Google Moves to Address Wage Equity, and Finds It’s Underpaying Many Men • Hacker News Board

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

#331

Post by EForEndeavour » Mon, Mar 04, 2019, 10:02 PM UTC

klipt wrote: post #304

EForEndeavour wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

https://ngcproject.org/statistics > Women earned 57.3% of bachelor’s degrees in all fields in 2013 and 50.3% of science and engineering bachelor’s degrees.

Your truncated quote is woefully incomplete at best, and intentionally misleading at worst. The full passage reads as follows, emphasis mine:

Women earned 57.3% of bachelor’s degrees in all fields in 2013 and 50.3% of science and engineering bachelor’s degrees. However, women’s participation in science and engineering at the undergraduate level significantly differs by specific field of study. While women receive over half of bachelor’s degrees awarded in the biological sciences, they receive far fewer in the computer sciences (17.9%), engineering (19.3%), physical sciences (39%) and mathematics (43.1%).

More relevant points appear further down the page which illustrate what people talk about when they lament the underrepresentation of women in STEM:

Women make up half of the total U.S. college-educated workforce, but only 29% of the science and engineering workforce. Female scientists and engineers are concentrated in different occupations than are men, with relatively high shares of women in the social sciences (62%) and biological, agricultural, and environmental life sciences (48%) and relatively low shares in engineering (15%) and computer and mathematical sciences (25%).

For example:

35.2% of chemists are women;

11.1% of physicists and astronomers are women;

33.8% of environmental engineers are women;

22.7% of chemical engineers are women;

17.5% of civil, architectural, and sanitary engineers are women;

17.1% of industrial engineers are women;

10.7% of electrical or computer hardware engineers are women; and

7.9% of mechanical engineers are women.

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

#332

Post by mjevans » Mon, Mar 04, 2019, 10:02 PM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #298

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…

I've never worked in a field where I could compete for a job with a woman, they'd always get first dibs. It is pretty unfair. However a distinction must be made between the formal systems (extremely sexist favouring women), informal systems (potentially extremely sexist favouring men) and workplace environment (women are continuously sexually propositioned; pretty overwhelming evidence for that IMO). Making the forma…

It is really tough to measure performance in 'creative' fields. I've never ever seen anyone do it correctly (and would love to hear counter examples!); I've not even got a good place to start that wouldn't lead to some things being gamed, or end up being a popularity contest (like the informal systems).

As far as trying to address the... over-solicitation issue, I am trying to be constructive with this set of suggestions.

  * Diversify corporate offices to promote mixing in to cities rather than within the company.
  * Have strong work life balance allowing external socialization.
  * Apply political and economic pressure on civic infrastructure to promote:
  * * mass transit (more, better, cleaner, safer)
  * * quantity and quality of housing (lower prices for all)
  * * "livable" cities in general

Most of these solutions would also, over the 10-20+ year term, lead to more //opportunity// for all, and would also in the short term improve corporate culture and worker relations to make entering the field more appealing to a wider range of audiences.

Specific incentives for FAMILIES (not just women) could include additional career help and planning:

  * Part time work, fully async, from 'home' (or a more local office sometimes) for moms/dads.
  * Remote 'first' (only?) participation; meetings online, rather than by the water-cooler.
  * Have a presence in a given region that is stable
  * * with actual career paths in the area, allowing home-buying (rather than renting)

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

#333

Post by avip » Mon, Mar 04, 2019, 10:03 PM UTC

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…

The funny thing is it's all open. Women-only positions in unis and so. My wife was even invited to a women-only conference! I asked her if she would go to a "white only" or "Christian only" event.

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

#334

Post by vp8989 » Mon, Mar 04, 2019, 10:05 PM UTC

rafiki6 wrote: post #164

CydeWeys wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To use a sports analogy: Two people could each have 5 years of experience playing baseball, but one is in a AAA league and the other plays for an MLB team. Years of experience doesn't necessarily say anything about actual skill.

You just told me that Google is the MLB. I don't see any evidence for this. Many great software companies exist. You are working on the assumption that everyone applying to Google is coming from low-rate companies. Further, if I get hired into the MLB from an AAA team, it's likely I am playing at a professional level. I might get a rookie contract upfront, but that doesn't mean that my skill level is that of a rookie…

"The key difference here is that in the MLB it's much harder to quantify skills whereas that's not the case with software engineers. If I was part of a team that released a solid piece of software, even if it's from a non-giant software company, I'm not entirely sure why my experience isn't transferable to Google (outside of a different stack)."

I'm sorry but that is completely the opposite.

