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Woman Recruited By Google Four Times and Rejected Now Joins Age Discrimination Suit
dcblogs writes: An Ivy league graduate, with a Ph.D. in geophysics, Cheryl Fillekes, who also specializes in Linux and Unix systems, was contacted by Google recruiters four separate times over a seven year period. In each instance, she did well enough on the phone interviews to get invited to an in-person interview but was rejected every time for a job. She has since joined an age discrimination lawsuit against Google filed about two months ago by another older worker. "The amended lawsuit also alleges that the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) received 'multiple complaints of age discrimination by Google, and is currently conducting an extensive investigation.'"
I tried to google this but I told me the news was too old.
None of Google's products support female accessibility features (e.g. breast gesture recognition). Their products are obviously intentionally engineered to promote the white cismale patriarchy.
It's very common for people to pass phone screens but fail onsite interviews. The phone screen is just an early warning system for people who have no chance. The fact that this lady got equally far in the process 4 times is probably a good thing - it means the process is consistent.
The problem is that the recruiters actually contacted her 4 times and misled her about her chances. If you have already been rejected once, you are obviously NOT an "ideal candidate". And the reason why the recruiters did this is simple: they are paid on commission. It's a fail system, and in this case it wasted the candidate's time, it wasted the interviewers' time, and now it will waste the courts' time.
I'm sure age discrimination is real, but that's not the issue here.
Getting into my late 40's, I find my friends are experiencing this all over. EMC keeps contacting a buddy who is a storage architect, he designed storage hardware at sun, they never make an offer after multiple interviews, he says its because hes almost 60. Facebook keeps calling a few of my buddies, but they too never get hired and are in their 50's. I was turned down by 2 companies when they learned my age and I had a family. But I dont want to work in a sweat shop anymore, so its good to know exactly how bad some places can be. Amazon so far seems to be hiring everyone, because they burn them out quicker than they can hire.
Yeah, people are working until retirement age now, so this is a problem. (You know, that reset button that wipes out your entire life savings called divorce)
It seems like they just get as many candidates as they can to repeatedly interview just for the data or something.
The second time I got recruited to interview was just like the first: zero feedback, just thanks-but-sorry-not-this-time. Yet a year later they reach out again, do the phone interview again, it's like "Maybe it'll be different this time." and then we schedule the onsite and then I'm like, no, it's not going to be different, why did I even schedule round three, we're done here."
and see the age discrimination. I've been to their SF and Kirkland, WA campuses about two dozen times, and very few people I saw were over thirty. When I interviewed there, they said I was a good fit due to my age. Yes, that's age discrimination, but I can't argue that they were wrong.
... will be to get them to find you and get your age before bringing you in for an interview. Will save a wasted trip I guess.
someone with her education who goes to make cheese... hey, that's really romantic. maybe she burnt out, maybe she has some social issue that prevents competent office interaction
but maybe the real issue here is resume prejudice. where the guy or gal who takes 5 or 10 years off to pursue a passion never can get back in the game. which is especially true of women and the pursuit being having children
the usa should be like the nordic countries, and have mandatory child leave for *fathers and mothers*
that way having kids dings men's careers as much as women. otherwise, as long as child rearing impacts women disproportionately, women will never achieve parity with men in the office. nevermind that men want to spend time with their children and time with dad is just as important as time with mom if we really care about strong families in this country. put your money where your mouth is on your rhetoric about strong families, the presence of a father in a child's life, and family values in general, dear social conservatives, and promote equal family leave for men and women
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
...you turn up to a job interview to find yourself the oldest person in the room....
Interviews are done by individual rank and file developers who are generally not compensated or recognized for doing this extra work in addition to their primary project. It's very unlikely that there was some top down directive to not hire people based on age. It's possible that younger interviewers have an unconscious preference for people similar to themselves, but dozens of folks who interviewed her would not be acting in consort or with malicious intent.
From my observations (not just personal) I came to the conclusion that, if you are out of job at 45, you're fucked, especially (but not limited to) in tech and science/research.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Grow up, idiot. Not every male hiring manager is a boob guy. There are quite a few ass guys out there too.
lucm, indeed.
wait.. really? http://www.isitdownrightnow.co...
doesn't look down... but i could google it...
too many young kids out of college are with startups and do not want to look at experienced IT veterans. This is an epidemic that has stemmed from silicon valley with the likes of facebook, google, etc. It's spreading to other states like Utah and elsewhere. Those who do this are in for some serious karma.
"For 40 years, I programmed in C, C++ and Python, primarily in the Unix and Linux environments. In 2014, I bought a dairy farm in upstate NY. I designed and built an on-farm creamery to produce farmstead sheep's milk cheese and yogurt. "
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ch...
To superficial people out there: yes, there's a picture in her profile. Semi-SFW.
lucm, indeed.
I've just witnessed the company I work lay off several middle aged white guys that all had successful performance reviews which were immediately replaced by unskilled college grads under the diversity and rebalanced workforce banners. And no they were not women nor a race that is typically considered a minority group in Oregon. I would love to see these topics discussed in our political debate
Older people aren't so prone to being carried along by hipster think, and there's a lot of hipster think at Google.
