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Google to pay $28M to settle claims it favoured white and Asian employees

theguardian.com

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Re: Google to pay $28M to settle claims it favoured white and Asian employees

#51

Post by jsemrau »

myaccountonhn wrote: post #47
derfnugget wrote: post #23

does anyone care if they perform better or does even suggesting that make me a racist in the modern world?

I think it matters, because minorities experience a lot of ways in which products fail them that probably would not have happened had their needs had been represented and prioritized. If a minority group is not represented in the development of a product, their needs are more likely to be neglected.

Products are developed for a specific market. If the market of the given minority group where large enough, there would be special providers only for that. If I go buy an Italian Pizza place, I expect to receive an Italian Pizza, and not an Italian Pizza with a Chinese nuance to it. That's when I go to a Fusion place. It's by definition impossible to make product that satisfies everyone.

Re: Google to pay $28M to settle claims it favoured white and Asian employees

#53

Post by thephyber »

dietr1ch wrote: post #35
wongarsu wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the same numbers "Latinx+" are actually over-represented at Google and white people underrepresented. Neither by a large amount though. With how close the numbers actually are I wonder if the different biases of different HR people and hiring managers actually cancelled out pretty well.

Side rant. Cut the Latinx crap please, Latinos don't really feel represented by the force-fed "inclusive" name that straight up goes against their gendered languages. It's overriding the language to seem more inclusive in English

Quit policing other people’s speech, please.

Re: Google to pay $28M to settle claims it favoured white and Asian employees

#54

Post by ceejayoz »

dekhn wrote: post #43
ceejayoz wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By the same numbers "Latinx+" are actually over-represented at Google… That's probably the case for much of California, where they're HQed.

Google's HQ is in Northern California .

Corrected, thanks.

Re: Google to pay $28M to settle claims it favoured white and Asian employees

#55

Post by ty6853 »

cj wrote: post #38
cubefox wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. You can't just simply assume that job performance is statistically independent of various seemingly unrelated traits. If you suspect age discrimination, you also can't just assume that age is uncorrelated with performance. Or being short sighted, or even things like weight or height. They may be uncorrelated, or they may be correlated.

Fun fact: You can almost always score at least $10-20k if you're fired from a job if you try hard enough. I've been on the employer side of this... you fire someone who's performing badly, and then they come back 4 months later and sue the company for [insert made up thing here]. In our case, an ex-employee is suing us for not accommodating an anxiety and migraine disability, which they never disclosed and never requ…

It works, but court cases are public record. Good luck getting anyone to touch you with a ten foot pole afterwards, not like the candidate can prove why they weren't selected.

Re: Google to pay $28M to settle claims it favoured white and Asian employees

#56

Post by ben_w »

dietr1ch wrote: post #35
wongarsu wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the same numbers "Latinx+" are actually over-represented at Google and white people underrepresented. Neither by a large amount though. With how close the numbers actually are I wonder if the different biases of different HR people and hiring managers actually cancelled out pretty well.

Side rant. Cut the Latinx crap please, Latinos don't really feel represented by the force-fed "inclusive" name that straight up goes against their gendered languages. It's overriding the language to seem more inclusive in English

On the one hand, this is linguistically correct… if we were speaking Spanish.

As we're not actually using real Spanish, such criticisms feel to me like objecting to the way Star Trek dares to boldly split infinitives that have never been split before on the basis that Latin (the language) didn't split them — Latin couldn't split infinitives because infinitives in Latin are single words, just as the -x suffix to denote -[o/a in this case but way more complex when you get to all the other gendered suffixes] doesn't make sense in Spanish.

(And now I'm wondering if anyone says "una hombra" and "un mujero" for trans people…)

This is mainly a comment about English speakers borrowing the word as an exonym, my grasp of the Spanish language itself is "tourist" at best.

Re: Google to pay $28M to settle claims it favoured white and Asian employees

#57

Post by GordonS »

reissbaker wrote: post #48
rchaud wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Got any evidence for that? Is Google in the habit of paying out giant HR-related settlements for something other than protecting good ol' boys like Andy Rubin? https://www.cbsnews.com/news/andy-rubin-google-settlement-se... Google has enough money to hire the best law firms too. Why would any law firm engage in frivolous litigation against a potential future client? The linked settlement is 10X that of this one, whic…

As another commenter pointed out elsewhere, Google recently paid out a settlement claiming that it discriminated against Asians. https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/ofccp/ofccp20210201 This settlement claims they favored Asians, but Google paid it out too! So, yes, it appears Google is in the habit of paying out contradictory settlements rather than litigating them.

Google is a huge organisation, so both claims could certainly be true.

Re: Google to pay $28M to settle claims it favoured white and Asian employees

#58

Post by ellisv »

skybrian wrote: post #24
derfnugget wrote: post #23

does anyone care if they perform better or does even suggesting that make me a racist in the modern world?

Why would group averages be helpful when making staffing decisions about individuals?

They generally aren't. See the ecological fallacy.

Re: Google to pay $28M to settle claims it favoured white and Asian employees

#59

Post by tdb7893 »

reissbaker wrote: post #48
rchaud wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Got any evidence for that? Is Google in the habit of paying out giant HR-related settlements for something other than protecting good ol' boys like Andy Rubin? https://www.cbsnews.com/news/andy-rubin-google-settlement-se... Google has enough money to hire the best law firms too. Why would any law firm engage in frivolous litigation against a potential future client? The linked settlement is 10X that of this one, whic…

As another commenter pointed out elsewhere, Google recently paid out a settlement claiming that it discriminated against Asians. https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/ofccp/ofccp20210201 This settlement claims they favored Asians, but Google paid it out too! So, yes, it appears Google is in the habit of paying out contradictory settlements rather than litigating them.

One thing I will note is that both of these can be true. Google is a huge company run by a lot of people and unless the specific claims are contradictory there's nothing stopping Google from doing both. It's not like we can expect it to be run with any consistent ideology
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