Old Guy Smacks Google For Age Discrimination

The much revered worship of youth and youthfulness at Google has had some real-world consequences. Instead of being rid of Reid, who they fired in April 2004 after nearly two years of service, and his lawsuit, Google received a big setback from the California Sixth District Court of Appeal.

The Central Valley Business Times obtained a copy of the appellate court’s decision in the Reid case. It’s a dynamite 26 pages of reading, and goes all the way up to implicate CEO Eric Schmidt in having a role in pushing Reid out the door (spacing added for clarity):

On October 13, 2004, Rosing removed Reid from the Director of Operations position and removed his responsibilities and reports as Director of Engineering. Rosing’s decision to move Reid into the position and remove the Director of Operations was instigated by Hoelzle.

Although Reid was permitted to retain his title as Director of Engineering, Reid was moved into a new role at Google to develop and implement a new program aimed at retaining engineers by enabling them to obtain a Master’s Degree in Engineering by attending courses taught by Carnegie Melon University Professors at Google.

CEO Schmidt assured Reid that the graduate degree program was important and that the work on it would require another five years. Reid was not given a budget or a staff to support the graduate program.

In Rosing’s response to Schmidt, Rosing expressed concern about the group’s decision regarding Reid’s bonus, stating he was “having second thoughts about the full zero out of the $14K bonus [versus] treating it consistent with all similarly situated performers.”

Rosing instead determined that Reid should receive a bonus of $11,300, in addition to some other suggested terms of a severance agreement, to avoid a “judge concluding we acted harshly . . . .”

A copy of the Court’s decision may be found here. The appellate judges found "Google acted with discriminatory motive such that a factfinder would conclude Google engaged in age discrimination."

Age discrimination in the tech industry has been a given for job seekers for years. Norm Matloff, a computer science professor at UC-Davis, has frequently cited age discrimination within the industry.

Although whispers about Google doing so have been made before, this is the clearest case of documentation suggesting it has been practiced with the approval of the highest levels of Google’s leadership.

Rather than vying for a coveted seat at Centre Court, lots of people opt for the excellent television coverage and commentary of Wimbledon each summer. Since last year, MediaZone and broadcasters ESPN and NBC have made Wimbledon Live available to Internet users.

For a flat all-access fee, or the purchase of a daily pass, people can catch all of the matches on Wimbledon’s courts. This is made available as live and on-demand coverage of the tennis taking place during the tournament.

The Wimbledon fan will need a Windows computer running Windows Media Player and a broadband connection to handle the streams. There’s no Mac or Linux availability, and champagne and strawberries & cream purchases are the responsibility of the viewer.

However, this year’s subscribers will be able to grab something new from the site. A PDF copy of the official program will be placed online for download by paying customers. Fans will be able to choose from over 300 matches being played this year.

Unless you are in a country where live streaming won’t be available, the deal looks like it’s ‘advantage viewers’.

Fellow writer Joe Lewis suggested in his article, Digg: A New Platform for Discrimination, that at Digg “it’s liberty and justice for none.”

I’m all in favor of free speech and expression. If you’re in the public eye in any measure, criticism and compliments should be able to flow without worrying about some government functionary writing down your name while jackbooted thugs haul you off for ‘re-education.’

You are owed the freedom to be a complete dope with your words. In our society, a lot of people avail themselves of that right. Pick a favorite example in your mind. Did that person end up in jail? No?

That’s because we have rights. One is the pursuit of happiness, and for many website publishers that happiness can only come with the boost of traffic a mention on the front page of Digg. When they don’t get it, they respond poorly.

Joe’s article considered the points raised in Cristian Mezei’s post about Digg’s algorithm update. It’s conjecture, as Digg does not publicize how its algorithm functions, but the guesses look well-informed. Like most things in life, Digg is a popularity contest; the more people you know, provided they are the ‘right’ people, the better you will do.

There are no guarantees on Digg. Joe makes references to the First Amendment along with the suggestion of discrimination. Neither really applies to Digg that I can see.

The First Amendment allows people like me to point out uncomfortable truths, as in this article for example. I can’t make things up, and more importantly I can’t make you, dear reader, like them just because I think I deserve your praise.

Digg may be discriminating on concepts its users and/or its human editors do not like. But it is a privately-owned site. I use it and am free to vote up or bury stories, and can even submit and comment on them too.

