
Google dealt setback in age bias case by judge interested in 'Googleyness' - belltaco
http://www.computerworld.com/article/3128725/it-careers/google-dealt-setback-in-age-bias-case-by-judge-interested-in-googleyness.html
======
eganist
> The judge limited the class to people who had an in-person interview, which
> means that job applicants who only had phone interviews can't join the
> class.

I feel (anecdotal only) that it's pretty easy to approximate age due e.g. to
lexicon and potentially dialect, and that it's even easier to pick up on
certain vocal changes in older candidates, so I can see the argument in favor
of including phone interviews in the class.

That said, the argument for restricting it to only people who passed the phone
screens appears to be that the phone screen establishes an initial impression
of qualification (skimmed from page 13 of the ruling; I could be _entirely_
wrong and could've quoted an irrelevant passage, but I'd like to think this is
accurate):

> The proposed class would include an unknown number of “applicants” who
> demonstrate no plausible qualifications for the job. To establish a prima
> facie case of an ADEA violation, the plaintiff must show, among other
> things, that he was qualified for the position.

[https://www.scribd.com/document/326637833/Google-Age-
Discrim...](https://www.scribd.com/document/326637833/Google-Age-
Discrimination)

~~~
dfrey
You can usually tell from a roughly how old a person is just from reading
their resume. If they list themselves as a team lead in 1990, then you can be
pretty sure that they are at least 50. I would guess that the judge wants to
limit to people who had in-person interview because that shows that they were
at least close to getting the job. If you have gotten past the phone interview
stage then you have already demonstrated basic competence.

If you're trying to fill a junior position, then you don't want to hire
someone who has been working as a chief architect for the last 10 years. It's
not about their age. It's about the fact that they are way overqualified and
will probably quit as soon as they can find something that they are qualified
for.

~~~
objclxt
> You don't want to hire someone who has been working as a chief architect for
> the last 10 years. It's not about their age. It's about the fact that they
> are way overqualified

That's not necessarily true. Maybe they burned out and want a less stressful
role. Or maybe they've cashed out and are looking for a job they would enjoy
and can afford to not worry about the paycheck. Frankly, job titles can also
be pretty meaningless.

If I saw a resume on my desk for a junior role with somebody with senior
experience I'd probably ask them "why are you looking to move into this
role?". I wouldn't rule them off outright, because I understand that people's
circumstances often change, and not everybody is driven by a career trajectory
that's constantly moving upwards.

~~~
dfrey
You're right. I probably oversimplified to save on typing. I actually work
with a person who is 60ish and has held considerably more senior roles in the
past. He seems pretty happy in his less senior role. I think he wanted
something a little less demanding.

------
DocSavage
Surprised there was no mention of the lawsuit by Brian Reid against Google:
[http://abusergoestowork.com/tag/reid-v-
google/](http://abusergoestowork.com/tag/reid-v-google/)

He was, by far, the best prof I've ever had. The Google experience was so
distasteful to him he doesn't even list that employment on his resume.

------
ethbro
I'm all for getting case law in the record for calling a spade a spade in
situations like this. The US has laws against age and other discrimination.

The 'More Perfect' podcast had a great episode about Batson, jury selection,
and racially motivated peremptory challenge that speaks to the same points
(though sadly, still unresolved in our justice system). See
[http://www.wnyc.org/story/object-anyway/](http://www.wnyc.org/story/object-
anyway/)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batson_v._Kentucky](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batson_v._Kentucky)
[http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/24/us/supreme-court-black-
jur...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/24/us/supreme-court-black-jurors-death-
penalty-georgia.html?_r=0)

If the laws need changing then that's a discussion we should have. But you
shouldn't be able to weasel around them by inventing a term and then equating
it to things that are illegal.

------
MrTonyD
I'd really like to see problems like this addressed in another way. I'd like
to see that people have other alternatives - so that being turned down for a
job isn't a life destroying experience.

I think of "corporativism" \- where multiple interest groups are involved in
creating policies. In Scandinavia they decided to allow companies to "fire at
will" in exchange for free education and a good social safety net. But I think
that system can be much improved, with much better alternatives.

~~~
convolvatron
thats a great trade. trying to address these issues after the fact by
establishing protected classes, affirmative action, hiring diversity programs
and punitive law suits is a losing game for so many reasons.

since the value of people's hands and backs is rapidly decreasing, we need a
much better framework for harvesting the important things like creativity from
the working population.

------
Stratoscope
In addition to people who made it through a phone screen and got an in-person
interview, there are those of us who simply never applied after hearing so
many stories about Google's style of interviewing and their reputation of
favoring young CS grads.

I worked as a contractor for Google from 2008 through 2013 (along with other
clients), building election results and voter information maps for their Maps
and News teams. My maps ran on google.com and were syndicated out to a number
of news sites.

How I got in was an odd fluke: I'd been active on the Maps API mailing list
answering people's questions, and a couple of weeks before the 2008 Iowa
caucus and New Hampshire primary, Google realized that the company they'd
hired to build those maps wasn't going to deliver, so they asked if I could
jump in and build something in a hurry that worked.

