Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google Sued by 3 Female Ex-Employees Who Say It Pays Women Less Than Men

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 297 posts

Re: Google Sued by 3 Female Ex-Employees Who Say It Pays Women Less Than Men

#141

Post by linkregister »

zaptheimpaler wrote: post #126
linkregister wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it interesting that HN commenters frequently take it for granted that someone who tinkered with programming at an early age and do side projects is a better performer at work. I have never seen any multiple-data-point evidence presented to support it. Sure, various prominent entrepreneurs used computers as hobbyists (Gates, Zuckerberg), but does that apply to the typical programmer? We all encountered students…

In every single industry and craft, those with more work experience are typically paid more than whose with less. There is little difference between "experience programming during a job" and "experience programming for fun". It is the same activity. So of course those with more experience should be expected (on average) to better than those with less. Of course those who seek out more experience due to passion will (…

> In every single industry and craft, those with more work experience are typically paid more than whose with less.

This isn't true. Those who do more with their work experience are paid more.

We all know engineers who have been at the same company for over a decade, but have practically nothing to show for it. There is an enormous disparity between engineers.

There's a reason why Google and Facebook allow engineers to stay Senior Engineers for an entire career: most don't actually progress beyond a certain point.

Jeff Dean and Rob Pike aren't good because they've been programming for a long time. They're good because they've developed their organizational skills, architectural skills, communication skills, and excellent public speaking (this is vital as a tech lead and higher). None of those can be developed by programming on something cool on the weekend.

None of what you said actually disputes my statement; we both value experience. I'm just trying to communicate to you that extra hours programming at home might not be as intrinsically valuable as you might think.

Re: Google Sued by 3 Female Ex-Employees Who Say It Pays Women Less Than Men

#142

Post by zaptheimpaler »

tptacek wrote: post #102
lumberingjack wrote: post #100

I still wonder why the gender equality issue in nursing has not been addressed we need more men as nurses! What is it like 12 women to 1 men nurse we have to fix this its is out of hand. /s

Hahahaha it's funny because "nursing" is a gendered term for a class of front-line medical occupation that is almost certain to be vital to the provisioning of cost-effective health care in the 21st century where it is vitally important that we both raise the status of the profession to get more people into the labor force to do it and also to raise its status among consumers so less people have to wait for ludicrous…

I think you agreed nursing is gendered in favor of females.. no one complains about that.

Construction jobs are gendered in favor of males.. no one complains about that.

So if 20% CS majors are women, and 20% programming jobs are held by women why is that a travesty?

Why do we call diversity initiatives to increase the hiring proportion of one group ABOVE what is naturally expected fair rather than unfair? If they are paid less, sure we need to address THAT. But seeing they are represented as expected in the workforce, biasing your hiring process further in favor of women necessitates biasing it against every other demographic. And why does no one give a shit about diversity in other less desirable occupations?

Thats what OP is pointing out. Its not a joke. There are problems for women in tech. But there are also simply people who want to grab as much special treatment as they can get for their own group over others, when it is in their best interest. And thats why its important that people clamor so much more about diversity in than any other - many of them will support any measure that improves their odds regardless of what it means for society. At that point it becomes pure self-interest not social change for the good.

Re: Google Sued by 3 Female Ex-Employees Who Say It Pays Women Less Than Men

#143

Post by solotronics »

neerkumar wrote: post #82
brad0 wrote: post #8

One of the women suing complained that a man was hired a level above her with the same years of experience. They both had four years experience. I joined one of the big 4 eight years into my career. Similar to her I was placed at an entry level position. When I started I saw that I had the same ability as people higher than me. I made sure that I displayed that ability to my peers and manager. And what do you know, I…

Everyone who worked at Google or a company like Google knows that 90% of people do a job well below their skills. That's how it is in those places. To sue them because you have back-end skills, but you were doing front end is laughable. There are so many PhDs in ML there writing SQL queries, or PhDs in CS changing the color of some text for an A/B test. That's how it works in the best companies in the world. You get…

there is probably some kind of sweet spot where you get to do whatever really cool stuff you can think of and your company is just pretty good

