ListNook

ktr83 22 hr ago +459

When you're rich enough, laws are just suggestions

459

redofsam 18 hr ago +51

50 million for google might as well be 50 cents for a regular person

51

d01100100 18 hr ago +23

Literally not hyperbole. Google is a multi-trillion dollar company, and 50m less than 1/10 of 1% of that value.

23

CBrinson 11 hr ago +6

You are not far off. Google has about $125B in cash though not trillions. The trillions represents their market cap which is the value of the company but they don't get to keep that money, it's just a hypothetical number based on what people outside the company think it is worth. Like I could say "damn that D01100100 guy is smart, I bet his intelligence is worth a trillion dollars" and if I was important enough you would technically be worth a trillion dollars. That doesn't give you any real money but I am sure a bank would loan you some billions since you are worth a trillion dollars now.

6

justonemom14 7 hr ago +5

Ok, so someone check my math. If you take off seven zeros, this is the equivalent of someone who has $12,500 in cash having to pay a fine of $5.

5

DeOh 2 hr ago +1

You underestimate their greed. It might seem like a drop in the bucket to you, but for them every cent is pinched.

1

iEatChunkyChipsAhoy 20 hr ago +64

Just the cost of doing business.

64

breadandbunny 19 hr ago +12

I remember my USAP history teacher in high school basically saying the same thing. Nothing is really all that illegal for someone if they have the funds to simply settle and avoid jail time. We don't truly have a justice system.

12

Xlorem 14 hr ago +10

Its a civil lawsuit, theres no jail time for civil suits. It has to be a criminal case. You can make the argument that we need criminal laws for companies that make them more liable, but thats a legislature problem not the courts. This is why its so important that people participate in local governments and vote. Nothing changes because everyone gives up and says this is just how it is. It is how it is because 1/3 of the country doesn't vote and even more than that don't pay attention to local politics.

10

breadandbunny 14 hr ago

I fully agree that things only change when people make a point ot changing them.

0

Successful_Struggle9 18 hr ago +2

Legal system.

2

breadandbunny 18 hr ago +6

This is what I meant: we have laws but there is constantly a failure of justice.

6

Impossible_IT 21 hr ago +5

Yup! Just like those speed limit signs are suggestions along the highways and roadways.

5

Xlorem 14 hr ago

What do you want from that to change? Make speeding not a ticket fine but mandatory jail time because rich people can easily pay the ticket fine? That will just put working people into jail more because they have to drive more. You can also make the ticket a percentage of your net wealth but again, rich people have the option to just avoid driving more to dodge the liability.

0

NewsCards 22 hr ago +570

> hiring managers deemed Black candidates “not ‘Googly’ enough, a plain dog whistle for race discrimination.” Less a dog whistle, more just a whistle.

570

Kapps 21 hr ago +30

Am I not Googly enough for the Google club?

30

R_V_Z 21 hr ago +53

Great googly moogly!

53

AudibleNod 22 hr ago +96

We should have known. The multi-colored Google logo was designed to signify that it doesn't follow the rules.

96

vandon 21 hr ago +34

Google HR: "There's no black letters in the Google logo."

34

lewlkewl 20 hr ago +29

The Googly round is literally one of their interview rounds, it's a term commonly used at google. Not being "googly" enough just means you didn't pass the behavioral (and usually means youre not a fit culture wise). What makes it a dog whistle?

29

1QAte4 19 hr ago +53

>usually means youre not a fit culture wise Not a company or cultural fit is usually the place where people are sorted out and discriminated against. People often defend the practice but I guarantee the same people would scream when it happens to them.

53

Notoriouslydishonest 17 hr ago +20

>People often defend the practice but I guarantee the same people would scream when it happens to them At the same time, employees scream when their company hires someone who's a terrible personality fit for the team.

20

PringlesDuckFace 12 hr ago +3

So if the whole team is 23 year old women, they're okay if they don't hire a 48 year old man because they'd be a bad fit for the culture?

3

ValhirFirstThunder 9 hr ago +4

Culture fit can mean a lot of things and yes what you described is a good example of a bad use of culture fit. At other companies, the culture fit part of the interview is yo ask you questions to see how you resolve and handle conflict. What steps do you take when you encounter something blocking you. How adaptable you are as a person. I didn't know what Googly-ness is but a lot of devs of all races have been pegged by that

4

Hot-Significance7699 4 hr ago +1

That's not even cultural that's just character....

1

ValhirFirstThunder 4 hr ago +2

We can play semantics all day but we're at least referring to the same thing. There is an argument that culture is the right word. People's character makes the company culture.

