Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 626 posts

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

#61

Post by sct202 »

xienze wrote: post #9
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.

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…

The first company I worked for did equal pay for all new hires, but pay raises and promotions were variable and the raise percentages varied on company performance (so a promotion could be +7% on quarter and then +6.5% the next quarter).

We would all occasionally compare over the years and it would always come up that there would be a small difference (<$1k) where someone happened to hit a lucky streak of getting promoted in a better % year, and people's feelings would be hurt.

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

#62

Post by naasking »

dv_dt wrote: post #37
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #2

I am sure the Labor Department will absolutely love Google giving raises specifically to men whilst under investigation for "systematically" underpaying women.

It's really not difficult to understand that women are systematically paid less than men, and also that minorities (men and women) are systematically paid less than non-minorities. And that beyond pay disparity at a given job title, there is also an issue with higher titles underrepresenting women in general, as well as minorities.

> It's really not difficult to understand that women are systematically paid less than men, and also that minorities (men and women) are systematically paid less than non-minorities.

It's not difficult to understand why people believe this might be true, but it is difficult to understand why people accept this as fact when the empirical data of systematic underpayment isn't all that solid.

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

#63

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#65

Post by goldenzun »

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.

yeah its literally ridiculous what the discrepancies are in information sources, and the informational asymetry just leads to more confusion and inequality. Ive found sources like levels.fyi to be a lot more useful than glassdoor/etc because you can see that breakdown and individual data points and see what you deserve to be paid

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

#66

Post by mpweiher »

slg wrote: post #55
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…

> There is simply not enough information...

Hmm...

"Men account for about 69 percent of the company’s work force, but they received a disproportionately higher percentage of the money. "

So, yes, we do have that information.

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

#67

Post by denzil_correa »

naasking wrote: post #62
dv_dt wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really not difficult to understand that women are systematically paid less than men, and also that minorities (men and women) are systematically paid less than non-minorities. And that beyond pay disparity at a given job title, there is also an issue with higher titles underrepresenting women in general, as well as minorities.

> It's really not difficult to understand that women are systematically paid less than men, and also that minorities (men and women) are systematically paid less than non-minorities. It's not difficult to understand why people believe this might be true, but it is difficult to understand why people accept this as fact when the empirical data of systematic underpayment isn't all that solid.

> but it is difficult to understand why people accept this as fact when the empirical data of systematic isn't all that solid.

It would help if you posted the empirical data you refer to.

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

#68

Post by NotATroll »

derefr wrote: post #34
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…

> direct comparisons only work in jobs that are essentially assembly line work Counter-example: pay on commission. Salespeople are "directly compared", but are not doing exactly the same work. Still, the work they are doing is fungible —you can compute the value in dollars both of closing one big account, or ten small accounts, and compare those. This is essentially how a very small subset of IT people get paid, as w…

I don't think that's realistic to try and implement at many people's places of work.

Stable incomes are essential for most people's sanity. Always being at risk of having projects shift away from work you do, and to work other people do directly conflicts with that stability most people are looking for. You could be spending an incredible amount of time trying to catch up with another project, while still maintaining your own, all the while having the looming threat of not being able to pay your bills over you head.

Freelancer type pay isn't for everyone.

Which goes back to that issue of not having an objective measurement to pay by.

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

#69

Post by woxe »

duxup wrote: post #25
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.

I like to imagine (although it probabbly isn't true) that then I'd get less recruiter spam for jobs where they want to pay squat.... like "Did you check my salary and think you have something to offer? If so, let's talk." Granted, that probabbly wouldn't stop recruiter spam and of course there is MUCH MORE to a good job than pay.

So just put your current salary in your CV.

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

#70

Post by AlexTWithBeard »

mpweiher wrote: post #66
slg wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> There is simply not enough information... Hmm... "Men account for about 69 percent of the company’s work force, but they received a disproportionately higher percentage of the money . " So, yes, we do have that information.

I think we're moving the goalposts here: are we talking an abstract man, on average, in general earning more than an abstract, average women or we're talking about a different pay for the same work?

My understanding is that we're talking about the latter.

Post reply on HN