Re: Google Sued by 3 Female Ex-Employees Who Say It Pays Women Less Than Men

#144

Post by solotronics »

bandrami wrote: post #134
great_psy wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how just giving a group of people more money will solve the problem. That's is an artificial way of addressing it, it's just a band aid. Let's look at the causes , and address those. I think that's how you solve it. It is pretty sexist to say , "give someone more money because they are a women"

Ummm... you realize band-aids solve the problem of bleeding, right? Similarly, giving women more money solves the problem of women getting paid less money.

why isn't everyone paid exactly the same? because that would suck for all of us here and be great for everyone that doesn't work as hard. I was messing with strange *nix distros for years and teaching myself programming before I got a tech job. I would be seriously pissed if someone that didn't know as much got my same job and pay just because they were a _____

Re: Google Sued by 3 Female Ex-Employees Who Say It Pays Women Less Than Men

#145

Post by tbrownaw »

zaptheimpaler wrote: post #126
linkregister wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it interesting that HN commenters frequently take it for granted that someone who tinkered with programming at an early age and do side projects is a better performer at work. I have never seen any multiple-data-point evidence presented to support it. Sure, various prominent entrepreneurs used computers as hobbyists (Gates, Zuckerberg), but does that apply to the typical programmer? We all encountered students…

In every single industry and craft, those with more work experience are typically paid more than whose with less. There is little difference between "experience programming during a job" and "experience programming for fun". It is the same activity. So of course those with more experience should be expected (on average) to better than those with less. Of course those who seek out more experience due to passion will (…

There is little difference between "experience programming during a job" and "experience programming for fun". It is the same activity.

Over of my more recent hobby projects was writing an RSS->IMAP bridge in maybe a couple hundred lines of Python. It has one user (me). This is fairly typical.

Until this year, my primary work project was a toolset for streamlining one-off ETL projects. It has parts written in I think five different languages, it has parts that run on Windows user machines and other parts that run on unix servers, it was built to reduce the annoying parts of a business process, it evolved over the course of almost a decade, etc. It has a couple dozen users (the team I used to be on).

The two are about as different as adding a new attached garage and workshop vs building a dollhouse.

Re: Google Sued by 3 Female Ex-Employees Who Say It Pays Women Less Than Men

#146

Post by kamaal »

neerkumar wrote: post #82
brad0 wrote: post #8

One of the women suing complained that a man was hired a level above her with the same years of experience. They both had four years experience. I joined one of the big 4 eight years into my career. Similar to her I was placed at an entry level position. When I started I saw that I had the same ability as people higher than me. I made sure that I displayed that ability to my peers and manager. And what do you know, I…

Everyone who worked at Google or a company like Google knows that 90% of people do a job well below their skills. That's how it is in those places. To sue them because you have back-end skills, but you were doing front end is laughable. There are so many PhDs in ML there writing SQL queries, or PhDs in CS changing the color of some text for an A/B test. That's how it works in the best companies in the world. You get…

I think many people complain about this too. I remember a very famous HR person of a famous IT services firm in India once told in a public event that software was one of those areas where every one expects to be treated special and expects to be given a job where they feel they are generating tremendous value, by the virtue of which deserve a very high salary.

While only a handful such jobs exist in any company.

The standard response for these things used to be 'Go find a different job which you think works for you'. But these days its either 'do as I say' or 'prepared to get sued'.

Re: Google Sued by 3 Female Ex-Employees Who Say It Pays Women Less Than Men

#147

Post by zaptheimpaler »

sidlls wrote: post #128
zaptheimpaler wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So true. People didn't give two shits about the nerds and the tiny useless portion of the world known as computing they occupied 20 years ago - back then it was less glamorous and less money involved. They scoffed at the morons who not only did computers at work but continued to think, write and do "work" after work! Now theres money involved everyone wants in! Now those same leeches demand to be given the same roles…

I don't know what's more funny (or sad): that you think engineers are no longer as looked down on or compensated at a lower rate than their "work" should otherwise merit or that you seem to have completely missed the part about "equal experience" in your haste to poohpooh them that desire equal treatment for it as inferior.