Every service they've offered in recent times has involved intensely hip PR riding on the back of abusing users to fuel the company's advertising revenue, and youthful hipsters are so enthrally by the hip atmosphere and many youthful bodies around them that they don't even recognize the abuse of users.
And that's exactly how Google wants it. Older people who have acquired some wisdom over the years and who are very likely to push back against the prevalent M.O. of treating users like cattle would be seen as "not team players" at Google.
So Google simply doesn't hire them, and may the evil continue.
The best way to get rid of these people is to demand right up front that they make a serious offer, especially with an unsolicited contact. Tell them that you want a 50K signing bonus wire transferred to a bank account under your control before you start with a 250K yearly salary and a minimum three year deal. I don't particularly like Silicon Valley type people and I hate San Francisco, so if I'm going to work there or in New York, which also sucks, that's what it costs. It's amazing how fast this shuts most of them up. Of course, it would might be tough if one day they actually called my bluff.
They hired Kurzweil a few years ago, and he's now 67 (of course there's only one Ray Kurzweil). Anyway, I don't think the lawsuit has legs.
You old broad.
My impression isn't that it's age discrimination per se, it's the culture of twentysomethings. The way they were raised, they are simply uncomfortable with anyone but their own kind. It's not that they hate old people or anything, it's just that they feel weirded out and feel they couldn't possibly work every day with such a person. It's lack of empathy with "the other". It's also a form of oikophobia, in which they welcome people from other cultures but fear and loathe people from their own.
You can trot out the tired cliches about GET OFF MY LAWN LOLZ but at a certain point, there is truth there. I never felt weirded out by working with age 50+ people, even when I was a new recruit. It was just something everyone did. But now, unless you're one of their own kind, they just get freaked out and think they can't deal with having you around day in and day out. When it comes to making a decision, they drop the black ball in the fishbowl and that's it. No regrets, they just prefer the company of their own generation.
And I can sort of see where they're coming from. What happens when they share the latest meme from Tumblr around the office? You're going to show a blank look and keep on working. You're not on Tumblr, nor Twitter, nor Facebook, and this not only weirds them out, but makes you automatically suspicious. What are you trying to hide by not making your life public? You're probably a child molester of the kind that their parents constantly warned them about. "Stranger danger!"
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
I majored in mechanical engineering, does that qualify me as a neurosurgeon?
Fuck's sake, she majored in geophysics - maybe she should be trying to find work with the USGS?
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
Are you saying the economy can support every single tech professional starting their own successful business at 28? Please tell me what country you're from so I can move there!
She should open her eyes and look at the companies that are using sites like Jobrivet to get around age discrimination laws, and band together to sue all those fuckers as well.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I work at a Fortune 500 technology company where gray haired wisdom is still highly valued. Perhaps those crying "ageism!" aren't getting hired because they lack the temperament to mentor younger staff who will carry the baton forward once they move on. This is especially important in companies where stock is a major component of employee compensation and everyone needs to harbor the attitude that the are still a stakeholder even after the leave the company.
Google was sued for age discrimination a few years ago and won. The guy who sued them appealed - he was a Stanford professor. Google was forced to reveal the bonuses issued to people by age. Turns out older workers were given smaller bonuses. Also, Google is populated by a bunch of inbred upper-middle-class snot who think they are god's gift to the tech sector. Just look at Google outreach ads a few years ago - e.g. "*recent* graduate from Top 20 school". Clear discrimination!
Always really interesting to see these two topics come up on Slashdot. Ageism apparently exists, sexism doesn't.
It depends.
I've found that government tech jobs don't discriminate against age.
Many private industry jobs do but not always. It depends upon whether or not the hiring manager is an old fart or not but that is not always the case. Sometimes, they're being directed to sift out a particular age group for the job by their superiors. Mostly for low wage or "obedience" issues. Young people haven't become stubborn yet and are wiling to put up with more bullshit.
They also don't happen to have children that interfere with pesky 12-16 hour work days.
Not for me or a few others I know, but point taken as it mostly applies.
So the consequence of that realization, is that about ten years into a career, you should get a masters to reset the clock. :-)
Hmm, so THAT'S why people get a masters... always seemed rather pointless until now. It's not pointless, just expensive.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I think you might correlate number of job offers with sign on bonus. New grad tend to be getting offers from multiple companies because the have a timeline to graduation
Older people tend not to want to work long hours, which is expected in many places in the industry.
An older person won't fit well into a young company, probably won't enjoy hanging out with 20 year olds that much, etc.
Older people do, in general, have less "zest". They've seen enough, they're more measured, they don't go "OMG, my first job, how exciting is that" or "did you see that programming competition?"
Older people have more experience, and it's expected that they'd expect and ask for higher salaries.
While it's all individual, it's much easier to assume up front that a young code monkey will be more excited and willing to work for less, will fit in more easily and code 14 hours a day.
I'm 40 and I'm pretty sure I could get a job within a couple weeks if I lost my current one tomorrow. We'll see what the landscape looks like when I'm 45.
It's rather amusing that you, as an outsider, attempt to define what we, 20 somethings, feel and how we think. It's even funnier when you realize how wrong you are.
