[smt88]

"Generous" is hard for me to have an opinion about. $11M is less than a rounding error for Google.

"Fair" isn't as hard. It's not fair, if (as I suspect) Google is guilty of age discrimination. There should be greater consequences than just trying to pay people what they might've lost financially from the discrimination.

Or, to put it another way: Google deserves to be punished if this was actually happening.

[jaclaz]

If you see it from the other side, it is more than 50,000 for each of the 200 people, even if the lawyers will likely get 1/3 of that, it remains 35,000 US$ or so.

For what?

Having been NOT hired (but making it to the interview).

Presumably, even if a bit "old" according to Google standards, these people are anyway "top notch" in programming and almost surely soon found an appropriate job at some other company.

So, the compensation is seemingly very hypothetical, covering what? 2-3 months of wages for someone hypothetically getting 140,000-200,000 US$ per year.

Or is it because the applicant could have been hired at 160,000 US$ per year but only makes - poor little thing - 125,000 US$ from the company that hired him/her, and so first year is covered?

[mbrumlow]

Engineers at google can make way over 200k in salary and even more in total compensation. Given these guys were over 40, and many of them likely seasoned it is likely they would have made way more than the numbers you are suggesting.

[jaclaz]

I don't doubt that, it was just an attempt to put the numbers in pespective, if you believe that it is only 1 month or 15 days of wage it is ok as well, but what was the actual inconvenience to them?

Let's bring it to the extreme, 35,000 US$ for the hassle of making four (fruitless) interviews?

[mbrumlow]

The point of the payout is not really for the people who did not get a job -- its just a good place to put the money. These lawsuits are actually to punish the companies so they change their ways. 11m as pointed out is a rounding error for google. I would be surprised zero happens at google related to age determination as a result of this lawsuit.

Had the lawsuit resulted in 1B -- something significant -- I can assure you that something would change in the way they handle older applicants.

[onemoresoop]

It's very demoralizing to be realize nobody wants to hire you because you're over a certain age. So this is not about the inconvenience of wasting time with the interview but more generally about age discrimination.

[jaclaz]

I perfectly understand the issue, I work (I might say worked) in a field where - for completely different reasons - the work opportunities are scarce to non existant for senior people, but the question was more about how the sum was quantified.

Being the target of discrimination (be it age, sex, race, religion, whatever) is a terrible experience, but it is not easy to determine the amount of a monetary compensation.

As the parent noted, the $11 M are a rounding error to google, still the amount each person received should not be excessive because google is so big.

I mean, let's say that in an alternate world the amount would be calculated on the gross profits of google and the total amount had been US$ 110 Millions instead (still peanuts).

Would have it been "fair" that each refused applicant got 350,000 US$? (a couple years wage)

Or 3,500,000 each (more like 20 years) would have been adequate?

[onemoresoop]

I don't have an opinion about the compensation, some could argue that it is or it isn't excessive. My understanding is that the wealthier the company the less likely they are to change their bad practices when fined a small amount compared to their size.