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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

#71

Post by onemoresoop »

jaclaz wrote: post #67
mbrumlow wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't doubt that, it was just an attempt to put the numbers in pespective, if you believe that it is only 1 month or 15 days of wage it is ok as well, but what was the actual inconvenience to them? Let's bring it to the extreme, 35,000 US$ for the hassle of making four (fruitless) interviews?

It's very demoralizing to be realize nobody wants to hire you because you're over a certain age. So this is not about the inconvenience of wasting time with the interview but more generally about age discrimination.

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

#72

Post by ghaff »

pcwalton wrote: post #66
dmitrygr wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How is a disguised return 0 anything remotely resembling a good question? I highly suspect most people who are "unable to answer" are actually just misunderstanding the question, since it's phrased in such a bizarre way. The way you phrased it, I'm not even 100% sure that "return 0" is the answer you're looking for!

That’s the right return value of course but ignoring everything else doesn’t actually meet the requirements of the question. Of course in a live situation you can ask if that’s ok or if they actually want useless bit twiddling.

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

#73

Post by xiphias2 »

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.

As I'm getting older all my organs are working less, and my brain is slower as well (though I'm able to think just as deeply as before).

At the same time I'm much more concious about spending my thinking energy, and because of my experience I'm making much more money than when I was younger _despite_ my slower thinking.

Discrimination involves hate, and I definately not hate old people, just accept the facts of life (and I'm also hoping for a cure for aging).

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

#74

Post by inlined »

rubicon33 wrote: post #56
danielscrubs wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> there’s simply no way you can reach expert level with such a diversified codebases.

What are you talking about? I’ve checked in production code in 4 languages in a day.

Once you learn your first few languages you should be able to learn the new syntax of a language in a day or two and a good portion of their idioms in the next month (as you know more languages you’ll notice what’s unique about each language and glean idioms from online tutorials and your local codebases).

Being a polyglot is a huge part of many in our industry, especially full stack development. For one project alone I had to work with a backend that was part Java and part Go that hosted customers’ Node backend. I oversaw client SDKs in Objective-C, Java, and C++ and helped prototype the server-side SDK for Go. That’s not fatigue, it’s enjoyable and a skill I can offer my team. Sure I get rusty with a language, but it doesn’t take long to blow off the dust with a skill.

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

#75

Post by csunbird »

erentz wrote: post #54
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...

As always, lawyers get paid, not actual plaintiff.

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

#76

Post by sandino »

typon wrote: post #70
riku_iki wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What signal gave you "close call" impression?..

The recruiter told me I had 3 really positive reviews and 2 somewhat positive and 1 negative review. It's usually more feedback than I expect from companies but it was good to hear. It also matched with my expectations knowing how the interview went. She apparently took it to another hiring committee and they said no as well.

The recruiter told me I had 3 really positive reviews and 2 somewhat positive and 1 negative review.

And apparently at Google - the negatives carry the day.

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

#77

Post by taurath »

rikroots wrote: post #68
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.

Not my experience. I've learned how to tweak my resume to a job spec while at the same time not giving an impression of my age (getting a degree with the Open University in my 40s really helps with that). It's at the face to face interview stage that the wheels tend to fall off my cart - nothing I could prove as 'ageist' behaviour, more like they're disappointed in me (or discounting me) before we sit down to chat? "…

To some extent it could also be that you’re presenting as young?

FWIW - My only concern with older folks is that they’re either jaded, stuck in their ways technologically, or obstinate towards being managed by people younger than them. Strong opinions held strongly is a net negative. This isn’t everyone or even a majority, but it’s quite a few.

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

#78

Post by pcwalton »

ghaff wrote: post #72
pcwalton wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is a disguised return 0 anything remotely resembling a good question? I highly suspect most people who are "unable to answer" are actually just misunderstanding the question, since it's phrased in such a bizarre way. The way you phrased it, I'm not even 100% sure that "return 0" is the answer you're looking for!

That’s the right return value of course but ignoring everything else doesn’t actually meet the requirements of the question. Of course in a live situation you can ask if that’s ok or if they actually want useless bit twiddling.

But there's no such thing, semantically, as "leaving zero bits alone". The value 0 has no notion of "where it came from". The expression "x & 0" is semantically equivalent to the expression "0", in that they represent the same value.

In my view, the fact that the question even lends itself to philosophical debate like this just illustrates how exceptionally bad the question is, even by Google standards.

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

#80

Post by tictoc »

What's the reasoning behind not hiring older developers? Besides the lack of flexibility in personality and old guy sentiments, they are usually solid developers and have a lot of knowledge. I've learned so many things by osmosis by just being around them. Is it solely that they can grind young developers into the ground at a low salary? Nearly every young developer in my short time as a developers thinks they are Mr. Robot, whereas the older guys give a much better sense of what programming is really all about in the context of reality.
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