8 ms·

Google Pays Female Workers Less Than Male Counterparts, Labor Department Says

76 points by arcanus 10y ago

eecks 10y ago
I can't wait to see Googles response. I have no idea why they would even open themselves up to this criticism when they could easily align the salaries.
- multibit 10y ago
  They did respond, they denied any pay gap.
- jdavis703 10y ago
  Google basically claims they have internal programs and have reached pay parity globally. The DoL says that's not true based on the data they've viewed. There seems to be a lot of lawyer scaremongering on both sides, I'd wait for this case to progress more before choosing a side. Source: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/07/google-pay-disparities-women-labor-department-lawsuit https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/07/google-pa...
- dsacco 10y ago
  They responded and denied it; frankly it's plausible that they're correct (but also that they're not). It's not yet fair to assume one party is correct over the other while both try to drive the media presentation. Let it play out.
  - angstrom 10y ago
    I would lean towards both being correct depending on how they looked at the data. If you did purely education level, degree field and years of experience related to position then I would expect minimal deviation. However, you can go further tweaking how you look at each of those variables.
  - eecks 10y ago
    That's good to know. Not sure why I was downvoted for wanting to know Google's response.
- jacquesm 10y ago
  Google already responded, they essentially claim there is no gap, that there was one in the past but that they worked very hard to close that gap. They also question the governments methods to arrive at their conclusions. Without data to back up either position debate is pretty much meaningless.
  - eecks 10y ago
    That's good to know. Not sure why I was downvoted for wanting to know Google's response.
AuthenticApe 10y ago
Why are women making less compared to males in tech? Are they not as capable?
m52go 10y ago
I can't read the whole article, but does it (or DOL documents) include details like amount of experience and job function? I've heard that much (not all) of the aggregate gap (i.e., on the national level) goes away after controlling for those variables. Curious if that applies here, and if so, to what degree. Edit: consider recent headlines promoting outrage at Marissa Mayer's successor earning double her salary because he's a man. Turns out he's a veteran executive with 20 years of C-level experience. Mayer didn't have that. It may be an extreme example, but it's a good reminder to be cautious about pay gap assertions.
- tyingq 10y ago
  It's an odd situation. The government isn't giving out any numbers, but they are saying things like: "The government’s analysis at this point indicates that discrimination against women in Google is quite extreme, even in this industry." Pretty strong language when you aren't yet willing to back it up. Google's replies are equally strong in the other direction: "Every year, we do a comprehensive and robust analysis of pay across genders and we have found no gender pay gap." Saying there's no gender pay gap at all is pretty bold as well.
  - denzil_correa 10y ago
    The government can't give out numbers when Google is denying them access to the records. I've written the details in another comment. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14067113 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14067113
    - tyingq 10y ago
      If they have no numbers, how did they reach the conclusion they state above?
      - denzil_correa 10y ago
        DoL has NOT reached any conclusion. DoL has a suspicion based on 2015 snapshot of salaries. They want to understand why there's a disparity. It may or may not be due to a gender wage gap but for that conclusion to be reached you need to have access to data they have requested from Google.
watbe 10y ago
Non-paywalled but not identical version: http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-google-women-20170407-story.html http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-google-w...
jacquesm 10y ago
Until the government releases their methodology it is hard to know how factual this assessment is. Google has done a lot of work internally to even up the gap and claims that they have achieved parity. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/07/google-pay-disparities-women-labor-department-lawsuit https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/07/google-pa... Either party could squelch the un-informed debate by releasing the data and the methods used to arrive at their conclusions.
- golemotron 10y ago
  > Either party could squelch the un-informed debate by releasing the data and the methods used to arrive at their conclusions. Just like the overall gender pay gap in the US, right?
  - jacquesm 10y ago
    Yes, but no single company could release that data. Here a company is singled out with a very specific and easy to prove or falsify claim given the data.
- denzil_correa 10y ago
  DoL is suing Google to access for data in order to complete their evaluation of a pay gap. DoL suspects a pay disparity. It needs more data to come to a definition conclusion for which it asked Google and was denied access. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14067113 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14067113
  - jacquesm 10y ago
    Don't you think the headline is a bit premature then?
trishume 10y ago
Can someone who actually has access to the story answer the following questions for me. Is this before or after controlling for: - field of work. Is this the whole company or just devs? - years at the company. - age, as a crude proxy for total experience at all companies. Also does it say the magnitude of the gap? There's a number of ways this headline could be true, all may be unfortunate from a societal perspective, but it only shows bias on Google's part if this is after controlling for the things companies say they base their pay on.
- sitkack 10y ago
  They also base the pay on negotiation, something which men are much more aggressive about and that woman who negotiate hard are judged unfairly.
UnoriginalGuy 10y ago
Another (non-paywall) article: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/07/google-pay-disparities-women-labor-department-lawsuit https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/07/google-pa... Seems like it is early days on this lawsuit. The DoL are asking for more documentation about employee's pay and Google is calling it a "fishing expedition." This is definitely one to watch, but I won't be drawing any conclusions this early in this lawsuit (since even the DoL say they need more documentation to prove their case).
dsacco 10y ago
Note that this is not originally a WSJ story; for those without a subscription, you'll learn just as much by reading from the same news source that WSJ is commenting on (and which they link to in this article): https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/07/google-pay-disparities-women-labor-department-lawsuit https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/07/google-pa... Of course, when I say "just as much" I mean "not much", because neither party has released anything substantive to rebut the other's claims. Until then, the court of public opinion is going to be both passionate and completely uninformed. But if I'm being cynical, that's probably the point of reporting on it at this stage.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
sidcool 10y ago
What is that Google would gain from this? Not that they are strapped for money. It could only lead to such bad publicity. And if the women engineers were hired by Google, they obviously are good at it. Can't understand the rationale behind it, if true.
tim333 10y ago