2

Notoriouslydishonest 12 hr ago -6

If he's a 48 year old guy who has nothing in common with the other employees and wouldn't enjoy working with them, he's probably not the best candidate.

-6

DeOh 2 hr ago +1

I've never seen that happen. Give me a break. Most people go to work, and do their jobs. They're not looking to join a friend club.

1

lewlkewl 16 hr ago +8

Googleyness is one of the easiest rounds to do well on. It's not like netflix where they expect you to worship at the altar of their culture code. Google just wants people who aren't difficult to work and are good in team settings.

8

verrius 13 hr ago +9

On paper yes. In reality, that's only how some interviewers treat it. Some treat it as an opportunity to assert dominance over someone who wants a job, or an opportunity to show off that they know more than someone. Others use it as an opportunity to test if the candidate is the exact same as them. There's a theoretical place for that sort of round, but its almost never used exclusively for that.

9

Domeil 13 hr ago +10

> Google just wants people who aren't difficult to work and are good in team settings. "... and not black," according to roughly $50M.

10

lewlkewl 11 hr ago +8

Settling isn’t an admission of guilt.

8

Mikeavelli 8 hr ago

I once got a submission deleted from r/nottheonion for being "not oniony enough," and I'm still upset about it. Getting rejected from a job for being not googly would be *way* worse, so I guess what I'm saying is I agree with you.

0

czechereds 20 hr ago -26

Something tells me they probably used this term for people of all races. There's no way hiring managers at Google would be so unaware as to only say this about black candidates in a company where DEI is constantly talked about and appearing racist is ever present.

-26

Tyrrox 20 hr ago +14

Well, they settled so clearly it wasn't documented as standard language across all candidates, or evenly across all demographics, or they would have had a pretty easy defense there.

14

pressuredrop19 18 hr ago +2

Googly is a standard metric they use for all candidates. It’s very subjective though. I’m sure a higher proportion of black candidates weren’t googly enough compared to other races.

2

czechereds 20 hr ago -17

Settling is usually better than some protracted lawsuit and reputational harm that comes with it. "The suit claimed the company steered them into lower-level and lower-paid jobs" which they obviously would if they were hiring not on merit, but racial quotas. It's just people upset that they were given lower level jobs after being hired because of their race. Once they're actually working Google is obviously going to promote the highest performers and if they had a practice of hiring people of less merit because they were black it's going to end up this way over time. It's the same as medical schools using race based admittance. Eventually if you lower the bar to meet racial quotas there is going to be a transparent difference in quality that is going to appear racist on the surface.

-17

Tyrrox 20 hr ago +8

Settling is more reputation harm than going to court with an easy defense and winning. Also far nore expensive.

8

czechereds 20 hr ago -6

This will be forgotten about by tomorrow and Google doesn't have to go through any discovery or release any internal files. The same can be said for Crump, why settle if you have an easy lawsuit to win.

-6

theRealGermanikkus 15 hr ago +3

Google has more lawyers than most software companies have programmers. They don’t have to settle Jack.

3

czechereds 15 hr ago +3

And they have to pay those lawyers

3

Aggressive_Sky8492 4 hr ago +1

What evidence do you have that google was hiring black people simply because of their race..? It’s one possibly explanation, but other explanations (google has racist internal practices) is actually backed up by people who worked there

1

MAMark1 18 hr ago -2

Yes, corporations are generally going to prefer a settlement over the risk of losing after also having spent on waging a legal battle. So you're right that it can't be used as absolute proof of guilt. However, it also doesn't mean there isn't credible evidence here. Hiring managers absolutely can be unaware. We know bias exists, especially subconsciously, and it has been proven over and over. A company having a DEI campaign doesn't mean it is solved. It means they are working to undo inequities. You kind of tell on your narrow view of DEI when you claim it is racial quotas. No, that generally is not what it means. So your suggestion that these black employees were just lower quality and thus put into lower jobs and denied promotions based on merit is both based in a faulty premise and hints at some bias you've internalized. We know from history that companies do not simply promote the highest performers, and it feels bizarre for someone to pretend that is the reality in 2026 with all this info available.

-2

sephjnr 22 hr ago -33

"Googly" according to the hiring managers = White skin, brown tongue.

-33

Fractoos 22 hr ago +44

There are far more brown skinned people at Google than white.

44

sephjnr 21 hr ago -15

No doubt. I'm just hammering what "Googly" the racist hiring managers are projecting.

-15

czechereds 20 hr ago -11

Something tells me they probably used this term for people of all races

-11

Clessiah 11 hr ago -1

They only hire candidates who are red, yellow, green, or blue.

