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

Re: What happens when you talk about salaries at Google

#321

Post by spinchange » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 4:09 PM UTC

mhluongo wrote: post #91

spinchange wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This post isn't journalism by any stretch of the imagination. It's actually like a perfect caricature of whats wrong with digital publishing. Serious topic on a serious masthead with less than amateur treatment.

Someone sharing something on Twitter isn't supposed to be journalism. AFAIK the original author isn't a journalist, she's a technologist who got fed up.

We are not commenting on an HN submission that is a link to someone's tweet/tweets. We are commenting on a submission to Wired Magazine, a publication owned by Conde Nast. Wired's reporting added nothing to this story. (There is no reporting) They didn't interview the person, they didn't interview her employer, and they didn't offer any analysis whatsoever. The reporter didn't storify the tweets herself. Wired did insert advertisements and is getting page views for it though. It is Wired's job to do more than they have done here. You should expect more from them or anyone who purports to inform you.

Re: What happens when you talk about salaries at Google

#322

Post by dalke » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 4:09 PM UTC

defen wrote: post #294

Anderkent wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people also agree that in ideal circumstances you wouldn't have to negotiate your wages (because you're effectively being rewarded for your negotiating skill, which is probably completely irrelevant to your actual productivity and value).

What's the alternative, though? No salary negotiations? How does that give employees more power? I'd rather figure out a way for poor negotiators to get better at it, than take that away from everyone.

Here's Joel Spolsky on the alternative they used at Fog Creek. http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090401/how-hard-could-it-be-em... . A goal was that "A manager would have absolutely no leeway when it came to setting a salary. And there would be only one salary per level."

Re: What happens when you talk about salaries at Google

#323

Post by _ea1k » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 4:10 PM UTC

chockablock wrote: post #174

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…

I agree that the Reddit user lacks the same level of credibility as the original author.

On the other hand he is basically spelling out all of the things that I noticed from the original tweets.

1) The tweets mentioned normalizing currencies. In every international company that I have worked in, pay ranges varied by geography. I'm not sure how you could do this accurately as the cost of living between many countries in which Google operates is not directly comparable.

2) In reading the tweets it seemed clear that peer bonuses were only being rejected when they appeared to be for the work on the spreadsheet. I haven't worked at many companies with peer bonus systems, but most of them would have frowned on sending bonuses for something like this. It is outside of the purpose of the system.

3) Yeah, this person likes to "stir the pot" a bit. That's not always a bad thing, but it is bound to have some impact on a person's career (politics are everywhere). It's hard to separate the signal from the noise about what actually happened here.

Re: What happens when you talk about salaries at Google

#324

Post by tsiki » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 4:11 PM UTC

macspoofing wrote: post #280

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…

>I hate that wage disparity is being heralded as a gender issue. If wage disparity follows gender lines then it is a gender issue.

What if wage disparity follows the lines in negotiation ability even more strongly, does that make it an issue of negotiation skills then?

Re: What happens when you talk about salaries at Google

#325

Post by eropple » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 4:18 PM UTC

deadmik3 wrote: post #318

eropple wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is still not the employee's problem, and so bringing it up is, to me, very much a threat.

As an employee you should kind of care about the company's problems, especially if they're ones that you caused. It doesn't read like a threat to me as much as it's a "Do you even realize the internal repercussions of everyone discussing their salaries?" They're just asking for insight into why this could be a problem (think 3rd grade, "Do you know why this is wrong?") and she shoots back aggressively. I think her in…

Those repercussions are irrelevant in their entirety because it is both legal and right to discuss compensation. There's nothing for her to consider as wrong and inconveniencing an employer by exercising completely and utterly protected rights is not, in any way or by any stretch of the word, her problem. The company may have a problem with openness and truthfulness, but it's not hers, and to lay it at her feet speaks volumes of you but not of her.

(edit: politeness)

Re: What happens when you talk about salaries at Google

#326

Post by aswdeffr » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 4:38 PM UTC

omouse wrote: post #317

aswdeffr wrote: post #293

Googler here on a throwaway. I personally know Erica and followed her career. it is quite frankly bizarre to see her biting back against Google given the opportunities she was given. Erica was a tech stop employee, which is Google's help desk. in terms of technical ability, hiring standards for tech stop are lower than for SRE, where she ended up. every non-erica tech stopper, including me, who wants to transfer into…

> she stayed a few months in SRE, underperformed If that's the case it looks like she wasn't aware of it; especially if you're suggesting a door was opened for her maybe there's some more transparency that's needed in the process. > the similarities to michaelochurch are strong. IIRC he was wronged and he got an apology for it: https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/07/03/my-name-is-c... Aside from Erica and her s…

Nobody really believes michaelochurch received an apology from upper management. the lawsuit potential alone means that even if there was such an apology it would never be in email. he really actually seems to be crazy.

I personally really appreciated the spreadsheet because I am anti-capitalist, but I find Erica's version of the facts to be distorted in a self-serving way. I find it hard to believe this would meaningfully impact her career.

Re: What happens when you talk about salaries at Google

#327

Post by jdmichal » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 4:51 PM UTC

imgabe wrote: post #177

balabaster wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's a huge issue of laws built around the intention of an action. That is, the action itself is not illegal unless also backed by a given intention. These cases are nearly impossible to prove in court. How do you prove that someone did something with a certain intention? Especially when they have 5th amendment protection? Unless they come out and say it voluntarily, or unless you have solid evidence such as emails, you're not going to get very far.

Re: What happens when you talk about salaries at Google

#328

Post by cmdrfred » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 4:59 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.

Journalists don't need to obey a TOS (at least in the US where it is specifically protected in the constitution "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press;"), watch the news sometime they don't get consent forms for all the people walking by in man on the streets segments. (Or a better example where news outlets published details from the snowden leaks)

I guess if all you want to do is post a bunch of tweets and not write any context or additional information about it this is the way to do it, but if you actually want to be a journalist TOS means nothing.

Re: What happens when you talk about salaries at Google

#329

Post by eropple » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 5:02 PM UTC

nicboobees wrote: post #309

eropple wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or an actual understanding of market position and--in the case of less privileged folks--a way to smoke out systemic bias. You know--things that any worker should want to know.

Maybe it's different here. In the UK it's considered vulgar to discuss money or how much you earn.

Have you paused to consider who would benefit from instilling that idea in you? Because it's not you who benefits.

Re: What happens when you talk about salaries at Google

#330

Post by innguest » Tue, Jul 21, 2015, 5:06 PM UTC

woah wrote: post #238

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,...

"The sjw's are out to get me!!"

> "The sjw's are out to get me!!"

That has a lot more teeth than the leftist equivalent "the terrorist are out to get me!!".

Remember, the TSA has a failure rate of 95% according to Homeland Security:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/01/tsa-fails-95-percen...

And on top of that, our borders to the South are open which means terrorists could come in from Mexico as well.

However, despite the TSA being admittedly just security theater and the US borders being wide open there hasn't been another terrorist attack ever since the 9/11 false flag.

But you and your leftist comrades are still shouting "The terrorists are out to get me!!".

I really, honestly, personally think that you are the idiot here, not those rightfully raising the SJW flag right after an SJW almost sinked Reddit.

Get a grip.