Those who have run afoul of Digg’s practices can’t cry Constitutional violation just because, for example, Digg doesn’t like SEO content. It’s frustrating, certainly, but illegal?

Probably not. No one had to like you in junior high school either, no one had to invite you to the best parties in college, no one had a mandate to hire you out of college into a $60k job with a company car unless you merited or deserved those things.

Some people who enjoyed those benefits probably got them based on who they know. Digg works in similar fashion. It’s just like being fourteen again.

Hard work pays off more than complaining does. Scott at SEOmoz, for one, knows this. Look at what he has planned to work around Digg’s obstacles. Maybe there’s a lesson to be learned from that; you can pursue happiness all you like. Just don’t expect it as a right.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

Is There A Reason You Are Buried On Digg?

It was quite an informative article, and I’ll try to touch on some of the main points here, but I highly suggest reading the entire post if you get the chance.

Three notable items that caught my eye have seem to have a large impact on whether or not a story makes it to the Digg frontpage:

It occurs to me that these items bear absolutely no correlation as to the quality of the story being reviewed. It seems to be all about making friends, hoping they digg your articles, and not pissing anyone off – consequently compelling them to bury your articles.

So this bears the question: Is Digg a true news site, or just a glorified social clique? Or worse, is it a vehicle for unwarranted censorship?

To answer these questions, let’s consider the example of Lee Odden, who found last month that his site had been completely banned from Digg on the premise of spamming. Lee’s Top Rank SEO Blog wasn’t the only site to suffer this penalty, but the interesting point to take note of here is that the “malicious content” in question wasn’t spam at all, not even close.

So why were these sites buried and banned? Simply because influential Diggers decided the content was “unworthy” of inclusion within their precious little sphere of social media, elitist style.

Michael Graywolf’s article outlining “Dirty Digging” goes into great detail into just exactly how Diggers can rally together to bury and ban domains for which they disapprove for seemingly arbitrary reasons. He also goes on to explain why A-list Diggers are able to get away with this type of discrimination:

It’s valid to claim that getting on the Digg frontpage comes down to a popularity contest, and I think one would have to be pretty nave to completely disregard the idea that status has a significant impact on an article’s ranking.

More than that, however, bloggers and journalists now have to live in fear of saying the wrong thing, lest they be expelled from the site altogether. All of this leaves me wondering when the First Amendment suddenly became null and void according to Digg, a place where now anyone can be squelched on a whim, so long as it pleases the elitist Diggers.

I guess at Digg, it’s liberty and justice for none.

Nevertheless, Digg is indicative of the ever-growing paradigm shift in news coverage.

News is becoming viral, socially contextual, and is increasingly less dependent on the validity/quality of the source material involved.

So, if someone with a lot of virtual charisma makes a statement like, “Google is awesome and they’re going to over the world,” he or she would stand a better chance of making it to Digg’s front page than a well-researched piece containing commentary from reputable Wall Street insiders and industry analysts, but written by someone who is isn’t a part of the clique, as it were.

And if you mention SEO in the title, you might as well prepare to be buried and most likely banned. Why? For no other reason that the Diggers just don’t like you, that’s why.

If Social Media is just going to become another vehicle for censorship and elitist agendas, then you can count me out. I’ve no interest in becoming part of Discrimination 2.0, even if it means sacrificing page clicks or name recognition, if membership requres that I cater to the socialite bureaucracy of Digg by avoiding topics whimsically decided to be “unsavory” to their sensitive reading agendas.

Perhaps I’m one of the few who actually still believes in free speech, even if I don’t agree what someone has to say.

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Joe is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest ebusiness news.

If they can’t “see” you, you might as well not exist–and if they can’t understand your code, no amount of keywords can get you in the Golden Top 20.

The problem that many website developers used to encounter was that search engines worked differently; so you could end up with a high ranking in Lycos but languish at the bottom of Google. How exactly should you optimize your site so you perform well in all search engines?

Enter ROR (short for Resources for a Resource), an independent XML format that translates your content in a way that all search engines can understand.

Think of it as a web spider’s Cliff’s Notes. it describes all the objects, services, discounts, images, podcasts, etc. If it’s on the site, it’s on the ROR feed, but in a format that’s easy to process and removes all risks of skipping or ignoring a link.

ROR calls its “magic file” structured feeds, which guide search engines as they scan the text. Unlike Google Sitemaps, it’s universally understood–and very easy to process. It’s also more detailed. It doesn’t just give a map or “table of contents”, it actually summarizes what’s inside. It’s also been in existence far longer than Google, so its reliability has been proven by time.

