"Too big to comply", now that’s an interesting term.
Shouldn’t all this data be in a single consistent database anyway? I mean, Google can manage all historic payments people do via their payment processor, but can’t manage all historic wage payments automatically?
Through a family connection I know quite a bit about how salary data is analysed inside silicon valley companies. That analysis, in turn, is largely driven by the need to comply with various DOL regulations.
Based on what I know I find it inconceivable that Google doesn't have this data in a spreadsheet that could be emailed in a few seconds to whoever needs to see it.
Of course they can do it, the question is should they and do they want to. The latter is obviously no.
You can testify against yourself too if you want to, it doesn't matter that you don t have to. Well, maybe if you have committed a crime you should since you said you're a good person and don't do evil? The amount of smart people thinking and buying the idea that all the social issues companies are working for are being done for nothing besides win your mind and heart amazes me. And then you say advertising doesn't work?!
Err, too expensive for Google? And pardon my only partially feigned ignorance, but if you're paying them based off the position and not gender, why do you need additional wage data?
>And pardon my only partially feigned ignorance, but if you're paying them based off the position and not gender, why do you need additional wage data?
Aren't Asians "overpaid" in the US tech industry? Any investigations into this? Of course not. This stinks of hidden agenda.
I hope this will help in reducing bias in the recruiting process, but your statement is a prime example that we just want to move the problem somewhere else in the career pipeline.
We won't achieve parity in the workplace simply because there is no parity in STEM programs (and particularly in Computer Science).
So, if everything was done w/ IA, I would just force a 50/50 split for employees to encourage girls to take up coding classes (at the tiny expense of coding abilities).
So Google can organize the worlds information, has AI good enough to categorize and automatically tag my pictures, has some of the most brilliant minds on earth, but can't do what would be a simple SQL statement for most companies?
If Google released such wage data, they would have to pay people more, and that would cost a lot, and so collecting wage data is too expensive. Get it?
I never really understood the Google worship. "Don't be evil" was an ingenious PR move which earned them an army of useful idiots willing to defend their every move, but never actually applied internally as far as I could tell. I think the reality was "see how much evil we can get society acclimated to".
As for Facebook, I think anyone who ever had a positive opinion of them should be evaluated by a psychiatrist.
Google is [was?] a geek company. You could get a good pay by being really good at coding. Most companies out there, the only way to get a high compensation is to play Games of Thrones on the management ladder. Actually doing any work is shunned upon.
You're working for a bad manager. I appreciate the management at my company. They keep the lights on and take care of all the stuff I would never want to do and I can concentrate on development.
From my experiences with friends who worked or work at Google, you could fit in just as well by being a mediocre programmer or graphic designer who really enjoyed kool-aid.
The terms "Googley" and "Googler" quickly became the equivalent of nails on a chalkboard to me thanks to these people.
IMO both of them are already on a plateau. Google keeps abandoning products, Facebook keeps buying promising startups and quietly shuts them down (Google does it too). In Google this mostly happens due to some weird geekdom culture / peer pressure thing (coding hipster-ism?), and in Facebook it's more like "we want to conquer the world".
Both companies' strategies are not sustainable. The world is already catching up and I suspect that now it's time for suing the hell out of everybody who isn't sharing their vision while being even slightly competitive to them (opinion, not a fact, no evidence for that, don't kill me).
One only needs to follow recent HN for news about decentralization efforts and slightly increased amount of articles about self-hosting to understand that a good part of the tech world is getting fed up with Google and Facebook.
Google code can't age gracefully. They constantly replace key infrastructure in their monorepo, so either a project is important enough for engineers to keep it on the upgrade treadmill, or it needs to be shut down before it abruptly fails.
For internal projects that's absolutely the right approach. However, once you go around the net and see how people are laughing at Google for their "bazillion chat apps", then you understand that they use the same approach for their public projects, and that's just being inefficient on their part. And damages their brand and name.
I don't get this - why would there be back payments? A contract is a contract right? Regardless of what's in other people's contracts... Perhaps it might mean new contracts might have to demand more but I guess on the other hand they could probably squeeze other areas that are overpaid?
Nah, if gender-based wage discrimination is 'proven' in court, the people who got shorted are going be awarded some multiple of the amount of wages that can be attributed,
according to whatever calculation gets used to determine the existence or non-existence and magnitude of any such discrimination. (Not a lawyer, but I've listened to Lilly Ledbetter give a speech.)
Please tell me that your focus on "contracts" doesn't mean you are a sincere, "omg the right to contracts" libertarian?
So IANAL but "an emergent pattern" (which doesn't sound as bad as, e.g., internal memos to the effect of "let's pay the gurls less hahaha") may be more than enough for the government to categorize Google's behavior as gender-based wage discrimination.
If/when the government does that, I think 2 things happen:
1. the government announces some punitive action against Google; things they must do, things they must pay, etc;
2. the probability of every Jane, Jill, and Hillary who worked for Google winning a wage discrimination case skyrockets, at least some workers file such cases or enter negotiations to settle such discrimination.
That's why I think it could be an interesting case ... if the data showed this to be the case I don't think it would be an open and shut case for those bringing complaint. If google were shown to not have taken steps to balance things then maybe. But on the other hand then if google demonstrated that they had and this pattern emerged anyway what then? I guess this is the kind of discussion google would want to avoid anyway but whatever the outcome could set an important legal precedent.
> Please tell me that your focus on "contracts" doesn't mean you are a sincere, "omg the right to contracts" libertarian?
Can we please focus on rational arguments instead of insults and ad hominems? This country needs much more rational discussion (like the previous comments) and much less name-calling.
Educated adults should understand: just because it's written in a contract doesn't mean it's enforceable. The viewpoint of "contracts uber alles" (which I hope nobody holds as anything other than a tactic to pursue their own self interest) may have cheerleaders, but is just incorrect as far as the legal system goes.
On the meta-discourse level: is it appropriate to make fun of a belief that one honestly believes is Bad if I don't say that person X holds that belief and hence is bad?
I'm sorry. My intent is not to insult, but to express a thought that only recently occurred to me: democratic societies need a basic legal "literacy" class in the education of every citizen as much as people who may need to save money for retirement or borrow for a home purchase need basic financial "literacy" classes.
In my public schooling, I had two year-long classes about the structure and function of the United States government. One was in middle school and one was in high school; I was not required to take any course on the subject as part of undergrad. Neither course taught me much more about courts than that the Supreme Court is the highest court of appeal and interprets the Constitutionality of laws.
Courts are complicated and laws and regulations are different from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but there are some fundamental, low-level principles that apply to proceedings across most (possibly all?) courts in the US. An educated citizenry in the US would, ideally, have at least some exposure to these fundamentals; these basic principles (which would include at least a little on contracts) are too important for the vast majority of the population (i.e. almost all non-lawyers) to not understand.
I told a lawyer friend about this idea and she strongly agreed. She said that her sister had taken an undergrad class which roughly fit my description-- "pre-pre-law" was how she described it. Her sister's evaluation of the course was that it's description of legal principles and their operation in courts helped explain a lot of the mechanics of how government, private institutions, and society function.
Thank you for taking the time to respond. I now understand what you meant "Educated adults should understand" - as in, the educational systems should make way for this, rather than a swipe at my education or status as an adult ... such is the Internet. I'm quite well educated in the ways of the law however, to the point that I understand how flimsy it can be in certain areas, and your central thesis is far from having closed endpoints. In any case, I apologise in kind for what may have been a bit of a hissy-fit.
[1]
I think it's probably less than fully appropriate. Person X might hold that belief (whether or not you say they do) and, if they do, then the mockery will be hurtful. It costs you nothing to politely explain, sans ridicule, why an idea is wrong rather than taking on an unnecessary risk of hurting someone's feelings.
Still, people should be less sensitive on the internet.
[2]
Most educated adults, including me, are not lawyers and so do not know precisely when a contract is or is not enforceable, because the legal system is complex and arcane. This is distasteful to many because anyone who takes himself as an authority on what is just/unjust/moral/immoral is naturally liable to feel they should therefore be an authority on what is legal/illegal (since legality is intended to codify justice and morality or something like that). I suspect that many contracts-uber-alles-like sentiments (some of which I have entertained myself from time to time) stem from this unconscious yearning to know a priori what is legal or enforceable.
In such cases, the sentiment is not rational, nor is it a tactic for the pursuit of self interest.
I think it's ok to infer someone holds and opinion (i.e. is libertarian, Stalinist, some other annoying internet political opinion) and to check out of the conversation if they do.
US workers generally don't work on "contracts", that's more of a European phrase. I'm guessing OP probably works in a European environment which probably has different rules around this.
Yes, but for example, in the U.S. you can get a lot more damages for certain legal concepts which I don't think are present or as well recognized in many European countries. For example, there's the idea of "pain and suffering." So if you're physically harmed by someone, you can claim costs for your hospital stay, damage to your property, missed work, etc, but you can also get an additional sum because of the "pain and suffering" you had to endure.
Because there might have been a falsehood involved along the lines of, "this is what we normally pay for this kind of work" when that's not true at all.
A contract based on lies is fraud.
The information asymytry here is huge. It's worse than a sleazy car salesman showing a customer a doctored blue-book to inflate the price of an old junker.
The US government is not asking for the data to be made public, it's asking for it to be made available to their officials:
The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs asked the technology giant to submit information in September 2015 about its equal opportunity program and to provide supporting documents as part of a scheduled compliance review. As a federal contractor, Google must agree to permit the federal government to inspect and copy records and information relevant to its compliance with the equal employment laws administered by OFCCP.
Google employees would be none the wiser about the fairness of their wages.
Right, but if the Department of Labor finds them to be out of compliance with Equal Pay laws, the resulting consequences will be made public in some form. That in itself (and rightfully so) could set off further legal action by current or former employees.
Get this! Google and companies allocate a tremendous amount of money in corporate lawyers and legal staff. These companies have a well-documented history of suing other companies when they feel a contract has been abused or unfulfilled. Google entered into a contract with the Federal Government, they received compensation. Google was fully aware of their requirements to fulfill the contract. And just in case they did not, too damn bad. And that is exactly how Google would view it when suing another company for not meeting contract obligations. Unfortunately, there are a lot of companies that attempt to weasel out of their contractual obligations with the government at the cost of taxpayers. But put the shoe on the other foot, these companies and for sure Google would be applying the full resources of their respective legal departments to make sure the Federal Government met their obligations under the contract. So don’t fool yourself into thinking that Google was not aware of their obligations under the contract. If they didn’t like the terms, they should not have entered into the contract. There is nothing sneaky about the terms of this contract, nothing unique, and nothing vague. All companies that enter in to contractual obligations with the Federal Government meet the required obligations. And when you consider the Federal Government has had for decades prominent contracts with Defense contractors, who are notorious for seeking any weasel room they can to get around these obligations, I seriously doubt Google can come up with any revolutionary excuse. Google has used the foolish excuse that they are trying to protect the “PRIVACY” of their employees, and this is a bunch of crap, because the IRS, another Federal Government Agency has that wage data. So I can only surmise, that Google, one of the “BIG” voices of social reform, liberalism and whatever other causes that are emitted from the Silicon Valley complex may just be a hypocrite.
Took a shower!
