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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

#491

Post by mqrs »

haberman wrote: post #336
frogpelt wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In the same example, 10% of men = 7,000 where as 10% of women = 3,000. That qualifies as disproportionately more and yet it remains a fallacy.

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

#492

Post by simoncoulton »

roguecoder wrote: post #282
emddudley wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is some data from the U.S. National Center for Education Statistics: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d18/tables/dt18_318.30.a... In 2017 there were 133,761 Bachelor's degrees conferred in Engineering, 20% of which were conferred to women. Computers: 71,420 degrees, 19% women Math: 24,073 degrees, 42% women Physical sciences: 31,268 degrees, 40% women

Physics hardly any more applicable to software development than biology is, especially areas like biostats or neurophysiology that involve directly writing code. But these numbers sure suggest that something is wrong with computer science departments.

It does not suggest anything is wrong. Seeing any group represented more than another in anything that is due to CHOICE does not correlate to an issue.

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

#493

Post by simoncoulton »

rhegart wrote: post #174
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?

I’d wager it’s the same as the composition of females in any Engineering program. If there were 25 women in your CS program out of a 100 (being generous), they can’t magically multiply and somehow end up 50 in the workforce. No one is forcing them to NOT join a STEM field. Everyone is telling them to specifically join STEM and giving likely billions of dollars in support aiding the increase.

Exactly right, people don't seem to understand this basic concept.

The only way to achieve an equal split with anything is to discriminate.

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

#494

Post by Izkata »

mikeash wrote: post #484
ZeroFries wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think your last paragraph hasn't prevented women from becoming numerous and successful in many other fields, such as becoming doctors? Could it be because of one of the most reproducable and statistically significant findings in social psychology, that women are generally more interested in people and men more interested in things?

A quick search shows that male doctors outnumber female doctors in the US by about a 2:1 ratio, so I don’t think that’s the best example. Your point remains, since there are fields where women are at parity or beyond. I think that because it seems unlikely that we’ve managed to completely eliminate thousands of years’ worth of systemic sexism in such a short time. It’s highly improbable that, with so many things chan…

> A quick search shows that male doctors outnumber female doctors in the US by about a 2:1 ratio, so I don’t think that’s the best example.

I think it's a good example, you (and GP) just missed the more interesting part: Nurses handle the patients on a more intimate level than doctors, and female nurses outnumber male nurses roughly 10:1 in the US.

https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/total-number-of-pr...

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

#495

Post by malvosenior »

avivo wrote: post #410

It's interesting how this sort of discussion is actually leading HN to be more of an echo chamber. Most of my female friends in tech completely avoid it now because it seems that discussions that get voted up tend to ignore or belittle their experiences—even if there may be lots of great points and perspectives mixed in. In fact, the only response I noticed explicitly from someone who identified as female was being d…

This post is specifically about men being underpaid. Men are rightfully concerned and passionate about this issue. Here we have hard data showing men are being discriminated against and people are still asking how this will help women.

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

#496

Post by andrewprock »

mpweiher wrote: post #327
roguecoder wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Physics hardly any more applicable to software development than biology is, especially areas like biostats or neurophysiology that involve directly writing code. But these numbers sure suggest that something is wrong with computer science departments.

> sure suggest that something is wrong with computer science departments. Why? Why do men and women have to have the same preferences in what to study, in your opinion? Does the fact that 78% of students in veterinary science are female "sure suggest" that something is wrong with veterinary science? Since there are so many fields where women vastly outnumber men (and women significantly outnumber men overall in colle…

The short answer is yes, all of the statistics which show a deviation from a priori gender balance suggest that there is "something" going on.

That "something" is almost certainly cultural, since there is little evidence that any group based genetic hypothesis has explanatory power, whereas cultural forces have clearly been shown to impact gender balance. e.g. the right to vote.

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

#497

Post by vl »

NotAnEconomist wrote: post #180
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?

It's possible to both discriminate against men, yet have more men in the workforce, if women voluntarily are choosing not to enter a profession. In fact, that seems to be the problem: no amount of discrimination against men resolves that women simply are choosing careers in a different distribution to what men do, but the only policy lever that can really be utilized is discrimination at various stages of education o…

And yet Google fired the guy who expressed this sentiment in the internal memo.

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

#498

Post by llama052 »

jurassic wrote: post #471
HeroOfAges wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I don't think there is anyway to know if that's because you're female or not. It could be personality, politics, among many different factors. I think it's unfair to assume that people don't remember your name because you're a female.

I've worked with people for almost a year without remembering their name, because I'm awful with names. They were also very quiet and introverted, rarely said much and I suspect that had something to do it.

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

#499

Post by hylianwarrior »

None of this analysis accounts for leveling.

If women are disproportionately hired at lower levels, pay equity will still be _very_ off, even if the data says otherwise on the surface-level.

Ex: Woman w/ 4 years experience hired at T3. Man w/ 4 years experience hired at T4. Both are "in range" of their median comp per level, but the man is being paid more for his expertise.

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

#500

Post by roguecoder »

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…

So, they identified how discrimination was happening?
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