Link to avoid paywall https://www.facebook.com/flx/warn/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fgoogle-pays-female-workers-less-than-male-counterparts-labor-department-says-1491622997&h=ATNo1YZ-SgUdJ8wz83J0cO5LV8wz3OcKeYvQQ8ypDdqLNSLm74vBUcKyDN0isAyNoRFXEIRbjE7oj8XngWr9Jq-i-jw9mFUAIg&_rdr https://www.facebook.com/flx/warn/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.c...
- rascul 10y ago
  Going to the site via Facebook doesn't avoid the paywall.
  - eecks 10y ago
    It did for me
1_2__3 10y ago
Companies like google are obsessed with diversity. The idea that they'd systematically pay women less is laughable - you will not find more liberal environments outside of academia. I can't help but wonder if this is politically motivated.
yomly 10y ago
It is hard to discern what is going on, and it feels strange to say I trust Google ahead of the government. Google is full of engineers who prize logic and fairness above most else, and culturally most the engineers I meet in most places espouse gender parity and equality. In light of this, it is hard to believe Google would not find a way to even up payscales. That said, while non-management says one thing it is often the case that management find a way to enact the opposite. Something in me feels like this has the air of a dirty underhanded PR-war to it, and the government is trying to pressure Google into something we don't know about...
- freddyc 10y ago
  While I generally agree with your main point, I have witnessed engineers who espouse equality publicly until their own remuneration is the topic of discussion, at which point self-interest kicks in and "of course I should earn more than A, because x, y, z ..." becomes the private narrative. While a lot of progress has been made in reducing the gender wage gap in tech, we still have a long way to go.
  - Majestic121 10y ago
    Of course everyone tries to have the best salary possible, the same is expected for both men and women and that's a good thing. I mean, even if I'm willing to get a hit on my salary in the name of gender equality, I'm pretty sure the money will go in upper management's pocket and not my female counterparts.
  - jimmywanger 10y ago
    > "of course I should earn more than A, because x, y, z ..." Unless "x, y, and z" include "because I'm a man and she's a woman" then I don't really understand your point. Of course most employees think they're underpaid, and they can all come up with reasons, due to performance on the job, specific incidents, experience, and level of education why they should be paid more. How is that related at all to gender wage gap in any industry, let alone tech specifically?
- nojvek 10y ago
xienze 10y ago
Methodology is important here. A lot of the logic behind pay gap talk assumes that the jobs men and women do in the same company are exactly the same, as if these are assembly line jobs and worker output can be compared in a direct and straightforward manner. Anyone who works in tech knows that what each person contributes varies greatly and there's no way to directly compare what two people do or even the amount of experience they bring to the table when they're hired.
davidf18 10y ago
Assuming labor markets are liquid, if the pay gap is true it means either: 1. Women really want to work for Google and take less pay than working at other employers or 2. Women at almost all employers are receiving less money. There were times not too long ago when there were Jewish quotas. Nobelist Physicist Richard Feynman was denied entry into Columbia and he went to MIT instead. Nobelist Medicine & Physiology Author Kornberg was one of 3 of 200 Jewish applicants to get into medical school from his university. Those universities/firms that didn't have Jewish quotas and discrimination got a good boost in performance over those who had quotas and discrimination. If they women are only getting paid less at Google and not other firms then they should change firms. If other firms are paying less, then Feds should go after them as well and not single out Google. Any firm that pays women as much as men should be able to hire the competent women from Google. In another part of the WSJ article, there is a complaint that most of the employees are male and asian or white. They should examine the portion of people attending top engineering schools: male and asian or white.
- kgwgk 10y ago
  > Any firm that pays women as much as men should be able to hire the competent women from Google. Only if that firm pays men and women more than Google pays (competent) women.
  - davidf18 10y ago
    Does Google pay more than Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Oracle, Facebook, ....?
- Klinky 10y ago
  Markets don't solve everything, especially institutionalized racism or gender inequality. It is a lazy solution to a very harmful problem.
  - davidf18 10y ago
    Well, many would hire programmers /engineers/ lawyers/ doctors/ professors for competence regardless of race.
brians 10y ago
It would be surprising and novel if the DoL statisticians had produced an unambiguous correct analysis. They're working in a complex field, and under pressure and regulated to use the wrong tools in many cases---so I'm sure plenty of the people there are excellent and could do great work---DoL statistics in general are not a good basis for action. Example: DoL is required by law to track non-white applicants and hiring to jobs. Alice is not white, and applies to ten open jobs at Example.com, a hot new startup. She's hired for one. DoL reports this as 90% of non-white applicants being rejected. If 10 non-white applicants each apply for all those ten jobs and are all hired, one job each, that's 90% rejection. A mix of law and regulation requires counting this way. Near one edge case (plausibly including SV today!) the error doesn't matter much. But as you get anywhere near justice, this isn't helpful. So without seeing the details of this analysis, I'm skeptical that DoL's way of counting is helpful here.
- sitkack 10y ago
  I think you are constructing a strawman. If rejection statistics were indeed calculated as you describe, it would scale with the number of job seekers crossed with the demographic. I am going to go with DoL statisticians not being idiots.
  - lr4444lr 10y ago
    Strawman or not, the public has a right to the methodology and criteria behind the DoL's claim, without which we are free to disbelieve their allegations without justifying ourselves.
    - sitkack 10y ago
      We should hold both Google and the DoL to the same standard, nowhere does "trust us" form a compelling argument.
dleslie 10y ago
I'm not certain why anyone would be surprised. Remember the spreadsheet from 2015? https://duckduckgo.com/?q=google+spreadsheet+compensation+leaked https://duckduckgo.com/?q=google+spreadsheet+compensation+le...
simonsarris 10y ago
What they're counting matters. It seems if Google has the goal of hiring more females than industry average, then the stats are stacked against them when you look at their worker pay distribution, even if Google isn't doing anything wrong. Suppose the population is distributed in their experience and productivity, and that you can measure these to some extent. Suppose your field has way more males than females. This is not your fault, more of a pipeline thing, but you want to be more equal internally than the outside world is. Most people commend this kind of thing. If you are fairly paying both genders, wouldn't you necessarily have to take more unproductive and inexperienced female engineers to reach your goal? And if you're fairly paying based on those criteria, won't the female population be paid less as you try to take on a more-than-average number of them? I'm not saying any of this is how it ought to be, just that it seems like a typical conclusion with napkin math, and would result in these allegations while Google is actually trying to do good. Interestingly if equal pay were not a thing, I would expect the opposite headline: That Google would pay women much more than men to work so that they could attempt to correct a gender imbalance internally that exists in the external population (software workers).
