269 People Joined An Age Discrimination Class Action Suit Against Google (bizjournals.com)

Slashdot reader #9,119 BrookHarty writes: "269 people have joined a class-action lawsuit against Google claiming they were discriminated against in the workplace based on their age..." reports BizJournals. "The lawsuit originated in 2015 with plaintiff Robert Heath and was certified as a class-action in 2016." Google has stated it has implemented policies to stop age discrimination but still has an average employee age of 29.

In 2004 Larry Page fired Brian Reid nine days before IPO costing Reid 45 million in unvested stock options. Reid was fired for lack of "cultural fit". Reid has settled for an undisclosed amount.

Comments

Wait wait wait

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought Google was all about the diversity. Are you telling me they don't believe older workers can accomplish the same as younger workers?

Certainly that can't be because of biological differences. It therefore must be about ageism and bean counting.

That would make Google....Evil.

Re:Wait wait wait

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought Google was all about the diversity. Are you telling me they don't believe older workers can accomplish the same as younger workers?

Google only cares about diversity that's hip. Unless you're a member of a one of the traditionally defined repressed groups, fuck you. The world is divided into opressors and opressees. If you're an old white male, you're an opressor, and fuck you.

Re:Wait wait wait

[alvinrod]

Most companies hire white and Asian men because those are the majority of people obtaining degrees in computer and IT fields and applying for positions. That's why quota systems at companies aren't going to fix the problem. Even if company X does almost exclusively hire women or non-Asian minorities, it just means that the white and Asian men end up working somewhere else. It isn't as though there are a shortage of tech positions available for anyone who's capable enough to demonstrate a bit of competence.

Re: Wait wait wait

[ilguido]

Certainly that can't be because of biological differences. It therefore must be about ageism and bean counting.

Actually, since older engineers are probably male, it is about biological differences.

Re:Wait wait wait

[Tough Love]

I thought Google was all about the diversity.

Don't you get it yet? Google is all about the hypocrisy. Example: Google wants everybody to use its cloud to support modern, efficient remote working. Yet remote working is largely banned at Google. Example: google tells you that privacy is dead, get over it but if you dox Eric Schmidt you will be sued to the ends of the earth. Example: Google says "don't be evil" then does the opposite.

Re: Wait wait wait

[Anonymous Coward]

privacy is *not* for the little people.

Re:Wait wait wait

[ganjadude]

It's about imposing a meritocracy, which conservatives should be all for. The best qualified candidate gets the job, regardless of race, age, nepotism, or whatever else. It's all about what you can do and how well you can do it relative to everyone else.

Thats exactly what the fired google employee was trying to say and we all see how well that went

Re:Wait wait wait

[93 Escort Wagon]

Younger workers are often willing to put in lots of extra time on a project without being asked. Older workers often prefer to have some sort of life outside of work; so, if they are expected to put in extra time, they want to be asked - and will sometimes still say no.

The people in power st Google - and other places - seem to think it's perfectly fine to discriminate based on these factors. Funny thing is, the people in power often want to do stuff outside of work and expect to be accommodated without penalty... they just don't think the little people deserve the same consideration.

Re:Wait wait wait

[Pinky's Brain]

No, I'm saying that companies discriminate above and beyond that for the very rational reason that people from under-represented protected classes represent a risk to the company come firing time. At will employment laws don't really help in that regard, since the civil rights act pre-empts it.

"In fact, on average, damages are probably relatively low in hiring cases, reinforcing incentives to avoid hiring protected-class members and to risk lawsuits from applicants rather than employees"

https://books.google.com/books...

Of course none of this is official policy, ever said out loud, or even admitted to themselves by people in these companies a lot of the time. We in the west are very good at maintaining culpable deniability at all times. That's why the only way to really get a given statistical distribution you think is fair is to punish companies based purely on statistical evidence, as happens with companies fulfilling federal contracts as the book points out. Do you really want this level of central planning for the economy in general though?

Re:Wait wait wait

[rtb61]

That would be the fake left. The ideology of the real left is left = workers and right = bosses and issues that affect every worker, universal health care, a living wage for all workers, equal access to democracy and equal access to justice. The fake left, the main stream media fabrication, the SJW tools of the bosses, the one designed to break up left = workers, sure "genital mutilation of the acceptable kind?!?" is an issue but make not mistake it is not an issue for the majority of workers or the real left.