Thanks for the condescension sensei.

I think your position is equal work experience should merit equal pay.

You seem to have missed my point also - experience outside work also counts as experience. And millions of things besides experience determine your salary. So we should not be so quick to assume that 2 people with the same years of experience "should" merit equal pay - its obviously false.

If all people with equal work experience are simply equal in the value they bring to the company then why do we conduct interviews or ask for resumes or anything? Lets just set everyone's salaries to "$100K + 10K * (years worked)" no?

Re: Google Sued by 3 Female Ex-Employees Who Say It Pays Women Less Than Men

#148

Post by aaronbrethorst »

zaptheimpaler wrote: post #142
tptacek wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hahahaha it's funny because "nursing" is a gendered term for a class of front-line medical occupation that is almost certain to be vital to the provisioning of cost-effective health care in the 21st century where it is vitally important that we both raise the status of the profession to get more people into the labor force to do it and also to raise its status among consumers so less people have to wait for ludicrous…

I think you agreed nursing is gendered in favor of females.. no one complains about that. Construction jobs are gendered in favor of males.. no one complains about that. So if 20% CS majors are women, and 20% programming jobs are held by women why is that a travesty? Why do we call diversity initiatives to increase the hiring proportion of one group ABOVE what is naturally expected fair rather than unfair? If they ar…

42 minutes before you wrote your comment, a comment was posted which includes a link to an article that does complain about the lopsided gender distribution in nursing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15254670

When I read these comments just now, it was literally 2 comments above yours.

Re: Google Sued by 3 Female Ex-Employees Who Say It Pays Women Less Than Men

#149

Post by linkregister »

kamaal wrote: post #119
linkregister wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it interesting that HN commenters frequently take it for granted that someone who tinkered with programming at an early age and do side projects is a better performer at work. I have never seen any multiple-data-point evidence presented to support it. Sure, various prominent entrepreneurs used computers as hobbyists (Gates, Zuckerberg), but does that apply to the typical programmer? We all encountered students…

Its not necessarily starting early in programming. Its being in general being good at 'scoring marks' vs 'doing projects'. The former and latter take very different skill sets, and their returns too are often very different. If you are good at doing projects. Along the way you learn a lot of other very important life skills. Things like resourcefulness, persisting at things, immunity to failure, trying many times etc…

Would participation in athletics or math competitions fulfill your requirements for early hard work and adversity? I do agree with your premise. I just don't see where you actually disagree with mine.

I'm not discounting anything. I'm just saying that it shouldn't be a given that engineers who got into the field late are automatically less able.

> early starters are likely to get very good at things in a far more disproportionate way than those who come later.

We think that but it's not actually demonstrated. Entering a field at the age of 18 or 20 isn't actually late. Until we actually have evidence that people who programmed before college have better outcomes, we need to stop talking about it as if it's a known truth.

Re: Google Sued by 3 Female Ex-Employees Who Say It Pays Women Less Than Men

#150

Post by stale2002 »

Spivak wrote: post #93
stale2002 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The business reason as to why a company would discriminate against certain groups is perfectly rational. I mean, if a company can get away with paying women 70 cents on the dollar, because women are worse at negotiating or have less negotiation power (ie everyone ELSE is also discriminating against them, therefore they have less counter offers), then of course they would do it. It has nothing at all to do with "makin…

Bit in the same breath if you can get away with getting an equally talented employee for 70¢ on the dollar then why would you ever hire a man?

The way that it works is that you hire anyone at all who can pass the hiring bar, and then negotiate salary afterwords.

The problem is quantity. At the end of the day, if only X people that you interview pass your hiring bar, it is impossible to hire more than X. You can't just say "Lets double X!".

Now, would companies do things like try to reach out to women groups, so as to increase the amount that interview with them, and therefore increase the proportion that are hired?

Yes, absolutely they would do that. As has been demonstrated by all the diversity reachout efforts that companies are doing to women and minority groups. Diversity efforts are PROFITABLE.

Post reply on HN