Though it’s been around for a long time, ROR is by no means outdated. The majority of the file formats are already available in ROR, although it is currently being updated to keep up with the growing number of website innovations. But to avoid being too unwieldy, the ROR system tries to re-use existing data structures. It boasts of being very streamlined, a strength that makes it one of the more efficient ways of indexing a site.

Usually the ROR feed is located in the directory, and is named by default ror.xml. It is possible to rename the file, and the search engines will still find it. The only thing it needs to have is a <link> tag in your main page (between the <head> and </head> tags). Another alternative is to create a smaller ror.xml file which will direct the search engines to the ROR feed.

You can create this file in the ROR sitemap generator.

XML-Sitemaps.com has an online sitemap generator that creates XML, HTML, text and ROR sitemaps and also provides some useful SEO tools.

Whether the suits have merit or not, clearly pregnant women are “feeling” discriminated against and, in my opinion, that’s enough to make it a business issue worth addressing. As a recently pregnant business owner, I empathize both with Google and with Christina.

The Google Suit

Google has an image of caring about their workers with a foosball tolerant, dog-loving culture and a focus on helping workers balance life and work with great maternity and paternity benefits. That is why the news of Christina Elwell’s pregnancy bias suit against Google is so hard to believe. Not Google, right? They love workers and babies and worker’s babies!

The suit claims that after Elwell broke the news of being pregnant with quadruplets, her job was eliminated and then she was demoted, fired, rehired, and then demoted again after medical leave. Google says the lawsuit “is without merit and we will defend vigorously against it.” I kind of suspect “defend vigorously” will shake out into “settle quickly.”

My Take on This Issue

If the allegations of the case are true, it sounds like the employee-centered culture was not being embraced by middle management. Her manager is quoted as allegedly calling her or her situation “an HR nightmare.” But, I empathize because, let’s face it — he’s right. And I suspect that comment, while insensitive, came from her manager’s feelings of bitterness and betrayal. Here is this top performing sales executive, at the top of her game, recently made sales director. Google loves her and she loves Google. And then one day she tells her boss that she loves her career so much that she has chosen to implant (I am speculating) not one but four embryos into her uterus, and it’s not going well. She’s going to miss a lot of work these next nine months. And after that? Don’t ask — it’s illegal.

As a manager, even if you have the caring heart of a saint, this news makes you want to throw up. Of course she’s not going to consult you about the decisions she makes with her family and her uterus; you know that logically. But you cannot help but feel betrayed. All the time invested into her career, all the training, and she has chosen to do IVF right now. Let’s face it; it seems like she doesn’t value her job. Or certainly, she values it second to a family. And now she’s heading for a family of four instantly. Does her career honestly stand a chance? What do you say now as she sits across from you?

Now here’s the flip side. If your employee-centered culture has really permeated middle management, your manager will be able to sincerely say (without 5 minutes of hesitation or further questioning), “Congratulations!! This is so exciting!” That’s because he or she will not see a revenue stream sitting in the chair across from them, but a person. I have to believe Christina’s manager made the mistake of seeing her as a revenue stream. Before the pregnancy, a beautiful flowing incoming stream with lots of future flow potential. Then suddenly that flow was not only dammed up but was backwashing out through HR in “nightmare” fashion with short term disability, maternity leave, and a potentially vacant job held open in vain for a woman with 4 kids.

But when you realize that this pregnant revenue stream is really a person, you can also realize that like all humans she struggled to make this decision. And she is most likely open to being influenced by her environment. Not only is her future uncertain, but probably very flexible.

Keep these things in mind when an employee tells you she is pregnant:

* If my iVillage pregnancy discussion board participation has taught me anything, it is that there is a high likelihood she has not made up her mind about returning to work.

* If she’s come far and succeeded in her career (read into also as fairly compensated), there is a higher likelihood she wants to keep the job, if at all possible.

* What makes balancing a child and a career possible? The company does. If this experience is met with unconditional support, there is a higher likelihood she’ll make efforts to balance her career with family. That’s speculation, but pretty common sense, don’t you think? And by support I mean emotional and logistical.

* Her husband might be the one staying home.

* As a business owner, if you create (or claim to have) an employee-centered culture, do it because you actually care about the people in your organization, not because some business book told you it will help with retention. Because if the culture is real, then your management staff will believe in it — for themselves and for their employees. And that means they will say things like, “Having four babies must be scary. Let me know if there is anything I can do to help along the way.” As opposed to, “Wow. This situation is an HR nightmare.”

