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U.S. sues Oracle, alleges salary and hiring discrimination

reuters.com

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Re: U.S. sues Oracle, alleges salary and hiring discrimination

#191

Post by xxpor »

phkahler wrote: post #147

How does the US government have standing in such a case? If such practices are not legal, shouldn't the law specify a remedy? If not, how has the government been harmed?

Disclaimer: IANAL

It's an administrative law case, so it goes to an Article 1 tribunal, not Article 3.

https://www.oalj.dol.gov

They're enforcing regulations and executive orders, not codified laws. In this case, Oracle is subject to their purview because they have federal contracts.

Edit: more info here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_administrative_l...

Re: U.S. sues Oracle, alleges salary and hiring discrimination

#192

Post by linkregister »

logfromblammo wrote: post #74
titomc wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" Most of the time it is just easier to hire Asian/Indian employees because they are readily available " - I doubt that. It's "easier" to hire because they "agree" to lower wages and its easier to retain them, because their visa status is tied to the employer. The employers have H1B workers on a leash. The process of hiring an H1B worker in short. - Hire an immigration lawyer. - Post an LCA. - Apply petition to USCIS…

You forgot the part about rejecting all current U.S. nationals as unable to work the position. This is often by requiring X+Y years of experience with an X year old buzzword, and then telling your recruiter exactly how to lie on the resume. But it may also be by giving people actual interviews and then either offering them a wage lower than what is intended for the H1B import, or rejecting them for unspecified reason…

Their H1B records would be posted here: http://h1bdata.info

Re: U.S. sues Oracle, alleges salary and hiring discrimination

#193

Post by jiggliemon »

blazespin wrote: post #179
jiggliemon wrote: post #112

I feel that I can provide a small yet worthy piece of context. We have a difficult time interviewing ANYBODY for our open reqs. And like every other technology company I've ever worked at; a majority of resume's I've reviewed had Indian names. This seems especially weighted given how the Oracle brand and database are still desirable properties and tech in India. Your average white dude in Silicon Valley may have a fa…

This is actually an interesting and relevant point. I can attest to seeing a similar cultural acceptance / rejection of the brand. Interestingly, it might be more favorable because of hiring practices. More interesting, this might be what has undermined the brand in the US.

The brand has been undermined due to Oracle having three salesmen to every developer. And two lawyers to every one developer.

Oracle is a software sales, and software holdings company.

Their litigious behavior doesn't help.

Re: U.S. sues Oracle, alleges salary and hiring discrimination

#194

Post by kartan »

duderific wrote: post #149
exabrial wrote: post #90

The real solution to the problem is everyone needs to share their income level with their co-workers as well as their performance reports. And don't be afraid to leave!

Huh? This could lead to a lot of hurt feelings and resentment, if you find out your co-worker at the same level is making $15K/year more than you. Awkward...

As a manager I can tell you that the first thing that I look at when setting salaries is: What other people will think of this salary if they find out? What will this employee think if she sees other peoples salary?

Depending on the culture of the company/country people is more or less willing to share salary information. But there is always people that does that, and it becomes awkward when the manager counted with all salaries being secret.

Don't assume salary secrecy, people talks.

Re: U.S. sues Oracle, alleges salary and hiring discrimination

#195

Post by swframe2 »

I worked at Oracle in 1992-1998. I hired a white male employee who complained later that I was hiring too many indian employees. I went backed to look at the applicants and noticed that 90% of them were indian and that I'd contacted every non-indian applicant. I'm not white or indian so I was very eager to make sure I was being fair. My non-scientific conclusion after working at a lot of other companies is that very successful companies paid a lot better and had much more interesting work than Oracle (remember oracle missed the .com shift in a major way); I feel oracle gets so few the applications of whites because most of them had much better jobs and opportunities. In that situation, it might require oracle to pay more to retain white employees.

I left oracle in 1998 and returned in 2003. I did notice a dramatic shift in the employee demographics at that time. Areas that used to be mostly white or mixed were now entirely indian. I'm not sure of the reasons but I've worked at places that are much more successful than oracle and I suspect it is not oracle that is discriminating as much as it is a lot of better companies enticing talent away. I've seen many of oracle's brightest employees working at more successful companies.

Re: U.S. sues Oracle, alleges salary and hiring discrimination

#196

Post by gotrecruit »

hueving wrote: post #69
bubbleRefuge wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I can tell the way sentences are formed in many cases if I'm dealing with a native speaker or not.

Would you kindly do the willingly and explain how? :)

You mean do the needful?

