Google Settles Age Discrimination Lawsuit For $11 Million

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA — Heightening the debate about ageism in corporate America, Google settled an age discrimination lawsuit concerning its hiring practices for a hefty $11 million, Forbes reported.

More than 200 applicants ages 40+ who applied and were turned down by the Mountain View tech giant will receive the settlement money divvied up, the business finance magazine noted Tuesday.

In addition, the tech firm will implement employee training related to age bias and wage an age diversity effort regarding the recruitment of the highly sought after jobs in the prolific Silicon Valley. The third component of the settlement ensures age-related complaints are thoroughly probed to comply with the settlement terms.

Cheryl Fillekes, the lead plaintiff in the class-action lawsuit, claimed she was not offered employment at Google despite her “highly pertinent qualifications and programming experience.”

Despite the settlement, Google told Patch it has denied and continues to dispute that it intentionally discriminated against lead and opt-in plaintiffs, or any other applicant, because of their age.

Further, Google also indicated to Patch its four main criteria for hiring:

• General cognitive ability is an important attribute that we look for in all candidates. And it’s not I.Q, it’s learning ability evaluated. It’s the ability to process on the fly. It’s the ability to pull together disparate bits of information.
• Leadership: In particular emergent leadership is what the company cares about, when faced with a problem, does the person, at the appropriate time, step in and lead. And just as critically, does that person step back and stop leading to let someone else step in?
• Googleyness: A generic term to bucket desirable qualities it likes to see in employees, including having humility, being collaborative and curious as well as embracing diversity and thriving in ambiguity.
• Role-related knowledge: The more specific skills tied to the position it's hiring for.

Read the full Forbes story.

Ageism in the workplace has turned out to be as hot a topic in the Silicon Valley as gender preference and sexual harassment as shown from the following:

See also

• Are Google Men Underpaid? Study Says Yes
• Shareholder Sues Google For Tolerating Unethical Sex Behavior
• 3 Female Ex-Google Employees File Gender Discrimination Lawsuit