I think Google is being disrespectful to the citizens of this country. They are relying on leveraging this social movement of keeping the government out of their private lives. As if some old greasy fart, is sitting in some underground secluded vault reading your emails, texts, and whatever just for fun. But you have Google, Facebook, Apple, Uber, Microsoft, Twitter and so on writing complex algorithms to monetize where you have been, where you are, where you are going, what you read, how you shop, what you buy, using your phone to listen in on what commercials you are watching, where you are in the mall, who you are with, when you sleep and how you sleep or maybe even who you are sleeping with, what toys you buy, your phone number, extracting data from your emails and on and on. And these companies throw these pages of EULA agreements at you, and they know you don’t read them. They have an algorithm for that. Then some of these companies have the audacity to state that the “MAY SHARE” the data with third parties. Really? So just what part of your life do you consider PRIVATE? And more importantly, just what do you consider PRIVATE? And what do these companies tell you what their objective is in collecting all this data? “We are enhancing the consumers experience!”. If they really wanted to “enhance the consumer’s experience” allow the consumer the “OPT IN” and not throw a bunch of convoluted Setting screens to with obtuse worded options to “OPT OUT”. That is a lot of data that they extract, analyze and monetize. And Google says the Department of Labor’s request is more that they can handle and too costly to extract. How the heck do they even send out employee’s W-2s?
I agree a 100% that more must be done for gender equality and that gathering more data to understand wage gap mechanism is needed.
That being said, and considering that a part of my job is to help gather data from 50+ différents sources with diferent data models, I can agree with google on one point.
Gathering data from one point going forward is easy, gathering historical data from a system not designed with logging in mind is a huge pain.
As is usually forbidden in most democracy to issue a law with retroactive effects, it's maybe not a good thing to expect that retroactive dataset should be mandatory. That more of a work for historians and social-science researchers.
Retro active datasets are commonly court ordered. Laws aren't retroactive, but all court proceedings are retrospective.
Googles 100k assertion here is bullshit. They did a calculation that handing that data over, or even just collating it, would leave them in a worse position than fighting it.
I think the whole payroll, invoicing and accounts side of things is all running on third-party software, so the people who develop Google's own publicly-facing code don't have anything to do with it.
Sure. And they have enough money to hire a firm that specializes in e-discovery and/or assign clever employees who have experience doing good, challenging work to put together data sets from disparate sources.
The article linked in the first article has Google claiming it has gender pay parity early on in the dispute versus the government saying this is a bad situation based on the sample of data the government received. The original article then has Google saying it cannot produce the data behind this gender pay equity claim. It seems logical to anyone who is not a lawyer that the plaintiff, Google, cannot have it both ways in the very same case, in fact it seems positively ludicrous.
> [...] but can't do what would be a simple SQL statement for most companies?
Would they actually be able to do that? Google has offices in many cities in many states, and in many countries. Different offices could be subject to different rules and regulations and reporting requirements when it comes to handling payroll. This could require that they keep different information in their system depending on where the employee works.
I'd guess that it might be cleaner and more robust to have separate systems in each office or region that keep this data for the relevant employers, rather than having one central system that is designed to store the union of everything anyplace Google might open an office requires.
It seems plausible to me that all they have in some central system is broad aggregate information, such as the total payroll for each office or region, with all the interesting details distributed.
“We want to understand what’s causing the disparity,” she said.
---
Further proof women (!!ON AVERAGE!!) just do not perform as well as men IN THIS INDUSTRY.
It should absolutely be solved, somehow, but it's not by harassing a company that hires women for what they're worth.
My personal theory is that women are so cherished - they aren't held to the same standards in education. We try to pull them into the CS department by making it easy for them. That should stop. It's ridiculing women, and making them into inferior workers.
At the same time women need to proactively become 'beta' and study exact sciences. Put in their fair share of the effort.
Fucking social sciences are "fun and easy" - and women outnumber men there.
I think women should man the fuck up already. Don't get fair salary? Go away. That's what men do.
It sounds weird, but think of it this way: If women came at a discount, why would you ever hire men? At least some companies should realize this.
Is this sarcasm, or a joke? It's not very funny, and your comments come across as misogynistic and particularly rude. You complain that "CS departments are making it easy for women and ridiculing them" and then go on to say that women should "man the fuck up?".
Edit: it would be nice if people could explain why they are downvoting me. What was off with my comment? I cannot improve my comments unless you leave a comment yourselves on how I can do that. I found the comment (now flagged) to be particularly abrasive. I go into detail with the arguments in a grandchild comment to this post.
If we ignore the form, I think the substance of his argument has some merit.
I would appreciate it if you would comment on that, instead.
Indeed, if women were systematically underpaid despite equivalent performance, I find it hard to believe they wouldn't be hired by the boatload. This might be explained by (1) a lack of women relative to men in the developer workforce and (2) a systematic bias in competence.
It's not prima facie absurd to think that affirmative action efforts have perverse effects, namely that they push the actual selection based on competence to a later stage of the employment pipeline.
I understand this isn't a conclusive argument, but it does have some merit, and I'm worried by the fact that just bringing it up has one labeled a misogynist. That's not the way forward.
Again, the form is a bit prickly, but I think I've done a good job of spelling out what "you can't find a good woman programmer" likely means.
Yes, the OP is irate, and no he should not have let that irritation show through, but I insist that the substance of his arguments are not without merit.
> it deserves flagging, not a retort
Censoring opinions you don't like is not the way forward. There's a reason these discussions are so polarized, and your attitude is largely responsible for it. I implore you to stop.
Opinions that actively hurt people and damage the reputation of our industry when published, as well as being demonstrably false should be censored in a private forum, yes. HN needs to actively avoid being a toxic shithole, so I’ll flag this sort of thing until I’m told by the mods to stop.
Did the OP ask you to do this filtering for him? If not, let the man own his own words and thoughts. You're free to start a new top-level comment free of the vitriol.
Ignoring the form is ignoring part of the message the person wants to pass.
And I see no relevant or mininally intelligent substance in the argument. "Woman are cherished"?? In his anedocte might be, my personal perception is completely opposite. Woman are mistreated and have a harder life than man since young age.
So, if he is not referring any serious base for this claim, I believe he is just mysoginist.
"Woman are not good programmers"?? Another fantasy in his mind that create a good story for his mind.
I would appreciate if you try to comment whatever you found of merit in the substance of his comment
What in particular do you think has merit, here? Perhaps I'm missing something (it happens, of course) but I can't really see their point. I'll go through each point of GP's post and see what merit I can find therein.
>It should absolutely be solved, somehow, but it's not by harassing a company that hires women for what they're worth.
This is starting out at the point that the difference in wages arises out of how much the person is "worth", which may be true but I can't see any evidence for it, nor how you could accurately judge this.
>My personal theory is that women are so cherished - they aren't held to the same standards in education. We try to pull them into the CS department by making it easy for them. That should stop. It's ridiculing women, and making them into inferior workers.
This "personal theory" sounds like rubbish. Is there anything to support it, even anecdotal evidence? I find it hard to believe that CS courses are made easier for the purpose of bringing more women into them, and by their logic, it would also mean that the men who come out of CS degrees are also "inferior workers", so his previous argument collapses on itself. What's the merit in that?
>At the same time women need to proactively become 'beta' and study exact sciences. Put in their fair share of the effort.
Why exactly? Why can't women (and anyone) study what motivates them? And I think the conception that "soft sciences" (inexact?) are easy is quite demeaning to those who study it, and somewhat humorously the commenter is making this point having just earlier complained that CS being made easy is itself demeaning to women. What about this part of the comment?
>Fucking social sciences are "fun and easy" - and women outnumber men there.
So what if women outnumber men? So what if men outnumber women? Is the commenter saying that women choose social sciences because they're "fun and easy"? I'm sure some people find CS "fun and easy", too. Or some don't find it fun and easy. My friend is doing Sociology and he doesn't find it easy.
>I think women should man the fuck up already. Don't get fair salary? Go away. That's what men do.
Ignoring the fact that "man the fuck up" betrays and indeed perpetuates this commenter's perception that manliness equates to moral character and strength (itself a patriarchal conception), it does a disservice to our society to say that people should just leave rather than bargain for equitable treatment. Would the commenter say the same about unions for example? After all, union workers should just "man the fuck up already or go away if they don't get a fair salary"? It's an affront to worker rights.
>It sounds weird, but think of it this way: If women came at a discount, why would you ever hire men? At least some companies should realize this.
Because to my knowledge most countries have laws against companies which hire or fire only based on gender/sex. I don't know if the gender pay gap is "real" (I haven't done enough searching on this myself), and if it exists I do not know to what extent it exists (I know that there are various inaccurate or false figures floating around the Internet).
>Truth is you can't find a good woman programmer.
This is ridiculous and ignores the fact that there are plenty of female programmers.
Out of interest, where do you find merit in these arguments?
Edit: Why is this comment being downvoted? I have tried to make a calm and cogent response to the GP comment. Would the downvoters care to explain, please?
>> Indeed, if women were systematically underpaid despite equivalent performance, I find it hard to believe they wouldn't be hired by the boatload. This might be explained by (1) a lack of women relative to men in the developer workforce and (2) a systematic bias in competence.
But not, say, (3) a systematic bias in hiring practices.
Someonewhocare3s is not being called a misogynist because of the points you make here, he is being so called because he deliberately presented himself as such in other aspects of his post.
You seem to be saying that he should not be lambasted because underneath everything else he wrote, there may be a proposition that is at least debatable. This ignores the fact that he deliberately presented himself in that manner, and deserves to be judged on that, not on how you might present it. Freedom of speech does not protect you from being misunderstood; much less does it protect you from being clearly understood.
> Indeed, if women were systematically underpaid despite equivalent performance, I find it hard to believe they wouldn't be hired by the boatload. This might be explained by (1) a lack of women relative to men in the developer workforce and (2) a systematic bias in competence.
Or (3) because a huge proportion of perceived performance is subjective. I can't find a study right now, but e.g. http://fortune.com/2014/08/26/performance-review-gender-bias... make a decent argument towards women receiving qualitatively different performance feedback to men.
I don't know how his university is, but our has a quota of how many men and women get admitted each year. There is an exam you sit on (it's all pure math problems for the CS course) and the top X women and Y men enter. The exam is the same for both genders. The average score of the women who get admitted is consistently slightly lower than that of the men.
That said, the difference isn't really big and I don't think the women have it any easier, if we accept that their innate ability is lower than the men's. It's computers, not rocket science, it's not that hard after all.
This is disconcerting to hear, and certainly not appropriate. It's not okay to talk about women in that way. As a student in uni, women do just as week and are given just as difficult material as men.
Your comment is off color and mildly mysogenistic.
well the problem is that less woman want to be programmers. (At least where I live) Which actually means that men are more present so if you have 50 programmers where 5 are good you only will have a pool of 5 woman programmers where maybe 1 is good. that actually leads to the data, which actually not says that woman can't program better or worse, it just says it's harder to find a good woman, because there are overall less woman in tech.
actually I also think that not only in germany near freiburg are less woman programmers, I'm pretty sure that MINT is still "not that cool" for woman. the number was raised the last years and still climbs but it's nowhere near a 50:50 sadly
>> that actually leads to the data, which actually not says that woman can't program better or worse, it just says it's harder to find a good woman, because there are overall less woman in tech.
well the problem is that less woman want to be programmers
Would you like to explain why you think that happened? And why it's such a drastic turnaround from how things used to be?
