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> Ms. Ellis, who left the company in 2014, says that almost all of the female software engineers at Google worked in front-end jobs while men worked in back-end roles. That seems both highly dubious and easy to verify.
> Ms. Ellis, who left the company in 2014, says that almost all of the female software engineers at Google worked in front-end jobs while men worked in back-end roles. That seems both highly dubious and easy to verify.
This wasn't the only reason that I ultimately turned down the Google offer (and spent so long in team selection after passing the interview), but it was certainly one of them.
There are some back-end teams at Google that have lots of women; Chrome security comes to mind (I don't know if that's "back-end" in the common sense of the term, but it was the sort of team I was interested in). But I don't find it particularly dubious that these are the exception and not the rule.
I'll be shocked if its true. I'm working in the tech industry for like 13 years now, I've never heard of anyone getting a lesser pay on account of gender (at-least here in India). What has gender got to do with knowledge is beyond me !
I agree with you though, gender does not matter, and should not matter, when it comes to compensation.
I believe women make up less than 20% of comsci graduates? So wouldn't this be about right then.
Also I'm assuming women in comsci have lower workforce participation than men do (as in broader economy) so Google must be hiring women at a higher ratio than men from the available pool.
I'm 100% in support of open workplaces for gender/race/politics/sexuality/dress and whatever 'work ability' irrelevant preferences. And cases like Susan Fowler are absolutely disgusting. I also feel a bunch of people increasing complain about their lack of success due to gender or race and are not willing to see they have a fair crack at their career but dont have the talent/drive etc and cant see this lack of ability in themselves.
This is noise because these lawsuits are common, and Google has deep pockets. The more interesting investigation is what happens at small companies. For example, look at the early Google employees -- only a few women, and most of those women were not engineers. Once a company is at Google's size, comp levels and hiring become formulaic. Not to mention that Google is a monopoly, with enough excess cash to settle lawsu…
It would be pretty difficult to make completely objective formulas for salary. I assume it maps back to perceived performance (in the interview, or after hiring), which is always biased, conscious or not.
The media should practice more circumspection when reporting about lawyers seeking plaintiffs or suing for class action status or at least mention how it’s a money making endeavour for that lawyer/law firm. Many of these lawyers are vultures trying to capitalize on topical matters and they rely on this sort of coverage for free marketing, it’s as likely for this to be thrown out as it is for any other outcome, and th…
If you think that lawyers being motivated by money corrupts the legal system, well, I would agree and apparently so would Judge Richard Posner, who retired this week because he suddenly realized how unjust this all was. But, well, this is the system we have now.
> Ms. Ellis, who left the company in 2014, says that almost all of the female software engineers at Google worked in front-end jobs while men worked in back-end roles. That seems both highly dubious and easy to verify.
This is noise because these lawsuits are common, and Google has deep pockets. The more interesting investigation is what happens at small companies. For example, look at the early Google employees -- only a few women, and most of those women were not engineers. Once a company is at Google's size, comp levels and hiring become formulaic. Not to mention that Google is a monopoly, with enough excess cash to settle lawsu…
>Once a company is at Google's size, comp levels and hiring become formulaic. It would be pretty difficult to make completely objective formulas for salary. I assume it maps back to perceived performance (in the interview, or after hiring), which is always biased, conscious or not.
You start with the obvious -- managers assess the value of each employee. Roughly, for each employee you derive a dollar amount that is: 1. Larger than what the employee could be paid elsewhere (otherwise, the employee leaves) 2. Close to the employee's contribution to the company's bottom line.
That's a rough science though. #2 is certainly harder than #1.
So, next, you put all that data into a big database. Then you run a variety of sanity checks (aka formulas): 1. Large changes in comp, year over year 2. Discrepancies when broken out by factors including age and gender.
Finally, you're faced with a choice. If you override all of your initial estimates with the formulas, then you have formulaic comp. Otherwise, you're at risk to lawsuits.
Imagine a GOOG executive defending "yes, we paid women less because we honestly think, on average, the male employees contributed more to our bottom line." That's not gunna happen, which sorta leads to formulaic comp, no?