Google's diversity post makes no mention of age

http://brianstorms.com/2014/05/googles-so-called-diversity-makes-no-mention-of-age.html

by brianstorms • 12 years ago

146 43 12 years ago

Google's blog post about diversity stats doesn't say anything about age, they diversity website does (but not with age stats.)

Of course, there are lots of possible diversity axes for which they don't have stats, including, among others, veterans status and sexual orientation (which, also, though they aren't in the stats, are addressed on the diversity web page.)

Its even weirder that the blog post complains that Google's federally mandated EEO-1 report includes only the information that prescribed in the federal mandate.

brianstorms3• 12 years ago

That is one way to spin it but not what I mean. My point of the post is that it is unfortunate that the EEO-1 doesn't care about age, because age is a problem in Silicon Valley and it's going to be worse as the workforce gets older. The EEOC doesn't care about age, so we can't count on EEOC to require companies to talk about age. It's going to have to come from the companies.

dragonwriter3• 12 years ago

The EEOC doesn't care about age

"The EEO-1 doesn't include age" is a readily verifiable fact.

"The EEOC doesn't care about age", OTOH, is claim which requires some argument beyond merely the observation that EEO-1 doesn't include age. [1]

[1] See, e.g., http://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/litigation/selected/adea.cfm [2]

[2] which, I suppose, is also good evidence for the claim that "the EEOC doesn't care about keeping its website listing current cases particularly current", but that's a different issue.

devindotcom• 12 years ago

While I agree that age should be addressed, your post seems to be a very good example of "letting the perfect be the enemy of the good." Here we have a major company apologizing for its poor diversity and providing a confidential report to the EEOC along with visualizations, very publicly on its website. It seems like a great start, with plenty of room to grow. So why "so-called diversity"? There has to be a more constructive way to address this and call on Google to release more demographics - but let's not forget that everyone else is keeping even the "so-called" diversity stats secret.

roots8000• 12 years ago

That is because it is gender diversity that is the sexy topic (for obvious reasons). Then racial diversity often gets tacked on at the end as just some motions you have to go through to deflect criticism.

coldtea4• 12 years ago

A lot of people overplay the defenders of "gender diversity" to look cooler/more progressive to their group (which sometimes is ironically motivated by trying to get laid).

greggarious• 12 years ago

They also don't give a breakdown of what colleges they hire from. (Which is a good heuristic for social class) Not everyone had the privilege to be able to go to Stanford.

koenigdavidmj• 12 years ago

Even if Stanford were a public school with a well-developed CS program, it's still the nearest notable school. Is there a shock that Amazon and Microsoft hire a lot of UW grads?

jonlucc• 12 years ago

There are many reasons close schools would have an advantage. I would be surprised if there aren't adjunct faculty at Stanford from Google (and UW from Microsoft) and interns sometimes prefer local opportunities to those far away.

It might be interesting to look at which colleges they hire from, but just drop Stanford (or control for the number of miles from Mountain View.

seanmcdirmid• 12 years ago

Google probably hires more UW grads than Microsoft (and definitely at the PhD level). Back when I was an undergraduate, even intel hired more than Microsoft (replace google for intel these days).

thrownaway24242• 12 years ago

Diversity across arbitrary axes would be silly. Half the country didn't go to college. Should Google hire half non-college-attending people?

ggambetta• 12 years ago

I didn't have the privilege to be able to go to Stanford.

I didn't have the privilege to be able to go to any Ivy League University. Nor to any university in the US, for that matter - I got my Engineering degree from an unknown university in a small south american country. But I did fine in the interviews so they hired me.

So many people say "yeah, they only hire PhDs from Stanford". OK, how do I put this - no.

vitd2• 12 years ago

Sure, and there are lots of companies that don't have any policies against hiring women. It's just that everyone who does hire, happens to hire from their fraternity, or their best friend's recommendations (which are from his fraternity), etc. And it just happens that there are no women in any positions of power at that company, so nobody ever even asks the question if they should do things differently.

Shebanator6• 12 years ago

I'm a google engineer who is cough well over 40. I haven't experienced any age discrimination. The engineering team for the product I work on, Google Play Music, is roughly 15% older engineers (rough guess, because I don't actually know how old everyone is). And across google, many of the most well regarded engineers (not talking about managers) are also older folks. Should there be more older engineers? Possibly, but the population is skewed because google is growing very fast of late and the vast majority of hires come straight out of college.

Also keep in mind that software engineering is a tough profession, and burnout is a real issue. Many of the people I've worked with over the years have moved on to other careers, in high tech or in something completely unrelated. The luckier ones cashed out on stock options or IPOs, and no longer need to work for a living - they either have their own little companies where they play around or they just retire. I'd say probably 40-50% of the engineers I worked with in my 20s and 30s are no longer doing any coding.

