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Google Pays Female Workers Less Than Male Counterparts, Labor Department Says

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Re: Google Pays Female Workers Less Than Male Counterparts, Labor Department Says

#61

Post by sitkack »

brians wrote: post #26

It would be surprising and novel if the DoL statisticians had produced an unambiguous correct analysis. They're working in a complex field, and under pressure and regulated to use the wrong tools in many cases---so I'm sure plenty of the people there are excellent and could do great work---DoL statistics in general are not a good basis for action. Example: DoL is required by law to track non-white applicants and hiri…

I think you are constructing a strawman. If rejection statistics were indeed calculated as you describe, it would scale with the number of job seekers crossed with the demographic. I am going to go with DoL statisticians not being idiots.

Re: Google Pays Female Workers Less Than Male Counterparts, Labor Department Says

#62

Post by sitkack »

davidf18 wrote: post #25

Assuming labor markets are liquid, if the pay gap is true it means either: 1. Women really want to work for Google and take less pay than working at other employers or 2. Women at almost all employers are receiving less money. There were times not too long ago when there were Jewish quotas. Nobelist Physicist Richard Feynman was denied entry into Columbia and he went to MIT instead. Nobelist Medicine & Physiology Aut…

> Assuming labor markets are liquid

Is like assuming a spherical cow.

Re: Google Pays Female Workers Less Than Male Counterparts, Labor Department Says

#63

Post by brighteyes »

denzil_correa wrote: post #55
yomly wrote: post #22

It is hard to discern what is going on, and it feels strange to say I trust Google ahead of the government. Google is full of engineers who prize logic and fairness above most else, and culturally most the engineers I meet in most places espouse gender parity and equality. In light of this, it is hard to believe Google would not find a way to even up payscales. That said, while non-management says one thing it is oft…

> It is hard to discern what is going on DoL suspects pay disparities and asks for more data from Google to see if their suspicion is true or false. Google refuses access to the data. DoL takes Google to court for access to data.

It sounds like they have more than just a suspicion,

> “We found systemic compensation disparities against women pretty much across the entire workforce,” Janette Wipper, a DoL regional director, testified in court in San Francisco on Friday. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/07/google-pa... (no pay wall)

Re: Google Pays Female Workers Less Than Male Counterparts, Labor Department Says

#64

Post by inopinatus »

jjoonathan wrote: post #49
inopinatus wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you heard is an apology for sexism. Almost all structural/systematic discrimination can be controlled out of your comparison if you normalize it for the factors of the, er, structural/systematic discrimination.

Leaving the workforce is generally believed to negatively impact people of every gender's ability to contribute productively. If you want to claim that women or types of absences specific to women are special, the burden of proof is on you. EDIT: I see you've removed the claim I was addressing in an edit. Wish I'd quoted it.

Yeah, because it masked my main point. I'm happy to answer for it though. That "general belief" is simply another systematic problem. I've left the workforce numerous times to go do something interesting (defining the initial parameters of a new human life definitely fall into this category, but that's not the only social construction that can pull women out of the workforce), and it's increased my skill-set every time. As a result the idea that a gap on someone's CV is a negative is grossly antithetical to me when hiring, but I've heard it far too often from other managers who expect their teams to be, essentially, slaves to a corporate machine.

My point of view on gender role & pay disparity reinforcement mechanisms in institutional structures is often dramatically unpopular with traditional managers, but since my teams get results I don't care.

Re: Google Pays Female Workers Less Than Male Counterparts, Labor Department Says

#66

Post by sitkack »

trishume wrote: post #13

Can someone who actually has access to the story answer the following questions for me. Is this before or after controlling for: - field of work. Is this the whole company or just devs? - years at the company. - age, as a crude proxy for total experience at all companies. Also does it say the magnitude of the gap? There's a number of ways this headline could be true, all may be unfortunate from a societal perspective…

They also base the pay on negotiation, something which men are much more aggressive about and that woman who negotiate hard are judged unfairly.

Re: Google Pays Female Workers Less Than Male Counterparts, Labor Department Says

#67

Post by brighteyes »

nojvek wrote: post #36
yomly wrote: post #22

It is hard to discern what is going on, and it feels strange to say I trust Google ahead of the government. Google is full of engineers who prize logic and fairness above most else, and culturally most the engineers I meet in most places espouse gender parity and equality. In light of this, it is hard to believe Google would not find a way to even up payscales. That said, while non-management says one thing it is oft…

I agree. Google is one of the companies with the other big cos that take diversity and pay gaps very seriously. This is a very bold claim by DOL and Wsj publishing it just for eye balls says a lot about our government and journalists nowadays. "Make outrageous stories for readers so they click ads"

This isn't just the WSJ, also the LA times and Guardian have similar stories, all based on the recent court appearance (just search using that headline).

It's a reasonable topic to report on, the government is accusing of Google of "extreme" (in their words) discrimination.

Re: Google Pays Female Workers Less Than Male Counterparts, Labor Department Says

#69

Post by seattle_spring »

hannob wrote: post #40
m52go wrote: post #3

I can't read the whole article, but does it (or DOL documents) include details like amount of experience and job function? I've heard that much (not all) of the aggregate gap (i.e., on the national level) goes away after controlling for those variables. Curious if that applies here, and if so, to what degree. Edit: consider recent headlines promoting outrage at Marissa Mayer's successor earning double her salary beca…

> I've heard that much (not all) of the aggregate gap (i.e., on the national level) goes away after controlling for those variables. The question you may ask here however is: Does it matter? I mean I agree that it matters from "getting the facts straight", but maybe not necessarily from the conclusions. If the pay gap is due to less experience, less education etc., then you're seeing effects of earlier discrimination…

Is it then Google's fault to fix society?

Re: Google Pays Female Workers Less Than Male Counterparts, Labor Department Says

#70

Post by emsy »

Marazan wrote: post #48
snarf21 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't find the source but I read something recently that said that after controlling for position and experience the pay gap is around 7%. Off the cuff, I find that to match my intuition. If you could hire women engineers for 80% of the equivalent man, then all companies would wan't to hire every other companies women at 90% of equivalent because they would still be getting a deal and the women would get a big pay…

Of course that is the reason. People aren't underpaying women because they think they can get away with it to save money, they under pay because they think the women is worth less than an equivalent male.

If you have to hire women overproportionally to achieve a certain quota this seems like a logical and even justifiable conclusion.
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