More than 60 women consider suing Google, claiming sexism and a pay gap • Hacker News Board

Re: More than 60 women consider suing Google, claiming sexism and a pay gap

#121

Post by vilmosi » Wed, Aug 09, 2017, 5:13 PM UTC

rplst8 wrote: post #114

yellowapple wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Because your argument for getting things is basically luck." Luck is really what drives a successful career and life: - Lucky to have been born in the right place - Lucky to have the right skin color - Lucky to have the right sex/gender/orientation (and for those to match up in the "right" way) - Lucky to have the right family - Lucky to have an outgoing and/or extroverted personality - Lucky to have an interest in…

I'm not sure what you are arguing in favor of exactly. Say we do make actual individual merit the only factor in hiring and pay. Would those "unlucky" enough to have been born a starving child in Africa ever have a chance at getting a high paying IT job? Likely not, as they won't have the education or skills needed to do the work. I'd argue your use of "luck" in all these cases is wrong. It's more like fortune, and t…

Having said fortune, as you describe it, is luck. Nobody chooses their ancestors.

Re: More than 60 women consider suing Google, claiming sexism and a pay gap

#122

Post by rplst8 » Wed, Aug 09, 2017, 5:20 PM UTC

yellowapple wrote: post #120

rplst8 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what you are arguing in favor of exactly. Say we do make actual individual merit the only factor in hiring and pay. Would those "unlucky" enough to have been born a starving child in Africa ever have a chance at getting a high paying IT job? Likely not, as they won't have the education or skills needed to do the work. I'd argue your use of "luck" in all these cases is wrong. It's more like fortune, and t…

"I'm not sure what you are arguing in favor of exactly." I'm not really arguing in favor of anything. Just pointing out that personal success and well-being is indeed currently driven by luck, regardless of whether we like it or even realize it. Pretending that the only variable involved is merit or "hard work" is ignorant of the existence of billions of perfectly capable and "hard working" people currently unable to…

> the playing field is by no means level, and neither of us chose to be born into our respective families.

Agreed. However our parents did choose to have us, raise us, and give us the best fighting chance. Ignoring that ignores their hard work and skills to properly rear children. If in this new system we just give everyone a job and a good salary "because" then what incentivizes anyone to properly rear their children or give them anything other than the minimum the State mandates.

I'd argue that the drive to provide a better life for one's offspring is the fundamental building block of empathy. By society ignoring that capital that someone's parents built up in their children, you risk a change in behavior where parents say, "your life will be great because you will have a job and salary no matter what." Then, the very idea of love and empathy for one's offspring breaks down, and thereby in society as a whole.

Re: More than 60 women consider suing Google, claiming sexism and a pay gap

#123

Post by xapata » Wed, Aug 09, 2017, 6:04 PM UTC

dp-tyvek wrote: post #98

xapata wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are proposing the model: wage ~ education + experience + error If the errors are correlated with education or experience, that indicates a confounding variable problem. Most data shows that including race and gender as explanatory factors improves the model: wage ~ education + experience + gender + race + error Until the coefficients of gender and race become approximately zero, one can say that the market is dis…

According to my understanding, rimliu is proposing that wage ~ education + experience + gender + race + additional_factors + error where additional_factors consists of other unknown factors (e.g. charisma, intelligence, appearance?). In which case, if education , experience , gender and race are kept constant, there is still going to be a fair bit of variance in wage caused by these unknown factors. Either way, it wo…

Looking at it a different way, if productivity is defined as the combination of all relevant features (education, experience, ethics, etc.) then racism/sexism imply non-zero coefficients in

    wage ~ productivity + race + gender

This also assumes a competitive market where wage will asymptotically approach productivity.

Re: More than 60 women consider suing Google, claiming sexism and a pay gap

#124

Post by jorgemf » Wed, Aug 09, 2017, 6:37 PM UTC

forthefuture wrote: post #119

jorgemf wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lines of code as productivity measure is not the best example. Can you provide a better example? I can drop your example just with this: maybe your 100 working/tested lines produce more money for the company that the ones Joe wrote. Or the company needs the 250 lines of code to produce any money, without all of them your value for the company is 0.

The point is not that 150 lines is better than 100, it's that two people with the same job do not have the same productivity. Measure productivity by whatever metric you want, it's impossible for two people to do the exact same (amount / value) work. The only way to prove salaries are just is for every single person to have a different salary.

I agree with everything. But two points. First you cannot measure productivity per employee, it is incredible complicated. Second the difference is not going to be as big as you would expect to have huge differences in terms of salary (like 20% or more). So basically I think when two people with the same job positions have a very different salary you have a clear bias to give one more than the other. If they are really different in their productivity you might consider to fire the less productive or give the other person a better category (in the companies they have Junior I Junior II, Senior I, Senior II, etc).

Re: More than 60 women consider suing Google, claiming sexism and a pay gap

#125

Post by krotton » Wed, Aug 09, 2017, 7:17 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #97

ardit33 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

all your examples are from repressive regimes (either economically, or politically). You see very low participation rates on hard STEM among women on countries where women have both large degree of economic and political freedom. Basically, when women have choices, they choose against hard STEM. It is not just the US, but other countries with even better gender relations (Norwawy, Sweden, Denmark), it seems women jus…

> all your examples are from repressive regimes (either economically, or politically). So socialization doesn't affect peoples' preferences, except in societies where socialization does affect peoples' preferences. Got it. > Basically, when women have choices, they choose against hard STEM. 1) This presupposes, without evidence, that girls in the U.S., Denmark, etc., aren't socialized differently than boys, even if t…

May that be because tech is perceived as more competitive or stressful? Lots of people make fortunes these days doing technology and the pace is tremendous, unlike in sciences. Anyway, I think the theory that it's probably just parents telling their girls it's a man's sport most of the time appeals to me a tiny bit more. I don't however see any reason to straight out presume biology has no effect whatsoever, it's probably a complex mixture of factors.

