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

nytimes.com

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

#41

Post by slg »

sokoloff wrote: post #15
myrandomcomment wrote: post #6

I love the irony of this. Accused of underpaying women - their reaction is "let us get some data". Nope. underpaying men. This is the way you do things. You collect the data, analyze and react. Wash rinse repeat.

Given that Google's workforce is 69% men, it's quite possible that they found 3 men underpaid for every 2 women who were underpaid (60%/40%), which would mean they gave more men than women salary equity adjustments while still having a bias in the direction of the original complaint.

This seems like a classic example of the Simpson's Paradox. This[1] was just on the front page a few days ago.

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19278839

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

#43

Post by benatkin »

munk-a wrote: post #22
treis wrote: post #7

Should we read "Many Men" as "Those on H1B visas"?

I would actually be surprised if big corps didn't try to pull in more diversity from H1Bs, American universities are particularly bad at producing gender balanced graduating classes.

They should have to report each separately, and both should be reasonable.

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

#44

Post by peteey »

maxxxxx wrote: post #4

That's why we need salary transparency to really address this. There are a lot underpaid men and a lot of overpaid women. Making this into a male vs. female issue does nothing to address the fact that people are underpaid.

As a man, I have relied primary on two people at different points in my life; my wife and my mom. Their loss is not my gain. This is a team game.

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

#45

Post by 77pt77 »

oarabbus_ wrote: post #26

Reminiscent of Simpson's Paradox, the most famous example being a gender discrimination lawsuit alleging UC Berkeley discriminated against women in admissions (57% men vs. 43% women). It turned out there WAS bias - in favor of the women! "The lawsuit triggered a study. The study results showed that not only were women not discriminated against, but that women had a statistically significant advantage! Here’s what hap…

Exactly what I thought. How this is even considered a paradox is a paradox to me.

Human beings just have very strange presuppositions regarding probability and statistics that are almost always wrong.

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

#46

Post by eli_gottlieb »

xienze wrote: post #9
maxxxxx wrote: post #4

That's why we need salary transparency to really address this. There are a lot underpaid men and a lot of overpaid women. Making this into a male vs. female issue does nothing to address the fact that people are underpaid.

I think it would quite quickly turn into yet another source of conflict between employees. The problem with "equal pay" is direct comparisons only work in jobs that are essentially assembly line work, e.g., person A and person B do exactly the same thing every single day, and their output can be measured in exactly the same way, namely how many widgets each person produces in a given time period. Finding a difference…

>I think it would quite quickly turn into yet another source of conflict between employees. The problem with "equal pay" is direct comparisons only work in jobs that are essentially assembly line work, e.g., person A and person B do exactly the same thing every single day, and their output can be measured in exactly the same way, namely how many widgets each person produces in a given time period. Finding a difference in pay in that situation is cause for concern.

When I was in industry, our company was a 20-person R&D house that paid everyone equally, from new hires like me to founders of the company. And it worked great!

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

#47

Post by ScoJoh »

If you look at the amount they increased wages by, 9.7 million and by 10667 employees and just take an average... that's only 908 bucks a person. Don't get me wrong, 908 bucks a year is 908 bucks. But take into considering hours, that's only a pay increase of just under 44 cents an hour.

So at the end of the day, they weren't severely underpaying employees.

Good to see a company take this step. I had this happen to me at one company I worked for... it actually resulted in a pay increase of over 4 bucks an hour, now THAT was nice!

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

#48

Post by magneticnorth »

I've talked to one expert about a similar result in a company where I worked, and the flip side to results like this is sometimes promotion velocity - women looked "overpaid" for their level relative to the men, and that was often because they had been at that level much longer than most men at the same level.

If you set initial salaries fairly with respect to gender but promote men more quickly, then you end up with a company where it looks like women are paid more when you control for job title.

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

#49

Post by [deleted] »

xienze wrote: post #9
maxxxxx wrote: post #4

That's why we need salary transparency to really address this. There are a lot underpaid men and a lot of overpaid women. Making this into a male vs. female issue does nothing to address the fact that people are underpaid.

I think it would quite quickly turn into yet another source of conflict between employees. The problem with "equal pay" is direct comparisons only work in jobs that are essentially assembly line work, e.g., person A and person B do exactly the same thing every single day, and their output can be measured in exactly the same way, namely how many widgets each person produces in a given time period. Finding a difference…

[deleted]

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

#50

Post by naasking »

nostromo wrote: post #31
danaliv wrote: post #12

Do read the fine article for the details: But the study did not tell the whole story of women at Google or in the technology industry more broadly, something that company officials acknowledged. Most significantly, it did not address ingrained issues that, according to workplace experts, cannot be overcome simply by considering how much different people are paid for doing the same job: Women and racial minorities oft…

> according to workplace experts The media really needs to stop this practice of just saying "experts say" without any attribution. I suggest when reading any article, when you read, "experts agree" or "sources say" or "critics have said" or "others are saying" -- just replace it with, "I, the author of this article, think ..."

Seriously, I read that and I immediately wondered who these experts are and what their data actually says, considering the entire article is about how empirical data actually debunked the commonly accepted narrative.
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