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

Also, imo, important predictor of how good you will be later on is more your willingness to learn tech you don't like in the beginning. If you don't have that, changes will leave you behind.

The fun thing about making a straw-man is you make yourself immune from criticism. I can't attack this point without having to completely define someone who is "pro-diversity" (what's that even mean?), and give evidence that no one in that group has the traits you claim of ("look at this feminist, see I was right!").

More importantly, what's even your point if this straw-man were true? I could just as easily say this about anything.

"Oh your life is shitty? Well I bet you wouldn't complain if things were working out well." It's an interesting case of vacuous truth!

The argument is to make things better for the people who have it worse at the moment, correcting for previous inertia. In this case, the inertia is that men were previously paid more or gained an initial advantage that allowed them to be paid more, and then that advantage has percolated across their various positions until the difference becomes more stark all because as you say "companies always want to pay the minimum amount that can keep the employee from leaving". If that's the case, then if companies could pay women less for the same work, why wouldn't they? Similar arguments apply to affirmative action and similar programs. That's the argument at least, whether I agree with it is an entirely different question.

What irks me is you dismissing the argument with your little straw-man and moving on to "the only alternative". You completely disregarded the points of everyone opposite the aisle of you in the most condescending way.

It's not that the companies are sexist

Or the managers are sexist

Or the engineers are exist

Or you're sexist.

That's not what anyone has been saying this whole time - ever. You have completely misunderstood the point.

The system is sexist. Not the people in the system, but the system itself (similar arguments exist for police departments being racist - it's not the cops that are, but the system). In this case, the general consensus is that women are paid less than men in tech due to a variety of reasons.

A culture can also be sexist. While the people within it can harbor no ill will whatsoever, their behaviors and group dynamics can actively prevent a woman from being welcome. In this case, people are calling the tech "culture" sexist.

Here's a couple examples of a sexist culture I've seen in my own workplace. Note that none of the people here meant any harm, nor were there actions actively "sexist" in the common parlance, but they still did things that made people want to GTFO if they're a chick:

* I had a coworker who used to grill the woman on the team much more fiercely than the men. I never asked why this was - didn't have a great way to broach the topic. But it was always extremely obvious, and I have noticed it on HackerNews, Reddit, and pretty much every video game I've ever played. Men are very critical of women in jobs that men are already the predominant workers in. Female doctors and lawyers have had this issue for decades as well. It's not a sexist action. In my eyes it happens totally accidentally (My pet theory is that because we aren't used to seeing women in the field, we tend to be more involved when giving them criticism)

* My coworker had this anime poster in his cube with some half-naked bikini clad girl. Do I even have to mention why a girl might feel a little awkward here?

See how these things aren't actually bad in isolation? But over time, and in great numbers, they add up and make women feel like shit working at your company because they can never truly "fit in" with the guys. That's sexism in work culture and whether it's ever truly fixable is a great question.

I highly recommend you read some literature from across the aisle to become more familiar with the arguments you're facing, rather than the arguments you think you're facing. I highly recommend bell hooks' books on the subject. She's extremely clear and lucid and helped me grok a lot of the logic my first time around.

They even remove names from resumes for hiring decisions to avoid unconscious bias from the decision makers.

This is about as close as you can get to a completely fair system and is far above and beyond what can be reasonably expected from a business.

It seems that your solution is to simply increase bias in the labor market rather than try to make it more efficient. Over time, marketplaces tend to abhor inefficiencies and seek equilibrium, so not only would "give women more money" inevitably have unforeseen adverse side effects, but it also runs counter to our fundamental social and economic principles.

I don't. You just criticized me at length :). Some of it I could even agree with :).

My point is, the current narration coming from "opposite the aisle of me" is, on the one hand, "gender discrimination is bad", and on the other hand, "we need more discrimination to correct for existing one". Even if we leave out that I don't think there's that much discrimination happening as feminists would want you to believe (in fact, I think they're just reinterpreting everything in terms of gender, whether it is actually related or not) - still, you can't have it both ways.

I'm just against hypocrisy, especially this extreme. When someone admits that they are advocating literal sexism as a corrective action (hopefully temporary), I'll accept that (even though I don't agree it's needed). What irks me is condemning sexism when it goes in one direction, while at the same time advocating sexism in the other direction.