(remember: in earlier days a much higher percentage of programmers and other computer-adjacent technical people were women, compared to today. The demographics we see today are a change from that, which cries out for explanation)
Well hard questions.
I think why more woman did computing in the early days, was because men did actually do war. so woman actually fulfilled many roles that men could not do because they either were far away or came back with injuries or maybe one leg, whatever and early computing probably did not have features for disabled people.
fast forward a few years the war actually started to calm down, technology began to rise. and many more men seeked for a job, while there was a dramactic shift in jobs and that now woman did more work, it still was in a lot of men's brain that this is not typical so men did start to do the engineering jobs again and seen woman still as somebody who should do the household. this probably also meant that the whole parenting did raise their children in stereotypes (we still can see a lot of that today), which favored the social aspect of the woman and the engineering of the men. (Lego vs. Barbie, etc.)
I think that is why now men do more mint jobs as of now and a shift in that is hardly seen, a lot of people still raise their kids as back in the days, girls get barbies and puppets and boys gets lego and other stuff that favors different aspects of life.
That's why I also think that the young life of children should be way more non stereotypical. we should stop giving our children different colors and different toys because of gender, that would start to stop thinking in genders.
From my personal standpoint, I have a niche (5 years old) and she actually wished herself a friend book, and I wanted to have one that is as neutral as possible. And I can tell, that this is not that easy. a lot of them sub 60%-70% do actually favor a gender, either with their art cover __or__ worse with their question. I think such a thing is definitv one of the reason why there was a shift and why there still is a shift/difference between what man do and what woman do.
it's good that my niche does not get raised this way since my sister also helps her grow with other stuff (and she likes that stuff), like a workbench.
P.S.: I'm a guy and I hate it that a lot of people still think that girls needs to be raised with different toys. That is probably the starting point of discrimination and job inequality.
Edit: Well I think there are many more aspects why things are like they are, but this is probably one of the starting points and a big point that should be somewhat addressed.
well I think computing as we now of today started between 194x till 1990 and the internet grown at something like 96. and war including cold war was until the 80s and I came from germany and my father was at the army ("bundeswehr") in the 90s where they still seen the russians as an enemy. in our country woman did a lot from 54 to something like 70s they even rebuilt whole cities. while men still needed to find their way back into regular life. i'm not sure but after the 90s computing and engineering was already done by way more men.
I'll take that bet. I know several excellent women who program. Some of them in their 50's. They'd probably outclass the vast majority of the hacker wanna-be's but they have one aspect that is totally different from their male counterparts: they try very hard not to attract attention and to let on how good they are whereas any male who can hold a keyboard is off to the races bragging about their mad skills. There just seems to be much less ego involved.
While I disagree with the wording of OPs comment, I think it's easy to see that the problem here is that there is not enough women programmers - but I think we can both see how this in turn leads to difficulty in finding good ones?
For example - my MSc course in computer science had 30 people total, and out of them 3 were women. Of course, it's outrageous that only 10% of the students in that course were women, but that's a deeper problem that needs to be addressed far earlier than MSc level.
However, put yourself in shoes of a company recruiting programmers - you need to hire 1-2 programmers out of those 30 graduates. If you say that you only want to look at exam results and nothing else(completely blind choice) what is the chance that they will end up with a woman programmer? Very low, but it's not because women are any less skilled - it's just that there's fewer of them.
That's the problem that needs to be addressed first.
(For the sake of argument, I would say that if we looked for some predominantly female roles, like a nanny, the same would apply - "you just can't find a good male nanny" seems true, but it's not because men are any worse at it, it's just that there's so few of them in this profession)
Not only finding, but retaining. When there are very few women, organizations get... interesting. If women are pushed out of those organizations before there's a critical mass to have change happen, then hiring a few women here or there doesn't really help. If anything it just makes the women crazy.
The more balanced your team is, the more balanced your team culture is, and therefore the better chance you will have of retaining good people and the good balance.
OP's hyperbole took it too far by saying "good programmer". But if you change it just "top one percent programmer", it might not be too much of an exaggeration. Before I also get banned, I want to clarify that there's a difference between:
- "it's hard to find a woman programmer in the top 1%" because women can't be good programmers due to their biology
- "it's hard to find a woman programmer in the top 1%" because our society failed to train and produce them
The second statement isn't inherently sexist, it's just an observation of the poor state of our world.
If you're familiar with programming/math competitions you'll know that there are not many female represented there even after taking into account their smaller population: http://www.topcoder.com/tc?module=AlgoRank. There are probably 500 "red" coders (which is roughly the top 1%) but with probably less than a handful who are female. All you need is a username to compete so it's pretty objective and gender-blinded.
So it seems exceptional female programmers are simply not being produced even as early as high school and college level. Google interviews are very similar to those competition so I assume their data will also uncomfortably show this.
I am the top ranked woman (in terms of karma) on HN. I was one of the top 3 students of my graduating high school class and one of the best high school students in my entire state. I was the state alternate for a gifted enrichment program one summer. That means only two students in the state outperformed me and I would have gone had one of them been unable to participate for some reason. I won a National Merit Scholarship based on having the highest SAT score in my graduating class.
Any time I try to tell people that I kick ass at anything at all, even just as an excellent mom, it is a total fucking beat down. It simply isn't okay for a woman to admit she is that good at anything at all. Ever. For any damn reason.
This means if you are a highly competent woman and you want to survive in this world, you learn to shut the fuck up about it. It also means that you are routinely denied the same opportunities as the men who are, in fact, allowed to say "Yup, I am that damn good" without it being a total fucking beat down.
Furthermore, breaking into a male dominated field tends to be a shit show where a woman has to put up with endless harassment by men who would hit that because Oh My God, It's a Girl! And she is interested in the same thing I am!!! The price of admission is just vastly higher than for men. You need far more than to just be as technically competent as the guys. You also need to be incredibly savvy about handling the endless social BS, incredibly thick skinned and so on. And then you still need to not brag lest it turn into a shit show and beat down for that reason.
So "Commenting in an inflammatory way" is trolling that deserves a warning before banning.
But obvious sexism directed at belittling the skill of female programmers (Some of whom are regular HN readers) doesn't warrant a ban in itself?
Saying "There are no good [insert-race-or-sex-or-sexual-orientation-here] programmers" is not just an off-hand inflammatory comment. It's an attack on a portion of your own reader base who already are frequently made to feel out of place here.
This assumption that most women didn't properly "earn" their status as engineers and can't be true equals to male peers is misogyny through and through. I've had a customer on AWS support not take my troubleshooting seriously (on a subject I was the top expert on no less),and demand to be transferred for no reason. I transferred him, then literally fed the other engineer the exact words I was giving him before and troubleshooter through his chat, and suddenly the customer was happy. The only difference was that my name was obviously female, and my coworker's name was obviously male. The effects of this mentality on a woman's career are real, and its lame. Kind of shocking to see you so non-chalant about it when some of your YC peers like Cadran have done so much to bring attention to it.
I'm all for free discussion on HN, but anyone who says that is not engaging in good faith.
How can a corporation like Google that handles Peta bytes of data on a daily basis say it is too hard for them to keep track of their own employee payments?
If they were honest enough, they would have found a way to comply. This is just their attempt at lawyering out of the situation.
I've witnessed what you describe about women preference in Australia and I'm afraid this culture gets contagious in France. Women get a complete different privileged pathway to jobs, yet studies keep studying "How men and women get educated differently". Here's what I'm doing, and it's time all men do it too:
- Started a Youtube channel to provide a counter-analysis to common misconceptions. For example I've dismantled every second of the Always #LikeAGirl ad spot.
- Started writing to every single institution that isn't compliant to male equality (i.e. every time an institution is dedicated to women, such as France's "Family and Women's Rights Minister", or France's subventions to help women's careers.
- Started petitions on Change.org against political parties who, in their "Gender Equality" chapter, help women for tiny inconveniences and don't help men for e.g. their 3x higher suicide rates. That means calling for people like Trump vote if Hillary's program treats men as disposable. Her exact words, which participated to electing Trump, were: "Women have always been the primary victims of war. Women lose their husbands, their fathers, their sons in combat." I can't explain enough the level of disdain the general politics represent towards men (and this disdain against men dangerously fuels things like Trump, Brexit, FN, etc).
- Ideally I'd like to attack institutions for illegal discrimination when they officially discriminate men (ex: Gender-based help programs), but that requires putting my name in public, and I'm afraid of violent actions.
Equality will be when men defend themselves as much as women. Go find a petition today and sign it, at the very least.
Perhaps your comment here is premature? In order to know whether there is a wage gap at Google, you need data. Without that data, you are no more accurate than the people you are fighting.
This falls in the ideological rant category and is off topic on HN. You've posted comments like this before and we've already asked you not to. Please don't do it again.
In litigation, there is the expectation that parties shouldn't be expected to bear discovery costs that are out of proportion with the value and relevance of the requested data. "It'll cost too much" is thus a stock answer to discovery requests. Google can absorb the $100k cost--they'll likely spend tens of thousands to just to litigate over the discovery dispute. But they're entitled to hold the government to it's burden of articulating why that data justifies the cost.
Obviously the real reason is that Google doesn't want to hand over the data. But you should never just hand data over to the government. Government lawyers can get pretty creative with spreadsheets of numbers.
Being difficult is indeed pretty normal in our adversarial system of law. Being difficult about something that should actually be pretty easy is a good way to make your judge ornery and, unless your resistance earns you the opportunity to give up less/different information or some sort of other concession, seems like poor legal tactics.
That seems like something for a law firm to judge though, rather than a layman trying to model the psychology of a particular judge. It could be that you try to appease the judge, and you find it renders inferior value.
Google is a federal contractor. These documents are being requested because they do federal business, not because of any civil or criminal inquiry. Now of course these documents might lead to a civil case, but it's within the bounds of each agency's Office of Civil Rights to request this data.
As a legacy of modern civil rights gains, any company that does federal business has to comply with a stricter set of civil rights law. Of course, if they don't want to that's their prerogative, but they can't receive federal funds.
While this is all true, just because a lawyer can make an argument or typically makes a certain type of argument does not protect their client from the other bad results of making that argument.
This isn't just Google, it's important for all businesses to remember that the lawyers focus on the law, and done usually have access to the bigger picture. And even if they do, it's not their job to deal with it, they focus on winning in the legal arena.
And that's not assuming that the lawyers don't see a multi year legal argument which means $$bank$$ for the legal profession.
I know one international telecoms company deliberately dragged out a legal case about pensions for well over a decade - of course many potential beneficiary's died during the case
The government is not any different from any other adversary other than in terms of scale, and you know full well that government litigators don't have carte blanche to just allocate resources, significantly obviating the supposed scalar advantages. They too are heavily constrained by their budgetary limitations and accountability requirements, which are arguably far more onerous than those which obtain in the private sector..
This is run of the mill legal strategy, of course. It looks terrible, however. Which surely is not lost on Google. Which then makes it seem even more like they have something to hide. I hope there is nothing to it. If there is, I hope they can gracefully embrace the mistake and make it whole. As the backlash against Uber has shown, the rising tide of social consciousness will not look kindly on Google otherwise.
The issue of possible underpayment aside, It has to be in the interest of the company to provide as little information as they can.