In MLB and a lot of other sports now, every single play is tracked. Every player has rate and counting stats to measure efficiency and overall production in every category. Anyone in the world can subscribe to the tape library and watch your entire career on loop and analyze every single moment of your professional career.

No one can do anything like that in closed-source software. Infact, that is the big unsolved problem in tech hiring. No one can tell who the good devs are because your "track record", your resume is just not a reliable indicator of your ability.

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

#335

Post by nodesocket » Mon, Mar 04, 2019, 10:06 PM UTC

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…

Despite the media and far left continuing to propagate the gender pay gap especially in technology, the reality seems to indicate the opposite. Women are given a salary boost because companies (specifically those on the west coast) are afraid of being publicly shamed by the media for perceived gender bias. The pendulum has swung way to far, except now if you stand up and try push it toward the middle, you are quickly shamed and labeled a sexist.

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

#336

Post by haberman » Mon, Mar 04, 2019, 10:06 PM UTC

frogpelt wrote: post #234

slg wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You got too distracted by the Simpson's Paradox reference to see the actual Simpson's Paradox in play. As sokoloff [1] pointed out in a below thread, Google having an overwhelming male workforce means that there could still be a large bias against women at the same time that more man are being underpaid. There is simply not enough information presented in this article to know whether there is truly a gender bias (in…

I think you're right. E.g.: Google is 70% men. At 100,000 employees: 70,000 Male 30,000 Female If 5% of men are underpaid that's 3,500 men. If 10% of women are underpaid that's 3,000 women. More men are underpaid (3,500 > 3,000). But women are twice as likely to be underpaid (10% > 5%).

The article said disproportionately more underpayment was to men. Therefore your hypothetical scenario (which posits that the difference was measured in absolute terms) is not what Google found.

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

#337

Post by sokoloff » Mon, Mar 04, 2019, 10:07 PM UTC

wsy wrote: post #115

CydeWeys wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can everyone be underpaid? Does that even make sense?

Not everybody is underpaid, but among the underpaid, they found men as well as women. As random illustration, they might pay 200k+-5% to 80% of all level X developers, and the other 20% might only earn 150k+-5%. I still agree that 'underpaid' is a difficult term here. Maybe the 80% are overpaid? The only hard fact in this example would be that the salary is more skewed than it should be for a 'fair' compensation.

If you believe that developers are within a factor of 33% of productivity (defined notionally as “value created per week”), then there is excessive skew in the numbers you propose.

I believe the productivity figures are at least a factor of 2, and probably a tail out to a factor of 10 or more versus the median developer (and then a left-going distribution under the median where a substaintial number of developers do not create any value at all). Under that set of beliefs, 20% making ~$150K and 80% making ~$200K is actually insufficient skew vs a “fair” system.

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

#338

Post by AlexTWithBeard » Mon, Mar 04, 2019, 10:07 PM UTC

dqpb wrote: post #314

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...

I hope you told her that liking math is not a prerequisite to liking animals and babies. Surely these interests can be decoupled - unless she has some kind of socio-mathematical synesthesia.

I love math. I tried to make her a mathematician. But nope. Doesn't work. At all.

I'm still available if she changes her mind one day!

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

#339

Post by renholder » Mon, Mar 04, 2019, 10:08 PM UTC

PunchTornado wrote: post #261

renholder wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compare two developers. One just codes and the other not only knows how to code but knows how to debug (native, runtimes, etc.). So, then you publish developer 1's pay salary and developer 2's pay salary. Now, developer 1 has a rage-boner because developer 2 is being paid more but there's the reason of his/her desirable skills being utilised in the role. Yet, developer 1 doesn't see this qualifiable reason and just s…

there are plenty of situations where that better dev gets paid less. salary transparency will address that

>there are plenty of situations where that better dev gets paid less. salary transparency will address that

Plenty of situations? Where? Documented somewhere, I should hope, yeah?

Is that better dev from a subjective or an objective perspective?

The reason that I ask is because one dev can think that they're better than another and believe that they should be paid more but that could very well be the fault of fevered ego and not, necessarily, a reflection of reality, yeah?

Also, salary transparency wouldn't actually address anything. It would be a tool to address the salary issue with management and management (plus, HR) would address it, yeah?

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

#340

Post by analyst74 » Mon, Mar 04, 2019, 10:09 PM UTC

AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #247

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…

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...

This is the subtle part of social conditioning.

It's not that boys will all like math either, but society makes sure they can't like animals and babies. Higher expectations of children (within reason) typically leads to higher achievement.