[2aa07e2]

> In April of 2017, Google’s Technology Staffing Management team was instructed by Alogna to immediately cancel all Level 3 (0-5 years experience) software engineering interviews with every single applicant who was not either female, Black, or Hispanic and to purge entirely any applications by non-diverse employees from the hiring pipeline. Plaintiff refused to comply with this request.

Good for him. Google is now excluded from the "dream" companies I'd want to work for.

[rvshchwl]

Google is the first big company that I actually rejected after receiving an offer from them. I had a really bad experience, and just felt like the company was looking for things I am much more qualified from.

I was interviewed by engineers who were all just recent college grads, no managers, tech leads, or anyone I felt were probably more qualified to interview me. The environment felt toxic. Most people I talked to looked unclean, like they just got out of bed to work. Had red eyes like they were tired. And the workplace was just not as clean as I was hoping. There were a set of dirty plates in the conference room I was interviewed in, and no one bothered to remove them the entire time.

From people I have talked to, my experience was pretty unique, and most people have had good interviews there. But even as an outlier, I don't like the chance of it being exactly like my experience. Things like this really put stuff in perspective for me though. I still went through the entire process, but in the end, rejected the offer. I wouldn't want to work in an environment like Google's, it feels toxic, and engineers feel like they are overworking themselves to death.

[bitL]

Actually your experience is not unique; you could see on Googlers in Mountain View or Zurich that many of them are one step from a burn-out, they are also often crammed next to each other in larger noisy rooms; most of them seemed pretty stressed out, not joyful, starting from receptionists. Such a huge contrast in attitude comparing to Microsoft (content/happy) or Facebook (high-energy).

[latencyloser]

I too rejected a job at Google after feeling like they just wanted to pigeon-hole me, so to speak. But, as a former Microsoft employee as well, it's not all sunshine there either. While experiences tend to vary, there I was crammed in a small, loud room with too many other people who I'd argue were more complacent than content. Similarly, I've had colleagues at Facebook describe it more as "exhausting" than high energy.

I've come to the opinion that, unless you're a "famous" engineer, or very senior one, that can command a lot of respect and autonomy, most of these "dream job" companies are going to feel a lot more like a well paying sweatshop. At least, that's been my experience as someone with only several years in the field.

[Cthulhu_]

I do feel like Google and co are riding on their reputation a lot - one they built up some years ago with promises of e.g. three meals a day and high pay and only hiring the best and such. I got one recruitment mail which basically said something to the degree of "hi I'm from Google, please apply here". Not convincing.

[Slansitartop]

Don't forget the 20% time, which is long dead. That was the one thing that really made them seem unique to me.

[bitL]

Yeah, it depends on the project usually. It's like what you are hearing from people at XYZ (a higher rated company on Glassdoor than FB/GOOG I don't want to mention by name) who left to Google and 50% of them returning back after ~1 year telling everyone how much it sucked there :D

I really think you should stay in such a company for 1-3 years, build your cash cushion (i.e. stage 1 booster) and then lift-off (make your own startup using connections you made).

[kbwt]

> people at XYZ who left to Google and 50% of them returning back after ~1 year

If only it were possible to access the data Linkedin has on employee flows. You could get an idea on which companies are actually enjoyable places to work at versus ones that people are fleeing.

[Meey9oop]

> recent college grads, no managers, tech leads

I've just completed an onsite at Google MV and this stood out to me, too. This is Google's famed incredibly tough bar to pass? Out of six companies that I interviewed with in the area, Google's interview was the easiest.

I was also shocked at the lack of social skills from the interviewers. Most seemed to be 40-year-old college grads who had never left the Google campus. One interviewer arrived 20 minutes late, badmouthed the company and apologized in advance because I would probably get rejected.

It really lowered my opinion from "wow this is famous Google I'll be with superstars" to "oh maybe I'll tolerate it for childcare benefits and comp but with an expectation to shift offices in a few years".