It's a court case. The attorneys wouldn't be doing their job if they didn't use every legal means at their disposal.
And they may in fact have a point (to an extent). Government shouldn't be able to accuse a firm of something, then demand the firm spend money assembling data to prove the governments case. The fact Google "makes a bunch of money so no big deal" (which is what the .gov attorneys are apparently arguing) is irrelevant to that principal.
Government shouldn't be able to accuse a firm of something, then demand the firm spend money assembling data to prove the governments case.
First of all: when you sue someone, you do get to demand exactly that. They also get to demand it of you! It's called "discovery", and it's a bog-standard basic normal everyday part of lawsuits.
Second of all: if you have a look through the reporting on this, Google was being audited for compliance with equal-pay laws and refused to supply records the government said were relevant to the audit. So the government is now suing to force Google to hand over the records. Auditors are allowed to do that, and being required to assemble and hand over information is pretty much the literal definition of an audit.
An audit isn't a fishing expedition. Being audited for compliance with relevant laws is part of being in business; if it's an unbearable burden, your options are
Your comments strongly advocated for the "limits" being that no company could ever be compelled to compile or produce information for an audit at its own expense. Have you now recognized the error in your earlier position, since you seem to be trying to walk it back?
Government shouldn't be able to accuse a firm of something, then demand the firm spend money assembling data to prove the governments case.
Direct quote of you.
This is exactly what the government is allowed to do. This is exactly how an audit works when they think they've found something.
The government needs the information to determine whether the company is in compliance. The company has the information. How else would you solve this, besides the government having the power to compel production of the information?
So, your second statement isn't what I originally stated at all.
This isn't how an "audit" works at all, an "audit" and an accusation are two different things entirely. Your bias has apparently led you into reading things that aren't there. A common fallacy so don't feel bad.
"The government needs information"
I'm not sure it really does to this extent, but assuming you are right, how much legal responsibility does Google have to provide it?
And this is exactly what we are going to find out from the courts. Back to the original point, the attorneys for Google have no duty, and in fact, every duty, to minimize the amount of information provided.
Sorry, commenting on an old post, but I had to make this point:
"Government shouldn't be able to accuse a firm of something, then demand the firm spend money assembling data to prove the governments case."
Try telling that to the IRS, or OSHA, or any one of a dozen other organizations tasked with certain aspect of US business oversight. If the IRS says "a preliminary investigation showed that you may be underpaying taxes, please show us business records for such-and-such" you absolutely have to do it. It has nothing to do with a lawsuit, even, although a lawsuit is certainly going to follow if you don't comply.
If OSHA says "there's a string of unusual injuries that we believe were easily preventable at your workplace, please turn over employee training records and we'd like to do a walkthrough of your work site" -- you can't just say "No"
In this case, Google, a federal contractor, is suspected by the Department of Labor for systematically underpaying women. They have EVERY RIGHT to request relevant US employee records. This isn't "asking Google to prove their case," this is a reasonable demand for data that they have the right to.
That would require the Department of Labor to have that data. They don't have that data; the IRS has it, and they'd probably have to get a court to order the IRS to hand it over, and the court might well not do that.
It's the legal team's job to push back on any new requests for data. Obviously there _is_ a reasonable limit of what the government can ask Google to provide. This particular cost is obviously far less than that limit ought to be given the stakes involved and the size of Google, but again, Google should push back too early and the government should ask for too much, and the judge should find the reasonable middle ground. That's fine, that's how our legal system works, and I suspect this article is overblowing a typical procedural step in the process.
All of that said, Google is not coming out looking like the good guy by fighting this case so hard. Their compensation analysts ought to be running these sorts of reports themselves. If they truly aren't, then that in itself is evidence (in my opinion) that Google is willfully neglecting its responsibility not to underpay its female employees.
>Its about bringing women and minorities to the same level.
I'm not sure I understand the difference? And I'm not sure other people do either. You're measuring from the average, so moving either moves the average which you're measuring from.
From my understanding, you cannot tell the difference, therefore:
"bringing down white males" == "bringing women and minorities to the same level"
>The comment is in poor taste
Personal perception. Nobody is telling anybody what to like or dislike. I had to read it twice to understand it, I think a little more obvious would have been better. But again, personal perception.
> It's the legal team's job to push back on any new requests for data.
The legal team's ethics are not in question. They are upholding their fiduciary duty to be proactive, energetic representatives of what they consider -- or have been instructed -- is in Google's best interests.
Google is also perfectly capable of instructing its lawyers to drop this argument.
They have clearly chosen not to do so. It does them no credit.
One interesting point would be to check pay gap data across countries. We would see if Google is caring a little about these issues or is completely in a no-fuck-given mode where minorities and gender gaps issues are put after their profit.
This gender discrimination lawsuit is likely total b.s. From an overly zealous agency. It's a simple fact that on average men are 1) much better at engineering type things, and 2) more interested in them. Just like the average woman is obviously better with babies than the average man.
While I don't know the facts of the case, so I can't say if there really was gender discrimination, I suspect when actual differences in contribution are accounted for, the gap goes away.
It's a woman's world, because winning requires complaining the loudest. Men usually don't complain nearly so much as women so they get stomped in court and public opinion.
I guess Uber is no longer the popular tech company to rip into. I've seen some articles surfacing about Facebook, they'll probably be the next people to hate for a little while.
Everything about this is so wrong. It all comes down to laundering money out of Google, thinly veiled with this false idea of "justice" from incorrectly used statistics.
Can someone explain how they would be able to get away with paying women less than men?
And if your answer is: "They just pay them less."
1) Why? What is the purpose of them doing this?
2) Why don't they also just pay men less as well?
3) Wages trend, in a competitive market, towards marginal productivity of labor. What is preventing competitors in the market for engineers from poaching all of the underpaid yet equally talented women at below market costs, say half the gap Google is assumed to be creating? Surely this would be a clear path towards extra profits, no?
Wages are set by supply and demand. Systematic discrimination results in less demand for women, which results in lower wages.
There is some profit opportunity for companies who take advantage of this, but it's not enough to erase the difference.
Consider, for example, how pervasive racial discrimination was (and still is) in business despite the fact that accepting minorities as customers and employees would be financially advantageous.
Why don't the people (like you) that exist in different businesses (don't tell me you think there are 0) hire the underpaid women, either for a small raise, or a complete gap-eliminating raise? Surely you don't think you're a lone voice supporting wage equality.. just look at this thread.
They'd either be doing a purely altruistic social good righting the injustice of sexist wage discrimination and/or making more money. That both avenues exist, implying enormous incentives, the discriminatory gap should disappear. Why isn't this happening? When Bezos said "Your margin is my opportunity"? Did he secretly imply an asterisk to that statement carving out the unspoken rule that he and his competitors certainly would not compete for the underpaid women labor?
You use the example of racial discrimination. So, is Silicon Valley filled to the brim with sexist hiring managers?
Are there no whistle blowers courageous enough to out their bosses that refused to pay equal rates when confronted with the discrepancies? The tech industry is one of the most progressive... are you telling me these progressive minded people are standing idly by at best or actively carrying out this travesty at worst?
"That both avenues exist, implying enormous incentives, the discriminatory gap should disappear."
But it doesn't. You can talk about "should" all you want but ultimately you need to look at the world.
I don't have answers to all of your questions. Certainly some companies are being hurt by this, and others take advantage. That doesn't eliminate the problem unless you believe in perfectly efficient markets with no friction, barriers to entry, etc.
Those are all questions that naturally follow from the assumption that men (women too?) are discriminating against women against the best interests of the companies they work for because .... well I'm not sure you've spelled out the motive... but essentially "sexism"? It doesn't sound plausible when everywhere you look you have people shouting on the rooftops about how women deserve equal pay. So who the hell isnt paying them equally?
Suppose I have two equaly good candidates for a job with only two differences.
1. Gender (man vs woman)
2. salary expectations (man wants 10% more than woman)
I could hire the woman and pay less because "sexism" or because it increases my profit (nobody knows for sure). My competitor will hire the man because the woman already has a job. Next time my competitor is faster and hires the woman and I'm left with the man and have to pay him 10% more.
Why would the man in this scenario want more than the woman? Isn't this whole argument predicated on women wanting money they aren't getting? If the women don't want the money then what are we upset about?
We're (I assumed) talking about companies mandating lower wages for women.
If the whole argument for some presumptive gender pay gap is that women demand less money, this would:
1) Be fixed by directing all of the ire and heat associated with this topic at the message:
"Women. Demand more money. If there's a gap, this explains it and therefore the power is in your hands."
Is the "pay gap" politicized as a "Women aren't asking/expecting to get paid enough money in negotiations. They need to do this. We will work to get women to demand what they are worth."
Or, is it framed as: "America business is sexist. Our modern economy is sexist. Women are ---getting paid--- less than men as a result, and we need to change this." ?
2) Not the responsibility, or "fault" of companies paying wages the market will bear... or if you think it is, you're banging your head against a wall thinking you're going to get economic actors to act against their self interest when the path of least resistance is to get the other side of the transaction to act in theirs.
But since it's a contradiction to think equally qualified, motivated women don't want more money, then we can assume women want to get paid what they can get.
So we're left with the company being the one pushing wages down only on women, but not men. Because they're all sexist. Even the people in this thread who oppose the pay gap.. when it comes time to take part in hiring decisions they put their sexist hat on and line up for the patriarchy.
^Here's a strongly sympathetic post in support of the issue of "gender pay gap". They are true believers. Yet, lets look a little closer shall we:
Note how far down the page this little gem is placed:
"Nationally, when we control for job title, job level and other important influencers of wages (like years of work experience), women still only make 98 cents for every dollar earned by men."
98, my friend. Did you realize this whole controversy is over a 2% gap?
The pay gap (as popularly understood) does not exist. The data shows this. It is a political issue, as well as a cultural one, taking a stand on what certain people believe women should do with their life. They should not have to bear the burden of child rearing, and should want to have professional career ambitions equivalent to that of the average man. This is the position taken and pushed by activists concerned with the gender pay gap. One can be open to the viewpoint, like I am, that women should absolutely be encouraged to have a professional career, if they think that is right for them, and be compensated commensurate with their value. I'm not in support of socially mandating that path as the only acceptable, respectable one. I'm certainly not supportive of politicizing the issue of gender differences as it relates to family, career, and relationships etc by fooling people into believing that since "the average per person salary for all women across all jobs across all levels is 77% of the avg for all men across all jobs across all levels" is some economic and social crisis we have to politicize and legislate away. Its a wedge issue to create division.
>98, my friend. Did you realize this whole controversy is over a 2% gap?
I'll mention two things: the first is that other studies find that the 2% is closer to 5 or 7%. Still not 23 or 25%, but more significant. The second is that even that 2% number, over a lifetime and with interest is very likely something like an extra year's worth of income. That means retiring a year earlier, which I'd say is very significant.
They're great questions, and important questions. But if you're asking them rhetorically to argue that sexism doesn't affect pay, you've got things backwards.
Start with the data. See how men and women's pay stacks up. Once you know the outcome, then start asking questions about how it happens. (Note that I'm not saying what answer you'll find, only that you need to find the answer by looking at what happens, rather than making basic economic arguments.)