Having a person older than you by a fair margin be your subordinate might be somewhat strange, but not for very long and certainly not enough to cross the person off the hiring list. Working with older people in general, though? I've been doing that all my life... And so has basically anyone who's had to work, and not merely get a fat check from daddy to start their "startup". You seem to be conflating "20 somethings" with a select minority of people who can afford to turn their workplace into a reflection of their own egotistical selves.
"What in hell does a major from 20 or 30 years ago have to do with anything?"
When I interviewed at Google a few years ago, they wanted my SAT scores.
From high school. I graduated in 1979.
Damned if I could remember what they were. Why would anyone care what my SAT scores were?
I chalked it up to "a bunch of high-school kids who are still comparing SAT scores like penis sizes."
I told them, "Thanks, I'll look elsewhere..."
You're now expected to eat at work, breakfast, lunch, dinner. How dare you refuse our meals to eat at home with your wife and kids! This was the attitude I encountered.
Remember, when you work 60 hours a week on salary, you've basically given up all claims to overtime, time and a half. You're cheapening your hourly rate by doing so. This is the new way for US corporations to squeeze even more out of their workers. Unfortunately in tech, hourly wages aren't even offered for full time employees, because the very definition of what full time is has changed.
I quit my job at my "Unicorn" company on Page Mill Road in Palo Alto. I wish them well (a year of vested stock) but now I'm happily setting up data logging systems on marijuana grows. Everyday I'm outside, nobody works over 8 hours (sans some management) and everyone is just chill as fuck. My family was nervous when I made the jump because it meant a pay reduction, but my level of sanity is returning, I'm with my kids every night, and people really appreciate the work I do. I've adjusted my spending accordingly. It goes beyond just data logging, because now we're getting into flipping relays on sensor events.
This isn't the first time I've done tech in a none-tech company and I felt great about it. I worked at Mothers Cookies in Oakland in the 90's, and it was the exact same way. "Oh it takes you 2 hours each way? Work 5 hours a day, and we'll count you for 8". If I've learned anything, it's that the tech world doesn't respect your downtime. If you're 40+ like me, just take a hit now, get out, and find a stable non-tech company. Marijuana tech is a pretty good place to be if you're in Colorado or California.
It's not just google. Age-ism in Silicon Valley is institutionalized.
-- Will program for bandwidth
and the[n] bought the farm in 2014
Aren't most things impossible after you've "bought the farm"?!
[...]
she got into dairy farming
I should have known you meant it literally...
I've interviewed people who looked good on paper but were completely devoid of people skills in the interview. I've interviewed people who clearly hadn't bathed in quite some time. I've interviewed people who were so verbally aggressive they'd be a constant source of problems. Over the years what's amazed me is the number of people who can't at least fake "normal team player kind of person" in an interview. I suppose that's the point of interviews.
We have a culture of white 50 year old christian guys.
We don't feel comfortable hiring anyone who isn't a white male 40+ years old who wants to go to our church weekly.
it's AGE DISCRIMINATION.
The root cause doesn't matter. If you ONLY hire 20 to 28 year olds- you are practicing age discrimination.
Your candor is admirable, but we didn't fight this crap for 40 years (and countless deaths even) against old white religious males to give it all up to a bunch of young males.
I don't see where they are coming from and I hope this crap gets torn out by the roots- they get massive fines AND they get a rolling fine based on their age demographics going forward.
20 year olds have no more right to discriminate against 50 year olds than men do against women, whites do against blacks, Hispanics, Asians, etc, or religious people do against non-religious people, or non-religious people do against religious people.
If you meet the requirements of the job, your age doesn't matter. Google wouldn't be calling you if you didn't meet the requirements for the job.
What's so terribly funny is that with 2 to 4 year job duration these days (if that), age doesn't matter like it used to when companies were hiring people for 20 years.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I think the point is that what you think and what will happen are possibly two entirely different things.
Look, I'm getting older myself I understand self interest and all.
But stop fucking pretending this is anything _but_ self interest for a specific group of people. The older we get the more we cost insurance, the higher our salaries usually are, and the less able/willing we are to work 60 hour weeks every week.
This means we tend to be inferior employees in many situations. Sorry. Grow the fuck up, it's true and I don't know why an employer should not hire the person who will make them the most money.
Of course, yes, with age comes experience blah blah blah nothing is ever a hard and fast rule.
This lady just assumes she was as good a candidate, overall, as the people she was competing with and the odds are very strong that she was not.
It's sad that nobody sees this statement as the serious social problem that it is.
Yep, many men are boobs but most men are asses.
Quite by the contrary. I do mind working with 20s. They do have some patience for things we do no longer have, and also investigate things a lot. They also need some guidance. What often ticks me off is being interviewed by 20s. Besides them having no experience in life, they often do not understand when they are saying something they were told to say that they are insulting people actually (e.g. too lower offers, or private life questions, for instance), they do not have the life experience to often understand sarcasm, they also do not get it older people has more independent thinking, and also they denote clearly the place I am applying for hires as a politic cheap labor force.
