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Google Moves to Address Wage Equity, and Finds It’s Underpaying Many Men

nytimes.com

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Re: Google Moves to Address Wage Equity, and Finds It’s Underpaying Many Men

#141

Post by colonelxc »

rafiki6 wrote: post #96
colonelxc wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main thing is that Google prefers to downlevel people who have external experience. I (male) had 5 years of experience, still was hired at L3. I know many others who have the same story. So the L4 person probably had some better story/negotiation which allowed them to start at L4. It of course could be bias. It was really frustrating for me to be at the same level as new grads, though on reflection, I was not at…

Can I ask why you might think that you were not at the same level? Why is Google a special software snowflake and none of your external experience is transferable?

My previous experience, though I wrote software, was more like "research code" instead of "software engineering". We didn't have formal processes (no testing, testing fixes in prod, etc). Our focus was more on the (cool) analysis we were doing and not on the reliability of our systems.

One of the reasons I chose to join Google over another security-related company (that would have done little coding) was that I wanted to learn how to write software better. I've learned a lot about testing, understanding the reliability of distributed systems, writing code for maintainability, etc.

Re: Google Moves to Address Wage Equity, and Finds It’s Underpaying Many Men

#142

Post by tfha »

bandrami wrote: post #131
sleepysysadmin wrote: post #94

The gender wage gap is real in the sense that there is a gap, but when you analyze it, they are comparing apples to oranges. I'm sure everyone here knows this. https://data.oecd.org/earnwage/gender-wage-gap.htm The countries with the highest wage gaps are the countries with the most equality in the workplace. Women in Korea are not treated poorly. The important thing though is the people proposing that the wage gap i…

It's only "apples to oranges" if you're willing to beg the entire question. Why is elementary teaching less highly paid than university teaching? Why is nurse practitioning less highly paid than anaesthesiologizing?

Supply and demand. Easier to become an elementary teacher, more qualified elementary teachers available compared to the need

Re: Google Moves to Address Wage Equity, and Finds It’s Underpaying Many Men

#143

Post by flowerlad »

I don’t get this. It is not possible to underpay (when there is no allegation of discrimination) because if a person X is willing to work for salary Y then that’s exactly what he should be paid. In capitalism, corporations have a fiduciary duty to pay no more than is necessary to keep the employee.

Re: Google Moves to Address Wage Equity, and Finds It’s Underpaying Many Men

#144

Post by naasking »

tomschlick wrote: post #97
denzil_correa wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but it is difficult to understand why people accept this as fact when the empirical data of systematic isn't all that solid. It would help if you posted the empirical data you refer to.

Not OP but almost every one of these studies takes the total sum of money men make vs the total sum of money women make and compares it that way without taking into account the job title, years of experience, time off, etc.

Those are mainly mainstream articles, politicians' and celebrity talking points. They don't even account for the type of job, hours worked, danger of the job, etc.

There are some good studies on this subject that I've read over the years though, for instance one among lawyers in a firm in which women were paid about 2-3% lower than men, on average IIRC. But these often don't or can't take into account personality characteristics. For instance, women on average are more agreeable and so often don't negotiate as hard as men on their salary.

When controlling for all factors, wage differences largely disappear.

Re: Google Moves to Address Wage Equity, and Finds It’s Underpaying Many Men

#145

Post by sokoloff »

crooked-v wrote: post #128
sokoloff wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of people want to work in game development. Lots of people do. Some people say game devs are underpaid. I tend to think that they're paid what they agreed to accept and that is based in large part on market forces (supply and demand, value over replacement, etc.). I also left game development because it wasn't for me long-term. (I was underpaid relative to what I could make in another industry, but I wasn't unde…

> I was underpaid relative to what I could make in another industry, but I wasn't underpaid by my game-dev company. If a company underpays all its employees equally, it's still underpaying. Companies that do this are taking advantage of how people are not rational actors.

What is the reference for underpaying?

Supply and demand of willing free-will workers? Profitability of the company? Something else?

Or what a Wall Street hedge fund can pay?

Re: Google Moves to Address Wage Equity, and Finds It’s Underpaying Many Men

#146

Post by gnicholas »

stvswn wrote: post #60
danaliv wrote: post #12

Do 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…

> there's a lot of emphasis in the company towards retaining and compensating women fairly, and the effect was that managers were primed to reflect that in their pay raises

Or more broadly, supply/demand. There is a heavy demand for female tech workers, which tends to increase their salaries (both when hired and when countering outside offers).

Re: Google Moves to Address Wage Equity, and Finds It’s Underpaying Many Men

#147

Post by vibrato »

oarabbus_ wrote: post #89
CydeWeys wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can everyone be underpaid? Does that even make sense?

Not literally everyone can be underpaid, but most people can be underpaid, with a very small percentage paid fairly (and a smaller percentage overpaid)

If you're underpaid, that means there is an opportunity for you that will pay more. Aside from H1B, I struggle to see how anyone at google is underpaid.

Re: Google Moves to Address Wage Equity, and Finds It’s Underpaying Many Men

#148

Post by LiquidSky »

sleepysysadmin wrote: post #94

The gender wage gap is real in the sense that there is a gap, but when you analyze it, they are comparing apples to oranges. I'm sure everyone here knows this. https://data.oecd.org/earnwage/gender-wage-gap.htm The countries with the highest wage gaps are the countries with the most equality in the workplace. Women in Korea are not treated poorly. The important thing though is the people proposing that the wage gap i…

>The countries with the highest wage gaps are the countries with the most equality in the workplace. Women in Korea are not treated poorly.

I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean. Korea most assuredly is not a country with "the most equality in the workplace". It routinely ranks as having the worst gender inequality of any developed nation, and one of the worst in the world generally. It came in 115th out of 149 countries in the World Economic Forum's 2018 Global Gender Gap Report* and has hovered around that number for years.

*http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GGGR_2018.pdf

Re: Google Moves to Address Wage Equity, and Finds It’s Underpaying Many Men

#149

Post by reitanqild »

bandrami wrote: post #131
sleepysysadmin wrote: post #94

The gender wage gap is real in the sense that there is a gap, but when you analyze it, they are comparing apples to oranges. I'm sure everyone here knows this. https://data.oecd.org/earnwage/gender-wage-gap.htm The countries with the highest wage gaps are the countries with the most equality in the workplace. Women in Korea are not treated poorly. The important thing though is the people proposing that the wage gap i…

It's only "apples to oranges" if you're willing to beg the entire question. Why is elementary teaching less highly paid than university teaching? Why is nurse practitioning less highly paid than anaesthesiologizing?

In case anyone isn't aware of the obvious answer it is at least partially because of supply and demand.

More people are considered qualified as elementary school teachers than those qualified for university teaching. Same with nurses and doctors.

Re: Google Moves to Address Wage Equity, and Finds It’s Underpaying Many Men

#150

Post by crooked-v »

EGreg wrote: post #129

I sometimes find that I have to write a comment questioning the very premises of the discussion, whether it's Net Neutrality (Title I vs Title II) or the Pay Gap (women vs men). This is one of those times. There are many factors for why women are paid less than men for the same type of position. Many of these factors have to do with hours worked and expectations around child rearing. And when this is taken out, the w…

Along with making family life in general easier, a basic UBI program would also be a huge boost to small business ownership, since it acts as a general-purpose safety net in that sort of situation.
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