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U.S. sues Oracle, alleges salary and hiring discrimination

reuters.com

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Re: U.S. sues Oracle, alleges salary and hiring discrimination

#231

Post by pps43 »

coredog64 wrote: post #170
rudolf0 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, for one, you can hide contact info from a resume (which is still stored in a system somewhere, with a unique ID). And you can also make the early stages of your interview email or text-chat based (or just a Google Doc, like some companies do), to eliminate any potential bias in things that can be inferred from voice like accent, region, and gender. Obviously once they're on-site for an interview, you can't anon…

I find it pretty easy to distinguish between people educated in the US and those not educated in the US after a fairly small sample of writing.

Interesting. Any telltale signs? I'm assuming it's not the difference between native English speaker and ESL, but specific words or grammar patterns? Can you tell from my comment history whether I was educated in the US?

Re: U.S. sues Oracle, alleges salary and hiring discrimination

#232

Post by flamedoge »

pippy wrote: post #150
freditup wrote: post #123

That means we so far have: * Palantir sued for not hiring enough Asians [0] * Google sued for not turning over compensation data [1] * Oracle sued for hiring too many Asians While it's possible that discriminatory processes have happened at all these places, it seems these lawsuits can be targeted at whoever one wishes. It's always going to be possible to find data that indicates discrimination, unless companies hire…

This is why merit based evaluation is the only sane hiring practice. I'd love to see legal protection for companies that can provide evidence they strictly adhered to the merit based hires. You can also apply this rationale to your own projects, by including the Code of Merit into your projects[0][1]. [0] https://github.com/rosarior/Code-of-Merit/blob/master/CODE_O... [1] http://code-of-merit.org/

Meritocracy is great. Just when everyone has equal access to education.

Re: U.S. sues Oracle, alleges salary and hiring discrimination

#233

Post by nickpeterson »

torinmr wrote: post #228
tristanz wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately this isn't enough. Discriminatory rules such as "don't lend to any zip code that's over 75% black" will pass this test if you include this variable as a feature. The same logic applies to less obvious cases such as purchasing behavior.

A particularly hairy case is where you use variables as features which are themselves generated through other potentially-discriminatory processes. For example, including a "has committed a felony" feature seems like a no-brainer for a hiring or lending application, but now any racial or other discrimination present in the criminal justice system has now "infected" your hiring process, so that the outcomes of your hi…

But at some level, doesn't that just mean reality is biased, and since we don't live in utopia, trying to model one in the small is a sandcastle?

Re: U.S. sues Oracle, alleges salary and hiring discrimination

#235

Post by Mtinie »

j4kp07 wrote: post #220
Mtinie wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the same context, are they? Federal investigators asking to review documents and information that portain to areas that they provide regulation for is completely different than someone arbitrarily digging through a spouse's underwear drawer.

> Not the same context, are they? Of course it is. The context is/was (as stated by the previous poster), if you have nothing to hide, then why not be completely open? Which is what my point is; You don't need to justify your reasoning for privacy. It is a constitutional right. No justification is needed.

Again, completely different context.

You, as an individual in the United States have a Constitutional right to privacy through the Fourth Amendment.

Governed businesses operating in the United States have no such right.

Re: U.S. sues Oracle, alleges salary and hiring discrimination

#236

Post by [deleted] »

j4kp07 wrote: post #222
toomuchtodo wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are owned by people though That does not mean the corporate entity has personhood and the rights that status conveys.

SCOTUS disagrees with you "My Friend" and I'm pretty sure they have more experience in these matters.

[deleted]

Re: U.S. sues Oracle, alleges salary and hiring discrimination

#237

Post by [deleted] »

ninkendo wrote: post #219
Frondo wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know what, though? If we actually had equality of opportunity, it doesn't seem like we'd see the kind of disparity we do. Certainly not at a big corporation where there should be enough of an employee pool to have it at least somewhat reflect the general population of the region. But then, when I listen to the stories women in tech (for example) tell, and they do tell a LOT of the same stories, it's clear we're p…

> Certainly not at a big corporation where there should be enough of an employee pool to have it at least somewhat reflect the general population of the region. That is a drastic oversimplification. The employee pool can only hope to be reflective of the pool of those who seek employment at that company and are qualified. Which can only hope to be reflective of the employee marketplace for that industry at large. Whi…

[deleted]

Re: U.S. sues Oracle, alleges salary and hiring discrimination

#238

Post by r00fus »

gmarx wrote: post #23
titomc wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" Most of the time it is just easier to hire Asian/Indian employees because they are readily available " - I doubt that. It's "easier" to hire because they "agree" to lower wages and its easier to retain them, because their visa status is tied to the employer. The employers have H1B workers on a leash. The process of hiring an H1B worker in short. - Hire an immigration lawyer. - Post an LCA. - Apply petition to USCIS…

or possibly Indians didn't get the diversity memo and are more likely to hire other Indians than the analogous instinct in white managers? It's odd that the suit alleges that white people are discriminated against relative to Indians yet those that are hired are paid more.