Was there ever any REAL interest in this person at Google, or was it a series of recruiters (you never see the same one twice) trolling the Internet with a dragnet? I get LinkedIn spam from Amazon every few months, even after making it clear I'd rather work at a local Harbor Freight than relocate and work at Amazon. We need to know who contacted this woman and why over a seven year period. I was trolled by Google once, too. All recruiters do is try to contact every person on the Internet who may or may not have the skills they want. Then they select from the ones who respond. I would say that until we disprove it's a recruiter dragnet, it's hard to prove any kind of discrimination. Just the opposite - recruiters have no ability to discriminate at all with their trolling and dragnet.
However, 4 times is indicating very strongly that a policy or managerial decision at a rank above that of the recruiters is occuring. It's very likely that she is correct about it being based on age but the recruiters were not informed of that policy being applied by a higher level of management.
Either way it's a fuckup all round putting someone through the same time and money wasting process four times instead of looking up the records of previous interviews.
Ever heard of Texas Instruments? A lot of computer technology grew out of geophysics. With a doctorate it's almost certain that her project involved writing her own software. Geophysics is really about using computers to do stuff with signals and relate it to what is under the ground.
For certain classes of problems an applied scientist is going to be a far better programmer than a computer scientist purely because of their mathematical background, if that's what the solution needs. I've even met CS grads who have never heard of a Fourier transform, which is fine for some stuff but a handicap for others until they get up to speed with whatever a project requires (which may be never if it requires a couple of years of study in mathematics).
How horrible it must be to go through life like that, only looking at labels instead of people. So, so limiting. Oh well, whatever the narrative tells you to believe, eh?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Considerably less, though!
Pornhub reveals that people of caucasian/european descent are majorly boobs men, and they constitute vast majority of hiring managers in technological companies.
Oh the bliss of data science today.
In other words, it's age discrimination - dressed up in fancy words to make it look like it's not. A rotting rose by any other name still stinks.
You know, they should implement some kind of a search engine on their HR database so that they can look up past interviewees to prevent multiple recruitment gaffs like this. Now, I know that not everyone can write a custom search engine in house, but I hear that both Microsoft and Yahoo have up-and-coming search engine technology they might be able to license and implement that would let them mine their existing data.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
That is moderated down! Someone didn't notice that it is a joke.
... gender and racial diversity in the workplace. Ageism is discrimination that eventually will impact all of us. And given the rapid aging of the population, they will soon be facing smaller and smaller pools of younger candidates.
Not just trolling. Maybe she's really unpleasant in person, and keeps tanking the interviews.
Actually age discrimination laws dont apply if the candidate 40 yo
And these days sexual attraction may not even follow natural tendencies.
OK, so the last time I was unemployed I had about 12 in person interviews before I finally got a job from the 13th. I was absolutely qualified for every position I applied for and went on to the second interview round more than a few times. But the logic of this article, there must have been something nefarious going on. It's plainly nonsense.
Also "recruited" cannot be used in this sense. If she was recruited 4 times, that means she got the job 4 times. Otherwise she was just contacted by a recruiter 4 times - which seems to be the case. I had to read the the headline multiple times to work out why it makes no sense and the actual article to figure out what the intended meaning was.
I barely remember who the recruiters were at my firm 2 years ago, let alone over a seven year period. It seems like this person should have made clear on the.call that they had spoken with Google in the past, divulge the results and identify whether the opportunity was worth going in to interview for. Shame on her for going in four times, one.would think she would learn from the first few failed attempts.
You'd think that a past candidate that didn't succeed would be flagged by their system and not necessarily called again.
"For 40 years, I programmed in C, C++ and Python, primarily in the Unix and Linux environments"
Really. Is your name Ken? I didn't think so.
You can't pull bullshit around smart people. Though maybe you don't notice it so much at a dairy farm.
C was not seen out side of Bell Labs until 1973 at the earliest, most likely 74 or 75, so *maybe* that is true. But the C Programming Language was published in '78, so I call BULLSHIT.
C++ was just a gleam in Stroustroup's eye until about 1983, so I call more BULLSHIT.
Python first hit the streets in '89 or '90, so more BULLSHIT.
Unix, unless you were at Bell Labs, was not seen anywhere until the earliest, 1974, so maybe not bullshit, but I'd still call more BULLSHIT.
And linux is not even 15 years old, so there's no way that anybody has been programming on Linux for 40 years, so still even more BULLSHIT.
Stupid recruiters can't tell the difference between bullshit and tasty chocolate, but Google does not have stupid recruiters.
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
I'm 40 and I'm pretty sure I could get a job within a couple weeks if I lost my current one tomorrow. We'll see what the landscape looks like when I'm 45.
But that doesn't mean you won't be discriminated against during that search. 40 is close enought to your thirties that you don't really have to worry about age discrimination. But I don't worry about it. I've been told by recruiters to limit my job to only the recent jobs that might lead someone to believe I was younger (I'm 53). But I decided I don't want to waste my time with anyone who's looking for someone younger; that place will probably suck to work at. So while I won't be sueing anybody, I also won't be taking days off to interview with the assholes.