-1

afternever 19 hr ago -2

Are you here to tell me what a bad eugoogoolizer I am?

-2

AudibleNod 22 hr ago +146

>The 2022 lawsuit claimed that Mountain View, California-based Google viewed Black job candidates “through harmful racial stereotypes” and claimed that hiring managers deemed Black candidates “not ‘Googly’ enough, a plain dog whistle for race discrimination.” I didn't know "Googly" could be used as a racial modifier. Or that it was used internally to rate a candidate's race.

146

fdar 21 hr ago +186

It wasn't. It was just a way to rate "culture fit". It's a well known issue that when rating culture fit there might be a bias towards people who "look like you".

186

manachar 20 hr ago +56

Cultural fit is very much the engine of bigotry in the workplace. It is used beyond things like skin color to things like how people dress, do they laugh at the same jokes, do they look “professional “, etc. DEI was doing a great job of revealing that hiring based on these types of indicators didn’t build stronger well knit teams, it was just excluding people different than the hiring managers. Culture fit is probably the most insidious evil we all tend to do.

56

fdar 20 hr ago +51

Yes, but I don't think the concept is completely useless. For example, I was interviewing someone for a software engineer position and asked them what they would do if a more junior member was struggling to speak up during meetings. They said they would remind them that speaking during meetings was part of the job, and if they didn't do it they'll get put in a performance improvement plan and eventually fired. OK, well, I don't want that in my team or anywhere near me.

51

manachar 20 hr ago +18

Oh I understand. I have hired many over the years. The hard part is knowing what things are actually important for the job and what things are hurtful cultural constructs designed to be exclusionary.

18

fdar 20 hr ago +5

Yes, and I think what makes it harder in big companies is that you have a large pool of interviewers and candidates are spread out among them, so nobody can individually check their evaluations and reflect on whether they're being fair. Maybe the candidates *I* rated are all in very sensible relative orderings, and any bias I have isn't enough to change that *when looking at only the people I interviewed*. It only has an effect when you add other candidates other people interviewed, but that's hidden from me. And very hard to detect and correct for.

5

lewlkewl 20 hr ago

Google's interview process at least attempts to be as unbias as possible. You get interviewed by a panel, and then your feedback goes to a hiring committee that evaluates the feedback. They're supposed to call out interviewer bias. For example, if an interviewer gave an interviewee an overly difficult problem, then the panel will give leeway to the performance of that specific round. Obviously it's difficult to stamp out all bias, and at the end of the day i don't believe the interview panel knows the race of the candidate so they could get poor behaviorial feedback that could be bias without them knowing.

0

the_Stealthy_one 17 hr ago +3

you get interviewed in a loop, not a panel. and google is very conservative and deathly afraid of false positives.

3

lewlkewl 16 hr ago

I meant loop and then the committee being a panel

0

MAMark1 18 hr ago +3

This is similar to the DEI initiatives in hiring I have seen: panel interviews to lessen individual bias, standardized questions for all candidates to remove preferential questioning or even preferential phrasing, etc. If Google has internal DEI initiatives, then it makes sense they would implement all these processes. Doesn't mean they are perfect or that bias still couldn't come into play and impact employees. Honestly, it all just goes to show how insidious bias is and how challenging it is to remove it.

3

BearThatLikesCheese 20 hr ago +2

What an insane answer, wow. At least they made the choice easy for you, haha.

2

fdar 20 hr ago +9

To be fair, I think they were coming from Amazon.

9

spidereater 21 hr ago +3

Now imagine what happens when a black person ends up quitting or getting fired because of latent racism in the work place. It reinforces that view and the next person is viewed as a potential risk for “fit”.

3

imahotrod 22 hr ago +10

What are you trying to say?

10

Gyshall669 21 hr ago +11

Seems like they’re criticizing the claims that Google is racist cause of this.. but not sure

11

Lalocal4life 21 hr ago +60

Racist employees are incredibly expensive and a cancer to every profitable business.

60

DuztyLipz 19 hr ago +20

To shorten it even more: racism is bad for business.

20

BasicConsultancy 15 hr ago +8

even more: racism is bad

8

DuztyLipz 15 hr ago +2

more: f*** racism

2

rangerdace1 12 hr ago +1

but most importantly: racism

1

SnooRadishes9685 14 hr ago +1

Cancer to business, not society in general?

1

BettingOnSuccess 14 hr ago +1

TBH though, $50million is couch change for google.

1

chillysaturday 22 hr ago +27

It should've been for more to be honest. That's a drop in the bucket for them.