It's all about the H1Bs. Oracle wants cheap labor and Asians (Indians) are statistically more likely to be H1B than non-Asians. Thus the higher aggregate salaries for whites (likelihood to be H1B is minuscule).

Re: U.S. sues Oracle, alleges salary and hiring discrimination

#239

Post by sqlplus »

If you walk the floors of Oracle office in California, you are not going to feel like you are working in the US. It almost feels like an Indian enclave. In my opinion, this is a bad thing.

In the Database division, the division that also makes most of the money for Oracle, most people including Directors, VPs, SVPS, etc. are Indians. Many are Chinese too. They have been in this company for the last 10 to 20 years. They understand all the politics of the company inside out and use it to their advantage to rule (exploit?) their subordinates. It is almost as if they have setup their kingdom in this company. You might be wondering how all of this relates to salary and hiring discrimination.

* Most of these Indians at the top of the ladder, seem to be hiring only Indians.

* These Indian SVPs and VPs hire Indians for cheap. A unique cultural thing about Indians is that they are obsessed about saving money, e.g. lowball prospective candidates; sometimes the negotiation can last for 2-12 months before an offer is made!

* It helps these VPs if there are Indian engineers or managers under these VPs. Indians don't counterquestion their superiors much. So when these VPs find insane ways of saving money, e.g. not spending the budget for team outings, project parties, etc., the Indian engineers seem to oblige. One team activity or team outing only once in 2 years is not unheard of in Oracle while our neighbourhood goes for such outings every quarter. Indian VPs rejecting employee's request for stationery is also not unheard of. It is necessary to hire Indians so that they don't question when VPs reject reasonable requests.

* Another thing unique about Indian culture is utter lack of respect for schedules. The SVPs define schedules for a product release in a random fashion without ever consulting the managers or the engineers. Guess what? The schedule is not met. The company remains in a never ending loop of reschedule, miss schedule, repeat. The same goes for meetings. Meetings start late. They end late. Nobody cares that there might be another meeting that people may have to go to. A few Americans might look upset but who cares about the minority! They can get away with this kind of disrespectful scheduling when the majority are Indians.

If someone claims that they hire Indians because they are more skilled than Americans, then I call bullsh*t. It is true that there are more Indian engineers than Americans but it is also true that for the number of people Oracle needs there are enough skilled Americans as there are Indians. So if the hiring was fair, one should see an equal number of Americans and Indians.

Disclaimer: I work for Oracle. I am Chinese. I love Indians. I have many Indian friends.

Re: U.S. sues Oracle, alleges salary and hiring discrimination

#240

Post by wallace_f »

logandavis wrote: post #207
wallace_f wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's always going to be possible to find data that indicates discrimination, unless companies hire in exact quotas (which would also be discriminatory really). There already are off-the-record quotas. Who in management hasn't heard discussion at least eluding the the need for a diversity hire? Probably very few people at this point. I believe a distinction must be made: Equality of opportunity is good. Equality of o…

1) Don't you believe that equality of opportunity would lead to equality of outcome (plus or minus random variation)? If not, what alternative result would you predict would arise from equality of opportunity, and why? 2) Don't you see how taking steps to correct towards equality of outcome leads towards equality of opportunity (by increasing the networking / financial / inspiration opportunities for disadvantaged gr…

1) Equality of opportunity will never lead to equality of outcome. Our current politics around equality are fraudulent. Different people have different attributes. It doesn't mean one group is better. It just means people are different. For example, the NBA will never be dominated by players of Asian descent. Another: you will never see women asking for equal opportunity for jobs like working in the north sea on offshore oil rigs.

2) We can use words until the end of time to weigh the merits of state-forced equality. Same could be said about anything else that is non-scientific in nature: i.e. we could also argue about the relative merits of state-forced equality in communism vs capitalism in the same way. You can never prove anything this way in non-scientific fields, and at best all that can be done is hope to convince the other person that your reasoning is superior. However, before we got to that point, I'd even reject it on moral principle: it is immoral for government to enforce racist or sexist policies that discriminate against certain groups of people. Yes, it's in the name of moral outrage (equality), but note government-sanctioned use of force always comes with an argument of moral outrage, even if it is almost undeniably immoral, i.e: (America funding Jihadists in the Syrian War, Vietnam, Nazi Germany, the Opening of Japan, the Inquisition, etc., etc.).

Further on #2, one of the insights of modern economic theory has been that it can many times be actually better to make adjustments to free market outcomes ex post rather than use heavy handed regulation to force an arbitrary result ex ante. If I were king, I'd much rather see everyone with free access to healthcare, housing, transportation, and education than focus on how many women are working in male-dominated roles like offshore oil drilling in the north sea (or coding, whatever arbitrary field it happens to be).

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