I do Imagine as I approach 60 this will be harder and I am looking for my last job. That's the hard part. Unfortanately I've never been married so I have asmall fortune that will let me retire early.
The difference is that ageism does affect many Slashdot readers. Sexist and racism apparently not so much.
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
I'm basing this off the fact that I got my current job around three years ago, when I was 37, without much trouble. That and the volume of recruiting emails I get (including two from Google in the past 6 months) despite my age being pretty obvious from my LinkedIn profile.
People need to be careful about what you share publicly.
Someone at Chicago might disagree, but his opinion is irrelevant.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/m...
They're a bunch of bit-pushers who will get a rude awakening when the cheap energy runs out (it already is) and suddenly they'll have to produce real things...
"[W]e had a saying in the movement that we don't trust anybody over 30." Jack Weinberg
Yeah, you were trying to demonstrate your independence but you did it by being as prejudicial as possible. Others took up that mantra and now this is the result: a complete lack of respect for experience and an inability to benefit from the wisdom of age.
I see the question burned in your mind so brightly, you felt the need to post twice...
You seem to think it's OK to dislike me because of your own prejudice, so why then are you angry when other people do the same?
Because people of your worldview need such nonsense to think rationally, I'll qualify my point by noting that I personally support gay weddings, have a number of gay friends and friends of color... I'm not the bigot that your mind has formed, you are for hating what your imagination has crafted of me.
People like you think you can wave away human nature, even as your own devours your soul.
I will not answer you any longer, for you mentally are not in a place that you can be helped or even informed... If you can't learn from an exchange why should I bother?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yeah, I've known heteros like that too. It's shocking how they just act like it's "okay" to talk about the opposite-sex people they care most about in life. They should really know better and keep that damned hetero stuff in the closet.
Next thing you know, it'll be okay to say "wife" or "husband" in the office. It's a damned slippery slope, I tell you. Next thing you know, people will be acting like it's reasonable to talk about their kids. Next thing you know, they'll think it's okay to, you know, actually bring them to the office for a visit!
I'm sorry, I have to sit down and fan myself for a moment now. I'm just soooo upset.
Thank God we have people like you working to make sure that these things Just Don't Happen On Your Watch. You, sir, are a true hero.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
In a post entitled: "Re: child rearing impacts women disproportionately", AC says:
There's an entire industry that recognizes this specific serious social problem. That industry is the condom and other birth control manufacturers.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
someone with her education who goes to make cheese...
I wonder if the geek would have the same sarcastic reaction if she had designed and opened a craft brewery instead of an artisan dairy --- she milks sheep not cows.
Sheep have been raised for milk for thousands of years and were milked before cows. The world's commercial dairy sheep industry is concentrated in Europe and the countries on or near the Mediterranean Sea.
The dairy sheep industry is in its infancy in the United States. There are approximately 100 dairy sheep farms in the U.S. They are found mostly in New England and the Upper Midwest. There are several large commercial sheep dairies in New York and California.
While sheep usually produce less milk than goats and much less than cows, sheep milk sells for a significantly higher price per pound, almost four times the price of cow milk.
Most of the sheep milk produced in the world is made into cheese. Some of the most famous cheeses are made from sheep milk: Feta (Greece, Italy, and France), Ricotta and Pecorino Romano (Italy) and Roquefort (France). The U.S. is a large importer of sheep milk cheeses. Sheep milk is also made into yogurt and ice cream.
Modern sheep dairies use sophisticated machinery for milking: milking parlors, pipelines, bulk tanks, etc. Ewes are milked once or twice per day.
Cheese from the ewe, milk from the goat, butter from the cow . . . Spanish proverb.
Sheep 101: Dairy Sheep
As an Insider in his mid thirties who works with many people in their forties and a couple in their fifties I want to make a few points -- and I've done my fair share of interviews there
1) someone with 40+ years of experience won't be considered for a junior position at any of these companies like Google
2) the programming bar for getting hired as a senior (or higher engineer) is *very* high -- significantly higher than that of a new grad
3) people working in industry for a long time aren't typically well prepared for a Google SWE technical interview, because it involves a lot of "book knowledge" that isn't used in day-to-day engineering, so they're already at a disadvantage relative to people fresh out of school
4) in an interview setting, speed matters, so people who are used to taking timed tests and writing lots of code all the time are also at an advantage -- and older folks who are just slower (i'm talking people in their sixties or later) can get hurt by this as well
so there is kind of a form of age discrimination going on, but it actually has more to do with interview process itself than pure age
The fact that she got 4 interviews means she didn't totally fail any of them, and was most likely borderline good enough, but didn't improve her interviewing skills enough to make it
This article proves it.
Man starts class action lawsuit claiming ageism, crickets from news media.
Woman joins class action lawsuit, headline news on Computer World (and now Slashdot).
Seems like a clear cut case of sexism to me.
My wife and I have planned to move from the south to Washington state (east of Cascades) in about 3 year's time. I'm in my late 40s. I'm a sysadmin. My wife is in the medical field so she has the luxury of choosing from multiple offers all the time. We have three children, all in school for many years to go.