There are only two possibilities here. Either there is a wage gap, or there is not. If there is not, then you're being awfully strident about something where you could instead just point out "hey, this doesn't actually happen, here are the numbers." And if there is a gap, then your rhetorical questions don't eliminate it, so either the implication is wrong or there's something else going on.
I find arguments from economic efficiency and profit motive to be highly unconvincing. If stuff actually worked that way then you wouldn't have, for example, store brand products next to identical name brand products selling at a higher price, or a million other economically inefficient human behaviors we see.
What do we make of this statement, buried somewhat deep in the article (I would have made this the first line of the post):
"Nationally, when we control for job title, job level and other important influencers of wages (like years of work experience), women still only make 98 cents for every dollar earned by men."
I've seen similar from other studies, including a Harvard study that gets cited often.
I'm strident because I 100% think this is a political issue. It's gender politics. It's perhaps a lot of things. If the issue doesn't exist (certainly to the extent of "77% gap oh my!"), why do so many people get caught up in proclaiming the issue is a crisis?
I think it is a purposefully divisive issue who's propagation has serious consequences for women who are instilled with the idea they are being actively discriminated against, and who are lectured constantly that the only way they can be respected in modern society is by joining the workforce and being equally as career minded as the average ambitious man.
This social advocacy is perfectly fine. People can have a position on what they think the ideal role of women or men or whoever in society is. But be honest about it. And be tolerant of other viewpoints (namely, that perhaps many women would be happier at home, and those who otherwise would not be highly motivated to move up the corporate ladder shouldn't be shamed into having to do so.)
And damnit, be explicit about what you mean by "gap". Equal job, equal experience, equal "apples to apples" the gap is 2%.
If you don't see the obvious fact that people not explicitly stating the actual gap instead of disingenuously fooling people into believing it is 23%, then you won't understand why I'm strident about the issue. Those pushing it are without question strident about it, are they not?
Why not just post that study and be done? I think you've missed the point of my comment, which is that making these vague economic arguments is completely pointless. They tell us nothing about what's actually happening. If you want to point out that the wage gap isn't very big then say it's been measured and isn't very big.
I don't mind that you're strident about it, I mind that you're strident about pushing a bad argument.
My take is that Google isn't doing this intentionally - in fact, all salaries are generated by a "compensation team" which supposedly has an algorithm that generates an offer based on prior comp history, other offers, etc - and I believe it probably also specifies how much wiggle room there is for negotiating (granted, I have not seen said algorithm - this is based on my experience as a candidate). It's a system designed to be fair - gender is not taken directly into the equation. This is what Google means when they say that there is no gender pay gap - how could there be, when salaries are generated by an algorithm that doesn't take gender into account? A man and a woman with an equal compensation history and the same counter offers should, in theory, get the same Google offer.
However - it's entirely possible for the inputs into the algorithm to be skewed based on gender, and that's where I think the systematic gap may appear. A person's salary history can be incredibly gendered - women are less likely to negotiate for their first job (even if it wasn't at Google), and that initial gap can follow them for their entire career. Women are more likely to take time out of the workforce to care for family/children, which can result in lower pay when they return. Other companies known for high counteroffers (for example, Uber) may be biased against women and be less likely to give them a good offer. There are any number of reasons why a woman might have less negotiating leverage against Google than a man, and as long as offers are based on these inputs and not strictly on level and performance, it is easy to see how a gender gap might arise.
But if that's what causes the gender gap -- things like starting salary and time off from career, and men with those similar features receive similar pay -- then it's not a problem of sexism, at least, not on the part of Google. (I don't mean breaks on the maternal leave scale, eg months, I mean breaks of years.)
I've noticed that many of these complaints about gendered things are arguments for a particular social arrangement (eg, no consequence to a break in career) and not arguments against sexism, as such.
I don't think we shoukd be using equality laws as a bludgeon to effect changes in society outside of things like sexism or racism: that's what causes Trumpian backlashes. Most people are onboard woth fighting sexism; it becomes a mixed bag when talking about proposals like "taking years off should have no result on earnings".
Right - I'm not saying Google is sexist. I think they try very hard not to be.
But, if the end result is that a man and a woman doing the exact same job with the same perf ratings at Google are paid differently, because the woman happened to be paid less at her previous job - is that fair?
There is a reason that NYC just outlawed companies asking for salary history.
If you're not concerned with it being sexist, why the focus on men and women? Would you be equally concerned if men and women were paid in aggregate the same, but the subclass of each that negotiated worse was paid less?
I just find it dishonest to frame the question as about men and women, as you did just now, if your concern is that people who negotiate a worse first salary are paid less. You're at best co-opting an unrelated issue.
I would say that in answer to your question, it's not fair, just as it wasn't when it happened to two men, but I'm not sure it's something we should change.
I'm also going to say that you should stop framing it as a gender equality issue when it's not -- it's a capitalism implementation issue.
> Women are more likely to take time out of the workforce to care for family/children, which can result in lower pay when they return.
I mean, what do you propose should be done to combat this? Should people who put more time into their career not be rewarded more?
Further, you don't even need women to take time out more often from the workforce for there to be a problem. The current Median Age at Marriage for the USA[0] shows that men marry women about ~2 years younger. Assuming that both partners take equal time to care for the family, and assuming both partners started their careers at the same time, the moment the average married couple gets a baby they will skew ~3 career years(~2 + pregnancy) towards the man, until they get close to retirement age. Even if they split the family effort equally, those 3 years on average will still be in favor of the man, accruing more career experience and thus better pay.
This is not a Google specific thing, it happens in almost every company in the United States. Salesforce is a great public example of a company trying to eliminate gender bias in pay and they are having trouble doing it with constant internal monitoring/feedback. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/04/compani...
Also since Google claims to be gender neutral yet unable to reveal the data, we can't judge whether or not the problem is if pay is tied to position - is it similar to the original programmer salary question, did the pay go up because the culture changed or do fields requiring a lot of time in the office just get more salary - https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/09/what-pr...
You're assuming they're equally talented, you don't actually know that to be the case. Even if that assumption is correct, talent isn't the only factor that determines salary. I don't think employers actually have the data they need to ensure the wages they pay closely correlate with productivity. If Google isn't intentionally paying women less because they are women, then I think the answers to these questions pretty much has to be 1. Because they can & to save money 2. Because they can't 3. Because they're operating under the same set of assumptions as everyone else in the industry, and better heuristics would probably cost more than they'd save on labor.
> Wages trend, in a competitive market, towards marginal productivity of labor.
In a equilibrium model based on perfectly identical, perfectly rational agents, yes.
And in a model of horseracing based on perfect, identical spheres rolling down a perfectly smooth slope, all race results will trend towards the acceleration predicted by g. And yet we observe differences in reality and accept that observable reality, not the model, is correct.
Equilibrium models are useful, but once you add the ability for agents to have varying preferences according to which other agent they are interacting with, you get emergent behaviour that doesn't show up in the original models.
Women are just less aggressive when negotiating and are more agreeable than men. It's statistics and it's obviously biological.
Women also feel satisfied with compensation at one moment and have no desire to increase their working hours/responsibilities for a meager (if any) improvement in their quality of life (that would appear with higher salary). Men on the other hand, seem to have more of those crazy individuals that waste enormous hours and overachieve despite the meager improvement in quality of life, if we ignore the bragging rights it gives them. Also statistics, and obviously biology.
Not to mention the fact that accomplished women most often have older and more accomplished men as partners, which also removes an incentive for them to make more money.
It is also the case that women do accept part-time work positions (which makes them earn less) more than men.
There are inherent differences between men and women, not only in biology but also in the brain/psychology.
In general, Men have a higher diversity in IQ and Risk Taking.
The TL;DR is that Men will have a tendency to take higher risks than women, which is then rewarded more, if it succeeds, however, it is punished more severely when one fails. Punishment generally involved poverty and unemployment.
This doesn't mean women cannot take risks, just that they have a lesser inclination to.
Negotiation for a wage on your job is a form of risk taking, in case of failure you can certainly sour your work relationships which ruins your long-term income projection.
Right, I'm not disputing that there are obvious biological differences. Why do you think that the statistical difference between men and women at intellectual performance (for which I haven't seen numbers, but I'm not disputing) is due entirely to biological differences? It seems foolish to reject environmental influences off-hand.
I'm not fully rejecting environmental influences, however the biological influences play a much grander role for most of the population than environmental influences.
There will be exceptions but they're not the norm.
Point three seems to be assuming that the Efficient Market Hypothesis is true, but it is called a hypothesis precisely because it has not been proven to be true.
Suppose that there's compelling statistical evidence that Google underpays women, but no evidence of any specific intent to do so (which, IIRC, is how these things usually play out). Beyond the immediate legal remedies, how do they they fundamentally fix the processes that led to that outcome? Would they even really know where the leaks are in this machinery that admit such biases? How many other companies have the same fundamental problems that go unexamined because their outcomes happen to not suggest a legal issue (e.g. a bias based on alma mater, favorite movies, shared hobbies, etc.)?
> Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.¹
Yet this particular bit of information is too expensive to make accessible and useful. They have this giant correlation machine, and they don't use it to know as much as they can about their own company? How convenient.
I know, "one does not simply", but still: aren't you supposed to keep salary records anyway. Wouldn't you keep them even if you didn't have to, just in case? Wouldn't you run some statistics over them, just to see the trends?
Obviously, as rayiner says, Alphabet have other reason not to hand over the data.
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[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 247 ms ] threadShouldn’t all this data be in a single consistent database anyway? I mean, Google can manage all historic payments people do via their payment processor, but can’t manage all historic wage payments automatically?
Based on what I know I find it inconceivable that Google doesn't have this data in a spreadsheet that could be emailed in a few seconds to whoever needs to see it.
You can testify against yourself too if you want to, it doesn't matter that you don t have to. Well, maybe if you have committed a crime you should since you said you're a good person and don't do evil? The amount of smart people thinking and buying the idea that all the social issues companies are working for are being done for nothing besides win your mind and heart amazes me. And then you say advertising doesn't work?!
Aren't Asians "overpaid" in the US tech industry? Any investigations into this? Of course not. This stinks of hidden agenda.
It also makes you wonder about their statements that they have no gender pay gap. If you can't get the data together, how do you "know"?
We won't achieve parity in the workplace simply because there is no parity in STEM programs (and particularly in Computer Science).
So, if everything was done w/ IA, I would just force a 50/50 split for employees to encourage girls to take up coding classes (at the tiny expense of coding abilities).
Total Cost = Cost to acquire data ($200,000) + Back pay to employees ($20,000,000)
I predict that the Golden years of FB and Google are right now, they will slowly head into a plateau
As for Facebook, I think anyone who ever had a positive opinion of them should be evaluated by a psychiatrist.
You clearly don't understand what a manager does if you believe what they do isn't work.
But then again, managers are very skilled at power games, and the ultimate sign of power is taking credit for what your subordinates produced.
The terms "Googley" and "Googler" quickly became the equivalent of nails on a chalkboard to me thanks to these people.
I would. Where do I sign up?
IMO both of them are already on a plateau. Google keeps abandoning products, Facebook keeps buying promising startups and quietly shuts them down (Google does it too). In Google this mostly happens due to some weird geekdom culture / peer pressure thing (coding hipster-ism?), and in Facebook it's more like "we want to conquer the world".
