outlier that it will bolster his case.

~~~
nailer
That saddens me. The law should be based on fact and reason.

~~~
jacquesm
The law _is_ based on fact and reason. Judges are there to interpret the law
and apply it to real life situations which are gray instead of black or white.

~~~
nailer
In that case, why bother showing statistics demonstrating correlation unless
there's actual evidence to back up some kind of causation?

A high percentage of people with certain characteristics being fired or having
poor bonuses is factually not equivalent to those characteristics being the
basis for those people being fired.

There are well established relationships between membership of particular
groups and academic performance. It is generally not accepted to say that
those people are being discriminated against when marking due to their ethnic
groups unless there is specific evidence to prove that such wrongdoing has
occurred. In fact, generally accepted reason behind the statistics in one not
of discrimination, but of high rates of poverty amongst those groups causing
other problems.

~~~
jacquesm
The statistics are not the only evidence, they are part of the evidence, and
together with that other evidence present the case.

It's like being blindfolded and strapped to a chair and having to decided if
something is on fire.

You don't have any direct evidence. But you can smell smoke, you can feel the
heat on your face and you hear a crackling noise.

Now none of those by themselves are proof, but together they add up to a
preponderance of evidence, and you (the judge) may (rightfully) conclude that
there is indeed something on fire.

Either that or someone is going to great extremes to trick you.

Lawsuits like these are rarely decided on absolutes.

Now, the other side can play the same game, they can show partial evidence to
the contrary. They can suggest that the noise you hear is made by the wind
playing with a plastic bag, the heat is the sun on your face and the smoke
smell is because last week there was a fire but there is none today.

It wouldn't take a smart judge very long to ask some follow up questions to
figure out who has it right and who is fibbing.

When it's a really close call or when both sides 'have a point' the judge may
order mediation.

More likely the parties will then settle because neither will want the case to
be decided on such a slim margin because a ruling 'against' could be much more
costly than a settlement.

~~~
nailer
Thinking about it, you're right.

My statistics brain shouted 'eeek, correlation != causation' but you make a
pretty compelling argument with the fire analogy.

Using a programming analogy, you could think of a bayesian spam classifier.
The word 'viagra' might not on it's own constitute spam, but 'viagra' 'hard
p3n1s' and 'meds' scores enough to be safely considered spam.

Consider my mind changed.

~~~
jacquesm
Bayes actually deals with evidence so you're spot on.

Here is an interesting wikipedia article on that subject:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_under_Bayes_theorem>

------
garply
Let me ask a possibly unpopular question because the answer is not immediately
obvious to me:

Why are there laws against age discrimination?

For example, if I want to fill my company with pretty young women, competent
or otherwise, why should the law prohibit me from doing so?

~~~
jamesbritt

        Let me ask a possibly unpopular question because
        the answer is not immediately obvious to me:
    

Good enough reason.

Here's an explanation I've heard: Yes, it's your business, your property, and
in most things you're free to do as you like with it. But it doesn't exist in
a vacuum. You can have a business and a good life because you live in a
particular society, so you have some obligations back to that society. That
can take the form of, well, taxes (for example), but also as special
protections for select groups of people.

~~~
kiba
I don't think an "obligation" or obeying the law is necessary a good
qualifier.

Let look at this way. Each law we made will have potential side-effects, which
is most likely to be negative. Thus, the law of unintended consequence.

For example, a business deciding who to hire might decide on only the
merit/performances of employees. However, this end up with lot of white
people, because white people are disproportional represented in the tech
industry. Any minority in the tech industry have to swim against lot of
talented white people. So what we end up with is a firm with mostly white
people.

However, discrimination against race is prohibited in our law and it _looks_
like the firm is engaged in favoring white people over other type of colors.
So people either sue the firm for racial discrimination, or the firm decided a
quota of people from each race to hire.

Thus, we end up with the strange situation of a color-blind company being sued
for discrimination that it never engaged in, or forced to take a racist route
to avoid lawsuits.

So we better be careful of how we make our laws. A law with good intentions
and made with great moral conviction may end up doing the opposite.

"It is a saying among Divines, that Hell is full of good Intentions, and
Meanings." -- 1654 R. Whitlock Observations on Manners of English 203

~~~
jamesbritt
"So we better be careful of how we make our laws. A law with good intentions
and made with great moral conviction may end up doing the opposite."

I absolutely agree, and offered the explanation as one I've often heard, but
it isn't one I can get my heart into. But even if it's true in general
principal, the idea of trying to do good by roundabout methods is indeed
tricky, and if you cannot accurately measure the results you're doing
witchcraft not statecraft.

------
lionhearted
Sometimes I wonder if laws like this actually increase discrimination. I had a
professor who hired a female minority who had good qualifications and
interviewed well, but turned out to be incompetent. He was fanatical about
documenting everything, noted down when she made mistakes and actually tried a
lot to help her fix them, but no luck, so he let her go, and then she sued.
The suit was eventually dismissed, but he said it was very stressful and
costly for him.

So I wonder if situations like these make people say, "Screw it, I'm hiring
someone that can't sue me if they don't work out." Not a good thing, but I
think a very possible secondary effect of this sort of thing.

~~~
jacquesm
I'm surprised that she would sue. After all, she must realize that she was
treated fairly and that she's going to make it incredibly hard for the next
female minority to get hired, who might be qualified _and_ a nice person to
boot. Stuff like that tends to linger, even if it is subconscious and against
the law.

~~~
patio11
_I'm surprised that she would sue_

She may have never heard criticism of her abilities in her entire life, was
working for a boss who had nothing but positive feedback for her for an
extended period of time, and then was suddenly canned with no warning for
being incompetent. Every professor and teacher she's ever known is in
unanimous agreement: she's awesome. _Clearl_ y, the boss must be racist.

------
robryan
So if someone is a sub standard employee, either in their own output or in the
team environment and their age could be a contributing factor are you unable
to fire them?

I mean a younger employee could also be slow or not on the same page as their
coworkers and they would be being fired for the same reason.

~~~
_delirium
He seems to be claiming that it was _mainly_ his age, which would be less
permissible. In particular, as far as terminating him goes (as opposed to
merely changing him to a different role), the reason Google gave that they
couldn't find him any future role in the company was that he was a bad
"cultural fit" for the company, which is a lot more vague and questionable-
sounding than saying he was a "substandard engineer" or anything more
performance-oriented like that. Reid is more or less alleging that "not a
cultural fit" is a euphemism for "old guy", and he claims he has some
statistics to back that up, showing that Google fired old people
disproportionately often.

~~~
sliverstorm
> He seems to be claiming that it was mainly his age

If the reasons he was let go were all typically legitimate reasons but also
possibly directly _due_ to age, would that be discrimination?

I can't think of solid examples for programmers, but to use another field:
Suppose a firefighter is let go because his age has robbed him of his ability
to perform physically. Is this ageist?

~~~
_delirium
It's a complicated area, but I think generally the answer is that that's
allowed, but with a fairly high bar for the employer to show that what they're
testing really is a "bona fide occupational qualification". One of the
important cases in the area is _Dothard v. Rawlinson_ (1977), where the
Supreme Court held that Alabama's height and weight requirements for prison
guards, which disproportionately impacted women, were not justified, because
there was no evidence that these height and weight cutoffs correlated strongly
with prison safety: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dothard_v._Rawlinson>