I worry about relocating, my age, that kind of thing like I guess anyone does at my age. I have never held a management position as I actually like IT work. My skills are limited to those of a sysadmin: Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, some PBX, a few other things. I don't know what to learn next to make myself more attractive to employers in Washington in a couple of years.
Any thoughts? I'm not cut out to be a developer, I know this. I'm interested in databases and the "cloud". I've been in IT almost 20 years.
RED ALERT! RED ALERT! 20-something, registered account, posting on Slashdot -- bring out the old-fartifier, stat!
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=does+goog...
It looks like Google comments pretty badly against themselves in fact.
Maybe the Journalist should have tried harder.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Or... Maybe the U.S. has become anti-male in ways that are often somewhat hidden. Being anti-male has resulted in women in the U.S. being far less happy.
society breaks down in 50 years and is utterly gone in 100 years, if no one has children
people who raise children deserve credit: they are investing in the future of civilization
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Grow up, idiot. Not every male hiring manager is a boob guy.
Google does not hire by a single managerial decision. They hire by committee, precisely because it reduces the chance of unconscious bias being a factor.
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
While both parents are taking 5 years off work to spend time and bond with each of their children where is the income to raise those children for that 5 - 15 years coming from?
This doesn't have to be complicated. All Google has to do is release their hiring statistics to a trusted third party, who interviewed during the last few years and who was hired for each position. Then the third party can investigate and find out the ages of everyone (which won't be hard). Then break it down by age group and see if there is a difference between how well applicants succeed based on age. This won't happen because I'm pretty sure Google knows how it will look
I did. Very smart but used all of it for evil. Always felt like I had to become a lawyer to converse. I came to dread meetings. Very little work product. Not surprised to see her involved in a lawsuit.
Who said anything about "no one having children"? There are some countries with (barely) negative population growth, but that is not even close to "no one having children."
Meh. Civilization, in the sense of "people today, different people tomorrow, in an overall sense, is driven -- hard -- by the instinct to breed. I don't see it as something you should get "credit" for. If that's how you want to roll, fine.
What I'm talking about is the ability to exert control over your own reproductive system. You're a working person, you have a kid, likely you're no longer qualified to be a working person, because you now have a whole new set of responsibilities. If you are wealthy enough to slough those off on someone else (nannies, etc.) that's fine. Or if you're supporting a spouse who will carry that load. Otherwise, you're basically crippling your ability to be productive at work. From long nights up with baby to a whole slew of other responsibilities and necessities, some of which will extend past a decade, you will be less effective at your job, only assuming you were effective at it in the first place.
Birth control gives people a choice: They can pursue normal life without abstinence, yet slew the odds strongly in favor of not getting pregnant. It's no longer a general given that the mating process means high odds of pregnancy. Instead, we can control the when, and thereby large portions of the quality of the outcome.
Personally, I reserve giving "credit" to those people who plan the raising of children such that they are available, secure and ready for the task when they undertake it. Not when they punch a hole in the middle of their job responsibilities by pulling the "preggers" card. Furthermore, I think bringing an unwanted child into the world is downright awful.
While I am all for workplace equality, I see it as going both ways: If you do something that makes you less good at what you do than someone you could be replaced by, your job is at risk, and legitimately so in my view. Pregnancy, drug intoxication on the job (and that includes alcohol), not being where you're supposed to be when you're supposed to be, etc.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Did you miss the part where the subject of the story was actively recruited 4 times in a 7 yr period as well? To the point where she repeatedly got live interviews...
I worked with Cheryl briefly about 10 years ago relating embedded Linux work and her low level Linux knowledge back then was impressive. I would say it was Google's loss not employing her.
What the hell do you think young people who only hire less qualified young people over more qualified older people are doing?
We had a 63 year old java programmer at our company who crushed the younger programmers in terms of delivery, elegance of solutions, maintainability, creativity, and even hours worked (regularly put in 60 hours a week). He would be turned away from Google over a less qualified candidate.
Wouldn't it be nice if companies hired the most qualified candidate for the job?
Age discrimination in IT has been rampant since the 1990s.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
You are off by 1 year. They don't apply if you are 39.
http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types...
Age discrimination involves treating someone (an applicant or employee) less favorably because of his or her age.
The Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) only forbids age discrimination against people who are age 40 or older. It does not protect workers under the age of 40, although some states do have laws that protect younger workers from age discrimination.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
The real question is why ANYONE would think you have to like all the people you work with.
You don't have to of course. You are just an idiot if you don't seek that out when you have the ability - which all developers do because of the ease of finding work currently. I feel sorry for people who have more trouble finding work, who do not have that flexibility...
If you think about it, if you are working with a lot of people you don't like as a developer you are spitting on the less privileged. Or you are a masochist, which is fine - I also don't have to work with you.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
From the outside, it's impossible to tell what happened to her. She might have been the second best candidate for four different jobs; Google is a place where a lot of people want to work so they get a lot of good applicants. Or she may actually be a victim of age discrimination or sex discrimination or a combination of both; they are very much a thing in tech.
