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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

#381

Post by nommm-nommm »

wallace_f wrote: post #360
nommm-nommm wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, I'll bite, why exactly do you believe women don't want the opportunity to work on oil rigs? http://www.warrensiurek.com/blog/2015/04/5-women-claim-gende... >The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has filed a claim on behalf of five women against an oil drilling company in another state. According to the complaint, the women applied for jobs to work as floor hands on the oil rigs, but they were turned down. T…

No sane person genuinely believes just as many woman as men want to work on oil rigs, or that it's even close. That's a very surprising case, yet very American, lawsuit though.

Nice moving the goal posts there, this is what I was replying to

"Women will never be asking for equal "opportunity" working jobs in the north sea on offshore oil rigs."

QED

I will not be engaging you further.

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

#384

Post by omginternets »

sangnoir wrote: post #344
jimbokun wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a white kid, and I wanted to be a basketball player much more than a programmer. I just wasn't any good at it.

What you are suggesting, but won't say explicitly is that the black kid who wants to be a CRUD developer won't be good at it; that's a rubbish argument. The NBA is much smaller than entire industries: there are more CEOs than NBA players.

That's almost what he's saying, but the devil is in the details.

He's saying that within the Black community, there are fewer people who (for whatever reason) have the skills necessary to be a CRUD developer.

Reasons may include, but are not limited to:

- poverty and access to education

- cultural factors pertaining to the value of higher education

- cultural factors pertaining to the types of jobs that are valued (e.g.: perhaps Blacks take jobs that confer a certain status or that are seen as directly giving back to the community)

If this is true -- and I personally find it plausible -- then we would indeed expect blacks to be under-represented in software design.

tl;dr: Perhaps the bias in hiring is a reflection of a bias in competence. Perhaps Blacks are, on the whole, poorer candidates? If that's true, then the correct approach is to focus on education rather than punishing employers.

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

#385

Post by omginternets »

flamedoge wrote: post #232
pippy wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

Meritocracy is great. Just when everyone has equal access to education.

Agreed, but I think the point here is that when access to education is the problem, suing the employer is a bad solution.

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

#386

Post by logandavis »

wallace_f wrote: post #364
logandavis wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) You've carefully chosen two examples of jobs that depend highly on physical attributes with well-understood genetic causes (height, muscular development), and you've extrapolated this out to technical employees at Oracle, whose skills are hardly defined by such well-understood genetic markers. This is faulty logic. 2) Just so we're clear, you literally just compared affirmative action to Nazi Germany and the Spani…

>you literally just compared affirmative action to Nazi Germany and the Spanish Inquisition. No, I didn't. That's your misunderstanding. Go back and read what I wrote. No one is saying they're equivalent. What I did say is that government sanctioned force always comes with an argument of moral outrage, even if what they are doing is undeniably immoral. I should expect more of these straw man, incorrect, borderline-tr…

Ah. My apologies for misreading. I went back and re-read what you wrote. Please correct me if the following interpretation is wrong:

First, you said that moral outrage is the motivation for "racist" policies such as Affirmative Action. Next, you said that moral outrage also motivates state-sponsored violence. (I suppose this does not constitute a comparison per se.)

I'm sorry, but I really don't see the point of bringing up the Nazis, if not to tar "state-forced equality" programs with the same brush of "moral outrage leading to moral impropriety". Can you help clear up my misunderstanding?

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

#387

Post by omginternets »

tu7001 wrote: post #382

This is silly, obviously, if I'm hiring somebody, I discriminate the others.

You say this in jest, but you bring up a good point: the term "discrimination" has become loaded.

The question isn't whether or not there's discrimination. It's about whether said discrimination is unfair or unethical. Racial discrimination is generally considered unethical and unfair. But, simply observing a statistical bias doesn't mean that the discrimination took place on the basis of race. It is, in principle, possible for qualified candidates to be unevenly distributed.

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

#388

Post by wallace_f »

nommm-nommm wrote: post #381
wallace_f wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No sane person genuinely believes just as many woman as men want to work on oil rigs, or that it's even close. That's a very surprising case, yet very American, lawsuit though.

Nice moving the goal posts there, this is what I was replying to "Women will never be asking for equal "opportunity" working jobs in the north sea on offshore oil rigs." QED I will not be engaging you further.

Use of the word 'never' opened me up to an 'exception to the rule' attack. It was not the most careful word choice, and so I stand corrected that there are 5 women who apparently wanted to work offshore. I'm not talking about 5 women. We're talking about trends. There are always exceptions.

OK, so convince me you're right. Ignoring your condescending, short-termpered, dismissive remark based on attacking some minutiae in what I said (that we can both agree doesn't change anything), we now have an example of one very American, money-making lawsuit, representing 5 people. Alright, so what substantial movement can you source to convince me that you are right that women are seeking equal representation working on oil rigs in the north sea? What about auto mechanics? Plubming? There's many entrepreneurial businesses such as those that require no hiring decision. Why are women so underrepresented there? The work is much less physically demanding or as dangerous as working on off shore oil rigs.

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

#389

Post by omginternets »

wang_li wrote: post #135
_m8fo wrote: post #15

Couple points: First, this is where the meat is: https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/ofccp/ofccp20170118-0 Second: "...Oracle nevertheless preferred Asian applications over other qualified applicants in the Professional Technical 1, Individual Contributor Job group and in the Product Development job group at statistically significant rates." [1] [1] https://www.dol.gov/sites/default/files/newsroom/newsrelease... --…

There are plenty of affirmative action organizations that would be very upset with anonymization of applicants.

Out of curiosity: do you know of any organizations that have voiced such opposition?

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

#390

Post by omginternets »

j4kp07 wrote: post #214
toomuchtodo wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corporations are not people my friend. They do not (and should not) have the same rights. EDIT: Going through my wife's underwear drawer is not the same as having to provide payroll data to enforce labor law. EDIT 2: If you're a government contractor, you have certain labor rights obligations, by law . If you violate those, the US government has the authority to pursue you. "The department in a complaint filed with a…

> Corporations are not people my friend. It doesn't matter. That wasn't the argument stated; What was proposed was "Why does it matter if you have nothing to hide." > They do not (and should not) have the same rights. Corporations are protected from illegal search and seizures just like people. > Does anyone read the article anymore? I wasn't responding to the article. I was responding to the previous poster.

>It doesn't matter

It does matter. He's arguing that actual people should have a greater right to privacy than do corporations.

Granted, this is not a legal argument, but an ethical one.

Moreover, he might actually have some legal standing (INAL, etc) since there are laws that mandate corporate transparency whereas there are no direct equivalents for private persons.

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