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

#51

Post by esturk » Mon, Mar 04, 2019, 7:00 PM UTC

I read the article first and then came in to read the comments. I feel that most people commenting did not actually read the whole article. To put it simply:

It is not just about pay equity in a particular level. It is also about the ingress and egress rate of a level.

As the article mentions, some woman was hired as L3 while all of her co-workers were hired as L4. Was she overpaid as a L3? Maybe. But she was underpaid overall because she could've gotten L4.

Similarly, women and under represented minorities also face similar issues in promotions.

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

#52

Post by saagarjha » Mon, Mar 04, 2019, 7:01 PM UTC

peteey wrote: post #44

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.

I think this is less true for salaries, though, given that I'm sure Google has some sort of budget for them.

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

#53

Post by sokoloff » Mon, Mar 04, 2019, 7:01 PM UTC

oarabbus_ wrote: post #35

sokoloff wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not a contest of who is more underpaid. This would indicate that Google systematically underpays, regardless of gender. THAT is the real issue here.

How likely is it possible for Google to systematically underpay? People voluntarily take positions there (and in fact, compete to get hired there).

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

#54

Post by wincy » Mon, Mar 04, 2019, 7:02 PM UTC

voctor wrote: post #33

Off-topic: Why almost all words in the title begin by an uppercase letter?

Are you asking in general? That’s one of the first things a student learns in middle school English is that the title is all capitalized except for words like “the, to, and, or”, unless those words are at the beginning of the title.

This site looks like it has the rules more formalized, if you’re interested. I think it’s something most native English writers do without thinking by adulthood.

https://capitalizemytitle.com/

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

#55

Post by slg » Mon, Mar 04, 2019, 7:02 PM UTC

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…

You got too distracted by the Simpson's Paradox reference to see the actual Simpson's Paradox in play. As sokoloff [1] pointed out in a below thread, Google having an overwhelming male workforce means that there could still be a large bias against women at the same time that more man are being underpaid.

There is simply not enough information presented in this article to know whether there is truly a gender bias (in either direction) regarding how Google pays their employees.

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19303989

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

#56

Post by AlexTWithBeard » Mon, Mar 04, 2019, 7:02 PM UTC

johnny313 wrote: post #36

> Kelly Ellis, a former Google engineer and one of the plaintiffs in the gender-pay suit against the company, said in a legal filing that Google hired her as a Level 3 employee — the category for new software engineers who are recent college graduates — in 2010 despite her having four years of experience. > Within a few weeks of Ms. Ellis being hiring, Google hired a male engineer for her team who had also graduated…

I'm sure Google will learn from this mistake and will mandate the experience to match the qualification.

You've spent four years of your career doing some crappy data entry job? Undershot. Rejected.

You've been running your own company after the college? Overshot. Rejected.

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

#57

Post by ordinaryradical » Mon, Mar 04, 2019, 7:03 PM UTC

magneticnorth wrote: post #48

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…

So would you say the accurate way to study this is to examine "lifetime pay"--look at the pay of demographics over a time period at the company? That would show if men are making more in 5 years of accumulated employment vs women, right, and potentially unearth some of this "promotion velocity" numerically?

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

#58

Post by thaumasiotes » Mon, Mar 04, 2019, 7:03 PM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #52

peteey wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think this is less true for salaries, though, given that I'm sure Google has some sort of budget for them.

I think a lot of salaried Google employees have family members too.

If a woman is promoted over a man in the name of gender equality, are his three daughters better off because of the new equality? Are "women" better off?

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

#59

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Mar 04, 2019, 7:03 PM UTC

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #46

xienze wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 differenc…

[deleted]

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

#60

Post by stvswn » Mon, Mar 04, 2019, 7:04 PM UTC

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…

This is an example of a NYT reporter filling in context so that they don't get pubicly shamed. It seems like a lot of reporters think it's their job to stop readers from reaching the obvious conclusions of their reporting, lest a larger narrative be lost.

I don't think the context is completely unjustified. It just happens to be more complicated than this. The reason that women generally drifted into higher compensation compared to men was that their direct management chain was adjusting their compensation disproportionately (when measured in aggregate, across the company).

You could come up with a lot of explanations for this effect. Women could have been hired at lower levels than appropriate and were therefore outperforming men of the same level, for instance. Or, perhaps, there's a lot of emphasis in the company towards retaining and compensating women fairly, and the effect was that managers were primed to reflect that in their pay raises -- in other words, people were personally overcompensating for the intrinsic biases they were told that they had. Still another reason might be that women just make better engineers, in aggregate.

Google decided that the goal was "equity" here and decided to correct it, for better or worse, and yet it's false to say that we already understand the cause behind the disparity.