- user5994461 10y ago
  > If you are fairly paying both genders, wouldn't you necessarily have to take more unproductive and inexperienced female engineers to reach your goal? And if you're fairly paying based on those criteria, won't the female population be paid less as you try to take on a more-than-average number of them? If you are fairly paying both genders, it's fair to assume that women would be paid less statistically. They usually retire from work mid-career for pregnancy and possibly for a much longer time to raise the child (when it's not the man doing it, and when the couple don't have a nursery/grandparent, etc...). Retiring from work at the peak time for career growth is a disastrous move on one's income. (Be it a man or a woman).
  - dleslie 10y ago
    Clearly more men need to take time off work to help raise their children.
  - 10y ago
_Codemonkeyism 10y ago
This often happens in cultures - not sure Google is such a culture - were you negotiate your initial salary, raises and need to push for promotions. When advising women on interviewing I always suggest they ask for more money than they are comfortable with.
- user5994461 10y ago
  > When advising women on interviewing I always suggest they ask for more money than they are comfortable with. I do the same for men. Saw a few guys jump ship recently for significant raises. Turns out they were badly underpaid :D
  - _Codemonkeyism 10y ago
    Yes me too ;-) But especially with women. Since reading "Negotiating Your Salary: How to Make $1000 a Minute" a long time ago I've applied this to myself.
wonderous 10y ago
Prior HN comments and no paywall Guardian story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14063043 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14063043
JAbberJaw 10y ago
The people who talk about the president on the tv and radio said this isn't a real thing. I'd check your fact sheet on this is could be one of those liberal based poll things with a slanted view!
- krapp 10y ago
  Who are "The people who talk about the president on the tv and radio" and why should we assume their views are unbiased?
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
denzil_correa 10y ago
The US Dept. of Labor is suing Google for not revealing compensation data [0]. The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) has suspicion on pay disparities and in order to investigate further sent a request to Google to access some records (Point 9) [1]. Google denied OFCCP access to these records. Now, DoL has taken Google to court to get access to the records they need to investigate further and complete their evaluation. I wonder why Google is being so evasive about it. [0] https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/ofccp/ofccp20170104 https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/ofccp/ofccp20170104 [1] https://www.dol.gov/sites/default/files/newsroom/newsreleases/OFCCP20162406_0.pdf https://www.dol.gov/sites/default/files/newsroom/newsrelease...
- jimmywanger 10y ago
  > I wonder why Google is being so evasive about it. The article says that Google thinks the DOL is going on a fishing expedition. They turned over records, but like most private companies, don't like turning over records for no reason, especially about highly confidential information such as compensation packages.
  - denzil_correa 10y ago
    > The article says that Google thinks the DOL is going on a fishing expedition. That's because the system is designed in such a way. The DoL can't make a case without access to meaningful data. So, if the system is designed to make access difficult this is what we end up with. > They turned over records They did not turn over records - that's what the entire lawsuit is about as mentioned in the court documents.
    - matt_wulfeck 10y ago
      Clearly they've turned over at least some records before. They're making their case with 2015 data.
      - denzil_correa 10y ago
bobbington 10y ago
This is just stupid. Men make more 1) they can usually do the job better, and or are more driven b/c testosterone. 2) they are more likely to negotiate for a better salary. Women have been complaining about being women for a hundred years now. It's been a disaster for the country. This isn't popular, but women ought to spend more time acting like women and less trying to act like men. This is actually better for the economy. If a woman has twice as many kids instead of a career, in just one generation she will have made up for not being a full time employee. People underestimate how awesome and unique women are. Making kids is amazing and people act like there is something wrong with a woman for focusing on motherhood. It's good for the country, but ladies going on birth control is bad for the country. If you don't believe me, look at Japan. Their GDP is constantly shrinking because they have such a low birth rate. So why is the government complaining? People are too easily deceived by love of money.
hookey 10y ago
They should replace all their men with women and reap the profits
sitkack 10y ago
My incoming is already intimate knowledge to the state and my employer. Why isn't the DoL doing this type analysis across all employers? What exactly has to be divulged that the gov doesn't already know?
antoncohen 10y ago
The DoL claims "discrimination against women in Google is quite extreme, even in this industry", while Google claims "every year, we do a comprehensive and robust analysis of pay across genders and we have found no gender pay gap". DoL is probably lacking data, and has a somewhat simplistic methodology (i.e., they see woman are paid less, but they don't know why). I highly doubt Google is intentionally discriminating against woman, I actually think they are probably trying very hard to have equal employment practices. But they still might be discriminating without knowing it. Here is what could e happening: The DoL says "you pay women less, even when they have the same experience". Google says "we pay for performance, not experience, when you take performance into account there is no pay gap". What Google might be missing is that there are unconscious biases causing performance reviews of woman to be more negative. I think that is highly likely. My understanding is that Google is highly reliant of performance reviews and performance pay, so under those conditions the DoL might be correct in saying discrimination is "quite extreme, even in this industry".
anonymous7777 10y ago