The first year I did the whole thing myself: GIS processing to turn geographic
boundary files into usable form, back-end processing to gather vote data from
AP and other sources, and the front-end UI design and map development. Among
other things, I developed a way to display polygons on a map many times faster
than the Maps API itself.

A couple of the maps blew up in a spectacular way (I managed to DDOS Google
Code on Super Tuesday 2008!), but mostly they were pretty successful with
millions of viewers.

After that a couple of Google developers handled the back-end vote processing
and I took care of the GIS and front-end work, both for the US and a number of
international election maps. For some of the international maps, local teams
worked with my front-end code to enhance it for their needs.

It was a pretty good run and Google seemed very pleased with my work.
Eventually a great team in their DC office took over the map development, and
I started to think about what to do next.

One obvious idea, of course, was to apply for a job at Google! After all, I'd
already worked for them rather successfully for five years.

But I didn't even apply. Perhaps this was a mistake on my part. I just had a
feeling that my history of developing successful products for Google wouldn't
count for much - that instead I'd get logic puzzles, quizzes about algorithmic
minutiae and have to code a red-black tree on the spot on a whiteboard - all
things that favor recent CS grads. Plus, I'd just turned 61!

I wonder how many other people there are like me, experienced developers with
demonstrated ability, who never applied because of Google's interview
practices (or the rumors about them)?

FWIW, I'm still actively programming, getting into something new every year or
two - right now it's an odd mix of VR and Microsoft Office development - and
definitely looking for the next great opportunity. Anyone who wants a
multitalented developer and doesn't care how old I am, email is in my profile.
:-)

~~~
jobu
> _But I didn 't even apply. Perhaps this was a mistake on my part. I just had
> a feeling that my history of developing successful products for Google
> wouldn't count for much - that instead I'd get logic puzzles, quizzes about
> algorithmic minutiae and have to code a red-black tree on the spot on a
> whiteboard - all things that favor recent CS grads._

Yes that seems to be how it works.
[https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768](https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768)

 _" Google: 90% of our engineers use the software you wrote (Homebrew), but
you can’t invert a binary tree on a whiteboard so fuck off."_

My interview process with Google only made it to the technical phone screening
because I didn't know the Big O complexity of read/write/sort for Trie
structures.
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trie)) The
interviewer was pretty cool and we had an interesting technical discussion, so
I wouldn't consider it a complete waste of time.

~~~
cromwellian
i wouldn't expect someone to know how to derive big-o bounds, I'm 45, an
engineer at google and I couldn't do it if asked on the spot. I would however
expect you to know of the basic asymptotic performance of typical data
structures and algorithms. As a practical matter I've seen a number of
critical bugs in software because of mistakes in choosing data structures.

As a side note, I joined Google at age 39.

------
kabdib
Fallout from this: Companies will go to great lengths to avoid contact with
people who submit resumes that imply they are old. No phone screens, no
responses. It's going to be wintertime for folks in their late 30s now.

~~~
evgen
That would be great! Insta-lawsuit. Age is a protected class in the US, and if
it is discovered that your company did something like this you are going to be
paying out bigtime.

~~~
illumin8
But, how would you ever know you were discriminated against? They never called
you because your resume was filtered out before the initial contact.

~~~
gcp
Submit equal resumes that only differ in age. If a significant difference in
responses exists, you sue.

There are several organizations that are doing this in my country, but for
immigrants.

~~~
massysett
That's very difficult to do for age. If one applicant is 20 years older, he is
expected to have longer work experience; if his work experience is too short,
it's a red flag.

Of course they still might not hire the more experienced person because she is
"overqualified".

~~~
evgen
If the two applicants have equal qualifications and you only hire the younger
applicant then you are going to be open for an age-discrimination lawsuit.
Being older and having a shorter relevant work experience is the sort of 'red
flag' that puts you on the losing side of these lawsuits, as the two
candidates are manifestly equal by definition here other than differences in
age. You can't say "person X is older and should therefore have more work
experience, so we will pick person Y" and expect to not end up spending the
next few years in court.

------
socrates1998
Isn't it pretty easy to tell the age of someone by their resume? I mean, if
they put the year they graduated college, that means they were 22 or close to
that, right?

I know that's a generalization, but given Google's data on people, I think it
would insanely simple for them to discriminate based on age even if you tried
to hide it from them.

I don't know, clearly, but I would guess Google and other tech companies do
this because it's cheaper to hire young people, right?

