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What happens when you talk about salaries at Google

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Re: What happens when you talk about salaries at Google

#101

Post by jaawn »

Shinkei wrote: post #82
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…

Yes! It's not that somebody said, "hey, we can pay this person less simply because they are a woman." It's that the employee themselves may have negotiated for more. Correlation is NOT causation.

Even if this is true, this doesn't magically make it not a gender issue. What if women are generally given less leverage by default in negotiations? What if implicit gender biases have a chilling effect on women's expectations when they go to negotiate? What if women are discouraged from negotiating at all?

I think, given what I've seen so far, women are given less leverage to start with, they are subject to the chilling effects of gender biases, and they are discouraged from negotiating more often than not.

Sure, a woman can overcome these obstacles, but she shouldn't have these extra obstacles in the first place. The "pay gap" is almost certainly not due to managers thinking "oo I'll pay her less because she's a woman," but it is still indicative of some (more complex) gender inequality.

Re: What happens when you talk about salaries at Google

#102

Post by dataker »

>"Don't you know what could happen?"

>Nothing. It's illegal to retaliate against employees for sharing salaries.

This answer in fantastic and I wish more technical people learned with this.

As a programmer, some managers assume(often rightly so) that you have no clue about laws, finance and business in general.

Re: What happens when you talk about salaries at Google

#103

Post by relet »

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…

It is a negotiating problem, and I think that that is an issue (be it gender-related or not). It rewards competitive thinking over cooperative thinking - people who'd rather work in a fair and equal environment are more likely to accept the same salary they perceive others will get - i.e. usually the proposed salary. Competitive minds have less qualms about claiming higher rewards.

Mechanisms like publishing salaries allows for a fairer salary whether you are cooperative or competitive. If you earn more, you probably can justify it in front of colleagues and bosses.

Some say cooperation over competition is a 'female' trait, but personally, I feel the same. I am successful at negotiation, but I'd rather know that my colleagues earn the same when they work the same, which is why I try to encourage talk about salaries.

Re: What happens when you talk about salaries at Google

#104

Post by fridek »

Not that it matters and it was already said elsewhere, but peer bonus can be awarded only once for one thing. And it makes sense in a 50k+ company, where some social interaction happens and a single person can become peer-bonus-celebrity easily. It's not a good thing to incentivize :) Also if I were a manager sifting through some kind of peer bonus app I'd too be tempted to mark all as rejected after a while.

There was a book recently, Work rules! by Laszlo Bock who happens to be a head of people operations. He describes exactly those inequality patterns. It's nothing unusual, some of it is accepted (some people earn more for their higher value) and some not (woman not asking for a raise so easily). Seriously, just go and read a book, not some stream of contextless tweets gathered together.

Re: What happens when you talk about salaries at Google

#105

Post by braythwayt »

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?

This is like telling me that water is wet. Water is wet. Assholes are assholes. Companies stretching or breaking the law with respect to retaliation are companies stretching or breaking the law with respect to retaliation. Smug HN commentators are smug HN commentators.

None of this actually says anything about whether she acted correctly, or incorrectly, or whether the company behaved with propriety, or whether information wants to be free, or anything else that--to borrow a phrase from the original HN guidelines--“piques one’s intellectual curiosity."

Here’s my contribution to “she got exactly what she should expect:” Americans got exactly what they should expect when they refused to pay taxes to the King.

What happened next? Why did things turn out that way. What might have happened instead? What could have been done to prevent it from happening? What could have been done to make it happen with less bloodshed?

Those are the interesting questions to ponder.

Re: What happens when you talk about salaries at Google

#106

Post by bronxcoder »

Anderkent wrote: post #69
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…

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).

I would agree but I think there is something about a person who believes in themselves enough to negotiate that can be a differentiator. For instance, my coworker is a total slacker, comes in late and leaves early. I come in early and leave late and take on extra work. Someone who is determined enough to feel they are worth more money will probably statistically work harder. I know it isn't the same for all people, but I would bet that the majority of people who ask for more money work harder.

Re: What happens when you talk about salaries at Google

#107

Post by wayanon »

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…

If your employer said to your colleague 'look bronxcoder asked for and received a raise and you both work equally hard so you will get the raise too' - would you be annoyed or happy ?

I think is much more ethical to treat people like this but maybe your colleague isn't doing such a good job as you.

Re: What happens when you talk about salaries at Google

#108

Post by caskance »

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.

No they aren't. Plenty of people here know someone who works at Google.
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