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Heath and Fillekes v. Google Inc. Lawsuit

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Re: Heath and Fillekes v. Google Inc. Lawsuit

#41

Post by eli_gottlieb »

DannyBee wrote: post #40
throwawayforme wrote: post #33

TL;DR: Google often does not know how to hire senior people who are not luminaries, this screws people in their 40s. I think this happened to my wife, but her job category was not listed. When my small company was acquired by Google (and I had to interview to keep my job), we were forced to re-locate across the country from the east coast to Mountain View. My wife is a stats professor with tenure at a mid-tier univer…

"In my wife's case, the problem was that the committee deadlocked on how to level her. She had 5+ years of academic experience, and 5+ years of research experience (think national lab type stuff; research w/o teaching). However, she'd only briefly worked in industry many years ago between her MS and PhD. So rather than hire her, they told her to "go work someplace else for a year, then apply again". (direct quote, as…

>The answer you received is, in my view, usually the answer given when "we don't think they did well enough to hire them, but think that they may get there with practice".

If you don't want to hire a tenured stats professor with 10+ years research experience to work in data science, I think that's your problem. Maybe OP's wife had some horrifying deal-breaker personality trait, but really it just sounds like Google's committee was too snobby about Industry Versus Academia to hire an experienced statistics expert to do statistics.

Re: Heath and Fillekes v. Google Inc. Lawsuit

#42

Post by throwawayforme »

DannyBee wrote: post #40
throwawayforme wrote: post #33

TL;DR: Google often does not know how to hire senior people who are not luminaries, this screws people in their 40s. I think this happened to my wife, but her job category was not listed. When my small company was acquired by Google (and I had to interview to keep my job), we were forced to re-locate across the country from the east coast to Mountain View. My wife is a stats professor with tenure at a mid-tier univer…

"In my wife's case, the problem was that the committee deadlocked on how to level her. She had 5+ years of academic experience, and 5+ years of research experience (think national lab type stuff; research w/o teaching). However, she'd only briefly worked in industry many years ago between her MS and PhD. So rather than hire her, they told her to "go work someplace else for a year, then apply again". (direct quote, as…

All I have the quote from the recruiter. As a referer from a different job category, I was not privy to the committee meeting. I actually had a face to face talk with the recruiter a few days later because it sounded so nuts to me. FWIW, he also quoted somebody from the committee, who said (paraphrasing, it has been several years) "So, we're telling somebody who passed the interview to go work someplace else, this is just insane" We tried to go through some appeals process for women/minorities, but the entire thing seemed to be designed to degrade the candidate & waste their time. Eg, trying to wear them down.

This was MTV, and it was several years ago, so perhaps things have changed.

I admittedly know very little about the hiring process. The whole hiring, interview process at Google just pissed me off in general so much that I refused to participate when I was there -- never even took the interview training.

When we interviewed for our jobs, we were lied to and told we were not doing technical interviews (which it turns out is Google company policy for handling acquisitions, according to a friend of mine from school who was a CTO at a different acquired company). So there I was, at 40ish, totally cold, being asked tech interview questions drawing on uni stuff I hadn't seen in 20ish years. I flubbed the interview, and came in one level below my peers. (though I was promoted after 2 years to the level I was working at). I almost refused to go for the promo, but just treated the entire thing as a joke and wound up getting it easily.

Re: Heath and Fillekes v. Google Inc. Lawsuit

#43

Post by ChuckMcM »

pzh wrote: post #28
ChuckMcM wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Always an interesting choice, the upside if you join is you get some money if the suit is settled, I presume the only downside is that you pretty much won't ever be employed there ever if they have paid out a legal settlement check to you. (It turns out it isn't illegal not to hire based on previously being sued by someone). I doubt they would be forced to hire you if they settle. (which would be a huge downside in m…

> It turns out it isn't illegal not to hire based on previously being sued by someone. I thought there were laws to prevent Google from retaliating against somebody who sued them, and it would be illegal for them to not hire you on that basis alone...

