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

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

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 626 posts

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

#221

Post by eqdw »

If you assume:

a) Google is about 70% men; and b) The "error" in pay (eg how under- or over-paid you are) is randomly distributed

Then it will be trivially true that more men than women are underpaid

If you, in addition to this, assume some level of sex discrimination, such that in addition to (b) there is additional 'error' in womens' pay, depending on the relative strengths of each of these errors, the following two things can both be true at the same time:

1) A higher percentage of women are underpaid than are men. 2) Most of the people who are underpaid are men.

If this is surprising to anybody, they should be taking a remedial statistics class immediately.

To illustrate, assume that Google is 100 people: 30 women, 70 men. assume that 25% of men are underpaid, and 50% of women are underpaid.

That means that 0.2570 =~ 18 men and 0.530 = 15 women are underpaid.

That means that more men are underpaid than women.

That means that 18/(18+15)*100 =~ 55% of the people who are underpaid are men.

So in my hypothetical, is Google biased against men? Or is Google biased against women? Or is Google not biased at all?.

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

#222

Post by FiddlyPack »

sorum wrote: post #202
rhegart wrote: post #154

High school, college, any STEM fields are all overwhelmingly biased in terms of favoring women. 57% of college graduates are women. Men are not only getting the short end of the stick but are being told by every voice that they are privileged, it’s their fault, they are bad whereas women have sooooo many extra programs and positive reinforcement to succeed. No one with a straight face can tell me women in entry level…

> 57% of college graduates are women What's the percentage female graduates in STEM fields? The 57% may not be representative for the fields which matter for engineers. Not saying the delta is big, I honestly don't know and am curious.

Hey so I know this is n of 1 and off-topic, but as a liberal arts student, I went from music to signal processing to music theory to music analytics to generative music to software engineer. There can be a lot of STEM in non-STEM degrees. I did take a number of CS, acoustics, and electrical courses as a music major, but my degree still says music.

I know once-English majors with a similar story of a passion for what computing can reveal/create around a discipline that resulted in rich software careers. I am over a decade out of college, and in my personal experience passion for computing is more relevant than having a STEM background in software development. All this to say, I’m not sure % STEM focused is necessarily a reliable indicator of “future software engineer.”

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

#223

Post by fasdetwaew »

NotAnEconomist wrote: post #180
adamsea wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one with a straight face can tell me women in entry level tech programs are not incredibly favored. All my below average coder friends that are women got awesome jobs with high salaries extremely easily. Yes, I talk with them and they agree with what I’m saying. .... and yet, how many workplaces have an engineering team which are 50% female? 25% female? 10% female? 5% female?

It's possible to both discriminate against men, yet have more men in the workforce, if women voluntarily are choosing not to enter a profession. In fact, that seems to be the problem: no amount of discrimination against men resolves that women simply are choosing careers in a different distribution to what men do, but the only policy lever that can really be utilized is discrimination at various stages of education o…

> that women simply are choosing careers in a different distribution to what men do

Why is that, though?

Are women not encouraged to pursue technology careers? Or are they being encouraged to chose other careers instead?

Are they driven away from it by a toxic work place culture?

Or just the perception of tech as having toxic workplace cultures?

Are women moving into roles with more flexibility because they are expected to take on more domestic duties?

Or my hunch... Do women just feel less comfortable entering an industry with such an unbalanced gender ratio to begin with, and it becomes a self perpetuating cycle?

You say Biology be damned, but I don't think it's settled that biology is the main factor here.

And I'm not saying it is or it isn't. I'm saying we don't know.

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

#224

Post by fzeroracer »

NotAnEconomist wrote: post #180
adamsea wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one with a straight face can tell me women in entry level tech programs are not incredibly favored. All my below average coder friends that are women got awesome jobs with high salaries extremely easily. Yes, I talk with them and they agree with what I’m saying. .... and yet, how many workplaces have an engineering team which are 50% female? 25% female? 10% female? 5% female?

It's possible to both discriminate against men, yet have more men in the workforce, if women voluntarily are choosing not to enter a profession. In fact, that seems to be the problem: no amount of discrimination against men resolves that women simply are choosing careers in a different distribution to what men do, but the only policy lever that can really be utilized is discrimination at various stages of education o…

Are you saying there are biological differences that are preventing women from entering the software industry?

Because historically the trends of CS grads proves this is a false statement [1] so I'm curious where this statement comes from.

[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when...

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

#225

Post by mandelbrotwurst »

rhegart wrote: post #174
adamsea wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one with a straight face can tell me women in entry level tech programs are not incredibly favored. All my below average coder friends that are women got awesome jobs with high salaries extremely easily. Yes, I talk with them and they agree with what I’m saying. .... and yet, how many workplaces have an engineering team which are 50% female? 25% female? 10% female? 5% female?

