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

nytimes.com

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

#241

Post by bitlax »

bandrami wrote: post #215
fordwert wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of data-driven studies that demonstrate empirically that there is no gender gap in pay. For example, in Google's case, they take many precautions to ensure that compensation decisions are made without knowledge of an individual's gender: https://www.blog.google/topics/diversity/our-focus-pay-equit... They even remove names from resumes for hiring decisions to avoid unconscious bias from the decision…

Seriously, the fact that otherwise intelligent people claim this with a straight face is kind of crazy. The "data" here are looking at numbers and seeing which one is smaller and which one is larger, and the wages of women are smaller.

I should have tried this when I took Regression Analysis.

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

#242

Post by slavak »

hrktb wrote: post #199
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…

> Hiring is broken, we all know this. Then what is your problem with them suing ? They go a different way than yours, but if it's broken in the first place why not ?

Well, the suit only has merit if hiring is broken in a way that unfairly disadvantages a protected class. (In this case, women.)

I think the poster's point was that hiring is broken equally for everyone, which is inefficient but not illegal.

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

#243

Post by slavak »

slyfocks wrote: post #40
stretchwithme wrote: post #25

Companies pay some employees more for pretty good reasons. I don't think they're thinking "Jim's a dude so we should pay him $50K more than Sally." No, they're paying somebody more because they don't want them to leave. And if they are paying you less than somebody else, it's probably partially because they don't think you are as much of a flight risk. And if Google is wrong about these decisions, I'd guess we'd see…

This assumes venture capitalists don’t exhibit a bias towards male founders. Depending on the extent of bias (if any), female engineers would lose a bit of bargaining power with Google. Also, empirically, women tend to be more risk-averse than men on average, so Google (and other companies) could be paying less knowing the chance they’d leave is lower than a man of similar skill.

This is an interesting thought!

If an employer pays people who are a flight-risk more (a-la "the squeaky wheel gets the grease"), and women are on average a lower flight risk because they are more risk-averse - is the resulting pay disparity a case of illegal discrimination?

My intuition says no, but I'm not sure everyone (including the legal system) necessarily agrees.

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

#244

Post by geofft »

snovv_crash wrote: post #179
geofft wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The person I replied to was implying that the team he was interviewing for was sexist, to an extent where they simply would not hire women. I am making no such implication. I am simply saying that I don't find it "highly dubious" that Google has extreme levels of gender bias in teams correlated with area, based on some amount of data (looking at basically all the open reqs in backend in Google NYC over a couple mon…

I'm currently trying to hire multiple C++ engineers. We have a quick, simple automated test that we use as a pre-screen, and so far no women have managed to pass this test. Not that I'm actually surprised; the ratio of applicants is also biased about 50:1, and we haven't had 50 people pass the automated test yet.

Let's be clear, I agree that this is hard. (And as mentioned elsewhere in the thread, I ended up joining an all-male team at another company.)

But I also want to know that the company is taking the problem seriously. If your ratio of applicants is biased at 50:1, either you're doing something that I'm not super happy with, or more likely, you're trying your best and your recruiting funnel is doing something that I'm not super happy with and your ability to change that is limited -- which, to be clear, is not really your fault, and more the fault of how company politics works and what power you have to fix the recruiting process, but if your company is set up so that you as a hiring manager don't have the power to make your recruiting pipeline better, that says things about your company's management culture / power structure that are a negative indicator to me. (In particular, since I tend to work more in support functions like building platforms than direct profit centers, my management chain having limited political sway in the company is a pretty big concern for my long-term happiness, regardless of the thing they're trying to accomplish with that sway.)

If you tell me your recruiting funnel is biased at even 5:1, I'm not going to insist on 1:1. I know it's a hard problem. If you tell me it's biased at 5:1 and you're working to change it, fantastic, that's more than I've heard from most people.

