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Google pays $11M to job-seekers who alleged age discrimination

theguardian.com

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Re: Google pays $11M to job-seekers who alleged age discrimination

#51

Post by rchaud »

DannyBee wrote: post #39
rchaud wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has salaried in-house counsel. I'm pretty sure they could afford to go to court more easily than the plaintiffs.

I think you significantly underestimate the cost of discovery/wasting time of non-legal folks.

Isn't it usually the defendants that attempt to drown the plaintiffs in discovery-related paperwork? This is an employment dispute, surely Google's own lawyers have a much better handle on the legalese of their own HR practices (and of labour laws in the state) than the plaintiffs?

Re: Google pays $11M to job-seekers who alleged age discrimination

#52

Post by jaclaz »

smt88 wrote: post #23
eej71 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

"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.

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?

Re: Google pays $11M to job-seekers who alleged age discrimination

#54

Post by erentz »

djhworld wrote: post #53

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

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...

Re: Google pays $11M to job-seekers who alleged age discrimination

#55

Post by dmitrygr »

josefx wrote: post #47
dmitrygr wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't your statement assume that they were all good enough to actually be hired?

They were all good enough to get in person interviews at least[1]. If I read that document correctly Google would have been able to argue about the qualifications of various individuals and have them removed from the lawsuit after discovery concluded. Of course I am not a lawyer so I might be wrong. [1]see court document on https://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/bizwomen/news/latest-news...

Phone screens at google are not foolproof, and some candidates get to skip them for various reasons. I've seem some candidates make it to onsite and then be unable to answer my warmup question of: write a function that takes an integer, leaves all the zero bits alone, changes all the one bits into zero bits, and returns the result.

Re: Google pays $11M to job-seekers who alleged age discrimination

#56

Post by rubicon33 »

danielscrubs wrote: post #45
xiphias2 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'd say they already know the paradigms & architectures so they don't throw themselves at the latest fad as easily and above all seem to value family more highly and lets be honest. Back in the day you had to learn some pretty amazing tech (assembler and low memory data structures) just to get by. But yeah, just today there was a comment here on Hacker News saying (I'm paraphrasing): I learnt C then C++ then Java, th…

The flip side of that coin is the drain that comes from...

Learning C, then C++, then Rust, then Java, then Ruby (rails), then Objective-C, then Swift, then JavaScript, then Angular, then React, then Flutter, then ....

Depending on the timeframe in which all that learning happens, there's simply no way you can reach expert level with such a diversified knowledge base.

Re: Google pays $11M to job-seekers who alleged age discrimination

#57

Post by mbrumlow »

jaclaz wrote: post #52
smt88 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

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, t…

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.

Re: Google pays $11M to job-seekers who alleged age discrimination

#58

Post by mcguire »

"Instead, the company argues that the members of the class-action suit failed to demonstrate technical prowess..."

Yes, it's a widely known fact that people over the age of 27 lose a year's worth of "technical prowess" for every year they live. By the time someone is 50, they're barely capable of operating a spoon.

Re: Google pays $11M to job-seekers who alleged age discrimination

#59

Post by [deleted] »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #33
rchaud wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has salaried in-house counsel. I'm pretty sure they could afford to go to court more easily than the plaintiffs.

Sure, but if you get a judge that decides that the penalty should be salary from the time you were interviewed to the settlement date for each of the plaintiffs, the cost could be many times higher. Not to mention this simply won't look good in the public spotlight, regardless of how right Google may be. It's also almost impossible to prove on both sides. Even if Google has insane numbers showing how many young vs ol…

[deleted]

Re: Google pays $11M to job-seekers who alleged age discrimination

#60

Post by lawnchair_larry »

sjg007 wrote: post #46
xiphias2 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>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.

In a discussion about age discrimination, yes, sweeping generalizations do support the argument. He’s not wrong.
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