Here is the problem with her case. She has a PhD from a higher institution. Her work profile and accomplishments are well documented for anyone bothering to look. She taught graduate students, and by all accounts worked out quite well in a collaborative environment. So the notion that she was not a "good fit" or a "team player" gets hard to prove by Google given her record. Given Google's problems with diversity, I suspect that the cases will be quickly settled out of court.
So, you discriminate against religious people? Who else is on your list?
Here is the obligatory link to the artictle explaining why there are so few older programmers.
These types of stories are the staple of the left media...
'SOMEONE WRONGED ME BECAUSE I AM (fill in the usual) AND THEY ARE (bigots, racists, sexists, etc).'
-- Maybe Google is just another big, screwed up company when it comes to hiring and recruiting? Every big company I have worked with was (HP, Sun, Apple, etc)
'HR is a bunch of idiots'
-- No, they cannot read hiring managers minds. At Google, they dealing with very imperfect AI resume systems and getting 10,000 hits for any job opening
'XXX was hired because they KNEW someone inside'
-- A recommendation is ALWAYS better than a 5 minute interview. And, the first screening is usually about that long.
Classic interview wisdom still holds. You will have a lot of meaningless meeting, be put on hold, jobs will evaporate for unknown reasons, interviews will be jerks, etc. Was ever 'thus.
Best way to get a job is the same. Persistence, good followup, positive attitude, and, especially now, a REALISTIC view of the industry and where YOU fit.
Having been (rather recently) roped into the interview process, I can tell you that:
1) Recruiters often get it wrong: since they have no actual knowledge of the required skillset, they have to go on the CV alone; which in itself is very open to manipulation and interpretation
2) Someone may be amazing on paper and then just simply not produce when given a technical test (see #1)
3) Someone may have all of the technical skills but just not align with the culture of the company; for example, our company is big on TDD and dedicated time to learn and improve our skillset during what would otherwise be work time -- both of these 'non-negotiables' in our culture have opponents.
Without reading too deeply, I want to just raise a paw to remind everyone that no-one owes you anything and you don't DESERVE a job. You are granted a place to earn your salary at the discretion of the employer. If the Me-Me-Millenials could just stop for a moment to consider that, that would be great. Some of the older generation has seen that mindset working for the younger generation and thinks they can get away with it too.
On a parallel: if a company really doesn't want you to work there, why are you hung up on forcing them to? Personally, I'd hate to work in an environment where I'd forced myself in, especially when there are (guaranteed) places where you'll be just the right cog in the machine. I've actually left companies where I didn't feel 100% valued based solely on that premise. If you're good enough, you'll place somewhere.
"In this caste system, what you know is not important.
Who you know is very important. It is better to be on the golf circuit than to be at the desk working hard.
Read more at:
http://economictimes.indiatime...
Casteism
The candidate alleging age discrimination here has no "20 year gap" in her employment history. Just 40 continuous years of programming, first in HS, then in college (for pay), then in graduate school (her thesis work), then in postdocs (her research), then in the commercial world. No mention of kids. Would you be making this same incorrect assumption of "must have had a gap in employment" and "doesnt *really* have 40 years of actual continuous programming experience" she were a man alleging age discrimination? It is true that when people are shown pictures of purple cows, they remember them later as having been brown, just because their minds reject what their eyes actually see. It's not because you're sexist or ageist or misogynist -- just human. But do try to look at the evidence, rather than inappropriately applying stereotypes.
Funny, some pretty outrageously sexist and ageist behavior of young men is often excused on the basis that, well, they're programmers, so they "lack people skills." That makes it OK then, right?
I wonder why "lack of people skills" a reason to excuse the unlawful behavior of young men who make programming environments so toxic to anyone unlike themselves, but appears to be a perfectly valid excuse to unlawfully not even hire an older highly qualified woman?
So I should hire old women without people skills because people in other companies hired young men without people skills who later turned out to be a problem.
Seems legit to me. You're a genius.
No, it's just an indication of the double standard. Young men all over the industry are constantly being excused for everything under the sun, up to and including the criminal offense of attempted rape because "they lack people skills" whereas an "old woman" as you say (BTW boyo, 72 is "old woman", 55 is "mature seasoned professional) is going to be told she "lacks people skills" if she offendeth an egomaniac brogrammer by gasp! finding and fixing a bug in his code.
Face it, young men expect a woman as old as their mother to BE their mother, and if they're not getting their poor little egos stroked constantly and their fragile delicate little emotions molly-coddled constantly by someone who "should" be as nice to them as their mommy, they'll bitch and complain about her "people skills" not to mention the more actionable comments about her being "ugly" and "old" and "fat" and "overeducated" and "whacko" (clearly there are some armchair psychiatrists here) and "not really qualified because she took 20 years off to make bay bees" even if she's childless and hasn't had a vacation in 40 years.
We've already seen ALL of those comments right here, so you can't say it doesn't happen.
Heer's a newsflash- Google is just anothedr Big Company Doing Evil.
From the forced serfdom which resulted when they knowingly, illegally and maliciously conspired to refuse to hire other SV companies programmers (so those programmers , if they quit, couldn't get another job OR couldnt' look for another job while working at any of those companies ! ) to the driveby stealing of WIFI passwords via StreetView to the CLEAR cooperation of Google with the NSA Prism program.. on and on and on and on... here's a newflash for anyone whose been under a rock these past years- Google Is Evil.
