What happens when you talk about salaries at Google • Hacker News Board

Re: What happens when you talk about salaries at Google

#131

Post by mister_m » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 1:23 PM UTC

malchow wrote: post #118

mhluongo wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> tl;dr she got exactly what you would expect when you're intentionally stirring shit up at any company. I'm not sure what she expected. What? Sharing salary information is a protected employee activity, and retaliation is illegal.. so maybe she expected there wouldn't be retaliation?

"retaliation is illegal" I'm not sure what world you think we inhabit. Are we humanoid automatons? The whole welter of human emotion more or less always outweighs a programmatic injunction like "retaliation is illegal." Companies are still people working together. They'll probably never be anything but people working together. It does not matter how protected the activity allegedly is; a giant embarrassment campaign…

The culture has to change from within. There is no reason why that information can't be shared among employees. As the user above you said, retaliatory action to that activity is in fact illegal. Just because the culture of where she works says it is not does not mean she is at all in the wrong for doing it, or that the retaliatory bullshit that was experienced was warranted - even if it was 'expected' as you say.

I for one side with the person who threw together the spreadsheet, not with Google who is trying to sneak by with not paying everyone equally.

Your assertion that the poster above you lives in a fantasy world for thinking that sharing salary information is a protected activity is frankly a nauseating attitude. One that I hope we all in tech can fix.

Re: What happens when you talk about salaries at Google

#132

Post by Robin_Message » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 1:23 PM UTC

tempodox wrote: post #72

cmdrfred wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had no idea this was a trend. How could anyone ever think this is a good idea? You'd think the editors at wired would be able to copy and paste, surely that's easier than embedding 45 tweets.

While this is technically true, you also need to adhere to Twitter's TOS if you're going to use their product.

Or Wired could do some actual journalism and, I don't know, interview the original poster plus ask her ex-boss and Google for comments plus try and track down the mysterious other man?

Re: What happens when you talk about salaries at Google

#133

Post by deadmik3 » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 1:24 PM UTC

Loughla wrote: post #74

deadmik3 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> probably because it should be a bonus based on job performance, not shit-stirring the entire crux of the article edit: word

Isn't it 'crux'? I find that crux is one of those words that's replaced with an incorrect near-homophone often - like mute instead of moot. Although, bonus points for using crutch instead of crust - that's usually the replacement.

I think you're right. And yeah, at least "crutch" gives that imagery of something being support whereas crust...

Re: What happens when you talk about salaries at Google

#134

Post by cmiles74 » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 1:24 PM UTC

sergiotapia wrote: post #89

Other side of the story: https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/3e05wg/what_hap... Either way both are completely unverifiable. Take both with a huge fistful of salt until both parties are interviewed and quoted and research is done into what happened.

This really reads like more of the same story, I don't see these two narratives to be in opposition. For sure, one reads pretty angry at Google and the other is clearly pro-Google but the facts are much the same.

Re: What happens when you talk about salaries at Google

#135

Post by jaawn » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 1:24 PM UTC

It is unfortunate that a large amount of the discussion is being distracted by the stringing-together-tweets thing. Yes, it was lame to do that, but isn't it more worthwhile to talk about the content?

I think most of us probably work at a company that discourages salary transparency (most people do in general). I think we could have a more valuable discussion about how our experiences compare/contrast to the content of the tweets, and save the "omg a bunch of tweets are not an article!" comments for when someone writes a blog post about that and shares it on HN.

Re: What happens when you talk about salaries at Google

#136

Post by tempodox » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 1:24 PM UTC

danielweber wrote: post #87

tempodox wrote: post #2

The article format is completely busted by Twitter's display rules and made unreadable. In this case, formatting the text in a readable way would probably get you sued. Those tweets belong to Twitter now and are good for nothing else but ferrying ads. I won't have my time wasted by trying to read that crap.

> In this case, formatting the text in a readable way would probably get you sued Has anyone ever been sued for stringing 20 tweets together into plaintext?

They probably wouldn't sue a private person for using tweets however they want in a private context. A publication with millions (just a guess) of readers is something quite different.

Re: What happens when you talk about salaries at Google

#137

Post by emirozer » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 1:24 PM UTC

Wouldn't it be better to __try__ to create a global movement within the industry for employees to feed accurate data to glassdoor?

Sidenote: Most of the people around here knows glassdoor but i have worked with a lot of people who never heard of it..

Re: What happens when you talk about salaries at Google

#138

Post by sergiotapia » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 1:25 PM UTC

cmiles74 wrote: post #134

sergiotapia wrote: post #89

Other side of the story: https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/3e05wg/what_hap... Either way both are completely unverifiable. Take both with a huge fistful of salt until both parties are interviewed and quoted and research is done into what happened.

This really reads like more of the same story, I don't see these two narratives to be in opposition. For sure, one reads pretty angry at Google and the other is clearly pro-Google but the facts are much the same.

Well, no. The ex-employee says management was pissed and hush hush.

The reddit comment says management mentioned it openly in one of their scheduled all-hands weekly meeting.

Quote: "Friend says the sheet was addressed a company all-hands meeting (it wasn't the focus of the meeting, apparently they have an all-hands every week and it was mentioned. Can that be right tho? Aren't there like tens of thousands of people all across the world? How can you have an all-hands meeting the world over every week? anyway...)"

Re: What happens when you talk about salaries at Google

#139

Post by harel » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 1:25 PM UTC

bronxcoder wrote: post #43

I hate that wage disparity is being heralded as a gender issue. It's really a negotiating problem. My coworker and I were hired together, same position, same experience, and offered the same salary. When I was offered the position, I asked for $15,000 more and they gave it to me. My coworker didn't ask for more and is therefore now making $15,000 less than me. After six months, I asked for a raise of $5,000. He never…

Hear hear. There was a big discussion in a London radio station a week or so ago about that, since David Cameron wants to fight for equal pay across genders and have companies over 250 or so people publicise the pay gap across genders. Which by itself sounds a laudable thing but really unrealistic for many trades, and in particular software development. The demand is high, supply is low, and you can have people with less experience than yourself making more because they negotiated better. That has nothing to do with genders as you say - its all down to negotiation skills.

Re: What happens when you talk about salaries at Google

#140

Post by deadmik3 » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 1:26 PM UTC

mhluongo wrote: post #94

deadmik3 wrote: post #47

Was stringing together a couple dozen tweets really the best format to share a story like this? There is a lot that's left out. Once she vaguely mentions that another employee who was "involved" was still getting all of his peer bonuses (which may or may not have been PB's for his "involvement", we don't know), the whole thing just crumbled into a victim story for me. OF COURSE the MALE coworker can do WHATEVER HE WA…

> tl;dr she got exactly what you would expect when you're intentionally stirring shit up at any company. I'm not sure what she expected. What? Sharing salary information is a protected employee activity, and retaliation is illegal.. so maybe she expected there wouldn't be retaliation?

They didn't retaliate, they just didn't give her the bonuses.