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

#351

Post by maxxxxx » Mon, Mar 04, 2019, 10:18 PM UTC

renholder wrote: post #339

PunchTornado wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fevere…

"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?"

The first step to address issues is to gather relevant data so an informed decision can be made. right now we have only very incomplete data.

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

#352

Post by lazyasciiart » Mon, Mar 04, 2019, 10:18 PM UTC

manfredo wrote: post #258

adamsea wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 schools have 50% make teachers? Is it because education has a rampant sexism problem? Or is it because men and women have different preferences?

It's at least partly because of rampant sexism and social suspicion of men who want to spend time around children.

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

#353

Post by wsy » Mon, Mar 04, 2019, 10:19 PM UTC

CydeWeys wrote: post #159

wsy wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What does the ideal salary distribution curve look like, anyway? Should it be a bell curve? A long-tail distribution? Should it have distinct peaks, i.e. everyone with the same YOE is paid exactly the same? Should the salary distribution mirror the talent distribution, or no?

Good questions. I think that compensation should mirror the value an employee provides to the company. However, in many cases, that is very hard or even impossible to measure.

In large companies with many career levels, the role level indicates the perceived value for the company. Then, the distribution within the level doesn't matter that much, as long as the difference between minimum and maximum pay is relatively small, and there is not much overlap to the neighborhood levels. Of course, there is no objective criterion what "relatively small" means in this context.

And, as the article already points out, this only covers fairness within the same level. Maybe even more important is if everybody is evaluated in the same way when it comes to career progress.

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

#354

Post by lazyasciiart » Mon, Mar 04, 2019, 10:19 PM UTC

oarabbus_ wrote: post #125

kgwgk wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The takeaway is that compensations are not perfectly aligned with whatever model was used in the study. Which is expected because compensations were not set using that model, so they won’t be exactly the same. And at that point, if the model is calibrated for everage compensation to be the same, it’s obvious that some people will get compensations below the prediction of the model and some people will get compensatio…

> And at that point, if the model is calibrated for everage compensation to be the same, it’s obvious that some people will get compensations below the prediction of the model and some people will get compensations above the prediction of the model. This is true of most models (in practice - any model which models salary in the real world) yet not every company is being accused of these payment discrimination lawsuit…

How many companies have this data available to someone who might sue them?

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

#355

Post by sokoloff » Mon, Mar 04, 2019, 10:20 PM UTC

malvosenior wrote: post #321

roenxi wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's a very interesting take. I know as a man, I'd rather work in a place where anyone propositioning someone else would be fired (man or woman) than a place where I may not even get the job because I'm male.

Romances between colleagues is a fairly common and natural thing. It seems quite excessive for all propositions to result in termination.

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

#356

Post by ggggtez » Mon, Mar 04, 2019, 10:20 PM UTC

AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #338

dqpb wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

This is a mistake of the parent. You can't "make" them become something. That's why they hate it, not because of the school. You are forcing them to do it.

I've seen this with people who are coders trying to force their kids to make websites (like they did when they were a kid). But guess what: maybe you did it because it was fun, but for her it's a chore because she didn't come up with the idea!

If she likes animals, show her science about animals. The math will come into play naturally. You could ask her about how many babies certain animals have each year. Let her find the problems that interest her, and show her that math is a tool that can solve those problems.

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

#357

Post by bargl » Mon, Mar 04, 2019, 10:20 PM UTC

ggggtez wrote: post #341

jlawson wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Did you know that men sometimes like babies and animals too? Crazy I know. What is taught in 4th-5th grade math? Fractions? Decimals? Multiplication and division of larger numbers (maybe the accursed "Long Division")? These are not exactly the most exciting or interesting things to learn... If I was a parent of this child, I'd take it as a notice that they are falling behind, probably from lousy teaching and parentin…

Are you a parent?

I ask because I remember saying stuff like this before I had kids. I don't anymore. I've tried to learn not to judge others parenting but hey that's just me.

No one, at least that I've seen. Is saying men don't like babies and animals too. There is nothing wrong with that. To assume that you have to like something based on your gender is ignorant.

To assume that you can't like what is "stereotypical" liked by your gender is equally ignorant.

People have a massive amount of fluctuation in what they like and don't like, part of being a parent is about recognizing the individual that your kid is and not pressing what YOU want on them, but balancing that with what's best for them based on what you know that they don't.

I also know that as a parent, you're always failing. You just do your best to fail as little as possible.

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

#358

Post by chc » Mon, Mar 04, 2019, 10:23 PM UTC

nwienert wrote: post #343

lgleason wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[edited for typos and grammer] Anecdotally, I've run a couple of tech conferences and know others who have as well fairly recently. We've made a point to hold workshops for under represented groups, had the Codes of Conduct, make a lot of extra effort to reach out to women as speakers etc.. In the end, we would get 5 to 10 times as many talk submissions from men, accept nearly all of the talks by women (often turning…

I’ll repeat points that aren’t my original ideas, but are painfully obvious here. It’s very simple what it’s become: sexist against men. This is what happens when you aim for equality of outcome instead of equality of opportunity. I believe we’re in a Kantian second stage. We were sexist against women. Now, we’re sexist against men. The hopeful third step

> This is what happens when you aim for equality of outcome instead of equality of opportunity.

People throw this accusation around all the time, but it doesn't make much sense. Outcomes are the only holistic way to measure opportunity.

If you're seeing one group getting lesser outcomes, there are only two possibilities: Their opportunities are being artificially limited somewhere, or one of the groups is simply better than the other. So if you really believe this is a meaningful distinction to draw — that measuring outcomes can't tell us about opportunity — what you're really saying is, "The groups who haven't traditionally been in power are in that position because they are innately less capable."

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

#359

Post by sokoloff » Mon, Mar 04, 2019, 10:23 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…

> 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.

(As a white, straight male,) I have absolutely no issue with a woman being offered a role over me as a tie-breaker or an epsilon-advantage. A company who would go significantly farther than that is one that I don’t want to work for anyway as they’re not interested in being competitive.

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

#360

Post by lazyasciiart » Mon, Mar 04, 2019, 10:23 PM UTC

sleepysysadmin wrote: post #251

LiquidSky wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The countries with the highest wage gaps are the countries with the most equality in the workplace. Women in Korea are not treated poorly. I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean. Korea most assuredly is not a country with "the most equality in the workplace". It routinely ranks as having the worst gender inequality of any developed nation, and one of the worst in the world generally. It came in 115th out of 149…

We have exchanged sources. Thank you. Your assertion is that Japan and Korea are highly discriminatory against women? That's certainly interesting and I'm not sure I can defend against that position. Perhaps women in japan and korea are extremely oppressed. This is certainly not what I thought after reading for example or just seeing what's portrayed in the media. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_South_Korea Me…

Japan is very well known for gender inequality in the workplace and Rwanda is also well known as an example of significant legal and social support for gender equality. If your intuition and awareness doesn't include either of these facts then you should not trust yourself on this area at all.