27

ValhirFirstThunder 19 hr ago +13

Hold up, did they say that black candidates are "not ‘Googly’ enough" explicitly or did they say that about black candidates that applied? Because if it's the latter...that's not really racial discrimination, that's just what Google and some other tech companies do. They hire for culture fit. I don't agree with that, but that's different than racial discrimination. I'm Asian and I got the same feedback just with different words

13

Gyshall669 19 hr ago +22

They don’t have any details. I’d guess it’s the latter but there might be a pattern where black candidates tend to get scored as not as Googly by HMs.

22

FoolishPragmatist 18 hr ago +23

You aren’t necessarily wrong, but if they kept finding that certain minorities “coincidentally” and consistently weren’t ‘Googly’ enough, that would rise to the level of a racial discrimination issue. The lawsuit would have determined that via discovery (among findings on their other allegations), but seems Google wanted it settled.

23

[deleted] 18 hr ago -6

[removed]

-6

Raioto 13 hr ago +2

I mean it clearly did since they had to settle for $50 mil lol

2

storefront 19 hr ago +3

I haven’t really seen the specifics, but if they’re willing to settle, I imagine there’s a case to be made here

3

ValhirFirstThunder 18 hr ago

Not necessarily, big tech companies will settle even if they think they are in the right. Legal battles are a time commitment as well as financial. Additionally just because you win in court, it doesn't mean you win in the court of public opinion. They could very well be discriminating against black candidates and employees. It's been a long reported things in the tech industry. But I wouldn't consider the Googly stuff one of them. So I was surprised I didn't see a more damning example in the article

0

Acheron98 18 hr ago -1

Or they just want to avoid a frivolous lawsuit going to trial. Settling isn’t an admission of guilt.

-1

Aggressive_Sky8492 4 hr ago +1

I think the ‘not googly enough’ thing without statistics is only half the story though. If 90% of black candidates were deemed ‘not googly enough’ and only 5% of non-black employees were then it pretty clearly *is* an avenue for racial discrimination, conscious or not.

1

meechmeechmeecho 10 hr ago +1

Likely the latter by intent, likely the former by outcome. I’d be shocked if hiring managers were stupid enough to explicitly document racist hiring practices. Based on their internal analysis, I’m sure they could see that the hiring rate of black applicants was objectively lower than other races. Whether or not it was intentional, just like googlyness, was likely subjective

1

Mantaur4HOF 21 hr ago +3

Cost of doing business.

3

Wayofchinchilla 17 hr ago +1

We got to get these lawsuits up into the billions if millions of dollars doesn't even make these companies blink anymore kind of makes you wonder if they lost 50 billion maybe they might do something a little different I'm willing to up payment until we reach that level of self-reflection.

1

macross1984 16 hr ago +1

Google is so filthy wealthy that any judgement against them can be settled by money and then continue their business.

1

RevolutionaryGain823 21 hr ago -41

Haven’t worked at Google so can’t comment on this particular case (although the “evidence” cited in the article is extremely thin). Over the past decade at several big international tech companies I’ve been on hiring committees where senior management “strongly suggested” we hire a candidate we all agreed wasn’t the most qualified because they needed to hit metrics for “x% of new hires this year are part of a certain group”.

-41

chillysaturday 21 hr ago +18

which ones?

18

razzmanfire 21 hr ago +10

"Ill take things that didnt happen for 500 Alex"

10

czechereds 21 hr ago +15

It's pretty obvious that every place someone would want to work has been trying to increase their minority employee percentage over the past 20 years. Fortune 500s, Educational institutes, State and Federal government jobs, etc.

15

MirrorComputingRulez 21 hr ago +8

That's not what the original comment said though.

8

omgfineillsignupjeez 20 hr ago +1

how so? seems like they were also trying to increase minority representation. what makes you confident that they weren't?

1

MirrorComputingRulez 20 hr ago +9

>I’ve been on hiring committees where senior management “strongly suggested” we hire a candidate **we all agreed wasn’t the most qualified** This is the relevant bit. The original comment didn't just say they were looking to increase minority representation. It specifically said they were hiring people who weren't as qualified in order to do so.