[walshemj]

Is strange the US being such a litigious country that they let "civilians" with apparently no training interview people.

I worked for a FTSE 100 company and unless you had passed a hard 3 day residential course you could not interview anyone.

[leemailll]

That’s really unprofessional and disrespectful for a company like google.

[regularfry]

Having read about (but not been through) the Google process, the idea is that you get interviewed by people who would be working for and with you, not (just?) people above you. Is that possible here?

[SteveCoast]

Maybe you failed the test that you were supposed to remove the plates :-O

[chrisper]

It's not his job to remove the plates.

[rounce]

Interview task: Implement dirty plate & cutlery classifier.

[Slansitartop]

That's the joke.

[LordKano]

As a black IT professional, I tend to leave the demographic information blank on applications because I want to avoid the racial implications of my application. I don't know if I'll be dismissed because I'm black and I don't want to be an affirmative action hire either.

I made it to the 3rd round of interviews with Google back in 2012. Maybe if I had told them I was black, I would have gotten the job.

[fhood]

If including your race gives you a leg up, then I think you should do it. I saw a whole lot of casual racism when I was in college, and if that was indicative of the experience of others then you don't owe the rest of us shit.

[soundwave106]

The ultimate goal from my perspective should be to eliminate implied tribal biases, rather than band-aid them. There's a fair bit of negatives with trying to force the issue with quotas, in my opinion -- by hiring on grounds other than merit, it might even perpetuate the bias. Those hired might for instance be thought of as "second class hires" within the company from the get go. So despite the casual racism that unfortunately exists, I can see why the poster leaves his or her race off applications.

In other fields, hiring can probably be done by ways that try to heavily reduce bias, and get similar increases in diversity without, from what I can see, the negatives of quotas. Some orchestras for instance have used "blind auditions" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_audition) for quite some time, with a noticeable increase in diversity as a result. I see in the Wiki that some tech companies are experimenting with this approach. I'd strongly prefer this sort of system over what Google has (if the details described in the lawsuit end up being true).

[LordKano]

I would leave that information off because I had no way of knowing if it would be a help or a hindrance.

If I apply to Google in the future, I will probably include it.

[nojvek]

Oh man! The irony of this. Diversity hiring doesn’t help anyone. What if you had gotten the job and your peers thought you were only there because of being Black. They don’t take your technical arguments and code seriously?

[LordKano]

I can't help what other people think.

I know my craft and I'm good at what I do. Code that I wrote as an intern was in use for many years (to the best of my knowledge, it still is) at a former employer.

[znpy]

Unrelated, but this reminds me of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwMzZtU5H7I

[briffle]

It reminds me even more of the 'Woman Engineer' scene in Silicon Valley: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dek5HtNdIHY

[nbroyal]

Sigh, don't perpetuate this. Being an underrepresented candidate may (or may not) help you with getting your foot in the door for an interview, but no one is getting hired if they're unqualified.

[LordKano]

I was qualified for the position but I got the impression that Google was just going through the motions. They got around to interviewing me a year and a half after I submitted my resumé.

[JPKab]

I'm surprised that people still view Google as a cool place to work.

It seems to me that ship sailed years ago. They are a giant corporation reliant on one monopoly product to fund everything else.

Employees usually are stuck with some tiny part of a component in a system. The office perks are nice, but are you really going to do interesting work there anymore?

[hodgesrm]

Google has produced some amazing software and continues to do so. I work with Kubernetes and Angular 2, both of which originated there. The quality of design, implementation, and documentation is a model for accomplishment in computer science. As an engineer it's hard not to envy the folks that got to work on those projects.

So...I think it really depends where you work. That's true of all big companies as far as I can tell.

[jameskegel]

Kubernetes is the product I’d mention, if I were making this comparison.

[dmihal]

The free food & other perks will keep their "cool" image going for a while. But it's certainly dipping.

[eloisant]

They were the first to do it in the 2000's, but now isn't every SV company doing that already?