Retaliation protection is about protecting you from being fired for bringing a protected labor suit. That doesn't apply to hiring. And as I understand it there is nothing wrong with actively discriminating against people who didn't go to a preferred university[1] as that is not a protected class.

[1] And as with diversity (or any discrimination) it reduces the chance that you'll employ that really star employee.

Re: Heath and Fillekes v. Google Inc. Lawsuit

#44

Post by DannyBee »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #41
DannyBee wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"In my wife's case, the problem was that the committee deadlocked on how to level her. She had 5+ years of academic experience, and 5+ years of research experience (think national lab type stuff; research w/o teaching). However, she'd only briefly worked in industry many years ago between her MS and PhD. So rather than hire her, they told her to "go work someplace else for a year, then apply again". (direct quote, as…

>The answer you received is, in my view, usually the answer given when "we don't think they did well enough to hire them, but think that they may get there with practice". If you don't want to hire a tenured stats professor with 10+ years research experience to work in data science, I think that's your problem. Maybe OP's wife had some horrifying deal-breaker personality trait, but really it just sounds like Google's…

"If you don't want to hire a tenured stats professor with 10+ years research experience to work in data science, I think that's your problem. Maybe OP's wife had some horrifying deal-breaker personality trait, but really it just sounds like Google's committee was too snobby about Industry Versus Academia to hire an experienced statistics expert to do statistics. "

1. Google, from what i can tell, is okay with it being it's problem as long as it can meet its hiring goals.

2. You have pretty much no data to base this on. Seriously.

Re: Heath and Fillekes v. Google Inc. Lawsuit

#45

Post by howawaygoog »

jedmeyers wrote: post #6
howawaygoog wrote: post #2

just got email for this, I did interview for Google and I'm over 40, (wonder how they got my info). I passed the interview but was shut down at the committee, very much doubt that age was a factor.

I've read that being rejected at a committee level happens relatively infrequent. Did they hint to what might be the reason for rejection at such a late stage?

I was a bit pissed that the way the recruiter told me initially I thought the hiring committee was just a safety check and pretty much a rubber stamp so I got all excited for abut a day until he told me I didn't pass the committee. He gave me no feedback whatsoever about interviews or anything, just encouraged me to apply in a year, which may be standard talk for all candidates (he did invite me later to an online seminar so there's hope).

The way I understand it now is that besides gauging your expertise level and general review they may simply select the top X for the positions they have, given a larger number of candidates that passed the interviews.

I didn't see anything that seemed to discriminate by age. One interviewer was a woman in her 40s ro 50s. That said it is true that Silicon Valley (I also interviewed for Facebook) is all white or Asian men in their late 20s or early 30s, (with some sparse women). I saw literally zero black people in three days in SV and the only obvious Hispanic were the staff at my hotel.

Re: Heath and Fillekes v. Google Inc. Lawsuit

#46

Post by throwawayforme »

DannyBee wrote: post #40
throwawayforme wrote: post #33

TL;DR: Google often does not know how to hire senior people who are not luminaries, this screws people in their 40s. I think this happened to my wife, but her job category was not listed. When my small company was acquired by Google (and I had to interview to keep my job), we were forced to re-locate across the country from the east coast to Mountain View. My wife is a stats professor with tenure at a mid-tier univer…

"In my wife's case, the problem was that the committee deadlocked on how to level her. She had 5+ years of academic experience, and 5+ years of research experience (think national lab type stuff; research w/o teaching). However, she'd only briefly worked in industry many years ago between her MS and PhD. So rather than hire her, they told her to "go work someplace else for a year, then apply again". (direct quote, as…

Speaking of growth -- what is Google's hiring position on growth? Would Google hire a "plateaued" senior SWE for a senior SWE role? Or does a candidate have to demonstrate a capacity for growth at all levels?

Internally, I believe we were told that all SWEs were expected to be capable of growing into a level 5 (senior SWE) role, and it was "OK" to not be promoted any higher.

