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

#131

Post by zoner » Thu, Aug 10, 2017, 9:32 AM UTC

dang wrote: post #130

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…

We've banned this account for using HN primarily for ideological battle, which is an abuse of this site.

Yes, follow what Google did ;)

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

#132

Post by effie » Thu, Aug 10, 2017, 10:28 PM UTC

boona wrote: post #63

aaron-lebo wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was widely condemned. The document has been inaccurately labeled (I've seen a Slate op-ed making statements that are blatantly false) , but the people who are acting like it is some kind of academic work have apparently never done academic work. The guy took a few academic sources and mixed in stuff from the New York Post. It's not well sourced. What people do see is an academic study linked and say "see, this is…

> it's just psuedo-scientific garble As Julian Assange pointed out, it's been reviewed by a professor of social psychology, a PhD in personality psychology, a professor in evolutionary psychology, and a PhD in sexual neuroscience and in large part it checks out. http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-... > Why is the tech world turning itself upside down for a mediocre undergrad paper? Precisely…

Thanks for the link, the analysis by Geoffrey Miller is quite remarkable.

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

#133

Post by freeflight » Sun, Aug 13, 2017, 10:28 AM UTC

bb611 wrote: post #86

trentnix wrote: post #6

Here is a clue for everyone: you aren't paid according to the value you bring. You are either paid according to some pseudo-arbitrary schedule or you are paid what you can be had for. Unless Google has a secret pay penalty for females, the problem here is women being willing to work for less. No lawsuit is needed to correct that.

> you are paid what you can be had for > No lawsuit is needed to correct that. If they can either get Google to settle or convince a jury they deserve compensation, they've retroactively increased their pay. It's a high and expensive bar, but if they clear it they get paid more for work they already did. So to put it into the perspective you're espousing, these women are simply negotiating their rate after the fact.

> So to put it into the perspective you're espousing, these women are simply negotiating their rate after the fact.

The time for that would have been before the fact, not after the fact. You can't just change a bilateral agreement in hindsight and on your own accord unless you are Darth Vader "altering the deal", which might actually be the best analogy for what's happening here, dark side and all.

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

#134

Post by freeflight » Sun, Aug 13, 2017, 10:46 AM UTC

throwaway9853 wrote: post #92

jorgemf wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Throwaway account created one hour ago? So you say that some who is starving if Africa we shouldn't care because he wasn't at the right place at the right moment? If you answer is that it is not the same case where do you put the line? Because your argument for getting things is basically luck.

Yes and it's luck + skills. Because otherwise you wouldn't even be in that position in the first place. And what does Africa have to do with this? This was related to people working at Google and/or similar companies. So you're point is that we should give unqualified people jobs that they are clearly not meant for just because they are having a hard time? There are NGOs and state help for this. Of course if I'm havi…

> I should do everything that is in my power to help myself, I shouldn't expect help from others.

That's a seriously dangerous mindset and one of the main reasons why we are dealing with a burn-out epidemic and generally massive mental health issues.

Some people are just really bad at asking for help, whether it's because they don't want to admit they ain't "perfect" and hurt their pride or because they simply don't realize they are in way over their head.

The result is that many people set themselves up to fail as they refuse to ask for help even when there's plenty of it aviable and they are clearly in need of it because they fear it might devalue their achievements by not having it done "on their own".

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

#135

Post by freeflight » Sun, Aug 13, 2017, 11:08 AM UTC

likpok wrote: post #116

mpweiher wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't claim to be making a scientific argument, > when a major link in your chain of reasoning is > nothing more than an appeal to preconception. "Gendered Occupational Interests: Prenatal Androgen Effects on Psychological Orientation to Things Versus People There is considerable interest in understanding women’s underrepresentation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics careers. Career choices ha…

Stipulate that men and women like things and people respectively, and this is a fundamental biological truth. With this, tech is more biased than it should be. Engineering as a whole is pretty people-oriented: projects are team efforts and require a lot of collaboration, requirements gathering and user research. Math, as a counterpoint, requires much less of this but is less biased. That suggests that the Thing/Peopl…

> Engineering as a whole is pretty people-oriented: projects are team efforts and require a lot of collaboration, requirements gathering and user research.

Just like the statement about coding, I think that's a tad bit generalized because you can apply this to anything you scale bigger. You can make a big project, involving lots of different people, out of pretty much any skill.

Tho that doesn't change the basic "requirements" to be good at a specific skill. A coder can still code an app on his/her own, he/she might need more time, but the whole "additional people" thing is entirely optional in this scenario.

Same deal with engineering: It might take more time, but even big projects can be done with very few people. Adding more people is an entirely optional thing to speed up the process.

It's for that very same reason that many big projects, involving lots of people, have positions solely build around managing the whole "people" part of the project, leaving the engineers to do their engineering and the coders to their coding.

Because that's just how we humans are: We ain't perfect at everything, we can't be because lots of it is based on trade-offs.

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

#136

Post by freeflight » Sun, Aug 13, 2017, 11:25 AM UTC

Kiro wrote: post #59

josteink wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Reporting that those condemnations occurred (they did) isn't an implicit validation If 9/11, Iraq and WMDs have taught us anything, it is that repeating a lie enough times makes it true. This is repeating the lie. Sure. It's done by reference only, and not directly, but it's still a repetition.

> 9/11 What lies are you referring to?

Lies like the supposed link between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein [0] and the fact that 9/11 was heavily used as a rationale for invading Afghanistan/Iraq.[1]

They had their target first and tried to spin 9/11 in such a way that it pointed to their predestined target. Many US Americans fell for it back then, still believing to this day that Saddam was involved with 9/11, lies about baby incubators and that the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was sanctioned by the UN.

Those are all evidently false, yet quite a many US Americans still consider them to be true, especially that last one about the Iraq invasion being UN sanctioned or else they'd have to admit that their country is leading wars of aggression for economic gains and not just to be "the good guys" aka "world police".

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddam_Hussein_and_al-Qaeda_li...

[1] http://www.cbsnews.com/news/plans-for-iraq-attack-began-on-9...