As it turned out, Christina had one child. I imagine she could have been back at work full force as a high contributor to Google after a few months. Instead she’s gone from HR nightmare to PR nightmare. Regardless of the merit of Elwell’s case, Google failed on this one. That’s my ruling anyway.

Rocky Lewis is co-founder and a managing partner of SageRock.com, which is an online marketing company specializing in SEO, Paid Search, and ROI/Usability Analysis.

The suit was filed July 18th by Christina Elwell, former national sales director for Google Inc., with the blessing of the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

After telling her boss, VP of national sales Timothy Armstrong, that she was pregnant with quadruplets and would no longer be able to travel, Elwell alleges she subsequently experienced a demotion, was called a human relations nightmare, and eventually forced out of the company without severance pay and lesser commission pay.

According to the suit, Elwell rose to her position as national sales director in 2003, after just three years of exemplary performance. She was so good at her job that at a meeting of Google salespersons in early 2004, Elwell was credited for a significant contribution to the company’s efforts to go public.

But Elwell says the love and appreciation showed her by Armstrong came to an abrupt end after telling him she was pregnant with quadruplets and due to accompanying medical conditions would be unavailable to travel for a few weeks.

Shortly after losing two of those unborn children, Armstrong showed Elwell an organizational chart that was noticeably missing Elwell’s position. Armstrong informed her of his intentions to transfer her to a position he would create in the operations division, a move Elwell viewed as a “significant demotion.” Armstrong reportedly told colleagues the transfer was because she could not travel.

A conciliatory Elwell offered to self-demote herself to Director of East Coast sales allowing her to travel by train and car. Agreeing and then soon after reneging, Armstrong promoted to that position a man Elwell herself had hired and deemed less qualified with no Internet sales experience.

After calling Elwell “an HR nightmare” in June, Armstrong expressed that he no longer wanted her at the New York office. The next day he fired her over the telephone claiming he had a “gut feeling” it was “the right thing to do.”

A few weeks later, Google’s human resources department informed Elwell she had been fired improperly. Just days after that, Elwell lost the third of her unborn quadruplets.

Hoping to retain employment at Google, Elwell accepted the position offered her, which she said had the same level of responsibility as a summer intern. At the same sales meetings she used to run, she now only attended and was ignored by Armstrong.

About a month after a doctor required Elwell to go on disability leave to not risk losing her fourth unborn child, she received a commission check for the second quarter “substantially less than Elwell was entitled to receive.” The drop in commission was due to Armstrong lowering her performance rating.

Elwell eventually gave birth to one child during disability leave and returned to work in January of 2005. After being notified she would not be returning to her former position, but still working at the low-level operations position, Elwell was “constructively discharged,” meaning work conditions were too intolerable to remain employed.

The suit charges several counts, most of which involve discrimination, retaliation, intentional emotional distress, and interference with contractual or advantageous business relations.

So far, Armstrong has yet to comment on his side of the case. Google has stated that the charges are “without merit” and will fight the lawsuit “vigorously.”

Back in February of this year, Reid was fired. Google’s reasoning: he didn’t have enough “youth and energy”.

As a Google employee Reid made $200,000 per year and was offered approximately 119,000 Google stock options. The stock would have been worth an estimated $10 million dollars after the IPO according to usatoday.com.

While still employed by Google Reid claims he collected evidence that Google avoids hiring older workers. Only 2% of Google’s estimated 1,900 employees are over 40, according to zdnet.com. The suit also claims the average ages of Google workers were late twenties at the time of Reid’s departure.

Members of WebmasterWorld.com are questioning the above statement. A message posted by truthbetold says, “I wonder if it’s possible for the people here who have already condemned Google as the big bad corporation to admit that it’s POSSIBLE that this man was let go for performance. In a fair and just society, people are considered innocent until proven guilty. Those that are always anti-business are usually that way due to emotional reasons rather than any rational reasons in my opinion.

Google, denying all allegations, has said it believes that Reid’s claims are “without merit” and will “defend [itself] vigorously” mentioned on computerweekly.com.

One thing not mentioned in the suit is that the majority of Google’s upper-level management team is over the age of 40, including CEO Eric Schmidt, 48.

Jeremy Muncy is a staff writer for WebProNews.com