Of course they're sexist as hell in their hiring practices. That's just a small part of being evil. Of course they pay men and women doing exactly the same job different salaries, that's just another small part of being evil. Read their horrified reaction to the fact of employees sharing salary data- why do you think they're horrified? Because those salaries don't revweal a distinct sex bias?
Google is a dirty dirty dirty dirty dirty dirty company. It just is. It does whatever it needs to to make money, lies about anything it needs to, have zero respect for anything which might interfere in it's making money (but goes the extra yardage and when caught frames their actions as a natural expression of their philosophical view of the owrld (Eric Schmidt- Anyone doing something online that they don't want others to know about maybe ought not to be doing that in the first place...".)
I mean is there anyone out there who is surprised at this?
This is just flat out bullshit.
Which comment are you talking about, specifically? Which comment that's not obviously meant to be a joke expresses these sentiments. I'd particularly like to see where someone expresses the feeling any women who's old enough to be their mother should treat them like a child.
Well enough of them certainly act like children. Just read your own petulant comments.
I see. You assumed you'd find certain kinds of comments and shot your mouth off before checking to see if they were actually there. That may fly in your women's studies class, but next time why don't you check first and save us all some trouble.
I'll give you a little hint for next time: You're not gonna find too many guys under 45 on slashdot, so even if there were actually something to your fantasies about what young men say and do, if they actually behaved like you imagine, you wouldn't see much of it here. The only person here acting like a child is you.
And you'd have to be using your own private definition of "petulant" to find it in my comments. It's true I've lost patience for the kind of transparent bullshit you're peddling, but that's not the same thing.
You're like one of those cartoon characters that has an angry defensive outburst whenever someone disagrees with him, tsotha.
And then gets particularly petulant and childish, screaming and stomping around, when it's pointed out -- how defensive, petulant and childish you're behaving.
Hilarious. Thanks for the lulz, sucker.
I should have put /sarcasm shouldn't I?
"we just have a youth culture" was being compared with "we just have a white male religious culture".
One is clearly illegal .. as is the other one too.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
How many hours did it take you scouring the internet to find something you could denigrate her personality with?
And this is all you came up with?
Wow. Just...wow.
Highlight name in the story, right click, Search for "%name%", read down results page, find Amazon review, read review. Took probably 3 minutes.
I do this for almost everyone in the news I have never heard of before, even other websites, no matter the context.
And trust me, almost every person who hires people will do a web search for the person's name these days as well.
Don't like that people will judge you for what you post publicly? Then don't post your opinion publicly (using your real name).
With agile you can't just decide to take a sprint to do investigation, there always has to be a deliverable of some sort
According to this list of agile deliverable names, you might be able to get away with an investigation that produces a "roadmap for repayment of technical debt".
We call that "projection".
That too.
I'm surprised to find someone so socially awkward she doesn't realize how other people see her. This article isn't about you, is it?
Well that is okay, because the law actually states that age discrimination is not hiring a person over 40 because of their age. Yes. You did not misread. There is age discrimination right there in the age discrimination law. You can discriminate against a person younger than 40 just fine.
I have a friend who was recently let go by our employer as part of a "restructuring" (read hire a new team lead internally for less money). He was given a small severance and walked to the door. So after filing for unemployment, he immediately updated his resume online. Within 2 days he got calls from 4 different recruiting companies recruiting him for the job he had just been let go from. It was obvious none of the recruiters took the time to read his resume, they only searched for keywords and his name popped up. He said he was sorely tempted to take the phone interview just to see how long it took these idiots to realize he had held the job previously. He simply told them not interested and they went away. It could be this woman fit the keywords, and since the phone interview is almost a waste of time with most recruiters (in my experience they are "technical" recruiters but are clueless about technology) she very easily was called for an in-person interview. I have to wonder if she actually had the same interviewer in any of her 4 interviews?
"If stupid things work...then they are not stupid."
It's just hilarious many commenters have revealed the very bias and bigotry that caused this case in the first place.
And yet, when the subject herself joins the discussion, nobody even bothers to ask her any questions, but rather just carry on in blind sexist and ageist speculation.
It's clear from the complete ignorance of how much programming and systems work her thesis actually required leading them to assume that it's "not relevant" -- from the comments, I honestly doubt anyone's bothered to actually read her thesis or indeed any of her publications.
This is why I hope this case actually goes to trial. Unless people are actually forced to face the facts in a court of law, no facts will be examined, and people will continue to simply believe their own stereotypes.
It's not very surprising that people in this profession do not appear to be terribly interested in facts or evidence, but rather seem to prefer wallowing in their own self-justifying speculation, bigotry and bias. It's the reason the demographic in the profession is so skewed in the first place. And, hence, the cause of action.
If young white men "feel uncomfortable" with people unlike themselves who find bugs in their code, it doesn't exactly help them to start spouting the very stereotypes that they think justifies their discomfort.
When you're in a hole, guys -- oh, here's your shovel. Keep digging. We'll just wait till your down deep enough to bury you.