[astrange]

Apple doesn't do free food. The Steve quote is "if you can't afford it, you should ask for a raise".

[jmull]

I'd just caution you not to buy in too much to the narrative presented by one side of a law suit.

You'll pretty much never see a more one-sided presentation of a situation. It may bear out or it may not.

[ocdtrekkie]

Bear in mind though, the lawsuit is a one-sided presentation held up against millions of dollars of PR investment in publishing an image about how great it is to work there.

Yeah, reality probably falls somewhere in the middle, but the default narrative is already slanted incredibly far the other direction.

[nailer]

Unless the screenshots are faked, Google has racist/illegal hiring practices. There's no narrative here: just Alogna's own words being published publically.

[icc97]

Do you seriously think that Google is going to stop hiring white men?

What is claimed sounds like a completely crass method. Whether you like Google or not they typically do things in a fairly data driven method even with their hiring.

It is also blatant discrimination that as others claim would be fairly easy to prove in court. This would be stupid.

For Google to be both crass and stupid seems unlikely.

[bitL]

Do you really want to work for a company where world-class work might not be that important for your career progress? Do you think a super talented high-achieving person with wrong gender/race should be expected to sacrifice their achievements for "common good" as defined by internal diversity officers? Do you think those diversity hires would be happy staying at junior positions and not pushing beyond their capabilities by non-merit related ways, not exploiting prevailing winds? I think second world countries would love to talk to you about how this turned out.

Obviously, interviews aren't that great indicator of success, especially in a company that tries to hire the best according to their criteria, so the overall medium-term effect might be small, but they do risk losing those people that could knock them out of the ring in the future, and making those people forever negative towards them. But maybe that's already taken into account and weighted in their internal decision tooling and they are fine with that.

[jccalhoun]

"Do you really want to work for a company where world-class work might not be that important for your career progress?"

I think pretty much every company has employees who would say that there are definitely people who get promotions and bonuses for reasons that are not related to "world-class" work.

[bitL]

Yeah, which is sad to observe with increasing probability in what should be one of our industry's flagship. It's double sad as there is literally nowhere else to go as a regular employee with high ideals; our industry could have done better.

[darepublic]

They will stop hiring level 3 engineer who are Asian and white according to this allegation. The discrimination against asians matters to me even if you're perfectly happy with it in your social justice utopia that discriminates against me.

[Cthulhu_]

Meaning the "asian and white" people will become more entrenched in the (I assume) higher levels, with minorities doing the junior work. Or am I missing the point?

[Slansitartop]

Or the pipeline's shut off to access those roles. It really depends on how much hiring is done at that level vs. internal promotion to them.

[slap_shot]

Where does OP every say that he thinks Google is going to stop hiring white men?

There's an obvious case of discrimination and OP said he no longer views Google as a dream job.

[linkmotif]

> Do you seriously think that Google is going to stop hiring white men?

What kind of question is that? Maybe you should rethink it. Why would being discriminated against like this make me feel better if maybe some other white man gets a job? What are we fungible?

[jsmeaton]

It sounds like it was one manager. Is that all you need to blacklist an entire company?

[humanrebar]

How a company deals with a bad manager is very important. Assuming you believe the accusations (1), the fact that Google wasn't immediately firing people and settling with the plaintiff is worse than the original complaint.

(1) A big if. I haven't seen any hard evidence yet.

[notahacker]

I imagine that not believing the accusations (or believing other accusations - true or not - made by the manager against the plaintiff) play a large role in Google not rushing to settle. They'd be mad not to regardless of their politics if the course of events happened exactly as described.

[fwdpropaganda]

To be fair, from the outside it is often hard to tell what is one manager and what is company culture.

[tyingq]

The complaint is pretty detailed and compelling. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4391847-18-CIV-00442...

[PeterisP]

It's not hard - if in this escalation the company would have facepalmed and fired the manager, than that would be the case of one weird manager; but if the company fires the recruiter and keeps the manager, then obviously that's the company culture they intentionally want to have.

