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

Re: What happens when you talk about salaries at Google

#171

Post by chasing » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 1:41 PM UTC

This is not journalism. Do not treat it as such.

Molly McHugh and Wired need to reach out to this woman and ask a few questions. They need to reach out to Google and ask a few questions.

Otherwise, this information is just a shade better than useless. There's a lot of detail missing in these tweets. There's a lot of handwaving where the audience is essentially invited to fill in the blanks with whatever stereotypes -- good or bad -- they feel like.

It irritates me immensely that this story is now out there and getting to be a Big Deal -- and there's no actual journalism to attempt to get to the bottom of it. How time consuming could it possibly be to send a few e-mails, hop on the phone, or go dig up someone you know who works at Google and might shed some light on this?

Maybe Erica Joy is right. Maybe there's a huge problem at Google regarding sharing salaries. Maybe something illegal or, at least, immoral/hypocritical is going on. Or maybe Erica Joy is misunderstanding something about how Google works. About how peer bonuses work, for example. Or maybe some combination of both.

But unless we want to go dig up that information on our own, we just don't know.

Good job, Wired.

Re: What happens when you talk about salaries at Google

#172

Post by pjc50 » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 1:42 PM UTC

dataker wrote: post #165

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?

I'm not taking Google's position, but couldn't Erica have a hidden agenda on this initiative? Is it only about transparency? She does seem like a SJW and, if any discrepancies in compensation were found between gender/race/... , Google would be ultimately screwed. Plus, with such large dataset, one could fallaciously assume differences without considering different countries,positions,...

Equal pay is still regarded as a sinister "hidden agenda"? It's 2015, guys.

Re: What happens when you talk about salaries at Google

#173

Post by onion2k » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 1:42 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…

Would you feel the same way if you worked in a company where 90% of the men were paid 15% less than the women? Would you believe that it was just every individual man being worse at negotiating? Or would you suspect there was something else happening? That's the situation women face.

Re: What happens when you talk about salaries at Google

#174

Post by chockablock » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 1:42 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.

One 'side' is a non-anonymous first-person account from one of the major parties in the described event.

The other 'side' is a post from Redditor 'dickbutt_md', who claims to have called up "a friend" who works at Google. In dickbutt's account, the friend claims not to know Joy personally, and not to have been involved in the events, but manages to describe Joy as "passive aggressive" and "not classy", and closes by saying "Google is fucking awesome and anyone who says otherwise is talking out their ass."

I kind of wish this were not the top-voted comment on an HN thread about pay equity.

Re: What happens when you talk about salaries at Google

#175

Post by smcgivern » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 1:43 PM UTC

deadmik3 wrote: post #164

smcgivern wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps you could clarify what you think: > exactly what you would expect when you're intentionally stirring shit up at any company is? From this reply, it appears that you think Google did nothing wrong - regardless of whether she was 'stirring shit up' or not.

I don't think they did do anything wrong against her. She didn't get her peer bonuses for starting this spreadsheet?

So what you expect for 'stirring shit up' is that nothing bad happens to you? If you think that, then the top post of this thread was weirdly inflammatory.

Re: What happens when you talk about salaries at Google

#176

Post by lewisl9029 » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 1:44 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?

Unfortunately, legislation like this don't really have any teeth.

Companies can still retaliate against salary sharing in any way they want because it's next to impossible for you to prove in court that they acted in retaliation.

Re: What happens when you talk about salaries at Google

#177

Post by imgabe » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 1:44 PM UTC

balabaster wrote: post #125

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?

The fact that she's a woman is neither here nor there... on the surface where it can be seen. Behind the scenes however, you have politics. When you piss people off that are in power, they find ways to make your life uncomfortable - that goes whether you're male or female. To expect there will be no retaliation for pissing off higher ups would be incredibly naive. Even if what you are doing (strictly speaking) is leg…

What exactly is the point of having a law if you don't expect it to be upheld? If these managers illegally retaliated for sharing salary information, then nail them to the fucking wall. Who the hell cares if they're "uncomfortable" that things are changing?

Yeah, maybe a tiger attacks people when it feels threatened. You still put it down.

Re: What happens when you talk about salaries at Google

#178

Post by pjc50 » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 1:44 PM UTC

balabaster wrote: post #143

malchow wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

Oh, one can write a law preventing that, but what happens when you write laws to curb human emotion? Very little. Human nature takes generations to alter their behaviour - even with laws making that behaviour illegal. It sucks that we can't be less judgmental, more accepting and more adaptable to the wants of others, but that's the way we are: Flawed. Until we can be more tolerant and accepting of one anothers needs…

what happens when you write laws to curb human emotion

We call this "civilisation".

Re: What happens when you talk about salaries at Google

#179

Post by dataker » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 1:45 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #172

dataker wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not taking Google's position, but couldn't Erica have a hidden agenda on this initiative? Is it only about transparency? She does seem like a SJW and, if any discrepancies in compensation were found between gender/race/... , Google would be ultimately screwed. Plus, with such large dataset, one could fallaciously assume differences without considering different countries,positions,...

Equal pay is still regarded as a sinister "hidden agenda"? It's 2015, guys.

If you're intellectually honest, yes, still is a hidden agenda.

Re: What happens when you talk about salaries at Google

#180

Post by Steko » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 1:45 PM UTC

sergiotapia wrote: post #138

cmiles74 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Maybe you should read the comment again, it does not say management brought it up. My understanding of these google meetings is anyone can bring up things.

Also:

(1) The fact that management can discuss something does not mean they do not object to it. There are many degrees of disapproval.

(2) Management is not a monolith, it's composed of many people taking many sometimes contradictory actions -- the fact that Joe was not harassed on Friday does not mean that Joe was not ever harassed.