There is no such thing as equal pay for equal work. Two people within the same gender aren't paid equal in the Tech or any Professional services Industry forget across genders. More importantly, can someone define what equal work is? Same role/title doesn't translate to equal work. Every person has different capabilities even within in the same role and if it happens to be that a Woman outperforms than her peers then she should be paid equal or more and I wholeheartedly support that but the sad part with Women is that they never talk about such cases but instead Just hangs on to the phrase "Equal pay for Equal work" so they know if they make enough noise they can get equal pay but they never mention a word about equal work. And after working for 10 years in the Industry (which means I am young so don't think I am talking about some B.C era) and statistically speaking most of the time it had always been men who did tasks that are above and beyond from their regular duties. Sheryl Sandberg Just spits out some none sense. She just got so Lucky to be the COO at FB in the first place. she thinks that if a company can control # years of experience, education level, and blah blah then that will be the deciding factor for Equal pay. I am like really? So two people with same amount of years of experience can perform the same way? Two people with the same education level are equally bright? What if one person went to college Doofus and another went to Stanford? I am sure going to better college doesn't automatically translate into a bright and efficient person for the company but it is an accomplishment one should acknowledge for their hard work. so in short, none of these factors can be controlled and the way most companies Judge pay depends on how well one performs in the Interview which is very much reasonable. If we do the Sheryl Sandberg way we actually don't need an HR department (which Btw, is lot of Women) we can just write a program to accept or reject applicants if is really that straight forward to control the factors she is talking about. I think it would be great if someone can actually make Sheryl Sandberg to code on a daily basis and deal with all the production issues. I went to an Ivy League school and I worked as a TA for many Computer Science courses. I had worked with many students (both Men and Women) I had seen them getting Jobs at Google and FB and whenever they told me they got into Google or FB I used to ask my students so What questions did they ask you? Typically it is Algorithms most of the time as we all know and I can for sure say that the Algorithms questions asked to Men are way Significantly harder than Women. Now why is this not highlighted? Because companies like Google, FB wants to highlight that they hired Women. I bet my entire savings (I truly mean it) that if I go Google even today and pick random sample of 50 (25 Men Vs 25 Women) and randomly ask the Algorithm questions Men will significantly outperform Women because I know the level of difficulty questions asked for a Women and Men to get into Google. This is totally unfair. And I hate Men for giving up on these issues. I am sure most companies know all of this. They want to pay equal because they don't want to deal with one more hassle. If I am a CEO of a large organization I will be all over the media asking Women define what Equal work is before they start talking about Equal Pay. And I would look at it case by case If a woman outperforms her peers then As a CEO I would actually pay more period.
malandrew 10y ago
At what point is a company responsible for discrepancies in pay due to behavioral differences that likely exist between genders. Most jobs have a salary range for each title and they present candidates an initial figure at the low end of that range. To get a figure at the top end of that range, the candidate needs to initiate negotiation and have the skills/experience/practice doing so, including the knowledge that they need to do things like talk about competing offers and avoid divulging their previous salary. There is plenty of research showing negotiating differences between the sexes (including differences in negotiating based on the gender of the counterparties relative to one another). Shouldn't the government instead compare discrepancies between initial offers for the same position instead of actual salary negotiated? If they don't use initial offer, then the business needs to correct for this and every way I can think of to correct destroys the firm's ability to recruit the difficult candidates while still remaining competitive with other firms. The firms that correct for these differences will pay more on average for labor than its competitors and will likely lose out on the capable candidates that know their self worth and demand compensation that reflects that.
datamgr 10y ago
Has anyone ever considered that women regardless of industry get paid less because they don't negotiate for more? As a female from the tech and other industries including talent acquisition rarely do I come across another female who asks for more or alternative compensation in either the hiring, review, or promotion stage of their career. As a benefits manager I've known the top limit companies will pay and sat quietly as female executives accepted offers that were 20-30k away from what the company was willing to give. Bottom line if you don't ask for more you won't get it. Men ask, women rarely do.
anonymous555 10y ago
There is no such thing as equal pay for equal work. Two people within the same gender aren't paid equal in the Tech or any Professional services Industry forget across genders. More importantly, can someone define what equal work is? Same role/title doesn't translate to equal work. Every person has different capabilities even within in the same role and if it happens to be that a Woman outperforms than her peers then she should be paid equal or more and I wholeheartedly support that but the sad part with Women is that they never talk about such cases but instead Just hangs on to the phrase "Equal pay for Equal work" so they know if they make enough noise they can get equal pay but they never mention a word about equal work. And after working for 10 years in the Industry (which means I am young so don't think I am talking about some B.C era) and statistically speaking most of the time it had always been men who did tasks that are above and beyond from their regular duties. Sheryl Sandberg Just spits out some none sense. She just got so Lucky to be the COO at FB in the first place. she thinks that if a company can control # years of experience, education level, and blah blah then that will be the deciding factor for Equal pay. I am like really? So two people with same amount of years of experience can perform the same way? Two people with the same education level are equally bright? What if one person went to college Doofus and another went to Stanford? I am sure going to better college doesn't automatically translate into a bright and efficient person for the company but it is an accomplishment one should acknowledge for their hard work. so in short, none of these factors can be controlled and the way most companies Judge pay depends on how well one performs in the Interview which is very much reasonable. If we do the Sheryl Sandberg way we actually don't need an HR department (which Btw, is lot of Women) we can just write a program to accept or reject applicants if is really that straight forward to control the factors she is talking about. I think it would be great if someone can actually make Sheryl Sandberg to code on a daily basis and deal with all the production issues. I went to an Ivy League school and I worked as a TA for many Computer Science courses. I had worked with many students (both Men and Women) I had seen them getting Jobs at Google and FB and whenever they told me they got into Google or FB I used to ask my students so What questions did they ask you? Typically it is Algorithms most of the time as we all know and I can for sure say that the Algorithms questions asked to Men are way Significantly harder than Women. Now why is this not highlighted? Because companies like Google, FB wants to highlight that they hired Women. I bet my entire savings (I truly mean it) that if I go Google even today and pick random sample of 50 (25 Men Vs 25 Women) and randomly ask the Algorithm questions Men will significantly outperform Women because I know the level of difficulty questions asked for a Women and Men to get into Google. This is totally unfair. And I hate Men for giving up on these issues. I am sure most companies know all of this. They want to pay equal because they don't want to deal with one more hassle. If I am a CEO of a large organization I will be all over the media asking Women define what Equal work is before they start talking about Equal Pay. And I would look at it case by case If a woman outperforms her peers then As a CEO I would actually pay more period.
GnwbZHiU 10y ago
Just identify those workers as male. Problem solved.