Re: U.S. sues Oracle, alleges salary and hiring discrimination

#197

Post by logandavis »

nanistheonlyist wrote: post #8

The assumption underlying these "disparate impact" cases is that all races or genders have exactly the same distribution of skills. The problem is every time this assumption is tested it turns out to be false. https://iq-research.info/en/page/average-iq-by-country

Bonus points for delicately wording your comment so you didn't literally have to say "I believe people from Africa are less intellectually skilled* than people from America".

*(or whatever you're trying to use IQ, that most pure and unbiased of metrics, to proxy)

Re: U.S. sues Oracle, alleges salary and hiring discrimination

#198

Post by justinjlynn »

dlss wrote: post #151
lucisferre wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not saying that I agree with quotas as a solution to problems like discriminatory biases in hiring, but how is a quota system "discriminatory"? What race, sex or age group is discriminated against by a requirement that appropriate proportions of those demographics make up the companies employees? (Heck in most cases quotas are simply a low bar, they are not even proportional to the population demographics.) I can und…

Google has actually released a paper on codifying what discrimination looks like for lending ( https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.02413 + blog post: https://research.googleblog.com/2016/10/equality-of-opportun... ). It can be trivially extended to discuss hiring. Basically a fair hiring process as defined by the above would be: P(hire | features) = P(hire | race=1, features) = P(hire | race=2, features) This may sound a bit…

Ensuring model safety is indeed a massive pain and is completely non-trivial.

Re: U.S. sues Oracle, alleges salary and hiring discrimination

#199

Post by Frondo »

wallace_f wrote: post #167
freditup wrote: post #123

That means we so far have: * Palantir sued for not hiring enough Asians [0] * Google sued for not turning over compensation data [1] * Oracle sued for hiring too many Asians While it's possible that discriminatory processes have happened at all these places, it seems these lawsuits can be targeted at whoever one wishes. It's always going to be possible to find data that indicates discrimination, unless companies hire…

>It's always going to be possible to find data that indicates discrimination, unless companies hire in exact quotas (which would also be discriminatory really). There already are off-the-record quotas. Who in management hasn't heard discussion at least eluding the the need for a diversity hire? Probably very few people at this point. I believe a distinction must be made: Equality of opportunity is good. Equality of o…

You know what, though? If we actually had equality of opportunity, it doesn't seem like we'd see the kind of disparity we do.

Certainly not at a big corporation where there should be enough of an employee pool to have it at least somewhat reflect the general population of the region.

But then, when I listen to the stories women in tech (for example) tell, and they do tell a LOT of the same stories, it's clear we're pretty far from equality of opportunity.

And I won't even get into those experiments people've done with sending out identical resumes, some with "white"-sounding name, some with "black"-sounding names... guess who doesn't get called in for an interview.

So I just don't buy that most people even give a shit about equality of opportunity, even those who pay lip service to it. I think most people don't want to be challenged on anything that makes them the slightest bit uncomfortable (like having unconscious biases or structural racism pointed out).

Re: U.S. sues Oracle, alleges salary and hiring discrimination

#200

Post by anw »

pippy wrote: post #150
freditup wrote: post #123

That means we so far have: * Palantir sued for not hiring enough Asians [0] * Google sued for not turning over compensation data [1] * Oracle sued for hiring too many Asians While it's possible that discriminatory processes have happened at all these places, it seems these lawsuits can be targeted at whoever one wishes. It's always going to be possible to find data that indicates discrimination, unless companies hire…

This is why merit based evaluation is the only sane hiring practice. I'd love to see legal protection for companies that can provide evidence they strictly adhered to the merit based hires. You can also apply this rationale to your own projects, by including the Code of Merit into your projects[0][1]. [0] https://github.com/rosarior/Code-of-Merit/blob/master/CODE_O... [1] http://code-of-merit.org/

Until the idea of meritocracy is considered too messy in the real world.[0]

> GitHub’s Julie Ann Horvath, a designer who also founded the company’s all-female lecture series Passion Projects, said the rug first became a problem when photos of it made their way into feminist discussions online.

> The false idea that the tech industry is a meritocracy hurts everyone. It allows Paul Graham to continue thinking that the founders who make it into Y Combinator are the best of the best, not just the best people with the most privileges. It also furthers a culture of entrepreneur worship.

Make of it what you will. But it seems GitHub at least doesn't want their floors to reflect a meritocracy.

[0] http://readwrite.com/2014/01/24/github-meritocracy-rug/

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