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Uber's Employee Ratings Put Women at a Disadvantage, Suit Says

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Re: Uber's Employee Ratings Put Women at a Disadvantage, Suit Says

#11
post #9

I think there is a growing problem in our society, or at least what appears in media, wherein any systematic discrepancy is blamed automatically on some kind of discrimination, without consideration of the possibility for consistent differences in merit between subpopulations.

So your response can be summed up as "Well maybe the men are just better on average?"

Re: Uber's Employee Ratings Put Women at a Disadvantage, Suit Says

#12
post #9

I think there is a growing problem in our society, or at least what appears in media, wherein any systematic discrepancy is blamed automatically on some kind of discrimination, without consideration of the possibility for consistent differences in merit between subpopulations.

This is a correction of the previous tendency, which was to take the default assumption that all discrimination was in fact rational and a reflection of consistent differences in merit between sub-populations. We've gone from assuming that discrimination is probably rational to assuming discrimination is probably irrational.

You could argue that we've over-corrected, but my own subjective experience leads me to disagree. I see constant reminders every day in the media and on the Internet of the persistence of irrational emotionally driven biases against groups of people. Wake me up when Reddit and Twitter are not overflowing with inane frothing at the mouth bigotry.

Re: Uber's Employee Ratings Put Women at a Disadvantage, Suit Says

#13
post #8
post #7

At this point, any company that thinks stack ranking is a decent idea just needs to die.

I wouldn't go that far, but I agree stack ranking is a really bad idea. Uber seems to be full of bad ideas, so maybe it's a good fit.

Maybe Uber is like an organizational Gaspode[1], in which so many bad ideas are all running amok at once that it all keeps working, somehow.

[1]: https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Gaspode

>is only still alive because the various diseases are too busy fighting each other to kill him

Re: Uber's Employee Ratings Put Women at a Disadvantage, Suit Says

#14

Lol, lame reasoning. What happened to iron clad empirical evidence before suing? Oh I guess that was never the case, eh?

You are correct, even if you meant to be trolling. It was never the case that suing required iron clad empirical evidence. Civil cases in the United States use the "preponderance of evidence" standard, not the "iron clad" standard you just made up.

And "preponderance of evidence" means 50/50 plus a feather.

Re: Uber's Employee Ratings Put Women at a Disadvantage, Suit Says

#15
post #9

I think there is a growing problem in our society, or at least what appears in media, wherein any systematic discrepancy is blamed automatically on some kind of discrimination, without consideration of the possibility for consistent differences in merit between subpopulations.

I think it's more likely that the problem (bias) has always been there, but society is only now willing to even entertain the idea that it's real, despite the studies and data showing it is. I used to feel like you did, when I was a college kid. I liked to believe I had gotten where I was because I worked hard, not because I was a white dude. Then I got out in the real world and saw situations just like the one described in the study quoted by the article:

>For example, in one pair of reviews a female employee was described as having “analysis paralysis.” A man with the same behavior was praised for his careful thoughtfulness.

Re: Uber's Employee Ratings Put Women at a Disadvantage, Suit Says

#17
post #8
post #7

At this point, any company that thinks stack ranking is a decent idea just needs to die.

I wouldn't go that far, but I agree stack ranking is a really bad idea. Uber seems to be full of bad ideas, so maybe it's a good fit.

The article states Uber stopped using a stacked ranking system.

> Microsoft Corp. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. have faced similar legal challenges; both firms and, more recently, Uber, have abandoned the practice.

Re: Uber's Employee Ratings Put Women at a Disadvantage, Suit Says

#18
post #2

Tldr: the claim is that when male managers are faced with stack ranking employees, they will often choose male reports over female reports due to sexist bias.

I think a simpler and better claim would be that:

When managers are faced with stack ranking employees, they will often decide based on factors not purely related to the productivity or value of the employee.

----

That, and as an employee in a stack-ranked organization, you know you need to be competitive. Not in terms of productivity but in terms of "in the eyes of your manager"-- Perception is more important than performance.

Studies have shown that men compete more aggressively than women, on average. So it's certainly plausible that men enjoy a gender-driven advantage that isn't purely due to gender-discrimination. Rather, it is the system that is biased.

This reminds me of that "racist algorithm" debacle.

Re: Uber's Employee Ratings Put Women at a Disadvantage, Suit Says

#19
post #2

Tldr: the claim is that when male managers are faced with stack ranking employees, they will often choose male reports over female reports due to sexist bias.

If I take that at face value doesn't that mean any performance evaluation system would be flawed so long as a man is in charge of it? (Assuming that women don't also rate women higher) >“This pay-for-performance system is fundamentally flawed,” Tavis said in an interview. “The performance element is very subjective.” What is the alternative?

One partial alternative is 360-degree performance reviews where each employee's performance is subjectively evaluated not just by one manager but rather by a collection of other employees they work with spread out across all levels of the org chart. Of course that's not perfect either but at least it provides more data points and can reduce the impact of some biases.
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