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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

#91

Post by oarabbus_ »

sokoloff wrote: post #53
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.

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

>People voluntarily take positions there (and in fact, compete to get hired there).

I would say this makes it more likely for people to be underpaid, especially when factoring in hours worked. See SpaceX for another example.

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

#92

Post by rifung »

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…

> 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.

I worked for around 4 years before joining Google and was also hired as an L3. I'm male.

Two of my new grad friends were hired as L3's at Google too but make like 100k more than I do in total compensation. One is male and one is female.

I'm not saying there isn't sexism but I'm not really convinced by this example. It's pretty common that people get "demoted" when coming in from other companies.

I made the mistake of not getting competing offers (I wasn't actually looking to change jobs at the time).

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

#93

Post by EpicEng »

munk-a wrote: post #16
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 this only really comes up when pay disparity is as extreme as it is now, when some people at a company (outside of C-level) are making 300k and others are making 32k there is a good reason to be aggressive about fixing pay disparity.

>when some people at a company (outside of C-level) are making 300k and others are making 32k there is a good reason to be aggressive about fixing pay disparity

Why? That's far too simplistic. Are you comparing e.g. a senior engineer to a part time janitor? Why should their pay be closer?

Look at the position and demand for it. Comparing salary without context is a waste of time (unless you truly believe market forces shouldn't be relevant, but I think you'll have a hard time convincing people in the US to join your side.)

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

#94

Post by sleepysysadmin »

The gender wage gap is real in the sense that there is a gap, but when you analyze it, they are comparing apples to oranges. I'm sure everyone here knows this.

https://data.oecd.org/earnwage/gender-wage-gap.htm

The countries with the highest wage gaps are the countries with the most equality in the workplace. Women in Korea are not treated poorly.

The important thing though is the people proposing that the wage gap is a problem has a solution. They are pushing equality of outcome. They want everyone to be paid exactly the same. That's the problem that they have. They don't care that they are comparing apples to oranges. They want pay to be exactly the same.

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

#95

Post by rafiki6 »

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…

Outside of the obvious reason of needing a job, I can't understand why she didn't immediately begin to interview and look for a job elsewhere. This goes for both men and women. If you are clearly being underpaid for your level of experience and skill, don't stay put.

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

#96

Post by rafiki6 »

colonelxc wrote: post #86
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…

The main thing is that Google prefers to downlevel people who have external experience. I (male) had 5 years of experience, still was hired at L3. I know many others who have the same story. So the L4 person probably had some better story/negotiation which allowed them to start at L4. It of course could be bias. It was really frustrating for me to be at the same level as new grads, though on reflection, I was not at…

Can I ask why you might think that you were not at the same level? Why is Google a special software snowflake and none of your external experience is transferable?

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

#97

Post by tomschlick »

denzil_correa wrote: post #67
naasking wrote: post #62

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. 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.

Not OP but almost every one of these studies takes the total sum of money men make vs the total sum of money women make and compares it that way without taking into account the job title, years of experience, time off, etc.

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

#98

Post by kgwgk »

oarabbus_ wrote: post #77

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

The takeaway is that compensations are not perfectly aligned with whatever model was used in the study. Which is expected because compensations were not set using that model, so they won’t be exactly the same. And at that point, if the model is calibrated for everage compensation to be the same, it’s obvious that some people will get compensations below the prediction of the model and some people will get compensations above the prediction of the model.

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

#100

Post by miramardesign »

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.

Why does a 3rd party need to nose into a consenting financial transaction? We should sooner have a 3rd party nosing into a sexual transaction. Oh I forgot men don't have agency over their financial matters because leftism has taken it away
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