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

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

#281

Post by snovv_crash »

praulv wrote: post #278
snovv_crash wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 me guess, codility/hackerrank nonsense. No wonder you can't hire.

Neither of those. It takes about 25 mins for qualified applicants, and we chose the questions to test what we think is actually relevant (note: the defaults are terrible).

We on the team all went through it retroactively, and all got decent scores.

And actually, we aren't having any issue hiring - it is ticking along nicely and I couldn't do more interviews while maintaining my sanity than I already am. I brought it up because I'm still surprised how much gender bias there is among the applicants.

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

#282

Post by praulv »

snovv_crash wrote: post #281
praulv wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me guess, codility/hackerrank nonsense. No wonder you can't hire.

Neither of those. It takes about 25 mins for qualified applicants, and we chose the questions to test what we think is actually relevant (note: the defaults are terrible). We on the team all went through it retroactively, and all got decent scores. And actually, we aren't having any issue hiring - it is ticking along nicely and I couldn't do more interviews while maintaining my sanity than I already am. I brought it…

Genuinely curious as to what the questions are like... "what is the default constructor for X library object" type?

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

#283

Post by snovv_crash »

praulv wrote: post #282
snovv_crash wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither of those. It takes about 25 mins for qualified applicants, and we chose the questions to test what we think is actually relevant (note: the defaults are terrible). We on the team all went through it retroactively, and all got decent scores. And actually, we aren't having any issue hiring - it is ticking along nicely and I couldn't do more interviews while maintaining my sanity than I already am. I brought it…

Genuinely curious as to what the questions are like... "what is the default constructor for X library object" type?

Way easier than that. Stuff like:

Select all of the following which manage the lifetime of an object:

  shared_ptr
  unique_ptr
  raw pointer
Or:

Assuming foo() prints "foo" and bar() prints "bar" and both return false, what would be printed from the following expression?

  if(foo() && bar()) {std::cout
So, basic modern C++ knowledge. I'm not testing their recall of header signatures, I'm testing if they can read code and if they would be able to Google the right terms to find what they need.

Plus 2 small algorithm problems that can each be solved in 5 lines of simple code, which they have 15 minutes each to do (top candidates take under 5 mins). The environment gives them a place to write tests (with some basic tests already written) and lets them compile their code and run tests as much as they want before they submit, with normal compiler messages if it fails to compile and also any debugging messages they put in their code printed. There is also a tutorial that they can repeat as many times as they want before starting the main test.

In later interviews I have mentioned to candidates that others couldn't solve the pre-screen problems, and they are always surprised that people so unqualified are applying for the job.

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

#285

Post by Consultant32452 »

spaceseaman wrote: post #279
Consultant32452 wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, the two things you listed are clearly sexist behaviors, even in isolation. Treating women differently than men, whether it's more harshly or with "kid gloves" is sexist behavior. Putting a pinup on the wall of your office is pretty inappropriate for a professional work environment and the reason it was allowed to stand is most likely sexism. But again, it only takes one workplace, one manager that doesn…

You seem to have missed my argument so I'll try and rephrase it. > that one employer would get all of these great women who are just as productive for a lower price and would take over their market. It only takes two such employers in a market who are competing for those women to get women up to income parity with men. Yet companies will always want to hire someone for the least possible amount they can - regardless…

I get your argument entirely. Your argument doesn't hold water at all. Because it demands that every woman be more willing to work in a toxic, sexist work environment for lower money than a non-sexist work environment for more money. What are the odds of that exactly? If even a small percentage of women engineers are willing to move, then the one exception company will be loaded up with massively disproportionate amounts of women.

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

#286

Post by watwut »

MagnumOpus wrote: post #209
watwut wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tinkering in teenage years does not give you more professional experience 10 years later. It gives you a bit advantage around early 20ties. It is essentially irrelevant at 26. As technologies change and develop, that get lost and become useless. 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 l…

Agreed with the latter, don't agree with the former. Tinkering gives you out-of-domain experience which subtly improves the decisions you take - both architecturally and organisationally. It gives you at least a bit of an insight of what the right tool for the job might be even if it is outside your domain. If that tinkering is in hacking IT security, and you do CRUD app development (or project management) for a livi…

The thing is, if it is your job to do crud applications, then having a look at security development at least once a year is a part of job. And at that point, you will learn about sql injection if it is a new thing. If sql injection was something known for 10 years, then you would learn it in the process of learning crud.

All that assuming you take work seriously.

I think that when young people spend their time doing something, it says somethi nd good about them and their environment. However, you can learn the things they learned later on if you have aptitude and study the topic seriously.

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

#287

Post by tptacek »

dontJudge wrote: post #69
geofft wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, I spent a couple of months this summer going through team selection at Google NYC, with a specific request for back-end, low-level, preferably C++ roles (app security, build systems, etc.). I didn't meet or talk to a single woman through the entire process, with the exception of reception, another candidate, and someone who was covering for my recruiter when he was on vacation. I asked every manager I ta…

Your intent on joining a women-based team is very creepy/cringe. This is not a healthy behavior.

This is a deeply rude and inappropriate comment for HN, especially given the context. It's not OK to talk to people like that here.

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

#288

Post by brad0 »

snovv_crash wrote: post #283
praulv wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuinely curious as to what the questions are like... "what is the default constructor for X library object" type?

Way easier than that. Stuff like: Select all of the following which manage the lifetime of an object: shared_ptr unique_ptr raw pointer Or: Assuming foo() prints "foo" and bar() prints "bar" and both return false, what would be printed from the following expression? if(foo() && bar()) {std::cout So, basic modern C++ knowledge. I'm not testing their recall of header signatures, I'm testing if they can read code and if…

Software engineering has huge skill variability. C++ is particularly difficult IMO.

I've seen such a large difference in ability on the interviewer side. In a three tier interview process per 100 people:

60 fail the 15 minute phone screen. Just voice, no programming, just describe some OO concepts like encapsulation, interfaces and inheritance.

30 fail the first in house test. This is writing a for loop to reverse a string and describing at a high level how to sort a 2gb file with 1gb of ram. Most fail at the string reversal.

8 fail the second in house test. You draw up an architecture of a basic app. It's open ended.

For every 100 developers about 2 know their stuff well enough to write decent software.

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

#289

Post by dang »

dontJudge wrote: post #69
geofft wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, I spent a couple of months this summer going through team selection at Google NYC, with a specific request for back-end, low-level, preferably C++ roles (app security, build systems, etc.). I didn't meet or talk to a single woman through the entire process, with the exception of reception, another candidate, and someone who was covering for my recruiter when he was on vacation. I asked every manager I ta…

Your intent on joining a women-based team is very creepy/cringe. This is not a healthy behavior.

This is a personal attack and you can't comment like that here. Please see the site rules at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

We ban accounts that repeatedly post uncivilly, so it's important not to.

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

#290

Post by ubernostrum »

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.

You know the old saying (insert your favorite stronger word) about "if you meet a (not-nice person), then you met a (not-nice person); if you run into (not-nice people) all day long, you might be the (not-nice person)"?

This is how I feel about people who tell me how stupendously low the pass rates of their interviews are.

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