According to foreign media reports, Google paid an undisclosed amount of compensation to reach a settlement with job seekers who accused Google of discriminating against them because of their age.
Daniel Low, an attorney for job seekers aged 40 or older, said that the two sides had reached an agreement on the amount of compensation in the negotiations on Friday, but agreed to keep the amount confidential before the court approved it.
He said that the two sides have not yet reached an agreement on 'non-monetary remedies' aimed at preventing older job seekers from continuing to suffer discrimination.
The classmate’s plaintiff had more than 250 plaintiffs who accused Google of refusing them because of age. Google had previously argued that the failure of these job seekers was for a reason, not because of their age.
The age of Silicon Valley technology employees is generally low. These companies are rumored to favor only young engineers and tend to reject older applicants.
The lawsuit began in 2015 and was initiated by two job-seekers. Robert Heath was 60 years old when he applied for Google in 2011. He was a software engineer at IBM and Compaq. 47 years old Chery Fillekes is a systems engineer who applied for four jobs at Google in 2007-2014, but all failed.
In 2016, the federal court judge of San Jose, California approved the case as a class action lawsuit, and 250 more job seekers over the age of 40 joined in, accusing Google of age discrimination.
Google has previously said that the lawsuit should not be a class action lawsuit, because the 250 people apply for jobs in different directions, and apply for different positions, and interviews by different employees. Because each person's application situation is different, it should not become Class action.
Google said that they will also hire people over the age of 40 from time to time, and Google's recruitment process has to go through multiple stages, and multiple people collectively decide whether to hire.
The search giant said that these job seekers failed to apply for their own reasons, such as one of them who did not respond well to technical questions, one of whom had insufficient skill levels.
'Money compensation will encourage companies such as Google to look at their recruitment policies from the perspective of older job seekers,' said Daniel Law.
The difficulty of working for senior job seekers and employees in the technology industry seems to be a global problem, and the problem in Silicon Valley seems to be more serious.
Due to outdated skills and other reasons, many older employees in Silicon Valley were fired by the company, some were only able to work part-time, some sold their old-age houses, and some even had to go through plastic surgery to find new jobs.
According to statistics, the median age of employees in the United States is 42. According to the regular working age, such age is normal. However, according to market research firm PayScale, the median age of employees of Silicon Valley Technology is more likely. Is 31 years old (Apple), 30 years old (Google and Tesla), 29 years old (Facebook and LinkedIn), even younger.
San Francisco employment lawyer Michael Welch said other industries are also phasing out older workers and replacing them with younger, lower-cost laborers, but Bay Area technology companies have a rich resume. There is no good feeling, even questioning. Mark Zuckerberg once made a famous summary of the temperament of Silicon Valley at the age of 22, he said to the audience at Stanford University: 'Young people are smart . '
However, not all older employees will leave quietly. From 2008 to 2015, the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing received 226 age discrimination complaints against 150 large technology companies in Silicon Valley, which is higher than racist complaints. %, 9% higher than gender discrimination.