76 points by arcanus 10y ago

eecks 10y ago

I can't wait to see Googles response. I have no idea why they would even open themselves up to this criticism when they could easily align the salaries.

multibit 10y ago
They did respond, they denied any pay gap.
jdavis703 10y ago
Google basically claims they have internal programs and have reached pay parity globally. The DoL says that's not true based on the data they've viewed. There seems to be a lot of lawyer scaremongering on both sides, I'd wait for this case to progress more before choosing a side. Source: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/07/google-pay-disparities-women-labor-department-lawsuit https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/07/google-pa...
dsacco 10y ago
They responded and denied it; frankly it's plausible that they're correct (but also that they're not). It's not yet fair to assume one party is correct over the other while both try to drive the media presentation. Let it play out.
- angstrom 10y ago
  I would lean towards both being correct depending on how they looked at the data. If you did purely education level, degree field and years of experience related to position then I would expect minimal deviation. However, you can go further tweaking how you look at each of those variables.
- eecks 10y ago
  That's good to know. Not sure why I was downvoted for wanting to know Google's response.
jacquesm 10y ago
Google already responded, they essentially claim there is no gap, that there was one in the past but that they worked very hard to close that gap. They also question the governments methods to arrive at their conclusions. Without data to back up either position debate is pretty much meaningless.
- eecks 10y ago
  That's good to know. Not sure why I was downvoted for wanting to know Google's response.

AuthenticApe 10y ago

Why are women making less compared to males in tech? Are they not as capable?

m52go 10y ago

I can't read the whole article, but does it (or DOL documents) include details like amount of experience and job function? I've heard that much (not all) of the aggregate gap (i.e., on the national level) goes away after controlling for those variables. Curious if that applies here, and if so, to what degree. Edit: consider recent headlines promoting outrage at Marissa Mayer's successor earning double her salary because he's a man. Turns out he's a veteran executive with 20 years of C-level experience. Mayer didn't have that. It may be an extreme example, but it's a good reminder to be cautious about pay gap assertions.

tyingq 10y ago
It's an odd situation. The government isn't giving out any numbers, but they are saying things like: "The government’s analysis at this point indicates that discrimination against women in Google is quite extreme, even in this industry." Pretty strong language when you aren't yet willing to back it up. Google's replies are equally strong in the other direction: "Every year, we do a comprehensive and robust analysis of pay across genders and we have found no gender pay gap." Saying there's no gender pay gap at all is pretty bold as well.
- denzil_correa 10y ago
  The government can't give out numbers when Google is denying them access to the records. I've written the details in another comment. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14067113 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14067113
  - tyingq 10y ago
    If they have no numbers, how did they reach the conclusion they state above?
    - denzil_correa 10y ago
      DoL has NOT reached any conclusion. DoL has a suspicion based on 2015 snapshot of salaries. They want to understand why there's a disparity. It may or may not be due to a gender wage gap but for that conclusion to be reached you need to have access to data they have requested from Google.

watbe 10y ago

Non-paywalled but not identical version: http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-google-women-20170407-story.html http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-google-w...

jacquesm 10y ago

Until the government releases their methodology it is hard to know how factual this assessment is. Google has done a lot of work internally to even up the gap and claims that they have achieved parity. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/07/google-pay-disparities-women-labor-department-lawsuit https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/07/google-pa... Either party could squelch the un-informed debate by releasing the data and the methods used to arrive at their conclusions.

golemotron 10y ago
> Either party could squelch the un-informed debate by releasing the data and the methods used to arrive at their conclusions. Just like the overall gender pay gap in the US, right?
- jacquesm 10y ago
  Yes, but no single company could release that data. Here a company is singled out with a very specific and easy to prove or falsify claim given the data.
denzil_correa 10y ago
DoL is suing Google to access for data in order to complete their evaluation of a pay gap. DoL suspects a pay disparity. It needs more data to come to a definition conclusion for which it asked Google and was denied access. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14067113 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14067113
- jacquesm 10y ago
  Don't you think the headline is a bit premature then?

trishume 10y ago

Can someone who actually has access to the story answer the following questions for me. Is this before or after controlling for: - field of work. Is this the whole company or just devs? - years at the company. - age, as a crude proxy for total experience at all companies. Also does it say the magnitude of the gap? There's a number of ways this headline could be true, all may be unfortunate from a societal perspective, but it only shows bias on Google's part if this is after controlling for the things companies say they base their pay on.

sitkack 10y ago
They also base the pay on negotiation, something which men are much more aggressive about and that woman who negotiate hard are judged unfairly.