Both companies' strategies are not sustainable. The world is already catching up and I suspect that now it's time for suing the hell out of everybody who isn't sharing their vision while being even slightly competitive to them (opinion, not a fact, no evidence for that, don't kill me).
One only needs to follow recent HN for news about decentralization efforts and slightly increased amount of articles about self-hosting to understand that a good part of the tech world is getting fed up with Google and Facebook.
Please tell me that your focus on "contracts" doesn't mean you are a sincere, "omg the right to contracts" libertarian?
No .. I just understand that's how most Western legal jurisdictions work.
Hadn't considered the compensation claim aspect but surely it could be argued it's just an emergent pattern - not as a result of any policy decision?
Would be a very interesting test-case ...
If/when the government does that, I think 2 things happen:
1. the government announces some punitive action against Google; things they must do, things they must pay, etc;
2. the probability of every Jane, Jill, and Hillary who worked for Google winning a wage discrimination case skyrockets, at least some workers file such cases or enter negotiations to settle such discrimination.
The Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 means (pardon my rough summarization) that a worker can sue over discriminatory pay even if the discrimination / 'lost' wages occurred a while ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilly_Ledbetter_Fair_Pay_Act_o...
Can we please focus on rational arguments instead of insults and ad hominems? This country needs much more rational discussion (like the previous comments) and much less name-calling.
On the meta-discourse level: is it appropriate to make fun of a belief that one honestly believes is Bad if I don't say that person X holds that belief and hence is bad?
In my public schooling, I had two year-long classes about the structure and function of the United States government. One was in middle school and one was in high school; I was not required to take any course on the subject as part of undergrad. Neither course taught me much more about courts than that the Supreme Court is the highest court of appeal and interprets the Constitutionality of laws.
Courts are complicated and laws and regulations are different from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but there are some fundamental, low-level principles that apply to proceedings across most (possibly all?) courts in the US. An educated citizenry in the US would, ideally, have at least some exposure to these fundamentals; these basic principles (which would include at least a little on contracts) are too important for the vast majority of the population (i.e. almost all non-lawyers) to not understand.
I told a lawyer friend about this idea and she strongly agreed. She said that her sister had taken an undergrad class which roughly fit my description-- "pre-pre-law" was how she described it. Her sister's evaluation of the course was that it's description of legal principles and their operation in courts helped explain a lot of the mechanics of how government, private institutions, and society function.
Still, people should be less sensitive on the internet.
[2] Most educated adults, including me, are not lawyers and so do not know precisely when a contract is or is not enforceable, because the legal system is complex and arcane. This is distasteful to many because anyone who takes himself as an authority on what is just/unjust/moral/immoral is naturally liable to feel they should therefore be an authority on what is legal/illegal (since legality is intended to codify justice and morality or something like that). I suspect that many contracts-uber-alles-like sentiments (some of which I have entertained myself from time to time) stem from this unconscious yearning to know a priori what is legal or enforceable.
But I was given to thinking property law and contract law were the fundaments of US law too?
A contract based on lies is fraud.
The information asymytry here is huge. It's worse than a sleazy car salesman showing a customer a doctored blue-book to inflate the price of an old junker.
The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs asked the technology giant to submit information in September 2015 about its equal opportunity program and to provide supporting documents as part of a scheduled compliance review. As a federal contractor, Google must agree to permit the federal government to inspect and copy records and information relevant to its compliance with the equal employment laws administered by OFCCP.
Google employees would be none the wiser about the fairness of their wages.
Source: US DoL website, https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/ofccp/ofccp20170104
Took a shower!
I think Google is being disrespectful to the citizens of this country. They are relying on leveraging this social movement of keeping the government out of their private lives. As if some old greasy fart, is sitting in some underground secluded vault reading your emails, texts, and whatever just for fun. But you have Google, Facebook, Apple, Uber, Microsoft, Twitter and so on writing complex algorithms to monetize where you have been, where you are, where you are going, what you read, how you shop, what you buy, using your phone to listen in on what commercials you are watching, where you are in the mall, who you are with, when you sleep and how you sleep or maybe even who you are sleeping with, what toys you buy, your phone number, extracting data from your emails and on and on. And these companies throw these pages of EULA agreements at you, and they know you don’t read them. They have an algorithm for that. Then some of these companies have the audacity to state that the “MAY SHARE” the data with third parties. Really? So just what part of your life do you consider PRIVATE? And more importantly, just what do you consider PRIVATE? And what do these companies tell you what their objective is in collecting all this data? “We are enhancing the consumers experience!”. If they really wanted to “enhance the consumer’s experience” allow the consumer the “OPT IN” and not throw a bunch of convoluted Setting screens to with obtuse worded options to “OPT OUT”. That is a lot of data that they extract, analyze and monetize. And Google says the Department of Labor’s request is more that they can handle and too costly to extract. How the heck do they even send out employee’s W-2s?
That being said, and considering that a part of my job is to help gather data from 50+ différents sources with diferent data models, I can agree with google on one point. Gathering data from one point going forward is easy, gathering historical data from a system not designed with logging in mind is a huge pain.
As is usually forbidden in most democracy to issue a law with retroactive effects, it's maybe not a good thing to expect that retroactive dataset should be mandatory. That more of a work for historians and social-science researchers.
Sure, it might not be as easy as "just a SQL query". But if they can make cars which drive themselves, they can figure this out.
Googles 100k assertion here is bullshit. They did a calculation that handing that data over, or even just collating it, would leave them in a worse position than fighting it.
Would they actually be able to do that? Google has offices in many cities in many states, and in many countries. Different offices could be subject to different rules and regulations and reporting requirements when it comes to handling payroll. This could require that they keep different information in their system depending on where the employee works.
I'd guess that it might be cleaner and more robust to have separate systems in each office or region that keep this data for the relevant employers, rather than having one central system that is designed to store the union of everything anyplace Google might open an office requires.
It seems plausible to me that all they have in some central system is broad aggregate information, such as the total payroll for each office or region, with all the interesting details distributed.
Further proof women (!!ON AVERAGE!!) just do not perform as well as men IN THIS INDUSTRY.
It should absolutely be solved, somehow, but it's not by harassing a company that hires women for what they're worth.
My personal theory is that women are so cherished - they aren't held to the same standards in education. We try to pull them into the CS department by making it easy for them. That should stop. It's ridiculing women, and making them into inferior workers.
At the same time women need to proactively become 'beta' and study exact sciences. Put in their fair share of the effort.
Fucking social sciences are "fun and easy" - and women outnumber men there.
I think women should man the fuck up already. Don't get fair salary? Go away. That's what men do.
It sounds weird, but think of it this way: If women came at a discount, why would you ever hire men? At least some companies should realize this.
Truth is you can't find a good woman programmer.
Edit: it would be nice if people could explain why they are downvoting me. What was off with my comment? I cannot improve my comments unless you leave a comment yourselves on how I can do that. I found the comment (now flagged) to be particularly abrasive. I go into detail with the arguments in a grandchild comment to this post.
I would appreciate it if you would comment on that, instead.
Indeed, if women were systematically underpaid despite equivalent performance, I find it hard to believe they wouldn't be hired by the boatload. This might be explained by (1) a lack of women relative to men in the developer workforce and (2) a systematic bias in competence.
It's not prima facie absurd to think that affirmative action efforts have perverse effects, namely that they push the actual selection based on competence to a later stage of the employment pipeline.
I understand this isn't a conclusive argument, but it does have some merit, and I'm worried by the fact that just bringing it up has one labeled a misogynist. That's not the way forward.
> Truth is you can't find a good woman programmer
It's manifestly untrue.
Perhaps you could tease out the parts that have some merit and paraphrase them without the gratuitous swearing so that the rest of us can see it.
Yes, the OP is irate, and no he should not have let that irritation show through, but I insist that the substance of his arguments are not without merit.
> it deserves flagging, not a retort
Censoring opinions you don't like is not the way forward. There's a reason these discussions are so polarized, and your attitude is largely responsible for it. I implore you to stop.
That's like witnessing an arson and calling out the person who called the firemen as responsible for shit being on fire.
And I see no relevant or mininally intelligent substance in the argument. "Woman are cherished"?? In his anedocte might be, my personal perception is completely opposite. Woman are mistreated and have a harder life than man since young age. So, if he is not referring any serious base for this claim, I believe he is just mysoginist.
"Woman are not good programmers"?? Another fantasy in his mind that create a good story for his mind.
I would appreciate if you try to comment whatever you found of merit in the substance of his comment
>It should absolutely be solved, somehow, but it's not by harassing a company that hires women for what they're worth.
This is starting out at the point that the difference in wages arises out of how much the person is "worth", which may be true but I can't see any evidence for it, nor how you could accurately judge this.
>My personal theory is that women are so cherished - they aren't held to the same standards in education. We try to pull them into the CS department by making it easy for them. That should stop. It's ridiculing women, and making them into inferior workers.
This "personal theory" sounds like rubbish. Is there anything to support it, even anecdotal evidence? I find it hard to believe that CS courses are made easier for the purpose of bringing more women into them, and by their logic, it would also mean that the men who come out of CS degrees are also "inferior workers", so his previous argument collapses on itself. What's the merit in that?
>At the same time women need to proactively become 'beta' and study exact sciences. Put in their fair share of the effort.
Why exactly? Why can't women (and anyone) study what motivates them? And I think the conception that "soft sciences" (inexact?) are easy is quite demeaning to those who study it, and somewhat humorously the commenter is making this point having just earlier complained that CS being made easy is itself demeaning to women. What about this part of the comment?
>Fucking social sciences are "fun and easy" - and women outnumber men there.
So what if women outnumber men? So what if men outnumber women? Is the commenter saying that women choose social sciences because they're "fun and easy"? I'm sure some people find CS "fun and easy", too. Or some don't find it fun and easy. My friend is doing Sociology and he doesn't find it easy.
>I think women should man the fuck up already. Don't get fair salary? Go away. That's what men do.
Ignoring the fact that "man the fuck up" betrays and indeed perpetuates this commenter's perception that manliness equates to moral character and strength (itself a patriarchal conception), it does a disservice to our society to say that people should just leave rather than bargain for equitable treatment. Would the commenter say the same about unions for example? After all, union workers should just "man the fuck up already or go away if they don't get a fair salary"? It's an affront to worker rights.
>It sounds weird, but think of it this way: If women came at a discount, why would you ever hire men? At least some companies should realize this.
Because to my knowledge most countries have laws against companies which hire or fire only based on gender/sex. I don't know if the gender pay gap is "real" (I haven't done enough searching on this myself), and if it exists I do not know to what extent it exists (I know that there are various inaccurate or false figures floating around the Internet).
>Truth is you can't find a good woman programmer.
This is ridiculous and ignores the fact that there are plenty of female programmers.
Out of interest, where do you find merit in these arguments?
Edit: Why is this comment being downvoted? I have tried to make a calm and cogent response to the GP comment. Would the downvoters care to explain, please?
But not, say, (3) a systematic bias in hiring practices.
Heaven forbid!
You seem to be saying that he should not be lambasted because underneath everything else he wrote, there may be a proposition that is at least debatable. This ignores the fact that he deliberately presented himself in that manner, and deserves to be judged on that, not on how you might present it. Freedom of speech does not protect you from being misunderstood; much less does it protect you from being clearly understood.
