Google’s diversity problem is more than skin deep

Murdoch
Murdoch
Aug 9, 2017 · 2 min read

Dear Larry, Sergey and Sundar,

When Google went Beta, I was one of your first users. I was an early adopter who raved about Google to anyone who would listen. That was back in 1998.

Twenty years later, I was the wrong side of 40. A woman with extensive digital experience at a senior level and an MBA from a top business school. Google advertised a number of jobs for which I was extremely well qualified. Except not according to Google which screens out candidates such as myself because of our age.

The only thing your recruiter wanted to know during the screening interview was: “In what year did you graduate with your first degree?” It was a diplomatic way of trying to figure out my age. Why would a question like that be relevant for someone with two degrees and nearly two decades of work experience? Incredibly, I didn’t score an interview for that or any other jobs despite ticking every single box in the job description and coming with recommendations from your own staff.

I later found out through sources at Google that I was on a blacklist. The ‘too old to hire list’. Google has algos that rule out certain potential candidates based on a number of factors including age. You don’t want to hire employees over 40. Not unless they are a hotshot coder or come in on an executive level. So we’re given a low score and get overlooked for jobs in which we would otherwise be considered ideal candidates.

The problem with this type of discrimination is that it’s not just ageist (sounds ridiculous for someone in their early 40s) but sexist too. Women often don’t accelerate their careers until their kids are old enough to be independent at school, and sometimes they might take a couple of years out of the workforce to be a mom. That means they’ll be looking for jobs at Google when they’re over 40. But Google doesn’t want women over 40 as I and other women found out.

Google doesn’t want employees it puts in the ‘too old’ basket. It doesn’t want employees the same age or slightly younger than its founders. It doesn’t want employees from the generation that put Google on the map.

So now, that Google has had to publicly deal with the issue of diversity, perhaps it’s time to review your blacklists and hiring algos so that you aren’t screening out great candidates who might have diverse profiles, including women who (dare I say it) are over 40. It’s kind of sad to have to point out to a company that’s famous for the razor intellect of it’s employees that your workforce should reflect the population of your users; that means a wide age range, gender equality and diversity on race and ethnicity.

O.K. Google.