101–110 of 626 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How can everyone be underpaid? Does that even make sense?
Not literally everyone can be underpaid, but most people can be underpaid, with a very small percentage paid fairly (and a smaller percentage overpaid)
> Men account for about 69 percent of the company’s work force, but they received a disproportionately higher percentage of the money. If women were underpaid, things are less equal on average. If men were underpaid, as the study suggests, things are more equal on average. That said, would it be fair to keep underpaying some people in order to keep it more equal on average? I think not.
They needed to compare the number of men who were underpaid as a proportion of all men to the number of women who were underpaid as a proportion of all women.
Using bum-pulled numbers, your company has 1000 employees, 667 are men, and 333 women, and they all do pretty much the same job. Your payroll is $100M, and 70% of it goes to the male employees. The mean pay for men is $105k, and the mean pay for women is $90k. Mean pay is $100k--let's say this is fair pay for the work. Overall, the men are overpaid, and the women underpaid.
But the mean is a fool's game; the median is more telling. Now say 445 men get $90k, and 222 get $135k. 2/3 of men are underpaid. Now let's say 222 women get $101k, and 111 get $68k. 1/3 of women are underpaid.
On a per-person basis, a man working for the company is twice as likely to be underpaid as a woman, but the amount by which they would be underpaid is much less. Going by the aggregate numbers, one could say "men at Company X are overpaid, compared to the women" and then any given underpaid man might not even realize they are being underpaid, thanks to the misleading statistic. When one of the $68k-paid women complains (naturally, as the worst-off of the bunch), and the company analyzes its own payroll at a more detailed level, it realizes that men are more likely to be underpaid than women (and also that increasing its payroll by 8% would make no-one underpaid).
> Kelly Ellis, a former Google engineer and one of the plaintiffs in the gender-pay suit against the company, said in a legal filing that Google hired her as a Level 3 employee — the category for new software engineers who are recent college graduates — in 2010 despite her having four years of experience. > Within a few weeks of Ms. Ellis being hiring, Google hired a male engineer for her team who had also graduated…
> Kelly Ellis, a former Google engineer and one of the plaintiffs in the gender-pay suit against the company, said in a legal filing that Google hired her as a Level 3 employee — the category for new software engineers who are recent college graduates — in 2010 despite her having four years of experience. I worked for around 4 years before joining Google and was also hired as an L3. I'm male. Two of my new grad frien…
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The main thing is that Google prefers to downlevel people who have external experience. I (male) had 5 years of experience, still was hired at L3. I know many others who have the same story. So the L4 person probably had some better story/negotiation which allowed them to start at L4. It of course could be bias. It was really frustrating for me to be at the same level as new grads, though on reflection, I was not at…
Can I ask why you might think that you were not at the same level? Why is Google a special software snowflake and none of your external experience is transferable?
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Not literally everyone can be underpaid, but most people can be underpaid, with a very small percentage paid fairly (and a smaller percentage overpaid)
This really feels like a separate issue.
Now I'm hearing that "it doesn't matter that there are significant numbers of both underpaid women and underpaid men" from you.
I guess it's not very clear to me what you think the issue is here.
Can't wait to see how Jordan Peterson uses this one... [edit: minor wording change; why am I being downvoted? I'm seriously asking]
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The main thing is that Google prefers to downlevel people who have external experience. I (male) had 5 years of experience, still was hired at L3. I know many others who have the same story. So the L4 person probably had some better story/negotiation which allowed them to start at L4. It of course could be bias. It was really frustrating for me to be at the same level as new grads, though on reflection, I was not at…
Can I ask why you might think that you were not at the same level? Why is Google a special software snowflake and none of your external experience is transferable?
Much of what you've done at other companies, other on the Microsoft stack or open-source stack, doesn't transfer. Little of your tooling experience matters.
While you can jump from one Linux-and-Python-and-git-and-JIRA-based startup to another and hit the ground running, you'll be spending months ramping up at Google unless you've worked there before.
I'm not saying this is justified, especially when it comes to other ladders like graphic designers (where you see the same thing happening), but there does seem to be a certain logic to it.
Do read the fine article for the details: But the study did not tell the whole story of women at Google or in the technology industry more broadly, something that company officials acknowledged. Most significantly, it did not address ingrained issues that, according to workplace experts, cannot be overcome simply by considering how much different people are paid for doing the same job: Women and racial minorities oft…
> according to workplace experts The media really needs to stop this practice of just saying "experts say" without any attribution. I suggest when reading any article, when you read, "experts agree" or "sources say" or "critics have said" or "others are saying" -- just replace it with, "I, the author of this article, think ..."
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This really feels like a separate issue.
So then what is the issue here. I'm hearing "no the issue is that the data was looked at wrong and they really do discriminate against women". Now I'm hearing that "it doesn't matter that there are significant numbers of both underpaid women and underpaid men" from you. I guess it's not very clear to me what you think the issue is here.
Unionize and wage equity magically disappears.