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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

#471

Post by jurassic »

HeroOfAges wrote: post #450
jurassic wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> areas with primarily male coworkers, and creepy bosses This describes basically every tech job I have ever had. Real life engineering woman here reporting in. In 2014 I joined a series B startup as engineer #15 and was the only woman in the office other than the admin; food delivery dudes often brought things to my desk, assuming I must be the office mother. When I was late to work one day after being groped by a s…

> Men, especially clients, often forgot my name. E.g. Janice vs Janet vs Jan (none of these my real name, but you get the idea. The point is that I wasn't important enough to these men to remember.) Are you aware this kind of thing happens to everyone? Do you expect people to remember your name just because you're a woman? Or would you rather they remembered your name because you've accomplished something beyond the…

I’m not talking about one-off meetings where the name doesn’t stick. That happens to everyone, of course. I’m talking about working on projects with the same group of people over a period of months. I have not seen the Matts and Ryans of the world have this problem.

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

#472

Post by eecks »

kareninoverseas wrote: post #459

This debate is exhausting. I agree with some previous posters that women may be more favoured by formal systems now, while men remain more favoured by informal systems. I think that part of the issue is that there are more ways to be male and a successful senior engineer or team lead than there are female. We tend to look towards people who are similar to ourselves to see how we should advance. There are many fewer f…

> I don't think that a good reaction to this news article is to feel upset that men are now being discriminated against.

Why not? It's good and bad news for men but men definitely shouldn't be discriminated against

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

#473

Post by stcredzero »

chc wrote: post #460
stcredzero wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Outcomes are the only holistic way to measure opportunity. I'm sorry, but that's "not even wrong" as Pauli would say. 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." Group cultures/subcultures can pass on knowledge, which can then provide advantages and then be transmitted to different groups. No racial or innate superiori…

What you're describing here is a disparity of outcomes reflecting a disparity of opportunity, isn't it? I agree with everything you said here, but you're presenting it as a disagreement, so I'm a little bit confused.

What you're describing here is a disparity of outcomes reflecting a disparity of opportunity, isn't it?

What I'm talking about is a kind of "grassroots" disparity of opportunity. It's not necessarily the same as a "systemic" disparity of opportunity. The former can often be available to people who are literally poorer than the poor. (As has been the case for Chinese immigrants at times.) Irish Traditional music contains another example of the former.

Often, disparities can be a mix of these two things.

I agree with everything you said here, but you're presenting it as a disagreement, so I'm a little bit confused

I'm glad you're feeling a little bit confused. Often, this can be a good sign!

The problem with how such disparities are talked about and acted upon, is that the complexity of the situation is often downplayed or drastically underestimated, then combined with a punitive attitude of blame and compensation. This isn't how these things are known to work. The best way to transmit cultural knowledge is through some form of competition. (Friendly and peaceful are best, of course.)

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

#474

Post by hellisothers »

AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #208
cronix wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does "same work" also include the hours worked? Usually not. If someone completes x projects in y hours, and someone else completes the same x projects in z hours, are they the same? Both did "the same work," but one was more efficient and did it faster (presuming the quality of the work by both parties was equal).

I assume most of Google employees are exempt, so the exact number of hours spent on a job is hard to calculate.

Agreed, “hours worked” is starting to look like a dog whistle in these threads

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

#475

Post by notadoc »

haihaibye wrote: post #241
titanix2 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We had something similar in France. There was enough people saying and believing that (ethnic) minorities are discriminated for employment to trigger a governmental supported study on the use of anonymous CV. The conclusion was that minorities were even less likely to get an interview with anonymized CV and were actually positivity discriminated against. Authors of study supposed that it is because some issues in the…

Same experiment, same result in Australia: https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-... In a bid to eliminate sexism, thousands of public servants have been told to pick recruits who have had all mention of their gender and ethnic background stripped from their CVs The trial found assigning a male name to a candidate made them 3.2 per cent less likely to get a job interview. Adding a woman's name t…

Fascinating. I wonder why we these studies and their findings never gain much attention?

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

#476

Post by soheil »

How did this fall off the front page with almost 500 points and less than 6 hours? There are submissions with fewer points and older that are still pretty high on the front page. Can anyone explain? Is it possible this is getting flagged too many times?

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

#477

Post by tomp »

chc wrote: post #358
nwienert wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bet…

Your problem is that you're measuring outcomes only in terms of money. Maybe women value time & family more than money & success?!

Women do yoga. Men do martial arts. Which is "better"? Which is the "lesser outcome"? None. It's just a difference (in preferences and therefore outcome).

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

#478

Post by haberman »

eqdw wrote: post #221

If you assume: a) Google is about 70% men; and b) The "error" in pay (eg how under- or over-paid you are) is randomly distributed Then it will be trivially true that more men than women are underpaid If you, in addition to this, assume some level of sex discrimination, such that in addition to (b) there is additional 'error' in womens' pay, depending on the relative strengths of each of these errors, the following tw…

The information provided in the article directly contradicts your hypothetical.

It says that the raises resulting from the study disproportionately went to men. Not just in absolute terms, but proportional terms:

> The study, which disproportionately led to pay raises for thousands of men, is done every year [...]

> In response to the study, Google gave $9.7 million in additional compensation to 10,677 employees for this year. Men account for about 69 percent of the company’s work force, but they received a higher percentage of the money.

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

#479

Post by chc »

stcredzero wrote: post #473
chc wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're describing here is a disparity of outcomes reflecting a disparity of opportunity, isn't it? I agree with everything you said here, but you're presenting it as a disagreement, so I'm a little bit confused.

What you're describing here is a disparity of outcomes reflecting a disparity of opportunity, isn't it? What I'm talking about is a kind of "grassroots" disparity of opportunity. It's not necessarily the same as a "systemic" disparity of opportunity. The former can often be available to people who are literally poorer than the poor. (As has been the case for Chinese immigrants at times.) Irish Traditional music conta…

I don't think anyone here is arguing for punishment or blame, though — I certainly wasn't. All I said was that if you look at a group getting much worse outcomes and declare that their opportunities were at least as good as the group getting better outcomes, it logically follows that the members of the group are simply not capable. If you wouldn't feel confident saying that explicitly, then comments about "outcomes vs. opportunity" are misguided and there's probably some kind of opportunity disparity that you've missed but which is reflected in the outcome.

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

#480

Post by manfredo »

chc wrote: post #389
leereeves wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capable isn't the same thing as interested. I know many smart people who have no interest in programming (and wonder why I enjoy it). As The Atlantic said: > Then again, it could just be that, feeling financially secure and on equal footing with men, some women will always choose to follow their passions, rather than whatever labor economists recommend. And those passions don’t always lie within science [or technolog…

It is when we're talking about outcomes within a field. Either you think women deserve to be paid less or not — there isn't really a third possibility there. If they do deserve worse outcomes, then either they suck innately or they suck because they're not interested, but either way you're saying they suck.

My room mate works fewer hours than me and doesn't have oncall rotations. He makes less money accordingly.

Are you willing to walk up to his face and tell him that he "sucks" because he doesn't work as hard and doesn't have the same TC as I do?

To be frank, your posts are pretty denigrating to people who choose to have better work life balance. Not everyone sees their self worth in terms of dollars.

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