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Google staff walk out over women's treatment

bbc.co.uk

101–110 of 471 posts

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you quantify experience? It cannot be empirically measured in all the ways that it matters.

Do you think even the most basic measure, say number of years, is any worse than the current process?

Of course! Have you never met a programmer who had ~20 years of experience but actually was extremely weak at programming? Even the most basic of interviews would disqualify them from the job, but an ML algorithm can give them huge points on the "experience" alone.

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#102
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UK Office for National Statistics publish good data for the UK. My impression (based on 2016 stats [0]) is that as most C-suiters are men, and they can get 100s or 1000s of times the money that ordinary employees get, that in the UK this likely accounts for most of the effect that's not accounted for by career breaks (childcare, for example). To reiterate, this is my _impression_ when looking at the data. Men who wor…

Here's one example of the ONS data: https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwor...

Cool, I'll have to look at the new data clearly, a priori it contradicts my analysis - I only recalled one situation previously where discrimination appears to give higher wages to women (over 30, working full-time), 15% is quite the gap did it make headlines?

Note they don't compare like roles here, just same industry sector IIRC.

The largest gap is 95% in favour of female archivists; that must be anomalous.

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#103
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parent was edited from “Let's see evidence of misconduct before rushing to judgment.”

But why is it flagged? That is a reasonable comment. Also, what's with the rampant brigading here. Every reasonable comment here seems to get immediately and automatically downvoted.

There's a lot of comments making arguments that were basically discredited decades ago, and people have got tired of having to rebut them every single time and gone straight to the downvoting.

Hacker news voters seem to have got a lot less tolerant of this kind of tired regressive culture war stuff lately. But this article is still on the way to being flagged off the front page. There are certain subjects this site is just not capable of having a mature, informed discussion of.

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#104
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You don't change things by striking, Traditionally union action including strikes has been the only way to make changes in big employers.

I've never worked for a unionized company yet hey, I've been treated fairly.

You've only been treated fairly because of the substantial gains that unions have won for you in the past. You don't even realize how much worse it could be. Enjoying that 5-day 40-hour workweek? Without unions, it'd be a lot worse.

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#105
post #87

"A commitment to end pay and opportunity inequity"? I'm confused here. Are they demanding that preferential hiring and advancement practices and programs for women and certain minorities be stopped?

As you can see, the divide is becoming greater between ones who “believe” and ones who “don’t”, and the audience is massively imposing a bias here in this thread. We’ve lost our ability to listen to each other, and it’s sad that it happened on a topic which is still very easy to judge using science.

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think even the most basic measure, say number of years, is any worse than the current process?

Of course! Have you never met a programmer who had ~20 years of experience but actually was extremely weak at programming? Even the most basic of interviews would disqualify them from the job, but an ML algorithm can give them huge points on the "experience" alone.

I too have encountered developers with many years of experience and little programming skill. But in those cases I'd not hire them; or if they made it through the net I'd put them on a performance improvement plan and begin the process of firing them.

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>No, of course not. Symmetrically, the should also not automatically accepted as true. This. I imagine most are absolutely true, but there are some that absolutely are not. I've personally been accused by rape, online, of someone in another state that I've never even been to. Fortunately, no one took the claim serious but I imagine there are many innocent people that have been wrongly accused for whatever reason. I a…

I imagine most are absolutely true, I don't, for two reasons. (1) There is simply no agreement currently on what counts as harassment. (2) Anecdote: I've been involved in investigating a sexual harassment claim at a previous employer, at it was absolutely and categorically and provably false. turning into McCarthyism. Too late. That ship has sailed a long time ago. The situation has gotten so out of hand, that record…

>(1) There is simply no agreement currently on what counts as harassment.

This is an absolutely fair observation.

>The situation has gotten so out of hand, that recording all employee interaction might indeed be the only way forward.

Yeah, I think something like bodycams is likely the most effective solution to the issue but then things get tricky for various industries, stuff like patient/client confidentiality laws, trade secrets, etc. Not to mention stuff like using the restroom, where sexual harassment could still take place.

Then audio-only wouldn't cover miming explicit actions.

It's certainly a problem with no easily actionable answer.

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#108
post #87

"A commitment to end pay and opportunity inequity"? I'm confused here. Are they demanding that preferential hiring and advancement practices and programs for women and certain minorities be stopped?

no, they want that next to forced diversity, women and minorities to receive a 20% bonus to their pay

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course! Have you never met a programmer who had ~20 years of experience but actually was extremely weak at programming? Even the most basic of interviews would disqualify them from the job, but an ML algorithm can give them huge points on the "experience" alone.

I too have encountered developers with many years of experience and little programming skill. But in those cases I'd not hire them; or if they made it through the net I'd put them on a performance improvement plan and begin the process of firing them.

I don't know where you live, but at least in EU the cost of hiring the wrong person is monstrous. Unless they were literally caught stealing and you can fire them for gross negligance, you are looking at months of "performance improvement plans", when both of you know that it won't actually improve anything. All while you are paying them full salary, national insurance, tax etc, and also sinking in the time of another employee who now has to deal with the situation. It's extremely critical to not hire those people in the first place, and I would not trust an algorithm to do that.

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#110

Wouldn't it be easier to create an algorithm for compensation which clearly didn't involve gender (i.e. no deep learning stuff). Something which boils down to base salary + experience factor + google service factor. Honestly, I can imagine that being less troublesome even outside of attempting to be fair an equitable regardless of race / gender / sexual orientation.

Blind hiring can have the exact opposite effect: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-tri... My point is - there's zero guarantee that a "logical" algorithm would be "fair". Just like if you trained an ML algorithm on the database of people currently in American prisons it would most likely conclude that black=more likely to be a criminal, which is obviously an unfair assumption to make.

doesn't that mean that women have already artificially high wages? Genuinely curios
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