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

281–290 of 626 posts

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

#281

Post by jotux »

adamsea wrote: post #169
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…

> 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?

>how many workplaces have an engineering team which are 50% female? 25% female? 10% female? 5% female?

All I can find is data from 2012[1], but Our job postings (and those of my previous employer) were generic descriptions of the work and benefits. Perhaps generic job descriptions are inherently hostile towards women?

[1] https://www.ncwit.org/sites/default/files/resources/girlsini...

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

#282

Post by roguecoder »

emddudley wrote: post #256
sorum wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Here is some data from the U.S. National Center for Education Statistics: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d18/tables/dt18_318.30.a... In 2017 there were 133,761 Bachelor's degrees conferred in Engineering, 20% of which were conferred to women. Computers: 71,420 degrees, 19% women Math: 24,073 degrees, 42% women Physical sciences: 31,268 degrees, 40% women

Physics hardly any more applicable to software development than biology is, especially areas like biostats or neurophysiology that involve directly writing code.

But these numbers sure suggest that something is wrong with computer science departments.

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

#283

Post by roguecoder »

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.

Hmmm, that excludes fields like anthropology and geography that the best developers I've worked with studied: understanding systems involving both people and technology is much harder than building an if-loop.

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

#284

Post by gnicholas »

romwell wrote: post #267
ben509 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the talk of discrimination against women requires that they be helpless damsels in distress in all this, when their dominance of college graduation suggests the opposite. Biology is not "preventing" women, it's directing their inclination. Women have a ton of opportunities, and it's just as likely that as CS blew up they decided they didn't want to and didn't need to take on the long hours and relative social iso…

>Biology is not "preventing" women, it's directing their inclination. Right, absolutely, biology is what inclines women to not be programmers. And it's not at all things like lack of parental leave policies in most software firms that would allow their partners to stay at home should a child be born in their household, or a million other workplace and policy matters. It's biology, the conversation is over.

> lack of parental leave policies in most software firms that would allow their partners to stay at home should a child be born in their household,

I've never heard of such a policy, or perhaps I'm misunderstanding your comment. Are you suggesting that companies should have policies that affect what the spouses/partners of employees do in terms of caring for children? Why would an employer have any right to say what their employee's spouses/partners do with their time? Or are you suggesting that employers should somehow provide compensation in this situation? I also don't understand how that would work (and I don't think the lack of such policies is specific to software firms).

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

#285

Post by esarbe »

CryoLogic wrote: post #240
esarbe wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to be a valid observation (see https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more... ), it is not insulting or demeaning and it contributes to the discussion. So, why is this downvoted?

It's not being down-voted because it's not a valid discussion point, but instead probably just because HN has a very liberal audience. Even the most educated are still capable of bias, and many here do not like the opinion that it is possible that women differ from men in any significant ways. Don't take the down-votes too personally. As long as you are posting constructive feedback with some evidence to your hypothe…

I don't take the downvotes personally (it's not my post, after all) but it makes me rather curious.

I think it strange that a liberal audience would dispute the fact that there are differences between men and women, even significant differences.

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

#286

Post by WrtCdEvrydy »

duxup wrote: post #81
woxe wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So just put your current salary in your CV.

I think "I ran across your CV" is probabbly the biggest lie I've heard in a while ;)

Seeing as how CV stands for Curriculum Vitae and is used by academics who do a lot of publishing in journals and I have never created a CV... I believe you are lying.

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

#287

Post by roguecoder »

EForEndeavour wrote: post #279
roguecoder wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Between 2004 and 2014 women received 50.4% of undergrad degrees in STEM fields.

This figure is higher that those cited elsewhere in the discussion thread. Could you provide a source?

https://www.aei.org/publication/gender-gap-in-stem-women-are...

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

#288

Post by billfruit »

myrandomcomment wrote: post #30
xienze wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A similar thing has happened with companies that go to great lengths to make sure they don't have any gender bias in their hiring process (no face-to-face during interviews, voice altering during phone interviews, etc.) only to find that they still selected more men than women. The conclusion, of course, is that they must be doing something wrong because it's simply impossible that they wouldn't be selecting a perfec…

Well it depends on the field. What is the ratio of male to female CS graduates? A quick check seems to say that in 2015 is was only 15% female.

That figure is almost reversed in many third world countries. In my CS undergrad, there were 40 women and 20 men.

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

#289

Post by jlawson »

nostromo wrote: post #276
AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High school, college, any STEM fields are all overwhelmingly biased in terms of favoring women. My daughter who is finishing the primary school has recently asked me if it's okay if she doesn't like math, but likes animals and babies. Sounds like some pressure is being applied...

Or maybe sexual differences cause men and women, on average, to have different interests. edit: thanks for pointing out that I misread which type of pressure is being applied.

That's what the poster meant. She was being pressured to like math; her inherent interest was in animals and babies.

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

#290

Post by AlexTWithBeard »

fullshark wrote: post #280
AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High school, college, any STEM fields are all overwhelmingly biased in terms of favoring women. My daughter who is finishing the primary school has recently asked me if it's okay if she doesn't like math, but likes animals and babies. Sounds like some pressure is being applied...

In which direction?

In "we-need-more-girls-in-science-club" one.
Post reply on HN