UnoriginalGuy 10y ago

Another (non-paywall) article: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/07/google-pay-disparities-women-labor-department-lawsuit https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/07/google-pa... Seems like it is early days on this lawsuit. The DoL are asking for more documentation about employee's pay and Google is calling it a "fishing expedition." This is definitely one to watch, but I won't be drawing any conclusions this early in this lawsuit (since even the DoL say they need more documentation to prove their case).

dsacco 10y ago

Note that this is not originally a WSJ story; for those without a subscription, you'll learn just as much by reading from the same news source that WSJ is commenting on (and which they link to in this article): https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/07/google-pay-disparities-women-labor-department-lawsuit https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/07/google-pa... Of course, when I say "just as much" I mean "not much", because neither party has released anything substantive to rebut the other's claims. Until then, the court of public opinion is going to be both passionate and completely uninformed. But if I'm being cynical, that's probably the point of reporting on it at this stage.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

sidcool 10y ago

What is that Google would gain from this? Not that they are strapped for money. It could only lead to such bad publicity. And if the women engineers were hired by Google, they obviously are good at it. Can't understand the rationale behind it, if true.

tim333 10y ago

Link to avoid paywall https://www.facebook.com/flx/warn/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fgoogle-pays-female-workers-less-than-male-counterparts-labor-department-says-1491622997&h=ATNo1YZ-SgUdJ8wz83J0cO5LV8wz3OcKeYvQQ8ypDdqLNSLm74vBUcKyDN0isAyNoRFXEIRbjE7oj8XngWr9Jq-i-jw9mFUAIg&_rdr https://www.facebook.com/flx/warn/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.c...

rascul 10y ago
Going to the site via Facebook doesn't avoid the paywall.
- eecks 10y ago
  It did for me

1_2__3 10y ago

Companies like google are obsessed with diversity. The idea that they'd systematically pay women less is laughable - you will not find more liberal environments outside of academia. I can't help but wonder if this is politically motivated.

yomly 10y ago

It is hard to discern what is going on, and it feels strange to say I trust Google ahead of the government. Google is full of engineers who prize logic and fairness above most else, and culturally most the engineers I meet in most places espouse gender parity and equality. In light of this, it is hard to believe Google would not find a way to even up payscales. That said, while non-management says one thing it is often the case that management find a way to enact the opposite. Something in me feels like this has the air of a dirty underhanded PR-war to it, and the government is trying to pressure Google into something we don't know about...

freddyc 10y ago
While I generally agree with your main point, I have witnessed engineers who espouse equality publicly until their own remuneration is the topic of discussion, at which point self-interest kicks in and "of course I should earn more than A, because x, y, z ..." becomes the private narrative. While a lot of progress has been made in reducing the gender wage gap in tech, we still have a long way to go.
- Majestic121 10y ago
  Of course everyone tries to have the best salary possible, the same is expected for both men and women and that's a good thing. I mean, even if I'm willing to get a hit on my salary in the name of gender equality, I'm pretty sure the money will go in upper management's pocket and not my female counterparts.
- jimmywanger 10y ago
  > "of course I should earn more than A, because x, y, z ..." Unless "x, y, and z" include "because I'm a man and she's a woman" then I don't really understand your point. Of course most employees think they're underpaid, and they can all come up with reasons, due to performance on the job, specific incidents, experience, and level of education why they should be paid more. How is that related at all to gender wage gap in any industry, let alone tech specifically?
nojvek 10y ago

xienze 10y ago

Methodology is important here. A lot of the logic behind pay gap talk assumes that the jobs men and women do in the same company are exactly the same, as if these are assembly line jobs and worker output can be compared in a direct and straightforward manner. Anyone who works in tech knows that what each person contributes varies greatly and there's no way to directly compare what two people do or even the amount of experience they bring to the table when they're hired.

davidf18 10y ago

Assuming labor markets are liquid, if the pay gap is true it means either: 1. Women really want to work for Google and take less pay than working at other employers or 2. Women at almost all employers are receiving less money. There were times not too long ago when there were Jewish quotas. Nobelist Physicist Richard Feynman was denied entry into Columbia and he went to MIT instead. Nobelist Medicine & Physiology Author Kornberg was one of 3 of 200 Jewish applicants to get into medical school from his university. Those universities/firms that didn't have Jewish quotas and discrimination got a good boost in performance over those who had quotas and discrimination. If they women are only getting paid less at Google and not other firms then they should change firms. If other firms are paying less, then Feds should go after them as well and not single out Google. Any firm that pays women as much as men should be able to hire the competent women from Google. In another part of the WSJ article, there is a complaint that most of the employees are male and asian or white. They should examine the portion of people attending top engineering schools: male and asian or white.

kgwgk 10y ago
> Any firm that pays women as much as men should be able to hire the competent women from Google. Only if that firm pays men and women more than Google pays (competent) women.
- davidf18 10y ago
  Does Google pay more than Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Oracle, Facebook, ....?
Klinky 10y ago
Markets don't solve everything, especially institutionalized racism or gender inequality. It is a lazy solution to a very harmful problem.
- davidf18 10y ago
  Well, many would hire programmers /engineers/ lawyers/ doctors/ professors for competence regardless of race.