~~~
Buge
Why would it be cheaper to hire young people? Google doesn't give a pension.

~~~
greenyoda
\- It's easier to convince young people to accept lower salaries and work long
hours (e.g., if they have no family to support or spend time with).

\- It's more expensive to buy health insurance for an older pool of employees.

\- Young people are probably less likely to be dissatisfied with cheap work
accommodations like open-plan offices.

On the other hand, there are increased efficiencies associated with older
employees:

\- People earlier in their career might have significantly higher job-turnover
rates.

\- Older employees have more work experience, and can prevent lots of problems
before they happen.

\- Older employees have had the time to become better at what they do. I don't
think the best developers reach their peak skills after only working for 5
years.[1] Learning from your mistakes takes time.

(I'm a developer in my 50s, and I work with lots of older developers who are
good at what they do.)

[1] See, for example, Peter Norvig's "Teach Yourself Programming in Ten
Years": [https://norvig.com/21-days.html](https://norvig.com/21-days.html)

~~~
drawkbox
> It's more expensive to buy health insurance for an older pool of employees.

Until we disconnect health insurance from employment like everywhere else in
the world, ageism will be a problem in every industry. We don't get auto,
life, home or any other insurance from employment, why the most important and
one that contributes to ageism?

~~~
dredmorbius
Why: WWII wage controls & Risk pools.

I agree that US health care should catch up with 20th century advanced
nations.

------
mc32
As a result of this, could companies be expected to have a workforce age
profile reflective of the local area or national pool, as might be the case in
other recruitment efforts? How would they do by seniors or those approaching
retirement age and reflecting those proportions in their workforce.

As the demographics change does a company's workforce have to change along
with it, if so to what degree and with what allowable lag?

~~~
bweitzman
One would hope that the age/gender/race/etc profile of a company would at
least reflect the profile of the applicants.

~~~
cobookman
I also take issue with that. Certain age/gender/race profiles tend to fair
worse than others in the interview process. Think h1b visa abuse.

For example males tend to have resume's which over qualify oneself vs females.
Asians and Westerners also have these kind of differences.

This causes the rate of resume to hire to be different for different
demographics.

Generally though interview feedback will state the facts and can be pulled up
to back a companies actions. This is what needs to be judged.

------
gxs
I really don't know how I feel about the government legislating stuff like
this.

Sure, I understand all the -isms of the world make it so that we can't have
nice things.

But what if a business figures out that a certain demographic, young or old,
fits their business better? That over the course of 10+ years it leads to
drastic differences in value creation? Are we really saying, ignore that, and
hire for diversity anyway?

It just always feels like we're running against the wind. I don't know what
the solution is but there has got to be a better way, to sound cliche at
9:55AM.

~~~
omginternets
I share your sentiment. *ism is undoubtedly a bad thing, but legislating
against these things feels like a particularly slippery slope. What next: sue
modeling agencies for hiring young, attractive people?

~~~
gxs
Yeah - don't understand the downvotes, is what it is I guess.

------
diyseguy
Perhaps explains why Sergey has been dumping stock lately.

~~~
abz10
I'd expect it's because ad growth is disappointing and paid search
manipulation isn't the money earner they hoped for.

~~~
abz10
Ok down-voters. I left the search industry over my refusal to participate in
search manipulation. So which part are you down-voting. The idea that it
exists? or do you think I'm some alt-right conspiracy nut? I'd actually like
to know. I don't care about points but I'm getting the message that I belong
on HN and I'm perfectly happy to quit on the assumption that HN punishes
dissent.

~~~
diyseguy
I believe we are getting downvoted because Google does a lot of perception
management, esp in places like this. See also the Asch Effect.

~~~
abz10
Thanks for letting me know. That makes sense. I'd actually love work with HN
to flush out perception management behaviours.

~~~
diyseguy
Not hard to flush out. Reasonable comment pounded into oblivion because it
mentions X Co. Net effect: people afraid to speak ill of X Co.

------
wyldfire
Google accepts such a terribly small slice of applicants that it's easy for
any engineer in the top 0.75% of overall engineers to think they're talented
and deserving but come to find out they're just not in the top 0.5%. That
distinction can be really hard to see and easy to attribute to ageism. That
said, I suppose there could be some actual ageism going on too.

> The lawsuit claimed the median age at Google was 29, based on data collected
> by Payscale, which the judge cited in the ruling.

Article also said that Google's going to guesstimate ages based on graduation
dates in order to provide evidence of applicant ages. But knowing the median
age of applicants is critical. It's a shame they included the median age of
employees without including the median age of applicants in the article. "29"
might match perfectly with the applicant pool.

~~~
CGamesPlay
The natural way to test this would be to see if the age distribution or
applicants matches the age distribution of hires. If so, probably not ageism.
If not, how could one argue that it's still not ageism?

This is an honest question, I think I can imagine some scenarios where unequal
age distribution != age discrimination, but I'd like to hear others thoughts.

~~~
dragonwriter
> The natural way to test this would be to see if the age distribution or
> applicants matches the age distribution of hires. If so, probably not
> ageism. If not, how could one argue that it's still not ageism?

It could quite easily not be ageism if the distribution of the skills actually
sought and relevant to the job were not equally distributed by age within the
applicant pool. Providing direct evidence of this in court may be difficult
(or not, depending on how Google documents its interviews.)

(And, really, the scenario where the age distribution matches _because_ of age
discrimination is _also_ possible, for the same reason.)

