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Google Sued by 3 Female Ex-Employees Who Say It Pays Women Less Than Men

nytimes.com

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Re: Google Sued by 3 Female Ex-Employees Who Say It Pays Women Less Than Men

#61

Post by skylark »

Alex3917 wrote: post #11
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #6

> Ms. Ellis, who left the company in 2014, says that almost all of the female software engineers at Google worked in front-end jobs while men worked in back-end roles. That seems both highly dubious and easy to verify.

Keep in mind that because of their scale, jobs that would be considered full stack or back end at other companies are probably considered front end at Google.

You're half right. Google doesn't hire purely frontend engineers. They have a job listing for them, but once inside everyone gets the same title: Software Engineer.

At Google, the "frontend" work also usually includes the server which serves the frontend code - this means engineers need to be not only capable at UI development, but also be familiar with the Java systems that exist at Google.

From this perspective, frontend at Google is indeed similar to a full stack role at most startups running on AWS or GCP. Backend at Google is more like working on AWS itself.

Re: Google Sued by 3 Female Ex-Employees Who Say It Pays Women Less Than Men

#62

Post by stretchwithme »

feminist17 wrote: post #36
stretchwithme wrote: post #25

Companies pay some employees more for pretty good reasons. I don't think they're thinking "Jim's a dude so we should pay him $50K more than Sally." No, they're paying somebody more because they don't want them to leave. And if they are paying you less than somebody else, it's probably partially because they don't think you are as much of a flight risk. And if Google is wrong about these decisions, I'd guess we'd see…

> Companies pay some employees more for pretty good reasons. I think you give companies too much credit. Those pretty good reasons are typically that that's how much they asked, it wasn't unreasonable, and they passed the interviews. People's salaries are all over the map for the same sorts of positions, and it's not just IT and development. But, even though it might not be a clearcut answer to whether there is discr…

I tend to think that successful companies tend to know what they are doing better than observers.

Re: Google Sued by 3 Female Ex-Employees Who Say It Pays Women Less Than Men

#64

Post by KGIII »

kamaal wrote: post #59
KGIII wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This might be true and I hope they win. Can you elaborate on this? Namely, the burden of proof is higher than 'might be true.' I'm guessing you meant something more like, 'If this is true, I hope they win.' I can never tell, anymore.

If this is a merely negotiation problem than the problem gets stated in a different tone. I have been told many times that I need to work on my negotiation skills. One manager has even asked me whom do I go lunch with. And why don't I go to eat with the big shots. Of course you need to act all pally and buttery, saying yes to anything they say all the while. What they mean to say is stop expecting the system to be fa…

That makes sense. And, yes, negotiating for yourself is a very good skill to learn. The other person may not be an adversary, but they probably don't have your best interests in mind. So, you'll want to represent your best interests.

Re: Google Sued by 3 Female Ex-Employees Who Say It Pays Women Less Than Men

#65

Post by stale2002 »

to_bpr wrote: post #43

What is the end goal here? Companies being forced to publish and formalize pay tiers? Can Google publish a report on non-pay differences by sex at Google? Sick (or personal) leave taken, overtime worked, vacation time availed of, etc. by sex? Obviously with everyone being equal and doing equal jobs, the above shouldn't really be an issue?

The end goal is a meritocracy where women arent discriminated against, and are paid what they are worth.

The current situation is not a meritocracy and it needs to be fixed.

Re: Google Sued by 3 Female Ex-Employees Who Say It Pays Women Less Than Men

#66

Post by skj »

notgood wrote: post #16

Poor 3 things were paid 80K instead of 100K; what and important and news-worthy tragedy; not like the millions of Americans that haven't get an important increase in their [1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/07/opinion/leonh... [2] http://www.businessinsider.com/wage-chart-2014-6

If you wouldn't mind, please send me $20k per year. It's nothing to complain about, after all.

Re: Google Sued by 3 Female Ex-Employees Who Say It Pays Women Less Than Men

#67

Post by kamaal »

WalterBright wrote: post #27
kamaal wrote: post #22

This might be true and I hope they win. But unfortunately everything that they say applies to men too. I wonder if this due to lack of negotiation skills. I have seen this problem being under compensation for the same skill and peer levels for men too. At work, In one case I discovered a colleague being paid almost 50% times higher than I was. In another case in only a casual lunch conversation I discovered a colleag…

We are all salesman - and a better salesman gets better results. As nerds we tend to discount, dismiss, overlook, whatever, salesmanship skills. But they still count big time. We sell ourselves all the time, like it or not. Might as well try to learn how to get better at it. All aspects of ourselves can be tweaked to better our salesmanship - grooming, dress, posture, getting our teeth fixed, tone of voice, words use…

What you have written is 100% true. Especially about the dress part. A while back I started wearing a shirt and pant to work. People, especially juniors do tend to take you a lot more seriously if you look formal and well dressed, compared to say showing up in denims and t-shirt.

But the negotiation and sales part. That's the issue. Its not easy to get good at that.

Re: Google Sued by 3 Female Ex-Employees Who Say It Pays Women Less Than Men

#68

Post by Clubber »

Ladies, please, never take the first offer. My wife did that (she's also a programmer) and she's getting paid shit salary by a shit company to get shit on all day.

From Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In

"But what's interesting," she says, "was that when my brother-in-law and my husband were saying 'negotiate, negotiate, negotiate' – when I finally said OK I'll do it, because no man would take the first offer, I then thought to myself, I felt like I needed a justification for doing it. And it turns out that's what the data says: men can negotiate without apology or justification. It's expected. If women negotiate, they need to justify it. It can't be that you want more for you. Because that's what men get to do." As she writes in the book, "success and likability are positively correlated for men and negatively correlated for women."

https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2013/mar/15/facebook...

Re: Google Sued by 3 Female Ex-Employees Who Say It Pays Women Less Than Men

#69

Post by dontJudge »

geofft wrote: post #12
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #6

> Ms. Ellis, who left the company in 2014, says that almost all of the female software engineers at Google worked in front-end jobs while men worked in back-end roles. That seems both highly dubious and easy to verify.

Anecdotally, I spent a couple of months this summer going through team selection at Google NYC, with a specific request for back-end, low-level, preferably C++ roles (app security, build systems, etc.). I didn't meet or talk to a single woman through the entire process, with the exception of reception, another candidate, and someone who was covering for my recruiter when he was on vacation. I asked every manager I ta…

Your intent on joining a women-based team is very creepy/cringe. This is not a healthy behavior.

Re: Google Sued by 3 Female Ex-Employees Who Say It Pays Women Less Than Men

#70

Post by [deleted] »

econner wrote: post #24
notgood wrote: post #16

Poor 3 things were paid 80K instead of 100K; what and important and news-worthy tragedy; not like the millions of Americans that haven't get an important increase in their [1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/07/opinion/leonh... [2] http://www.businessinsider.com/wage-chart-2014-6

How does this point invalidate their issue? All you've done is brought up another problem. Now there are 2 problems.

[deleted]
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