brians 10y ago

It would be surprising and novel if the DoL statisticians had produced an unambiguous correct analysis. They're working in a complex field, and under pressure and regulated to use the wrong tools in many cases---so I'm sure plenty of the people there are excellent and could do great work---DoL statistics in general are not a good basis for action. Example: DoL is required by law to track non-white applicants and hiring to jobs. Alice is not white, and applies to ten open jobs at Example.com, a hot new startup. She's hired for one. DoL reports this as 90% of non-white applicants being rejected. If 10 non-white applicants each apply for all those ten jobs and are all hired, one job each, that's 90% rejection. A mix of law and regulation requires counting this way. Near one edge case (plausibly including SV today!) the error doesn't matter much. But as you get anywhere near justice, this isn't helpful. So without seeing the details of this analysis, I'm skeptical that DoL's way of counting is helpful here.

sitkack 10y ago
I think you are constructing a strawman. If rejection statistics were indeed calculated as you describe, it would scale with the number of job seekers crossed with the demographic. I am going to go with DoL statisticians not being idiots.
- lr4444lr 10y ago
  Strawman or not, the public has a right to the methodology and criteria behind the DoL's claim, without which we are free to disbelieve their allegations without justifying ourselves.
  - sitkack 10y ago
    We should hold both Google and the DoL to the same standard, nowhere does "trust us" form a compelling argument.

dleslie 10y ago

I'm not certain why anyone would be surprised. Remember the spreadsheet from 2015? https://duckduckgo.com/?q=google+spreadsheet+compensation+leaked https://duckduckgo.com/?q=google+spreadsheet+compensation+le...

simonsarris 10y ago

What they're counting matters. It seems if Google has the goal of hiring more females than industry average, then the stats are stacked against them when you look at their worker pay distribution, even if Google isn't doing anything wrong. Suppose the population is distributed in their experience and productivity, and that you can measure these to some extent. Suppose your field has way more males than females. This is not your fault, more of a pipeline thing, but you want to be more equal internally than the outside world is. Most people commend this kind of thing. If you are fairly paying both genders, wouldn't you necessarily have to take more unproductive and inexperienced female engineers to reach your goal? And if you're fairly paying based on those criteria, won't the female population be paid less as you try to take on a more-than-average number of them? I'm not saying any of this is how it ought to be, just that it seems like a typical conclusion with napkin math, and would result in these allegations while Google is actually trying to do good. Interestingly if equal pay were not a thing, I would expect the opposite headline: That Google would pay women much more than men to work so that they could attempt to correct a gender imbalance internally that exists in the external population (software workers).

user5994461 10y ago
> If you are fairly paying both genders, wouldn't you necessarily have to take more unproductive and inexperienced female engineers to reach your goal? And if you're fairly paying based on those criteria, won't the female population be paid less as you try to take on a more-than-average number of them? If you are fairly paying both genders, it's fair to assume that women would be paid less statistically. They usually retire from work mid-career for pregnancy and possibly for a much longer time to raise the child (when it's not the man doing it, and when the couple don't have a nursery/grandparent, etc...). Retiring from work at the peak time for career growth is a disastrous move on one's income. (Be it a man or a woman).
- dleslie 10y ago
  Clearly more men need to take time off work to help raise their children.
- 10y ago

_Codemonkeyism 10y ago

This often happens in cultures - not sure Google is such a culture - were you negotiate your initial salary, raises and need to push for promotions. When advising women on interviewing I always suggest they ask for more money than they are comfortable with.

user5994461 10y ago
> When advising women on interviewing I always suggest they ask for more money than they are comfortable with. I do the same for men. Saw a few guys jump ship recently for significant raises. Turns out they were badly underpaid :D
- _Codemonkeyism 10y ago
  Yes me too ;-) But especially with women. Since reading "Negotiating Your Salary: How to Make $1000 a Minute" a long time ago I've applied this to myself.

wonderous 10y ago

Prior HN comments and no paywall Guardian story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14063043 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14063043

JAbberJaw 10y ago

The people who talk about the president on the tv and radio said this isn't a real thing. I'd check your fact sheet on this is could be one of those liberal based poll things with a slanted view!

krapp 10y ago
Who are "The people who talk about the president on the tv and radio" and why should we assume their views are unbiased?

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

denzil_correa 10y ago

The US Dept. of Labor is suing Google for not revealing compensation data [0]. The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) has suspicion on pay disparities and in order to investigate further sent a request to Google to access some records (Point 9) [1]. Google denied OFCCP access to these records. Now, DoL has taken Google to court to get access to the records they need to investigate further and complete their evaluation. I wonder why Google is being so evasive about it. [0] https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/ofccp/ofccp20170104 https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/ofccp/ofccp20170104 [1] https://www.dol.gov/sites/default/files/newsroom/newsreleases/OFCCP20162406_0.pdf https://www.dol.gov/sites/default/files/newsroom/newsrelease...

