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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

#311

Post by curiousDog »

sqlplus wrote: post #239

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. Th…

While parts of what you're saying might be true (about Indian culture), the overall pattern around politics, laziness, red tape etc isn't unlike other dinosaur corporates. I used to work at a defense contractor called Rockwell Collins and the laziness and lack of respect for time and deadlines astounded me. It was just old white dudes who'd been there for 20-25 yrs, knew a deeply technical area well because that's what they spent their life on and came in at 10am and left at 3.

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

#312

Post by MarkMc »

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…

> Palantir sued for not hiring enough Asians

Was the evidence against Palantir simply the rate at which they hired Asians? Or was there some other evidence that indicated discrimination?

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

#313

Post by DrScump »

aswanson wrote: post #181

Who in their right mind would want to work for oracle in 2017? That's like fighting for a gig at DEC circa 1997. They're doing candidates a favor by refusing them entrance on the Titanic.

I have several friends from a former employer of mine (an Oracle competitor at the time) that work for Oracle now, including a Director.

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

#314

Post by xiaoma »

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…

Historically, that's not how it's happened when artificial barriers have been removed. The Jewish population in top universities in the US, for example, rose to extreme levels of over-representation within a single generation of the removal "Jewish-quota" policies. Nearly the same thing happened again with Asian populations a few decades later.

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

#315

Post by foo101 »

driverdan wrote: post #297
nomel wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. Maybe someone who needs money for food and shelter? I support several people. If I were laid off, I would need an income within x amount of time before we all became homeless. If I were to approach that limit, I would take whatever job would prevent it. I can safely say you've never been homeless, hungry, or if you have, you had a support structure that loaned you food and a nice warm house. If that's not true,…

If you can get a job at Oracle you can get a job somewhere else. Why would you choose Oracle over the other company?

Are you serious? Do you work for Oracle or have you taken their interviews?

Oracle has many many departments. Do you know about Server Technologies (the RDBMS department)? When I applied for Oracle Server Technologies in 2016, I found their interviews to be of the same difficulty level as that of Amazon and Google. They expect a single candidate to know everything from real world work involving Linux kernel details and system programming to abstract concepts like probabilistic data structures, hash trees, distributed computing algorithms, etc. And they expect you to write working code free of bugs and syntax errors in the interview to prove that you know what you are talking about.

In my experience, not many companies in the Silicon Valley expect this kind of rigor and knowledge in the interviews except for the likes of Amazon and Google.

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

#316

Post by phonon »

sqlplus wrote: post #309
coredog64 wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I wanted to work on Oracle Linux I'd do it from Raleigh, NC.

Sure! There are employees who indeed work for Oracle remotely and get paid. The point is not that one may want to work on Oracle Linux. The point is that one can work on a variety of things in Oracle (including other Linux distributions, not just Oracle Linux) and system programming, and get paid to do this. Therefore despite the several chronic problems that exist in Oracle, it is not as absurd to be working for Ora…

Umm, I think he was trying to say Oracle Linux = RHEL

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

#317

Post by sqlplus »

phonon wrote: post #316
sqlplus wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure! There are employees who indeed work for Oracle remotely and get paid. The point is not that one may want to work on Oracle Linux. The point is that one can work on a variety of things in Oracle (including other Linux distributions, not just Oracle Linux) and system programming, and get paid to do this. Therefore despite the several chronic problems that exist in Oracle, it is not as absurd to be working for Ora…

Umm, I think he was trying to say Oracle Linux = RHEL

Then that totally misses the point I was trying to make. I was making the point that Oracle actively patches security vulnerabilities in Oracle Linux as well as other distributions for their customers when the upstream takes too long to patch them. Therefore, I was making the point that one who would like to work on security, open source and development at the same time could work for Oracle. Of course, one can just work for RHEL and Canonical too. But one can work for Oracle too. It's one more option available to developers and many developers seem to exercise this option.

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

#319

Post by elastic_church »

CodeSheikh wrote: post #3

"Oracle was far more likely to hire Asian applicants - particularly Indian people - for product development and technical roles than black, white or Hispanic job seekers." Can the DOL back up this claim with salary data to see if Oracle is abusing the H1-B visa system by purposefully keeping wages low? Most of the time it is just easier to hire Asian/Indian employees because they are readily available (larger proport…

Oracle America in Redwood Shores H1B salaries, for reference

http://www.h1bdata.info/index.php?em=oracle&job=&city=REDWOO...

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

#320

Post by MarkMc »

_m8fo wrote: post #15

Couple points: First, this is where the meat is: https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/ofccp/ofccp20170118-0 Second: "...Oracle nevertheless preferred Asian applications over other qualified applicants in the Professional Technical 1, Individual Contributor Job group and in the Product Development job group at statistically significant rates." [1] [1] https://www.dol.gov/sites/default/files/newsroom/newsrelease... --…

"...Oracle nevertheless preferred Asian applications...at statistically significant rates."

I would be very wary about what counts as 'statistically significant'. If I flip a coin 10 times and it lands heads 10 times, is that 'statistically significant'? Not if I'm going through a jar with 1000 coins.

And splitting Oracle's workforce into 'job groups' makes it much easier to find spurious rates of discrimination. Eg. there is discrimination in the 'Professional Technical 1' group but not the 'Professional Technical 2' group...etc.

(This discussion reminds me of this Dilbert cartoon: http://dilbert.com/strip/2001-10-25 )

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