Or (3) because a huge proportion of perceived performance is subjective. I can't find a study right now, but e.g. http://fortune.com/2014/08/26/performance-review-gender-bias... make a decent argument towards women receiving qualitatively different performance feedback to men.
That said, the difference isn't really big and I don't think the women have it any easier, if we accept that their innate ability is lower than the men's. It's computers, not rocket science, it's not that hard after all.
This is disconcerting to hear, and certainly not appropriate. It's not okay to talk about women in that way. As a student in uni, women do just as week and are given just as difficult material as men.
Your comment is off color and mildly mysogenistic.
Wanna bet?
actually I also think that not only in germany near freiburg are less woman programmers, I'm pretty sure that MINT is still "not that cool" for woman. the number was raised the last years and still climbs but it's nowhere near a 50:50 sadly
What data are you talking about?
Would you like to explain why you think that happened? And why it's such a drastic turnaround from how things used to be?
(remember: in earlier days a much higher percentage of programmers and other computer-adjacent technical people were women, compared to today. The demographics we see today are a change from that, which cries out for explanation)
That's why I also think that the young life of children should be way more non stereotypical. we should stop giving our children different colors and different toys because of gender, that would start to stop thinking in genders.
From my personal standpoint, I have a niche (5 years old) and she actually wished herself a friend book, and I wanted to have one that is as neutral as possible. And I can tell, that this is not that easy. a lot of them sub 60%-70% do actually favor a gender, either with their art cover __or__ worse with their question. I think such a thing is definitv one of the reason why there was a shift and why there still is a shift/difference between what man do and what woman do. it's good that my niche does not get raised this way since my sister also helps her grow with other stuff (and she likes that stuff), like a workbench.
P.S.: I'm a guy and I hate it that a lot of people still think that girls needs to be raised with different toys. That is probably the starting point of discrimination and job inequality.
Edit: Well I think there are many more aspects why things are like they are, but this is probably one of the starting points and a big point that should be somewhat addressed.
The times when women were much more likely to be in computing were not only times when the western world was at war.
For example - my MSc course in computer science had 30 people total, and out of them 3 were women. Of course, it's outrageous that only 10% of the students in that course were women, but that's a deeper problem that needs to be addressed far earlier than MSc level.
However, put yourself in shoes of a company recruiting programmers - you need to hire 1-2 programmers out of those 30 graduates. If you say that you only want to look at exam results and nothing else(completely blind choice) what is the chance that they will end up with a woman programmer? Very low, but it's not because women are any less skilled - it's just that there's fewer of them.
That's the problem that needs to be addressed first.
(For the sake of argument, I would say that if we looked for some predominantly female roles, like a nanny, the same would apply - "you just can't find a good male nanny" seems true, but it's not because men are any worse at it, it's just that there's so few of them in this profession)
The more balanced your team is, the more balanced your team culture is, and therefore the better chance you will have of retaining good people and the good balance.
- "it's hard to find a woman programmer in the top 1%" because women can't be good programmers due to their biology
- "it's hard to find a woman programmer in the top 1%" because our society failed to train and produce them
The second statement isn't inherently sexist, it's just an observation of the poor state of our world.
If you're familiar with programming/math competitions you'll know that there are not many female represented there even after taking into account their smaller population: http://www.topcoder.com/tc?module=AlgoRank. There are probably 500 "red" coders (which is roughly the top 1%) but with probably less than a handful who are female. All you need is a username to compete so it's pretty objective and gender-blinded.
So it seems exceptional female programmers are simply not being produced even as early as high school and college level. Google interviews are very similar to those competition so I assume their data will also uncomfortably show this.
Any time I try to tell people that I kick ass at anything at all, even just as an excellent mom, it is a total fucking beat down. It simply isn't okay for a woman to admit she is that good at anything at all. Ever. For any damn reason.
This means if you are a highly competent woman and you want to survive in this world, you learn to shut the fuck up about it. It also means that you are routinely denied the same opportunities as the men who are, in fact, allowed to say "Yup, I am that damn good" without it being a total fucking beat down.
Furthermore, breaking into a male dominated field tends to be a shit show where a woman has to put up with endless harassment by men who would hit that because Oh My God, It's a Girl! And she is interested in the same thing I am!!! The price of admission is just vastly higher than for men. You need far more than to just be as technically competent as the guys. You also need to be incredibly savvy about handling the endless social BS, incredibly thick skinned and so on. And then you still need to not brag lest it turn into a shit show and beat down for that reason.
Please don't create accounts to break HN's guidelines with.
But obvious sexism directed at belittling the skill of female programmers (Some of whom are regular HN readers) doesn't warrant a ban in itself?
Saying "There are no good [insert-race-or-sex-or-sexual-orientation-here] programmers" is not just an off-hand inflammatory comment. It's an attack on a portion of your own reader base who already are frequently made to feel out of place here.
This assumption that most women didn't properly "earn" their status as engineers and can't be true equals to male peers is misogyny through and through. I've had a customer on AWS support not take my troubleshooting seriously (on a subject I was the top expert on no less),and demand to be transferred for no reason. I transferred him, then literally fed the other engineer the exact words I was giving him before and troubleshooter through his chat, and suddenly the customer was happy. The only difference was that my name was obviously female, and my coworker's name was obviously male. The effects of this mentality on a woman's career are real, and its lame. Kind of shocking to see you so non-chalant about it when some of your YC peers like Cadran have done so much to bring attention to it.
I'm all for free discussion on HN, but anyone who says that is not engaging in good faith.
From a job listing for the North America Payroll Core Operations Lead: https://www.glassdoor.com/job-listing/north-america-payroll-... "Advanced scripting and extensive UltiPro knowledge"
If they were honest enough, they would have found a way to comply. This is just their attempt at lawyering out of the situation.
I've witnessed what you describe about women preference in Australia and I'm afraid this culture gets contagious in France. Women get a complete different privileged pathway to jobs, yet studies keep studying "How men and women get educated differently". Here's what I'm doing, and it's time all men do it too:
- Started a Youtube channel to provide a counter-analysis to common misconceptions. For example I've dismantled every second of the Always #LikeAGirl ad spot.
- Started writing to every single institution that isn't compliant to male equality (i.e. every time an institution is dedicated to women, such as France's "Family and Women's Rights Minister", or France's subventions to help women's careers.
- Started petitions on Change.org against political parties who, in their "Gender Equality" chapter, help women for tiny inconveniences and don't help men for e.g. their 3x higher suicide rates. That means calling for people like Trump vote if Hillary's program treats men as disposable. Her exact words, which participated to electing Trump, were: "Women have always been the primary victims of war. Women lose their husbands, their fathers, their sons in combat." I can't explain enough the level of disdain the general politics represent towards men (and this disdain against men dangerously fuels things like Trump, Brexit, FN, etc).
- Ideally I'd like to attack institutions for illegal discrimination when they officially discriminate men (ex: Gender-based help programs), but that requires putting my name in public, and I'm afraid of violent actions.
Equality will be when men defend themselves as much as women. Go find a petition today and sign it, at the very least.
Maybe better in the long run to not be seen as an easy mark, even if it causes some short term pain.
Obviously the real reason is that Google doesn't want to hand over the data. But you should never just hand data over to the government. Government lawyers can get pretty creative with spreadsheets of numbers.
This isn't just Google, it's important for all businesses to remember that the lawyers focus on the law, and done usually have access to the bigger picture. And even if they do, it's not their job to deal with it, they focus on winning in the legal arena.
I know one international telecoms company deliberately dragged out a legal case about pensions for well over a decade - of course many potential beneficiary's died during the case
http://money.cnn.com/2005/08/05/technology/google_cnet/
It's a court case. The attorneys wouldn't be doing their job if they didn't use every legal means at their disposal.
And they may in fact have a point (to an extent). Government shouldn't be able to accuse a firm of something, then demand the firm spend money assembling data to prove the governments case. The fact Google "makes a bunch of money so no big deal" (which is what the .gov attorneys are apparently arguing) is irrelevant to that principal.
First of all: when you sue someone, you do get to demand exactly that. They also get to demand it of you! It's called "discovery", and it's a bog-standard basic normal everyday part of lawsuits.
Second of all: if you have a look through the reporting on this, Google was being audited for compliance with equal-pay laws and refused to supply records the government said were relevant to the audit. So the government is now suing to force Google to hand over the records. Auditors are allowed to do that, and being required to assemble and hand over information is pretty much the literal definition of an audit.
And fishing expeditions (at the firms cost) shouldn't be allowed. We'll see what the court decides.
1. Get out of business, or
2. There is no second option.
So until I do I'll have to answer "no" to your question.
Direct quote of you.
This is exactly what the government is allowed to do. This is exactly how an audit works when they think they've found something.
The government needs the information to determine whether the company is in compliance. The company has the information. How else would you solve this, besides the government having the power to compel production of the information?
This isn't how an "audit" works at all, an "audit" and an accusation are two different things entirely. Your bias has apparently led you into reading things that aren't there. A common fallacy so don't feel bad.
"The government needs information"
I'm not sure it really does to this extent, but assuming you are right, how much legal responsibility does Google have to provide it?
And this is exactly what we are going to find out from the courts. Back to the original point, the attorneys for Google have no duty, and in fact, every duty, to minimize the amount of information provided.
"Government shouldn't be able to accuse a firm of something, then demand the firm spend money assembling data to prove the governments case."
Try telling that to the IRS, or OSHA, or any one of a dozen other organizations tasked with certain aspect of US business oversight. If the IRS says "a preliminary investigation showed that you may be underpaying taxes, please show us business records for such-and-such" you absolutely have to do it. It has nothing to do with a lawsuit, even, although a lawsuit is certainly going to follow if you don't comply.
If OSHA says "there's a string of unusual injuries that we believe were easily preventable at your workplace, please turn over employee training records and we'd like to do a walkthrough of your work site" -- you can't just say "No"
In this case, Google, a federal contractor, is suspected by the Department of Labor for systematically underpaying women. They have EVERY RIGHT to request relevant US employee records. This isn't "asking Google to prove their case," this is a reasonable demand for data that they have the right to.
https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2017/04/salesforce-equal-pay...
All of that said, Google is not coming out looking like the good guy by fighting this case so hard. Their compensation analysts ought to be running these sorts of reports themselves. If they truly aren't, then that in itself is evidence (in my opinion) that Google is willfully neglecting its responsibility not to underpay its female employees.
>White males are certainly paid too much! They should make half of what minority employees do!
It certainly feels like this won't stop until that's the case.
>Its about bringing women and minorities to the same level.
I'm not sure I understand the difference? And I'm not sure other people do either. You're measuring from the average, so moving either moves the average which you're measuring from.
From my understanding, you cannot tell the difference, therefore:
"bringing down white males" == "bringing women and minorities to the same level"
>The comment is in poor taste
Personal perception. Nobody is telling anybody what to like or dislike. I had to read it twice to understand it, I think a little more obvious would have been better. But again, personal perception.
The legal team's ethics are not in question. They are upholding their fiduciary duty to be proactive, energetic representatives of what they consider -- or have been instructed -- is in Google's best interests.
Google is also perfectly capable of instructing its lawyers to drop this argument.
They have clearly chosen not to do so. It does them no credit.
While I don't know the facts of the case, so I can't say if there really was gender discrimination, I suspect when actual differences in contribution are accounted for, the gap goes away.
