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

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

#41

Post by sdrothrock » Fri, Sep 15, 2017, 3:31 AM UTC

ransom1538 wrote: post #34

Flat salaries may fix this? You basically join at the same bracket publicly. No performance bonuses and all salaries increases are directly based on years put in. Everyone joins with the same options across the board. For each male hired there must be a female hired. No roles. Everyone has the same title: "Engineer". Off sites are strictly prohibited. Is this what the lawyers want?

> No performance bonuses and all salaries increases are directly based on years put in. Everyone joins with the same options across the board.

This is how Japan worked for a long while; now it's moving toward a more meritocratic approach with performance bonuses and raises because the fact of the matter is that it sucks for people who work hard to be paid the same as the guy who comes in 9-5 and does average work.

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

#42

Post by School-Cotton » Fri, Sep 15, 2017, 3:32 AM UTC

ransom1538 wrote: post #34

Flat salaries may fix this? You basically join at the same bracket publicly. No performance bonuses and all salaries increases are directly based on years put in. Everyone joins with the same options across the board. For each male hired there must be a female hired. No roles. Everyone has the same title: "Engineer". Off sites are strictly prohibited. Is this what the lawyers want?

Incidentally, this is not too different from how top-tier law firms work.

For example: http://abovethelaw.com/2016/06/breaking-ny-to-180k-cravath-r...

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

#43

Post by to_bpr » Fri, Sep 15, 2017, 3:32 AM UTC

What is the end goal here? Companies being forced to publish and formalize pay tiers?

Can Google publish a report on non-pay differences by sex at Google? Sick (or personal) leave taken, overtime worked, vacation time availed of, etc. by sex?

Obviously with everyone being equal and doing equal jobs, the above shouldn't really be an issue?

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

#44

Post by krastanov » Fri, Sep 15, 2017, 3:33 AM UTC

stretchwithme wrote: post #25

Companies pay some employees more for pretty good reasons. I don't think they're thinking "Jim's a dude so we should pay him $50K more than Sally." No, they're paying somebody more because they don't want them to leave. And if they are paying you less than somebody else, it's probably partially because they don't think you are as much of a flight risk. And if Google is wrong about these decisions, I'd guess we'd see…

It is definitely not that straightforward. You are probably right when referring to the top talent, but for the majority of the workforce it comes down to negotiations and raises. There is plenty of guilt to be spread around for everybody involved (like, "why don't women negotiate more"), but there are also known well-measured biases against female engineers (SWE has a neat "research" page listing reproduced studies on the topic, same with Project Implicit).

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

#45

Post by runevault » Fri, Sep 15, 2017, 3:33 AM UTC

slyfocks wrote: post #40

stretchwithme wrote: post #25

Companies pay some employees more for pretty good reasons. I don't think they're thinking "Jim's a dude so we should pay him $50K more than Sally." No, they're paying somebody more because they don't want them to leave. And if they are paying you less than somebody else, it's probably partially because they don't think you are as much of a flight risk. And if Google is wrong about these decisions, I'd guess we'd see…

This assumes venture capitalists don’t exhibit a bias towards male founders. Depending on the extent of bias (if any), female engineers would lose a bit of bargaining power with Google. Also, empirically, women tend to be more risk-averse than men on average, so Google (and other companies) could be paying less knowing the chance they’d leave is lower than a man of similar skill.

It doesn't even have to be for the startup life. They could just leave to work at another established company. Though the rest of your point about being risk averse and so sticking with a job (and therefore being less of a flight risk) is more interesting and would be worth exploring.

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

#46

Post by majormajor » Fri, Sep 15, 2017, 3:33 AM UTC

stretchwithme wrote: post #25

Companies pay some employees more for pretty good reasons. I don't think they're thinking "Jim's a dude so we should pay him $50K more than Sally." No, they're paying somebody more because they don't want them to leave. And if they are paying you less than somebody else, it's probably partially because they don't think you are as much of a flight risk. And if Google is wrong about these decisions, I'd guess we'd see…

The biggest one I've seen is "we pay them Y because they already made X."

So if it's biased externally it's gonna look that way internally if you're not proactive.

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

#47

Post by KGIII » Fri, Sep 15, 2017, 3:34 AM UTC

kamaal wrote: post #22

This might be true and I hope they win. But unfortunately everything that they say applies to men too. I wonder if this due to lack of negotiation skills. I have seen this problem being under compensation for the same skill and peer levels for men too. At work, In one case I discovered a colleague being paid almost 50% times higher than I was. In another case in only a casual lunch conversation I discovered a colleag…

> This might be true and I hope they win.

Can you elaborate on this? Namely, the burden of proof is higher than 'might be true.'

I'm guessing you meant something more like, 'If this is true, I hope they win.' I can never tell, anymore.

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

#48

Post by stale2002 » Fri, Sep 15, 2017, 3:35 AM UTC

stretchwithme wrote: post #25

Companies pay some employees more for pretty good reasons. I don't think they're thinking "Jim's a dude so we should pay him $50K more than Sally." No, they're paying somebody more because they don't want them to leave. And if they are paying you less than somebody else, it's probably partially because they don't think you are as much of a flight risk. And if Google is wrong about these decisions, I'd guess we'd see…

Unfortunately for Google, paying women less because "They can get away with it" (ie, women are less of a flight risk), is still illegal.

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

#49

Post by nrmitchi » Fri, Sep 15, 2017, 3:35 AM UTC

jpatokal wrote: post #39

Alex3917 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind that because of their scale, jobs that would be considered full stack or back end at other companies are probably considered front end at Google.

Edit: Nvm. Alex3917 defines it better than I did.

Well, they sort of do, because those terms don't map so cleanly when you begin spreading into a multi-tiered architecture.

You could easily end up with 'server side' work, which exists solely to augment or support a UI, and is not part of the 'core' business applications/services.

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

#50

Post by osmala » Fri, Sep 15, 2017, 3:35 AM UTC

kevmo wrote: post #26

Gustomaximus wrote: post #15

> (women) hold only 20 percent of the company’s higher-paying engineering jobs. I believe women make up less than 20% of comsci graduates? So wouldn't this be about right then. Also I'm assuming women in comsci have lower workforce participation than men do (as in broader economy) so Google must be hiring women at a higher ratio than men from the available pool. I'm 100% in support of open workplaces for gender/race/…

What percentage of programmers at Google have compsci degrees? What's the split like within that subset?

What percentage of HIGH PAY ENGINEERING jobs in google have comp sci degrees, that's the true comparison. And then there is bigger issue here. It's really the obsession about percentages of women in X position. Here's another percentage what percentage of women and men didn't waste a thought on how they looked in their teenage years because they where so obsessed on how computers worked? I believe it is both very small and men are over represented there, and they are over represented in high paying computer jobs.