Re: More than 60 women consider suing Google, claiming sexism and a pay gap

#126

Post by dlwdlw » Wed, Aug 09, 2017, 7:45 PM UTC

ebola1717 wrote: post #32

Every time an article like this pops up, I see the same sort of response. It's always - Women don't negotiate - Women get pregnant - Women work in lower pay professions And 90% of the time, the article already accounts for the nuances of those topics. Not to mention these arguments have been answered thoroughly many times over, and a cursory google would reveal that. I just wish people would do some basic research be…

I always thought that the problem was about changing culture. The existing culture is too elitist and male oriented.

Which isn't a problem in itself. But these are gatekeeping mechanisms that are gatekeeping what may become the ONLY good jobs in the future as everything becomes automated.

It's not about proving your worth but looking out for people trying to cram into the departing boat.

Whether there's enough space or if the boat can grow or even if the boat is as useful as it claims is another story.

Goverments used to burn books not because peasants could read them but because of the lifeline it extended. An opportunity to challenge.

Tech exponentially creates more and more knowledge requiring more and more specialization. It's not enough to throw scraps because difference can still grow if the scraps are small enough. Even though the rising tide lifts all boats, the difference in speed creates master/slave like riers.

Certain societies and cultures place more emphasis on the responsibility of the powerful to create these lifelines. Others are more individualistic.

Re: More than 60 women consider suing Google, claiming sexism and a pay gap

#127

Post by trobertson » Wed, Aug 09, 2017, 9:12 PM UTC

Tyr42 wrote: post #99

_Codemonkeyism wrote: post #2

How is Google handling pay? Is there a level system with fixed pay levels? Or can anyone negotiate his salary - in limits - when starting his job?

Check out the court ruling in the labour vs Google case: https://www.oalj.dol.gov/Decisions/ALJ/OFC/2017/OFCCP_-_SAN_... Page 10 has the information: A “compensation team” sets the salary for each hire. Tr. 165-69. The team has no direct contact with the applicant and does not have the applicant’s name, gender, race, or ethnicity. Id. For industry hires, the committee might be given the applicant’s current compensati…

That doesn't pass the smell test. They've been paying huge sums of money for some people (deep learning, and Levandowski's $100 million). Their process is far more arbitrary and open to negotiation than that summary claims.

Maybe for little people they have a standard process. But certainly not for everyone.

Re: More than 60 women consider suing Google, claiming sexism and a pay gap

#128

Post by yellowapple » Wed, Aug 09, 2017, 9:26 PM UTC

rplst8 wrote: post #122

yellowapple wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I'm not sure what you are arguing in favor of exactly." I'm not really arguing in favor of anything. Just pointing out that personal success and well-being is indeed currently driven by luck, regardless of whether we like it or even realize it. Pretending that the only variable involved is merit or "hard work" is ignorant of the existence of billions of perfectly capable and "hard working" people currently unable to…

> the playing field is by no means level, and neither of us chose to be born into our respective families. Agreed. However our parents did choose to have us, raise us, and give us the best fighting chance. Ignoring that ignores their hard work and skills to properly rear children. If in this new system we just give everyone a job and a good salary "because" then what incentivizes anyone to properly rear their childre…

"However our parents did choose to have us, raise us, and give us the best fighting chance."

Right, and we were lucky that they did so, which is my point. Plenty of people weren't so lucky, whether because of a lack of parents (e.g. orphans), neglectful/abusive parents, etc. Understanding that possibility is essential to understand why the playing fields aren't level.

"If in this new system"

I'm not proposing any kind of "new system", as I already explained. I'm just describing the problem.

"By society ignoring that capital"

I'm not calling for society to ignore that capital. If anything, I'm calling for society to recognize that not everyone has access to that capital by zero fault of their own and (ideally) to provide an alternative means to acquire equivalent capital. Folks shouldn't have to be punished for their ancestors' mistakes (or even non-mistakes).

A lot of this can and should happen through the public education system, but even that's not a given; even for those who have access to public education (which is far from 100%), not all public schools are created equal. It - again - more often than not boils down to luck.

Re: More than 60 women consider suing Google, claiming sexism and a pay gap

#129

Post by _Codemonkeyism » Thu, Aug 10, 2017, 4:45 AM UTC

Tyr42 wrote: post #99

_Codemonkeyism wrote: post #2

How is Google handling pay? Is there a level system with fixed pay levels? Or can anyone negotiate his salary - in limits - when starting his job?

Check out the court ruling in the labour vs Google case: https://www.oalj.dol.gov/Decisions/ALJ/OFC/2017/OFCCP_-_SAN_... Page 10 has the information: A “compensation team” sets the salary for each hire. Tr. 165-69. The team has no direct contact with the applicant and does not have the applicant’s name, gender, race, or ethnicity. Id. For industry hires, the committee might be given the applicant’s current compensati…

Thanks!

Re: More than 60 women consider suing Google, claiming sexism and a pay gap

#130

Post by dang » Thu, Aug 10, 2017, 7:55 AM UTC

zoner wrote: post #84

If women are getting paid less for the same work, that's wrong. But I sense this is not what's happening here: we are paid less for whatever the reason and we are suing google for it because there's this new religion, that's having a huge bias against discrimination. I'm sick of seeing this everywhere. Well f that. I'll have 15 children and my wife will stay at home all the time. Our civilisation survived because thi…

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