So if somebody was hired in their 20s, it would be reasonable to expect they'd plateau at level 5 by 40, and would have shown most of their growth in their late 20s and early 30s. Would you hire this same person?

Re: Heath and Fillekes v. Google Inc. Lawsuit

#47

Post by fjdlwlv »

DannyBee wrote: post #40
throwawayforme wrote: post #33

TL;DR: Google often does not know how to hire senior people who are not luminaries, this screws people in their 40s. I think this happened to my wife, but her job category was not listed. When my small company was acquired by Google (and I had to interview to keep my job), we were forced to re-locate across the country from the east coast to Mountain View. My wife is a stats professor with tenure at a mid-tier univer…

"In my wife's case, the problem was that the committee deadlocked on how to level her. She had 5+ years of academic experience, and 5+ years of research experience (think national lab type stuff; research w/o teaching). However, she'd only briefly worked in industry many years ago between her MS and PhD. So rather than hire her, they told her to "go work someplace else for a year, then apply again". (direct quote, as…

Google will hire loads of young / inexperienced people at non-senior, let them work for 8-10 years (exceeding level expectations but not getting to senior level), and then let them wash out to a competitor or startup.

But they won't hire someone with 15-20 years of experience as non-senior, and let them do the same. Because of demonstrated trajectory and the belief that a company only needs leaders and future leaders (see also: why Google has so much trouble polishing maintaining products, polish and maintenance requires non-senior-level elbow grease)

Yes, is because if uncertainty, but it has a disparate impact on older/experienced people.

It's not explicit ageism no, but of courses committees arnet explicitly racist and sexist either, yet Google has no problem admiting there is an implicit problem there.

Re: Heath and Fillekes v. Google Inc. Lawsuit

#48

Post by fjdlwlv »

DannyBee wrote: post #44
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The answer you received is, in my view, usually the answer given when "we don't think they did well enough to hire them, but think that they may get there with practice". If you don't want to hire a tenured stats professor with 10+ years research experience to work in data science, I think that's your problem. Maybe OP's wife had some horrifying deal-breaker personality trait, but really it just sounds like Google's…

"If you don't want to hire a tenured stats professor with 10+ years research experience to work in data science, I think that's your problem. Maybe OP's wife had some horrifying deal-breaker personality trait, but really it just sounds like Google's committee was too snobby about Industry Versus Academia to hire an experienced statistics expert to do statistics. " 1. Google, from what i can tell, is okay with it bein…

Is Google meeting its hiring goals? They seems desperate to land everyone they decide they want, so if they can get better at identifying who can help them, they'd benefit a lot.

Also, be careful, logic as in item #1 is the same logic that companies use to justify any form of discrimination.

Re: Heath and Fillekes v. Google Inc. Lawsuit

#49

Post by fjdlwlv »

wonko1 wrote: post #10

Based on my experience of Google interviews, they seem like one of the companies least likely to discriminate based on age. Their interviews tend to be very tech/algorithm focused. To the point where they disregard almost everything else. I would have thought, fast and loose early stage startups would be far more likely to discriminate.

People who have more years are expected to show either "trajectory" or have a compelling excuse. People with fewer years are judged by potential.

Interestingly, there is research that claims that in businesses women are more often judged by last performance, while men are judged more by potential.

Re: Heath and Fillekes v. Google Inc. Lawsuit

#50

Post by stuckagain »

howawaygoog wrote: post #45
jedmeyers wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've read that being rejected at a committee level happens relatively infrequent. Did they hint to what might be the reason for rejection at such a late stage?

I was a bit pissed that the way the recruiter told me initially I thought the hiring committee was just a safety check and pretty much a rubber stamp so I got all excited for abut a day until he told me I didn't pass the committee. He gave me no feedback whatsoever about interviews or anything, just encouraged me to apply in a year, which may be standard talk for all candidates (he did invite me later to an online se…

Sounds like the recruiter made a mistake. The committee rejects the vast majority. The executive review committee that comes after accepts most, though.
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