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Google staff walk out over women's treatment

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#141

Post by Udik »

victoriasun wrote: post #126
Udik wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why bother? Because I'm a bit annoyed by what seems to me a growing push towards confusing the judgement of someone's work with their moral qualities. I see it as fundamentally anti-intellectual, as it strives to bring extraneous criteria in the evaluation of what should stand and be judged on its own. A scientific theory or a work of art aren't less valuable because their authors or proponents are or aren't commun…

That is your personal choice, and is fine. But I think you can happily coexist with these other people: - Those who care about influencing their culture and want to do what they can to change it. - Those who are concerned with where their money goes and whether or not they think that that is the most effective use of their money. Feel free to ignore the concerns of those groups and do what you want. But I don't think…

> I don't think that wading into a conversation you fundamentally don't want to be a part of...

I was replying to a comment that claimed that

"no real process in place for situations of misconduct in the office [..] would be like Google not having a process to investigate and resolve site outages - it would be unthinkable"

This to me is clearly a confusion between two completely different things: what Google produces, and what are Google's internal ethics. iPhones are not worse products because working with Steve Jobs was a nightmare. I value the distinction.

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#142

Post by debacle »

alexis_fr wrote: post #105
qubax wrote: 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.

Most reasonable people on HN stay out of these threads. You're not going to change anyone's mind at this point.

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#143

Post by dragonwriter »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #25

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.

> 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.

You mean, the kind of thing basically every public sector employer has, where alleged gender pay gap is never an issue?

Yes, of course that’s easy to do.

OTOH, private sector employers like to have personal productivity be a factor, but don't have good objective metrics for that, so they let subjective assessment play a major role, such that the biases of managers become a substantial factor in setting pay.

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#144

Post by ryanmercer »

devwastaken wrote: post #52
ryanmercer wrote: post #27

These people should be fired, not because they want equal pay but because they refuse to do the job they were hired to do. Different genders deserve equal pay, people of different races deserve equal pay, people with various disabilities deserve equal pay. HOWEVER, you want to walk out of work? You should be terminated. If I walked out of work, I would be fired. If I organized several people to walk out of work with…

>corporate terrorism Unless they're bombing buildings the word you're looking for is extortion, not terrorism. Striking has changed a good amount of business's in the history of the U.S . public outcry and worker cooperation is the halmark of workers rights. The reason protest is required is because the company will not change without a better force. 'asking nicely' doesn't go anywhere when the bottom line is money a…

>Unless they're bombing buildings the word you're looking for is extortion, not terrorism.

You don't have to blow up a building to be a terrorist. You don't have to carry out an act of violence, or even suggest one, to be a terrorist. Organizing a walk out is intimidation,

ter·ror·ism /ˈterəˌrizəm/ noun the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#145

Post by cm2187 »

sublupo wrote: post #73
maaaats wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> to see what kind of difference there is between the sexes when comparing like-for-like jobs. What if the pay is equal for like-for-like jobs, but for the higher paying jobs one sex is vastly underrepresented? Not saying it is, just that discrimination and bias often runs deeper than some simple comparison.

What if one gender has a higher variance than another gender? Just don't say that to Google or you may get fired.

or to Harvard

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#146

Post by TotempaaltJ »

PunchTornado wrote: post #67
maaaats wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> to see what kind of difference there is between the sexes when comparing like-for-like jobs. What if the pay is equal for like-for-like jobs, but for the higher paying jobs one sex is vastly underrepresented? Not saying it is, just that discrimination and bias often runs deeper than some simple comparison.

What if one sex is statistcally proven to work more overtime than another sex? What if one sex takes more paternal leave than another so the other sex spends more time in the office improving skills?

Both of those can be seen as a cultural problem.

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#147

Post by nextstep »

brobdingnagians wrote: post #18
ChrisRR wrote: post #10

So the first demand is "A commitment to end pay and opportunity inequality" I'd like to see the actual data behind this constant inequality claim. I would be genuinely interested to see what kind of difference there is between the sexes when comparing like-for-like jobs. I've heard speculation that women don't argue for higher salaries as much as men, I've also heard that the data is never accurate because it doesn't…

Time magazine, which doesn't exactly seem to be a bastion of conservatism, had an article about this http://time.com/3222543/wage-pay-gap-myth-feminism/ , which had more hard-facts than anyone else I've seen, but the conclusion was that most of the claims made by the wage gap supporters are cherrypicked and false. Although, if Google specifically has a problem with it, I'd definitely be willing to listen. If they are…

Time magazine is absolutely a right-of-center publication. Here’s a nice piece they published last week calling for more nationalism in the US: http://amp.timeinc.net/time/5431089/trump-white-nationalism-...

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#148

Post by Nelkins »

zimpenfish wrote: post #115
brobdingnagians wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Time magazine, which doesn't exactly seem to be a bastion of conservatism, had an article about this http://time.com/3222543/wage-pay-gap-myth-feminism/ , which had more hard-facts than anyone else I've seen, but the conclusion was that most of the claims made by the wage gap supporters are cherrypicked and false. Although, if Google specifically has a problem with it, I'd definitely be willing to listen. If they are…

> Time magazine, which doesn't exactly seem to be a bastion of conservatism Although Christina Hoff Sommers does have a noticeable bias/axe to grind since she's pretty anti-feminism and considers there to be a "war against boys". Also she works for the AEI which is a conservative think tank.

Agree. When you perform an online search for articles on the "wage gap myth," the majority of the articles seem traceable back to her.

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#149

Post by nixgeek »

dragonwriter wrote: post #139
anon1252 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there's no real process in place for situations of misconduct in the office. There shouldn't be a "process" set by Google when it comes to sexual harassment, employees should be able to sue, that's the process,sexual harassment is a crime, they can't sue because Google force them into arbitration, which should be illegal for an employer to do that to an employee IMHO. this is a denial of justice.

> There shouldn't be a "process" set by Google when it comes to sexual harassment, employees should be able to sue, that's the process, Except that, under the law, the company’s response (including the absence or inadequacy of any process) to certain situations is part of what determines if they are sexual harassment. > sexual harassment is a crime No, it's not, and if it were the process would not be for employees t…

That’s actually not true, it varies by state, but many allow private criminal prosecutions to occur.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_prosecution

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#150

Post by ryanmercer »

zimpenfish wrote: post #120
ryanmercer wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You've only been treated fairly because of the substantial gains that unions have won for you in the past. I'm treated fairly because it's the 21st century not 19th and early 20th century, when unions did most of their beneficial work. We have things like OSHA, fire marshals, etc. We have far more avenues of employment than in the 19th and early 20th centuries as well. And arguably more importantly, we have mobile b…

> Unions are dying, presumably because people don't want to be a part of them Couldn't this also be down to rules against union busting being relaxed and companies like Amazon taking full advantage thus making it difficult for people to join a union even if they wanted to?

Or could it be due to the fact people don't want to give a percentage of their paycheck to historically corrupt organizations so they can be told "you can't work this week, sorry, we're striking" when people need to put food on the table and service debt...

As far as the 'evil' Amazon mention, they pay double minimum wage here in Indiana as is, people online like to whine about how unfair Amazon is yet people here fight for jobs at Amazon.

People need to wake up and realize they have better working conditions than nearly every other human being from a past age. It's called work for a reason.

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