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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.
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)
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.
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.
"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 agree with the first point, if a gap on the resume mattered it would have filtered them earlier. But....
well it's not like they didn't know her age either, they saw that before they called her too
It's quite one thing to know an age beforehand, and another to experience the age firsthand.
Although how would they know the age beforehand? It's not legal to ask and most people don't say.
I think it can easily be that in-person, the group of younger people simply does not feel as comfortable with them. It's not even really age discrimination so much as cultural discrimination because the difference in cultural experience is so large... Frankly I don't even have an issue with it, because if a group is not comfortable working with you you are not going to be happy working with them either.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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!
Fuck's sake, she majored in geophysics - maybe she should be trying to find work with the USGS?
I suppose from your post that you are one of those one-trick ponies that can do one thing and nothing else. What in hell does a major from 20 or 30 years ago have to do with anything?
Always really interesting to see these two topics come up on Slashdot. Ageism apparently exists, sexism doesn'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.
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.
Older people are more likely to tell the self-proclaimed genius founder that his brilliant ideas are crap. Not having zest is good, it means more likely to see through the bullshit. They can tell the difference between the artificial emergency and the real emergency.
Longer hours may be expected in many places, but it's illegal to enforce it in most places. The expectation in my experience is always self imposed, no boss ever says long hours are required (since it's illegal), but the employee seems to think that it's necessary. I sat across from someone who took work home very single night (as in pack up a box of equipment) and worked very long hours - he'd always say "I can't get my work done otherwise", but he never said "sorry, I can't do that new work assignment, I've got enough on my plate" and the boss never said "you must do all these tasks or else,": He'd even complain that the wife was complaining (which after one divorce he should have seen as a warning sign). It was completely his own doing, and only him not other team members.
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.
Those standards are largely a joke. They are actually worse than a joke because we tell people, "oh, you're all equal, no discrimination", then everyone knows it goes on anyway.
It is like trying to legislate morality, it doesn't work.
If a group of 20-30 year old white males are running a business, guess what? They'll largely hire 20-30 year old white males to work with them. They might hire some 20-30 year old white women to work there too, they smell nice and look nice.
Sounds horrible, doesn't it? Guess what? That is life and reality, and passing a law doesn't change that.
25 year olds look at a 55 year old and see their parents. They generally will not hire someone who reminds them of Mom and Dad. Note: They SHOULD because most 25 year olds have a lot to learn (I'm 40, I have kids, I know this now, but I didn't at 25 either).
White kids largely won't hire blacks either, at least not to work with.
Is that illegal? Yes. Does it still happen? Yes. Complaining about it won't change it.
Welcome to Earth and the human race. :) People like being around people who are like them, this is largely true everywhere on the planet.
I've often thought the greatest mystery in the world was how corporations convince otherwise rational people to sacrifice their lives, their health, their families all in the name of "THE TEAM" or "THE COMPANY", as if the company will ever return even 1/10th of that devotion to the employees. Corporations are the ultimate Stockholm Syndrome with some serious Manchurian Candidate brainwashing behind them.
Being unemployed causes a myriad of problems one doesn't have whilst employed. In the U.S., health care is a big inducement to work for "THE COMPANY".
If they are good at what they do then you don't have to like them. This weird concept that every single person in a workplace has to be the ideal drinking buddy is completely fucked up. A bit of professionalism goes a long way and can keep people who do not like each other from having a horrible work environment or "a life of despair".
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's easy - leave off irrelevant work history. If I'm applying for a job as a "full stack .Net developer", I leave off early jobs where I did C++ in DOS. I keep my resume to one page. In the interview I only discuss modern relevant technology. I don't discuss I started programming in 1986 in 65C02 assembly language on an Apple //e.
"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
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.
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