[organsnyder]

For any organization this size, assume that there is a fair amount of variance from one division to another.

[nugi]

I hold all organizations responsible for their own actions, reguardless of size. Too big to fail is a poor concept, logically, ethically.

[boomboomsubban]

This isn't too big to fail, it's "a bad egg doesn't ruin the bunch." Whether that's the case here is arguable, but no one is saying they aren't responsible for their actions.

[novembermike]

The saying is "one bad apple ruins the bunch".

[nugi]

Is 'allowing for variance' up to and including racism and sexisism in hiring? Because it seems like you are giving them a pass, because there are many hiring managers.

[cm2187]

Well apparently the company stands behind the decision of its manager.

[Unkechaug]

I doubt this single incident alone is the reason, but maybe the catalyst. Google and its unhealthy lust for diversity has been an increasingly frequent topic. Hell, someone got fired for posting an anti diversity rant last year. While his arguments were weak or flat out wrong, it's clear that Google is making a point to single out underrepresented minorities to the detriment of others who may actually be better candidates.

[DanHulton]

I mean, if it's the same memo in thinking of, it wasn't a "diversity memo" he was fired over, it was a manifesto that has been reviewed and agreed on as sufficient cause for his dismissal several times now.

In it, he argued that women were essentially worse at logical tasks than men, and further that this made them poor engineers.

That's not a diversity memo, that's a sexist screed.

[naasking]

> In it, he argued that women were essentially worse at logical tasks than men, and further that this made them poor engineers.

No he didn't. He said they were inherently less interested in STEM, and speculated about a few personality characteristics from psych research that might explain why, but all of that is irrelevant. Damore explicitly said that you can't judge individual competence from a probability distribution, even if the distribution of competence of each gender were different (which they largely are not).

Here's a broad overview of the literature covering what Damore got right and wrong: http://heterodoxacademy.org/the-google-memo-what-does-the-re...

Turns out, he was right that women seem to have different interests. I suggest reading about the things vs. people hypothesis. You can get more women into STEM subfields that deal with people if you highlight those aspects. Hiring quotas and some of the other measures Damore was arguing against would indeed have no effect on gender diversity given these facts.

[ofirg]

That is not what the memo said. did you not read it or is this what you think the writer meant even if he did not actually write that but you have some kind of mind reading abilities?

[NutriSugar]

Are we counting reviews by pushing the same narrative that was being pushed by the people he originally offended? What I've seen is a number of scientists (in the specific fields that are related to it) backing his work, others attacking it, and all agreeing it doesn't rise to the muster of a peer reviewed paper/meta-analysis (though that seems a pretty insane bar to begin with).

[emsy]

Agreed on by whom? Did you even read the memo yourself?

[ng12]

If he was fired over it, absolutely.

[johngalt]

Per the complaint it appears to be four managers in a row across two levels of management. With HR getting involved haphazardly at best.

Keep in mind that this is only one side of the story. There is little evidence to support the complaint. It's too early to draw conclusions.

[kerng]

Where there is smoke, there might be fire. Its not unlikeley related to KPIs set by high managment (given the news around Google in the past). And further down the food chain managers want to look good and do these things.

[chippy]

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4391847-18-CIV-00442...

It appears it was more than one. Possibly it was two.

[bbarn]

That happens every day, in every industry. That's why selecting managers is so important.

[whatyoucantsay]

This is a good point. There's a lot of negative press and truly appalling allegations swirling about Google, but it's near impossible to get an accurate idea of extent or even the truth of the situation from the outside.

Based on Reddit stories for a while, it seemed that even settin foot in the US was a near guarantee one would then be tasered, have their money taken by police officers, and then detained by agents from an unknown 3-letter agency and shipped to Guantanamo.

It's possible, though we have no way of knowing, that what's in this story is a case of a lone manager with an axe to grind. It's also possible that the attitude is pervasive.

It's likely best to withhold judgement and keep asking questions.