9

omgfineillsignupjeez 20 hr ago +1

yup, and? what u/RevolutionaryGain823 said is a logical conclusion from what u/czechereds said if somebody is sufficiently incentivized to hit targets and candidate 1 is 85% of ideal qualifications and candidate 2 is 90%, it's not a surprise that what u/RevolutionaryGain823 said would happen due to what u/czechereds said not seeing any disagreement between the two statements

1

MirrorComputingRulez 18 hr ago +3

> yup, and? And that's obviously different? Do you honestly need this explained to you? > what u/RevolutionaryGain823 said is a logical conclusion from what u/czechereds said No, it isn't. >if somebody is sufficiently incentivized to hit targets and candidate 1 is 85% of ideal qualifications and candidate 2 is 90%, it's not a surprise that what u/RevolutionaryGain823 said would happen due to what u/czechereds said But this isn't the situation. Instead, what happens is you have a handful of candidates who are all equally qualified. What used to happen is that unqualified white male candidates were hired over more qualified women or minorities. Now, businesses and other organizations use *more* objective criteria, not less, and the result is that hires are more diverse simply because they are removing some of the bias toward white men. Have you ever actually hired anyone? It's not an exact science. You end up with lots of people who have very similar qualifications and after that subjective things take over.

3

omgfineillsignupjeez 17 hr ago -1

Yeah it's not a perfect science and so if it's close and you have a pressure towards a certain race, can guess what will sometimes happen. Anyways, imo nothing you've said shows to me how what that second person couldn't be saying the same thing as the first person. If you think you have, we can agree to disagree lol

-1

MirrorComputingRulez 16 hr ago +1

You're either illiterate or intentionally obtuse.

1

MAMark1 18 hr ago -1

It isn't a logical conclusion because there are multiple possible explanations. Increasing minority employees doesn't requiring hiring less qualified candidates when the previous status quo was hiring white candidates over equally or more qualified minorities. It could merely require removing bias and reflect that the current state is actually more merit-based than before. Why you all can't think holistically and get beyond your "DEI means racial quotas" misinformation is beyond me.

-1

omgfineillsignupjeez 17 hr ago +1

I didn't say it requires it

1

chillysaturday 21 hr ago -4

They've *said* they have, but it's obvious from the multitude of massive lawsuits that the DEI talk has been nothing but lip service/advertisements.

-4

czechereds 21 hr ago +8

Eh, check any companies racial percentages year over year and you'll see increases. In reality most of these cases are just people inventing racism to fit their narrative or singular people with biases.

8

MAMark1 18 hr ago

Haha and "increase minority employee %" can only mean hiring less qualified minorities, huh? It can't possibly mean lessening the bias that previously kept equally, or even more, qualified minority candidates out of jobs. Should have realized this article would bring out the usual crowd of "DEI is the real racism" losers.

0

RevolutionaryGain823 21 hr ago +6

As a funny anecdote that people on here can choose to believe or not. A few years ago I managed a team of 8 (including myself) at a major tech company here in Europe. Of 8 people there were 8 countries of origin, 7 different mother tongues, 4/5 different religious backgrounds. But I was under pressure from HR/management due to lack of diversity as 7/8 were straight, “white” (by American standards) men. Another team was taken over by a bloke from South Asia and within 18 months 5/7 team members were members of his extended family/friend group/caste from back home (with the remaining 2 being “encouraged” out). This fella was praised for bringing “diversity” to his team lmao

6

SenorBender 20 hr ago +3

You say South Asian but was it Indian? Idk how frequent it is or if it’s confirmation bias but I’ve heard very similar stories in tech with Indian led teams

3

RevolutionaryGain823 18 hr ago +2

Yeah I’ve seen it play out multiple times. India is extremely divided based on region/language/caste/extended family group. I have Indian mates who know just from seeing a Hiring Mangers name that he’s from a different caste/region etc. and that he won’t hire them. Then sure enough if you check back in a few months he’s hired someone from his own caste/region/extended family. Western HR don’t want to go anywhere near this minefield so just “see now evil”

2

SenorBender 17 hr ago +2

That’s pretty interesting about knowing by name. I mean end of the day I don’t think it’s much different from typical nepo hires or different from the “it’s who you know” hires. It’s just a slightly different application

2

Falonefal 21 hr ago +4

The reason why it does indeed happen is because companies can win awards for being inclusive and diverse, which means that acquiring a degree of these awards becomes a performance metric for the department responsible for hiring (usually HR)

4

Dari89 14 hr ago

50 mil is basically nothing for them...

0

DividedState 21 hr ago -1

Pfff.... For google that is Porto.

-1

Traditional-Music485 17 hr ago -2

And see never worked another day in her life, it all came together in the end

-2

kbasante265 15 hr ago -4

Racial discrimination 🤔

-4

brattysweat 20 hr ago -8

I’m getting some of that right?

-8

Google settles racial discrimination lawsuit for $50 million

💬 Send a Message

111 Comments