It's a woman's world, because winning requires complaining the loudest. Men usually don't complain nearly so much as women so they get stomped in court and public opinion.
Everything about this is so wrong. It all comes down to laundering money out of Google, thinly veiled with this false idea of "justice" from incorrectly used statistics.
And if your answer is: "They just pay them less."
1) Why? What is the purpose of them doing this?
2) Why don't they also just pay men less as well?
3) Wages trend, in a competitive market, towards marginal productivity of labor. What is preventing competitors in the market for engineers from poaching all of the underpaid yet equally talented women at below market costs, say half the gap Google is assumed to be creating? Surely this would be a clear path towards extra profits, no?
There is some profit opportunity for companies who take advantage of this, but it's not enough to erase the difference.
Consider, for example, how pervasive racial discrimination was (and still is) in business despite the fact that accepting minorities as customers and employees would be financially advantageous.
They'd either be doing a purely altruistic social good righting the injustice of sexist wage discrimination and/or making more money. That both avenues exist, implying enormous incentives, the discriminatory gap should disappear. Why isn't this happening? When Bezos said "Your margin is my opportunity"? Did he secretly imply an asterisk to that statement carving out the unspoken rule that he and his competitors certainly would not compete for the underpaid women labor?
You use the example of racial discrimination. So, is Silicon Valley filled to the brim with sexist hiring managers?
Are there no whistle blowers courageous enough to out their bosses that refused to pay equal rates when confronted with the discrepancies? The tech industry is one of the most progressive... are you telling me these progressive minded people are standing idly by at best or actively carrying out this travesty at worst?
But it doesn't. You can talk about "should" all you want but ultimately you need to look at the world.
I don't have answers to all of your questions. Certainly some companies are being hurt by this, and others take advantage. That doesn't eliminate the problem unless you believe in perfectly efficient markets with no friction, barriers to entry, etc.
1. Gender (man vs woman)
2. salary expectations (man wants 10% more than woman)
I could hire the woman and pay less because "sexism" or because it increases my profit (nobody knows for sure). My competitor will hire the man because the woman already has a job. Next time my competitor is faster and hires the woman and I'm left with the man and have to pay him 10% more.
We're (I assumed) talking about companies mandating lower wages for women. If the whole argument for some presumptive gender pay gap is that women demand less money, this would:
1) Be fixed by directing all of the ire and heat associated with this topic at the message:
"Women. Demand more money. If there's a gap, this explains it and therefore the power is in your hands." Is the "pay gap" politicized as a "Women aren't asking/expecting to get paid enough money in negotiations. They need to do this. We will work to get women to demand what they are worth."
Or, is it framed as: "America business is sexist. Our modern economy is sexist. Women are ---getting paid--- less than men as a result, and we need to change this." ?
2) Not the responsibility, or "fault" of companies paying wages the market will bear... or if you think it is, you're banging your head against a wall thinking you're going to get economic actors to act against their self interest when the path of least resistance is to get the other side of the transaction to act in theirs.
But since it's a contradiction to think equally qualified, motivated women don't want more money, then we can assume women want to get paid what they can get.
So we're left with the company being the one pushing wages down only on women, but not men. Because they're all sexist. Even the people in this thread who oppose the pay gap.. when it comes time to take part in hiring decisions they put their sexist hat on and line up for the patriarchy.
I leave you with this:
http://www.payscale.com/data-packages/gender-pay-gap
^Here's a strongly sympathetic post in support of the issue of "gender pay gap". They are true believers. Yet, lets look a little closer shall we:
Note how far down the page this little gem is placed:
"Nationally, when we control for job title, job level and other important influencers of wages (like years of work experience), women still only make 98 cents for every dollar earned by men."
98, my friend. Did you realize this whole controversy is over a 2% gap?
The pay gap (as popularly understood) does not exist. The data shows this. It is a political issue, as well as a cultural one, taking a stand on what certain people believe women should do with their life. They should not have to bear the burden of child rearing, and should want to have professional career ambitions equivalent to that of the average man. This is the position taken and pushed by activists concerned with the gender pay gap. One can be open to the viewpoint, like I am, that women should absolutely be encouraged to have a professional career, if they think that is right for them, and be compensated commensurate with their value. I'm not in support of socially mandating that path as the only acceptable, respectable one. I'm certainly not supportive of politicizing the issue of gender differences as it relates to family, career, and relationships etc by fooling people into believing that since "the average per person salary for all women across all jobs across all levels is 77% of the avg for all men across all jobs across all levels" is some economic and social crisis we have to politicize and legislate away. Its a wedge issue to create division.
I'll mention two things: the first is that other studies find that the 2% is closer to 5 or 7%. Still not 23 or 25%, but more significant. The second is that even that 2% number, over a lifetime and with interest is very likely something like an extra year's worth of income. That means retiring a year earlier, which I'd say is very significant.
Start with the data. See how men and women's pay stacks up. Once you know the outcome, then start asking questions about how it happens. (Note that I'm not saying what answer you'll find, only that you need to find the answer by looking at what happens, rather than making basic economic arguments.)
There are only two possibilities here. Either there is a wage gap, or there is not. If there is not, then you're being awfully strident about something where you could instead just point out "hey, this doesn't actually happen, here are the numbers." And if there is a gap, then your rhetorical questions don't eliminate it, so either the implication is wrong or there's something else going on.
I find arguments from economic efficiency and profit motive to be highly unconvincing. If stuff actually worked that way then you wouldn't have, for example, store brand products next to identical name brand products selling at a higher price, or a million other economically inefficient human behaviors we see.
http://www.payscale.com/data-packages/gender-pay-gap
What do we make of this statement, buried somewhat deep in the article (I would have made this the first line of the post):
"Nationally, when we control for job title, job level and other important influencers of wages (like years of work experience), women still only make 98 cents for every dollar earned by men."
I've seen similar from other studies, including a Harvard study that gets cited often.
I'm strident because I 100% think this is a political issue. It's gender politics. It's perhaps a lot of things. If the issue doesn't exist (certainly to the extent of "77% gap oh my!"), why do so many people get caught up in proclaiming the issue is a crisis?
I think it is a purposefully divisive issue who's propagation has serious consequences for women who are instilled with the idea they are being actively discriminated against, and who are lectured constantly that the only way they can be respected in modern society is by joining the workforce and being equally as career minded as the average ambitious man.
This social advocacy is perfectly fine. People can have a position on what they think the ideal role of women or men or whoever in society is. But be honest about it. And be tolerant of other viewpoints (namely, that perhaps many women would be happier at home, and those who otherwise would not be highly motivated to move up the corporate ladder shouldn't be shamed into having to do so.)
And damnit, be explicit about what you mean by "gap". Equal job, equal experience, equal "apples to apples" the gap is 2%.
If you don't see the obvious fact that people not explicitly stating the actual gap instead of disingenuously fooling people into believing it is 23%, then you won't understand why I'm strident about the issue. Those pushing it are without question strident about it, are they not?
I don't mind that you're strident about it, I mind that you're strident about pushing a bad argument.
However - it's entirely possible for the inputs into the algorithm to be skewed based on gender, and that's where I think the systematic gap may appear. A person's salary history can be incredibly gendered - women are less likely to negotiate for their first job (even if it wasn't at Google), and that initial gap can follow them for their entire career. Women are more likely to take time out of the workforce to care for family/children, which can result in lower pay when they return. Other companies known for high counteroffers (for example, Uber) may be biased against women and be less likely to give them a good offer. There are any number of reasons why a woman might have less negotiating leverage against Google than a man, and as long as offers are based on these inputs and not strictly on level and performance, it is easy to see how a gender gap might arise.
I've noticed that many of these complaints about gendered things are arguments for a particular social arrangement (eg, no consequence to a break in career) and not arguments against sexism, as such.
I don't think we shoukd be using equality laws as a bludgeon to effect changes in society outside of things like sexism or racism: that's what causes Trumpian backlashes. Most people are onboard woth fighting sexism; it becomes a mixed bag when talking about proposals like "taking years off should have no result on earnings".
But, if the end result is that a man and a woman doing the exact same job with the same perf ratings at Google are paid differently, because the woman happened to be paid less at her previous job - is that fair?
There is a reason that NYC just outlawed companies asking for salary history.
I just find it dishonest to frame the question as about men and women, as you did just now, if your concern is that people who negotiate a worse first salary are paid less. You're at best co-opting an unrelated issue.
I would say that in answer to your question, it's not fair, just as it wasn't when it happened to two men, but I'm not sure it's something we should change.
I'm also going to say that you should stop framing it as a gender equality issue when it's not -- it's a capitalism implementation issue.
I mean, what do you propose should be done to combat this? Should people who put more time into their career not be rewarded more?
Further, you don't even need women to take time out more often from the workforce for there to be a problem. The current Median Age at Marriage for the USA[0] shows that men marry women about ~2 years younger. Assuming that both partners take equal time to care for the family, and assuming both partners started their careers at the same time, the moment the average married couple gets a baby they will skew ~3 career years(~2 + pregnancy) towards the man, until they get close to retirement age. Even if they split the family effort equally, those 3 years on average will still be in favor of the man, accruing more career experience and thus better pay.
How do you propose to fight this issue?
[0] - http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2011/12/14/barely-half-of-u-s...
In a equilibrium model based on perfectly identical, perfectly rational agents, yes.
And in a model of horseracing based on perfect, identical spheres rolling down a perfectly smooth slope, all race results will trend towards the acceleration predicted by g. And yet we observe differences in reality and accept that observable reality, not the model, is correct.
Equilibrium models are useful, but once you add the ability for agents to have varying preferences according to which other agent they are interacting with, you get emergent behaviour that doesn't show up in the original models.
Women also feel satisfied with compensation at one moment and have no desire to increase their working hours/responsibilities for a meager (if any) improvement in their quality of life (that would appear with higher salary). Men on the other hand, seem to have more of those crazy individuals that waste enormous hours and overachieve despite the meager improvement in quality of life, if we ignore the bragging rights it gives them. Also statistics, and obviously biology.
Not to mention the fact that accomplished women most often have older and more accomplished men as partners, which also removes an incentive for them to make more money.
It is also the case that women do accept part-time work positions (which makes them earn less) more than men.
Is it the patriarchy? Is it Google?
I'm pretty sure it's just the way it is.
In general, Men have a higher diversity in IQ and Risk Taking.
The TL;DR is that Men will have a tendency to take higher risks than women, which is then rewarded more, if it succeeds, however, it is punished more severely when one fails. Punishment generally involved poverty and unemployment.
This doesn't mean women cannot take risks, just that they have a lesser inclination to.
Negotiation for a wage on your job is a form of risk taking, in case of failure you can certainly sour your work relationships which ruins your long-term income projection.
There will be exceptions but they're not the norm.
Yet this particular bit of information is too expensive to make accessible and useful. They have this giant correlation machine, and they don't use it to know as much as they can about their own company? How convenient.
I know, "one does not simply", but still: aren't you supposed to keep salary records anyway. Wouldn't you keep them even if you didn't have to, just in case? Wouldn't you run some statistics over them, just to see the trends?
Obviously, as rayiner says, Alphabet have other reason not to hand over the data.
[1]: https://www.google.com/intl/en/about/ (meta description tag)