Google has a rock solid reputation for being ageist and this from the very beginning, the only reason they a starting to change, is to protect the already employed who grew old at Google whilst they rabidly excluded all other older people, now it's their turn and well, well, it's time to change the rules.

Re:"Do No Evil" Google

[DontBeAMoran]

You mean the Google that did age discrimination, sexism, monopolies, censorship and spying without our knowledge?

"ideas ... too old to matter"

[K. S. Kyosuke]

In 2004 Larry Page fired Brian Reid nine days before IPO costing Reid 45 million in unvested stock options. Reid was fired for lack of "cultural fit". Reid has settled for an undisclosed amount.

Wow. That's quite something. I had no idea that Hölzle was such a little piece of shit:

'He was fired by Larry Page (who was 30 at the time) in February 2004, after being told he was not a "cultural fit" by Rosing, and that his ideas were "too old to matter" by Hölzle, according to Reid.'

Now This

[RottenJ]

As a 45 year old, white, straight male I am slightly more desirable than nuclear waste when it comes to being employed in tech nowadays. I hope they prevail and some sort of precedent is established. I guess the only purpose of having a VP O' Diversity is to ensure sufficient hues of dermis and the correct ratio of penises/vaginas, fuck all else.

Re:Now This

[mrsam]

As a 48 year old, white, straight male I am constantly getting harassed by headhunters, and my current employer seems to be in a constant state of a nervous breakdown, afraid that I could leave for greener pastures at any time.

I understand that in some circles it is quite fashionable to be a victim, in order to seek sympathy and acceptance. I respectfully choose not to participate in the victim industry, or engage in victim mentality. Now, if you excuse me, I have to go back to hacking on this fine, beautiful weekend, in order to keep my skills up to date, and be employable...

Re:"Do No Evil" Google

[Chas]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Oh. You were SERIOUS?

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Sorry, but contrary to popular belief, Google is (and always has been) Evil. It's just that they're good enough at coverups that it becomes hard to collate all the instances of bad behavior.

Re:29 avg age...

[ShanghaiBill]

Is that really the average age of all employees or an "Engineer" positions age?

According to TFA, 29 is the median age of all employees at both Google and Facebook.

TFA says the "29" comes from the Huffington Post, and provides a link. Follow the link to Huffington Post, and they say the number came from ComputerWorld and PayScale.com. ComputerWorld pulls the number from a claim in Robert Heath's lawsuit, the subject of TFA, thus closing the circle.

Well, I liked my young co-workers, and vice-versa

[rbrander]

May I interject this is a silicon valley thing more than it is an everywhere thing. There's certainly some point at which younger bosses start to disregard older opinions, but especially if you've put in many of those years in the company, I found GenX and Millenials quite willing to listen to me and learn from me. (And I'm one of those jerks that will get his back up about an issue and sends around multi-page e-mail rants; people didn't read those, mostly, but they didn't stop listening when I had short, relevant comments to make.)

Granted, I worked at the opposite end of some kind of job-type spectrum: municipal utilities, where knowing what was different about how we put water pipes in the ground 20 years back is useful information. And most new ideas are suspicious. But, you know, a third of our economy is in things like government and basic services that are NOT dynamically changing with consumer fashions every year; there's a lot of good jobs with that "dull" part of the economy.

One funny thing is that I was teaching latest-thing high-tech to those people 20 and 30 years my junior, some of them were my bosses. I'm a civil engineer, but also had a CompSci degree, and kept up with many new things even if not the very latest. So they would be coming to me for help just doing Excel VBA macros or basic cgi-bin web solutions when the corporate apps were very clumsy. And I lost count of the people I taught basic SQL skills to, because "Report Applications" like Crystal Reports or Business Objects are a huge pain to learn when you just want a simple answer to a basic query.

I left at 57 to a lot of backpats and almost-tearful cries that they couldn't manage without me. They have, of course, though I've answered a lot of phone calls about How I Did That One Thing for them.

If Silicon Valley is indeed a dysfunctional family of overwork and discrimination and backstabbing competition, maybe you should stop picking your career based on Hollywood imagery of superhackers, not to mention dreams of millions before you're 30. Your odds are about the same as that high-school star quarterback who imagines a life starring in the NFL. Your odds suck, the place is a toxic-waste bin, so the game's not worth the candle.

Once enough people say, "screw silicon valley, I want to work with sane people", maybe silicon valley will have to start treating employees a little better.