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

#245

Post by slavak »

bandrami wrote: post #215
fordwert wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of data-driven studies that demonstrate empirically that there is no gender gap in pay. For example, in Google's case, they take many precautions to ensure that compensation decisions are made without knowledge of an individual's gender: https://www.blog.google/topics/diversity/our-focus-pay-equit... They even remove names from resumes for hiring decisions to avoid unconscious bias from the decision…

Seriously, the fact that otherwise intelligent people claim this with a straight face is kind of crazy. The "data" here are looking at numbers and seeing which one is smaller and which one is larger, and the wages of women are smaller.

Welp, that's the whole field of statistics down the drain! Who needs complex analysis and accounting for confounding variables when the answer is simply "Big number good, small number not good!"

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

#246

Post by learningram »

bandrami wrote: post #114

The fun part of these articles is reading all the comments that literally post proximate causes for the gender wage gap and somehow conclude from that that the gap (which they just validated) does not exist. This whole process infuriates me. The gender wage gap is an empirical question. It exists. If we believe it's a problem (I do; you may not), it has the easiest solution in the world: give women more money. Seriou…

Nah, the fun part if reading comments like yours that passive aggressively attack other posters for having a different opinion, but somehow assume a superior moral position.

>If we believe it's a problem (I do; you may not), it has the easiest solution in the world: give women more money. Seriously, I just solved the gender pay gap, right there: give women more money.

This is mind numbingly pretentious, shot sighted and stupid. Equality is not a straight line.

Maybe you should go about thinking a couple more lines about on how you can implement it as a policy in any company

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

#247

Post by bandrami »

slavak wrote: post #245
bandrami wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously, the fact that otherwise intelligent people claim this with a straight face is kind of crazy. The "data" here are looking at numbers and seeing which one is smaller and which one is larger, and the wages of women are smaller.

Welp, that's the whole field of statistics down the drain! Who needs complex analysis and accounting for confounding variables when the answer is simply "Big number good, small number not good!"

What does a confounding variable have to do with anything here?

The question is "do women make lower wages than men"?

You are adding confounding variables I assume because you are uncomfortable with the fact that the answer is "yes", but are less uncomfortable if there's some reason that it's yes other than "people deliberately pay women less".

Of course there are reasons women make lower wages than men. That doesn't really matter, though: if the gap is itself a problem as an outcome, the fix is very simple, and the reasons don't particularly matter.

If I asked which of the two of us is taller, all that takes is a measuring tape. The fact that one of us might have gotten better nutrition as a child, while possibly interesting, doesn't actually do much about the fact that one of us is really taller than the other.

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

#248

Post by bandrami »

Chris2048 wrote: post #225
bandrami wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A band aid is a temporary solution to a problem that fixes itself. Do you expect this problem to fix itself?

Actually I do imagine that more gender parity in management and boardrooms would probably organically fix the problem, eventually. This is, ultimately, an outcome of culture(s), and cultural problems are situations where you can fake it until you make it (though it can take a generation).

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

#249

Post by bandrami »

solotronics wrote: post #144
bandrami wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 _____

I could understand getting mad if your pay was lowered, but how are you harmed if the other person's pay is increased?

We make all sorts of incredibly bizarre (from an outside perspective) decisions about who gets paid what; the fact that we've fooled ourselves into thinking that it's because of supply and demand curves may be comforting but is completely unfounded in any data.

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

#250

Post by pillowkusis »

dontnotice wrote: post #7

The media should practice more circumspection when reporting about lawyers seeking plaintiffs or suing for class action status or at least mention how it’s a money making endeavour for that lawyer/law firm. Many of these lawyers are vultures trying to capitalize on topical matters and they rely on this sort of coverage for free marketing, it’s as likely for this to be thrown out as it is for any other outcome, and th…

>The media should practice more circumspection

They won't for exactly the reason the lawyers do this. This is a trendy, hot topic (look how many comments it has on HN so far). This is "news" fodder for media outlets. They don't mind that they're being taken advantage of as long as they get a non-zero amount of ad views out of the deal. Win/win for the lawyers and the media, although definitely a loss for those reading.

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