I’d wager it’s the same as the composition of females in any Engineering program. If there were 25 women in your CS program out of a 100 (being generous), they can’t magically multiply and somehow end up 50 in the workforce. No one is forcing them to NOT join a STEM field. Everyone is telling them to specifically join STEM and giving likely billions of dollars in support aiding the increase.

It doesn't require magic, just discrimination.

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

#226

Post by arkh »

rfinney wrote: post #215
rhegart wrote: post #154

High school, college, any STEM fields are all overwhelmingly biased in terms of favoring women. 57% of college graduates are women. Men are not only getting the short end of the stick but are being told by every voice that they are privileged, it’s their fault, they are bad whereas women have sooooo many extra programs and positive reinforcement to succeed. No one with a straight face can tell me women in entry level…

"non major liberal cities" I think the "me too" thing proved the coastal elite were part of the problem.

Or let's get crazy: they are the problem. People tend to think other people think and act like them. That's why often the first to be vocal against some behavior are part of those displaying this behavior.

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

#227

Post by rhegart »

roguecoder wrote: post #204
rhegart wrote: post #154

High school, college, any STEM fields are all overwhelmingly biased in terms of favoring women. 57% of college graduates are women. Men are not only getting the short end of the stick but are being told by every voice that they are privileged, it’s their fault, they are bad whereas women have sooooo many extra programs and positive reinforcement to succeed. No one with a straight face can tell me women in entry level…

Why are you assuming the women are below average? Though even if they were, maybe they are making a premium because they aren't adding sexism to their workplaces and exposing their company to the legal liabilities you are.

Because their grades were average, they are friends and I’ve helped them. Are you threatening me? Is it because I’m making sense and instead of offering a counter argument you resort to this? Well luckily for me I’m my own boss, I’m on a forum which let’s me discuss ideas with many members who I know are far smarter than me in every field. Maybe a counter argument here makes sense, convinces me, and brings me more to your side even by 1%. Or you can vaguely threaten me, push me to more obscure extreme parts of the internet and a year from now see my relatively moderate opinions become extreme because people like you have pushed me to the fringes where I’m surrounded by likeminded people some terrible but others who have also been pushed out and don’t hear any good counter arguments.

Because that’s happening all over lately.

Edit: I’m using “me” as an example, I’m obviously not going to do that but I’m trying to make a point that others who speak against the majority opinion absolutely might and there are bad actors who are trying to manipulate that with intersecrionality of their own kind. Just like being against sexism is intersectional with anti racism, gun control, pro choice etc. when someone gets sucked into something seemingly innocuous as this, it’s very likely they’ll start believing a whole lot of similar ideas. That can be good or bad I suppose.

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

#228

Post by esarbe »

NotAnEconomist wrote: post #180
adamsea wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one with a straight face can tell me women in entry level tech programs are not incredibly favored. All my below average coder friends that are women got awesome jobs with high salaries extremely easily. Yes, I talk with them and they agree with what I’m saying. .... and yet, how many workplaces have an engineering team which are 50% female? 25% female? 10% female? 5% female?

It's possible to both discriminate against men, yet have more men in the workforce, if women voluntarily are choosing not to enter a profession. In fact, that seems to be the problem: no amount of discrimination against men resolves that women simply are choosing careers in a different distribution to what men do, but the only policy lever that can really be utilized is discrimination at various stages of education o…

There is a very small (albeit vocal) minority on the left side of the political spectrum that thinks that equality in outcome is a worthy goal.

This this is a minority, that stance does not generalize to people on the left in general.

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

#229

Post by thomaslangston »

rhegart wrote: post #154

High school, college, any STEM fields are all overwhelmingly biased in terms of favoring women. 57% of college graduates are women. Men are not only getting the short end of the stick but are being told by every voice that they are privileged, it’s their fault, they are bad whereas women have sooooo many extra programs and positive reinforcement to succeed. No one with a straight face can tell me women in entry level…

That 57% of STEM grads statistic is misleading when commenting about an article about Google. The 18% CS grads in 2015 would be more appropriate to quote.

http://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/cracking-the-code:-why-aren...

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

#230

Post by maxxxxx »

renholder wrote: post #205
maxxxxx wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? Just publish who makes how much money. That’s it.

Compare two developers. One just codes and the other not only knows how to code but knows how to debug (native, runtimes, etc.). So, then you publish developer 1's pay salary and developer 2's pay salary. Now, developer 1 has a rage-boner because developer 2 is being paid more but there's the reason of his/her desirable skills being utilised in the role. Yet, developer 1 doesn't see this qualifiable reason and just s…

There are plenty of places with pay transparency and they work just fine. The information imbalance is only to the benefit of the employer.
Post reply on HN