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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

#531

Post by sleepysysadmin »

rtkwe wrote: post #303
sleepysysadmin wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The explanation is simple. When you provide women the opportunity to become anything they want. They choose the careers that they choose. Which tend to me more social related careers. Teaching or nursing for example does not scale well; therefore salaries are limited. Whereas men pick more "stuff" categories. It's men who work in STEM creating things. A car or an iphone is going to be generally speaking men who desig…

The 'people just choosing different careers' throws a lot of inequality under a rug and calls the problem solved. 1) If we tell women their whole childhood that some jobs are for men and some are for women and vice versa for men then ask them when they turn 18 what job they want we'll get horrendously unequal outcomes even though people are completely free to choose. 2) Valuation of jobs is based partially on the vie…

1. Could you provide a source showing this discrimination in school? I went to school, men and women were definitely told they could be anything. Also the schools are extremely left-wing SJW(Canadian schools teach children that the right-wing are all racists) so I find this assertion to be immensely unlikely.

2. Teachers in Ontario receive ~$140,000/year for 8 months of work, 5 hours a day. This is publicly available via the sunshine list. If you're using teachers as an example of bias. You're barking up the wrong tree here these inflated teacher wages raise the wages of women on average.

Furthermore, teachers are outside the standard capitalist system. If you want to use them as an example of valuation of you must support the privatization of teachers. I would support that idea. Might not end up well for those $140,000 teachers.

The point is though, women are not 100% teachers and the teacher unions are extremely strong; women and men are being paid the same as teachers.

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

#532

Post by smsm42 »

oarabbus_ wrote: post #77

To me the key takeaway is that google systematically underpays both men and women.

Or, in other words, some people are better negotiators than other. Since there's no objective measure of how much Google must pay anybody, the only benchmark would be comparing to peers doing substantially similar jobs. Fortunately, Google is big enough so that there would be substantially similar jobs to compare. Unfortunately, while jobs may be the same, negotiating skills of the applicants (and whatever HR workers they negotiated with) vary. And if somebody gets a better deal, that automatically makes everybody holding the same job underpaid.

BTW, in the same vein the article could be titled "Google finds it is overpaying many men (or women)" - since unless everybody has the same salary, half of the workforce would be paid less than median - thus being underpaid - and half would be paid more - thus being overpaid. Well, there could be lucky ones being paid exactly the median, but they are too boring to write an article about them.

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

#533

Post by smsm42 »

MRD85 wrote: post #178

Talking about the additional compensation - "Men account for about 69 percent of the company’s work force, but they received a disproportionately higher percentage of the money." Doesn't this imply that men, per capita, were being underpaid more than women?

Per capita averaging is spectacularly bad way to talk about income in most contexts. If Bill Gates (or any other very high-income individual) walks into a room, average per capita income of everybody raises significantly, especially if it's a small room. Somehow, it is of no use to anybody.

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

#534

Post by xenihn »

roguecoder wrote: post #516
llama052 wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ha…

Hey, so I'm sure you didn't mean it this way, but this comment sounds like gaslighting: a woman told you about her experience, and you immediately disbelieved her and told her she is not only incorrect about her experience but that it must be her fault for being "quiet and introverted"? I recommend starting out by assuming she has knowledge and experiences you don't have access to and learning from it, rather than tr…

I really don't appreciate you misusing the term since I've had to deal with actual gaslighting in real life. You cannot be gaslit by some random stranger making a single post on the internet. This isn't an obsessed stalker that we're talking about here, it's just a one-off comment that will probably be glanced over and then never thought of again, if it's ever read at all.

Gaslighting is something that happens over a long period of time, with someone you know well and that you trust. The person you are defending is not going to be questioning their sanity or who they are as a person because of one HN post.

Asking someone to reconsider why they were treated a certain way by other people is not gaslighting. Calling someone a liar is not gaslighting. Countering someone's anecdotal evidence with your own is not gaslighting. Please stop trivializing the term, because it's a serious form of emotional and mental abuse, and you're downplaying its severity by tossing the word around like this.

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

#535

Post by 7e »

frogpelt wrote: post #414
haberman wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And it can easily be justified by two assumptions: 1. The average under-compensated man had worked there longer or had been under-compensated longer AND/OR 2. The average under-compensated man was in a higher paid role.

Both of these assumptions are false.

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

#536

Post by lazyasciiart »

sleepysysadmin wrote: post #526
lazyasciiart wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japan is very well known for gender inequality in the workplace and Rwanda is also well known as an example of significant legal and social support for gender equality. If your intuition and awareness doesn't include either of these facts then you should not trust yourself on this area at all.

I'm not going to defend Japan. As I said I'm happy to believe they treat women worse than Saudi Arabia; which is what my source provided. As for Rwanda, this is just plain absurd. This is at best a checkbox study where they are looking to confirm reverse sexism. Yes I did read Rwanda has significant reverse sexism. After the genocide their society was over 70% women and they elected leaders to provide sexist policies…

You are defining equality of participation as evidence of reverse sexism and you appear happy to believe whatever random things cross your screen that don't disagree with your core beliefs. I hope someone else has the patience to talk to you more.

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

#537

Post by oarabbus_ »

crimsonalucard wrote: post #315
oarabbus_ wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When Men are being discriminated its not a contest but when women are, it is?

I'm not sure I understand if this is trying to imply I'm being sexist against men, or against women.

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

#538

Post by oarabbus_ »

mqrs wrote: post #491
haberman wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That would be proportionately more men, not disproportionately.

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

#539

Post by cellularmitosis »

fzeroracer wrote: post #224
NotAnEconomist wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Are you saying there are biological differences that are preventing women from entering the software industry? Because historically the trends of CS grads proves this is a false statement [1] so I'm curious where this statement comes from. [1] https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when...

That chart shows relative numbers. A chart which shows absolute numbers tells a somewhat different story: http://blog.bethcodes.com/is-the-internet-convincing-women-n...

Women’s interest in comp sci has experienced two booms and is otherwise somewhat stable.

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

#540

Post by dgudkov »

maxxxxx wrote: post #514
dgudkov wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why not? Just publish who makes how much money. That’s it. Okay. Let's make a thought experiment. Company A. Senior Java Developer. $100K. Company B. Senior Java Developer. $120K. Question: is the Java developer in Company A underpaid?

What’s the point of this thought experiment?

How can you understand fairness of pay from that information?
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