To me the key takeaway is that google systematically underpays both men and women.
You can actually see this in Google's H1B filings. It doesn't list gender but the range for the same titles is crazy.
Google Moves to Address Wage Equity, and Finds It’s Underpaying Many Men
111–120 of 626 posts
Re: Google Moves to Address Wage Equity, and Finds It’s Underpaying Many Men
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think this is less true for salaries, though, given that I'm sure Google has some sort of budget for them.
I think a lot of salaried Google employees have family members too. If a woman is promoted over a man in the name of gender equality, are his three daughters better off because of the new equality? Are "women" better off?
I don't see how that is relevant. We should not take into account the size of dependant family members. In our field, our jobs should be flexible enough to accommodate anyone, with paid leave, sick leave, flexible schedules. We should also end gender/race/etc discrimination, and that means being more proactive about getting our culture to change, which often means having some affirmation action in order to break the cycle.
Re: Google Moves to Address Wage Equity, and Finds It’s Underpaying Many Men
#113Do 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…
This is an example of a NYT reporter filling in context so that they don't get pubicly shamed. It seems like a lot of reporters think it's their job to stop readers from reaching the obvious conclusions of their reporting, lest a larger narrative be lost. I don't think the context is completely unjustified. It just happens to be more complicated than this. The reason that women generally drifted into higher compensat…
I believe the word you wanted was "publicly." At least, I hope it was.
Re: Google Moves to Address Wage Equity, and Finds It’s Underpaying Many Men
#114I've talked to one expert about a similar result in a company where I worked, and the flip side to results like this is sometimes promotion velocity - women looked "overpaid" for their level relative to the men, and that was often because they had been at that level much longer than most men at the same level. If you set initial salaries fairly with respect to gender but promote men more quickly, then you end up with…
So would you say the accurate way to study this is to examine "lifetime pay"--look at the pay of demographics over a time period at the company? That would show if men are making more in 5 years of accumulated employment vs women, right, and potentially unearth some of this "promotion velocity" numerically?
That is one part of the picture. This situation is so complex that I don't believe everybody has actually figured out all the important parts to study in the first place.
Re: Google Moves to Address Wage Equity, and Finds It’s Underpaying Many Men
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not a contest of who is more underpaid. This would indicate that Google systematically underpays, regardless of gender. THAT is the real issue here.
How can everyone be underpaid? Does that even make sense?
Not everybody is underpaid, but among the underpaid, they found men as well as women.
As random illustration, they might pay 200k+-5% to 80% of all level X developers, and the other 20% might only earn 150k+-5%.
I still agree that 'underpaid' is a difficult term here. Maybe the 80% are overpaid? The only hard fact in this example would be that the salary is more skewed than it should be for a 'fair' compensation.
Re: Google Moves to Address Wage Equity, and Finds It’s Underpaying Many Men
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
I strongly suspect they'll be fine giving raises to anyone specifically being underpaid while under such investigation.
I've seen a couple of studies that suggest that the pay gap isn't so much sexism as it is men just being better at negotiating in general. But with all generalizations it's not true for the entire group, so there will be some women who are better at negotiating and some men that are worse and have salaries that reflect that. Basically the real world is a lot more complicated than people think and there are many facto…
That's the explanation when men get paid more than women.
When women are getting paid more than men, there are no known explanations beyond sexism. Especially at Google who notoriously fired Damore for stating that maybe men and women have different preferences - it's pretty clear from the article, biased though it is, that the issue here is really Google managers systematically awarding pay increases to women rather than men, in order to try and boost their numbers.
Re: Google Moves to Address Wage Equity, and Finds It’s Underpaying Many Men
#117That's why we need salary transparency to really address this. There are a lot underpaid men and a lot of overpaid women. Making this into a male vs. female issue does nothing to address the fact that people are underpaid.
Salary transparency is not possible and would be highly misleading because jobs are not standardized. A "senior Java developer" can be anything. Then you would have to provide a job description in a comparable format for every salary which is not trivial, if feasible at all.
Salary transparency without job descriptions would be akin to showing house prices without describing house details - location, square footage, number of bedrooms, etc.
Re: Google Moves to Address Wage Equity, and Finds It’s Underpaying Many Men
#118One word: Union. Unionize and wage equity magically disappears.
And so does the ability of talented individuals to negotiate their own salaries.
Re: Google Moves to Address Wage Equity, and Finds It’s Underpaying Many Men
#119Can't wait to see how Jordan Peterson uses this one... [edit: minor wording change; why am I being downvoted? I'm seriously asking]
If I had to guess, a)Not adding anything to the discussion, b)the implication that Jordan Peterson has anything of value to add to the conversation, and c)the tone of the message.
Re: Google Moves to Address Wage Equity, and Finds It’s Underpaying Many Men
#120> Google, Ms. Emerson said, seemed to be advancing a “flawed and incomplete sense of equality” by making sure men and women receive the same salary
This quote would appear to sum up the entire debate, using the term generously.
There is a large and vocal minority in society who abuse the word "equality" to mean "more money and power for women". They don't care about equality. They want inequality, but they know they can't say that, so they simply redefine equality to mean inequality in the Orwellian style and carry on as if the language hadn't just been horribly violated.
Ms. Emerson should stop talking until she can say what she means, although given her job is 'diversity consulting' I'm going to guess she will never be able to say what she means.