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

Posted by EditorDavid on from the old-news dept.

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.

11 of 178 comments (clear)

  1. Wait wait wait by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re: Wait wait wait by ilguido · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:Wait wait wait by Tough+Love · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    3. Re: Wait wait wait by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      privacy is *not* for the little people.

    4. Re:Wait wait wait by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      --
      #DeleteChrome
  2. Re:"Do No Evil" Google by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 4, Insightful

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

    --
    #DeleteFacebook
  3. "ideas ... too old to matter" by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.'

    --
    Ezekiel 23:20
  4. Now This by RottenJ · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    --
    "It's fun to obey the machine" - Ralph Wiggum
    1. Re:Now This by mrsam · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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...

  5. Re:29 avg age... by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  6. Well, I liked my young co-workers, and vice-versa by rbrander · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.