Judges Reinstate Charges In Google Age Discrimination Suit

theodp writes "A California appeals court has reinstated former Stanford prof Brian Reid's age-discrimination suit against Google, ruling that a lower Court erred in siding with Google and rejecting Mr. Reid's claims. From the Court Decision (PDF): 'We conclude that Reid produced sufficient evidence that Google's reasons for terminating him were untrue or pretextual, and that Google acted with discriminatory motive such that a factfinder would conclude Google engaged in age discrimination.' As side notes, helping Reid make his case is CS Prof Norman Matloff, while Google's actions are being defended by Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati of pretexting-was-not-generally-unlawful fame."

Comments

Re:I dislike this result

[TheGratefulNet]

as someone who's a bit on the 'more experienced' level (ok, so I'm older middle age...) and who applied for a job at google, I can DEFINITELY say that from my perspective, there is age discrimination. very clearly. I saw it during several (I did have a few) interviews there.

the questions were 'schoolboy' quizzed. its been decades (literally) since I had to recreate a search or sort algorithm by hand. and you know what? for the field I'm in (network management) I have not HAD to re-do existing algs. not once in my career! we usually BUILD on existing ideas, not waste time re-doing perfectly good wheels.

when I answered 'I'd search for some sample code or an existing idea, then take parts of it and use what makes sense' they didn't like that answer! when they asked me math (arithmetic) style questions, I said I'd find a calculator and punch in the data. in other words, I know HOW to get the answer but I rarely (these days) walk around with literal data floating around upstairs. I keep POINTERS to data, not data. isn't that the better way? it surely has served me well enough in my 20+ years in the field.

the whole strategy of their interviews are all wrong! ALL wrong. they might work great for the snotnose college hire, but its completely wrong for us seasoned pros.

google is simple NOT setup for older guys. I saw it when I was there on campus for the live interviews and I sensed it all thruout during my phone screens.

they don't value thinking skills as well as they seem to value rote data recall, which clearly favors the young and those who very recently finished school and have it the algs still recallable line-by-line in their heads.