Bottom line: age discrimination is generally not a problem at google. One discrimination suit means nothing - those happen all the time at every successful company, and most of them are from folks angling for a quick settlement. (I don't know the merits of the particular case in question.)

thrownaway24242• 12 years ago

There's only one person on my immediate team who is under thirty. Much of the company's engineering leadership is on the "ex-dec" mailing list. Let's just say that there are no 22-year-old engineers on ex-dec.

edwardhotchkiss• 12 years ago

Based on these statements, would that mean that there is no cause for concern; while female engineers over-represent the percentage of CS majors?

cheapsteak• 12 years ago

Curious about the "ex-dec" mailing list. Link? Google isn't of much help (top result is this thread)

300bps2• 12 years ago

The engineering team for the product I work on, Google Play Music, is roughly 15% older engineers (rough guess, because I don't actually know how old everyone is)

I'm 41, work at an investment bank as a software engineer and I think I'm probably one of the youngest people in IT here.

Having an IT work force with only 15% of people above 40 doesn't happen by accident and in my 20 year career in IT, it's not the norm of most companies.

the vast majority of hires come straight out of college.

You realize that happens because of policies that make that happen, right?

Shebanator6• 12 years ago

Umm, no. Competition for experienced engineers in Silicon Valley is incredibly fierce - I get probably a couple dozen cold recruitment pitches every week, from startups and big companies alike. Any decent engineer with 10+ years of experience can write their own ticket pretty much anywhere they want, and many choose do so at startups where the potential rewards are higher.

On the other hand, most new grads would kill for a job at google, which is one of the best high tech companies to work for (if not the best). And most new grads don't want to take the risk and lower pay of a startup (not with all those student loans to pay off).

More supply == more employees. No sinister policies needed.

Edit: appended clarifying sentence to first paragraph

vitd2• 12 years ago

That's great that you feel that way and that your team may not discriminate. So why can't Google post those numbers, too? It would make them look great!

Shebanator6• 12 years ago

I'd like to see google post those numbers as well. I do realize that my own experiences are merely anecdotal, but hopefully of interest to enough people to be worth the post.

reledi• 12 years ago

Perhaps they're not including age because it's a lot more variable than "static" traits such as race and gender, even when using ranges. Such information would quickly become outdated, which is dangerous if they don't release updated stats often.

coldtea4• 12 years ago

Such information would quickly become outdated, which is dangerous if they don't release updated stats often.

Nothing stops them from releasing it once a year.

It's not like people grow older more than a year each year.

msoad• 12 years ago

One other thing that I notice is that they didn't have an ethnicity group for Indians and Middle Eastern. Maybe they categorized them as white because their white chunk was huge.

Shebanator6• 12 years ago

I think Indians would be counted as Asian, but I'm not 100% sure.

anonemu• 12 years ago

That's because Indians get lumped under Asians. Not sure about people of middle eastern origin.

protomyth• 12 years ago

The instructions are here: http://www.eeoc.gov/employers/eeo1survey/2007instructions.cf...

"Asian (Not Hispanic or Latino) - A person having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian Subcontinent, including, for example, Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippine Islands, Thailand, and Vietnam."

"White (Not Hispanic or Latino) - A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa."

mark_l_watson2• 12 years ago

I worked as a contractor at Google last year when I was 62. No age discrimination :-)

My opinion is that Google is hungry for good people, and they are casting a wide net.

BTW, a little off topic, it is much easier getting a job as a contractor at Google, so if you are curious about life at Google you might want to try the easier route. I think roughly 40% of the people there are contractors.

lsc• 12 years ago

Note, most of the reasons why companies discriminate against old people can be mitigated by making them contractors, so I don't know if that's a fair comparison.

There is the insurance issue- not an issue if you are a contractor. (I mean, on a google Engineer salary, it's less of a big deal, but still, we're talking a 5x increase in insurance premiums, it's not nothing.)

Then, there is the hours issue; It is thought that old people usually won't pretend to work for long hours like young people will. But you don't want your contractors to pretend to work long hours, you are paying them by the hour! Here, the perceived disadvantage of old people becomes an advantage, if you hire them as contractors.

Old people expect more pay. Sure, contractors are expected to get more pay.

Then, I think there are some vestiges of "expected loyalty" that are left in the system. Firing a bunch of old people is seen as worse, I think, than doing the same to a bunch of young folks. Making them contractors mitigates this problem, too.

Now, I'm not saying that there is age discrimination at google; I know a fair number of "greygoolers" or however you spell that. I'm just saying that almost all of the reasons why a company might discriminate against an old person no longer apply if they are hiring said old person as a contractor.

mark_l_watson2• 12 years ago

That is a good point about using contractors being more flexible, but that advantage holds across all age groups. Another good point on the increased health care costs.

plantain• 12 years ago

Except, it does. Click 'At Google' -> Greyglers.

http://www.google.com.au/diversity/at-google.html#tab=greygl...

brianstorms3• 12 years ago

Yes and I mention Greyglers in my blog post. But Google's tiny mention way down on a page that there's a group of old-timers in the company is nothing new and is not part of their new openness about transparency, nor does it say anything about age demographics across entire workforce or hiring practices.

zellyn• 12 years ago

Your "so-called" diversity blog post makes no mention of color-blindness. :-p

Google's diversity post makes no mention of age

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