jimmywanger 10y ago
> I wonder why Google is being so evasive about it. The article says that Google thinks the DOL is going on a fishing expedition. They turned over records, but like most private companies, don't like turning over records for no reason, especially about highly confidential information such as compensation packages.
- denzil_correa 10y ago
  > The article says that Google thinks the DOL is going on a fishing expedition. That's because the system is designed in such a way. The DoL can't make a case without access to meaningful data. So, if the system is designed to make access difficult this is what we end up with. > They turned over records They did not turn over records - that's what the entire lawsuit is about as mentioned in the court documents.
  - matt_wulfeck 10y ago
    Clearly they've turned over at least some records before. They're making their case with 2015 data.
    - denzil_correa 10y ago

bobbington 10y ago

This is just stupid. Men make more 1) they can usually do the job better, and or are more driven b/c testosterone. 2) they are more likely to negotiate for a better salary. Women have been complaining about being women for a hundred years now. It's been a disaster for the country. This isn't popular, but women ought to spend more time acting like women and less trying to act like men. This is actually better for the economy. If a woman has twice as many kids instead of a career, in just one generation she will have made up for not being a full time employee. People underestimate how awesome and unique women are. Making kids is amazing and people act like there is something wrong with a woman for focusing on motherhood. It's good for the country, but ladies going on birth control is bad for the country. If you don't believe me, look at Japan. Their GDP is constantly shrinking because they have such a low birth rate. So why is the government complaining? People are too easily deceived by love of money.

hookey 10y ago

They should replace all their men with women and reap the profits

sitkack 10y ago

My incoming is already intimate knowledge to the state and my employer. Why isn't the DoL doing this type analysis across all employers? What exactly has to be divulged that the gov doesn't already know?

antoncohen 10y ago

The DoL claims "discrimination against women in Google is quite extreme, even in this industry", while Google claims "every year, we do a comprehensive and robust analysis of pay across genders and we have found no gender pay gap". DoL is probably lacking data, and has a somewhat simplistic methodology (i.e., they see woman are paid less, but they don't know why). I highly doubt Google is intentionally discriminating against woman, I actually think they are probably trying very hard to have equal employment practices. But they still might be discriminating without knowing it. Here is what could e happening: The DoL says "you pay women less, even when they have the same experience". Google says "we pay for performance, not experience, when you take performance into account there is no pay gap". What Google might be missing is that there are unconscious biases causing performance reviews of woman to be more negative. I think that is highly likely. My understanding is that Google is highly reliant of performance reviews and performance pay, so under those conditions the DoL might be correct in saying discrimination is "quite extreme, even in this industry".

anonymous7777 10y ago

There is no such thing as equal pay for equal work. Two people within the same gender aren't paid equal in the Tech or any Professional services Industry forget across genders. More importantly, can someone define what equal work is? Same role/title doesn't translate to equal work. Every person has different capabilities even within in the same role and if it happens to be that a Woman outperforms than her peers then she should be paid equal or more and I wholeheartedly support that but the sad part with Women is that they never talk about such cases but instead Just hangs on to the phrase "Equal pay for Equal work" so they know if they make enough noise they can get equal pay but they never mention a word about equal work. And after working for 10 years in the Industry (which means I am young so don't think I am talking about some B.C era) and statistically speaking most of the time it had always been men who did tasks that are above and beyond from their regular duties. Sheryl Sandberg Just spits out some none sense. She just got so Lucky to be the COO at FB in the first place. she thinks that if a company can control # years of experience, education level, and blah blah then that will be the deciding factor for Equal pay. I am like really? So two people with same amount of years of experience can perform the same way? Two people with the same education level are equally bright? What if one person went to college Doofus and another went to Stanford? I am sure going to better college doesn't automatically translate into a bright and efficient person for the company but it is an accomplishment one should acknowledge for their hard work. so in short, none of these factors can be controlled and the way most companies Judge pay depends on how well one performs in the Interview which is very much reasonable. If we do the Sheryl Sandberg way we actually don't need an HR department (which Btw, is lot of Women) we can just write a program to accept or reject applicants if is really that straight forward to control the factors she is talking about. I think it would be great if someone can actually make Sheryl Sandberg to code on a daily basis and deal with all the production issues. I went to an Ivy League school and I worked as a TA for many Computer Science courses. I had worked with many students (both Men and Women) I had seen them getting Jobs at Google and FB and whenever they told me they got into Google or FB I used to ask my students so What questions did they ask you? Typically it is Algorithms most of the time as we all know and I can for sure say that the Algorithms questions asked to Men are way Significantly harder than Women. Now why is this not highlighted? Because companies like Google, FB wants to highlight that they hired Women. I bet my entire savings (I truly mean it) that if I go Google even today and pick random sample of 50 (25 Men Vs 25 Women) and randomly ask the Algorithm questions Men will significantly outperform Women because I know the level of difficulty questions asked for a Women and Men to get into Google. This is totally unfair. And I hate Men for giving up on these issues. I am sure most companies know all of this. They want to pay equal because they don't want to deal with one more hassle. If I am a CEO of a large organization I will be all over the media asking Women define what Equal work is before they start talking about Equal Pay. And I would look at it case by case If a woman outperforms her peers then As a CEO I would actually pay more period.

malandrew 10y ago

At what point is a company responsible for discrepancies in pay due to behavioral differences that likely exist between genders. Most jobs have a salary range for each title and they present candidates an initial figure at the low end of that range. To get a figure at the top end of that range, the candidate needs to initiate negotiation and have the skills/experience/practice doing so, including the knowledge that they need to do things like talk about competing offers and avoid divulging their previous salary. There is plenty of research showing negotiating differences between the sexes (including differences in negotiating based on the gender of the counterparties relative to one another). Shouldn't the government instead compare discrepancies between initial offers for the same position instead of actual salary negotiated? If they don't use initial offer, then the business needs to correct for this and every way I can think of to correct destroys the firm's ability to recruit the difficult candidates while still remaining competitive with other firms. The firms that correct for these differences will pay more on average for labor than its competitors and will likely lose out on the capable candidates that know their self worth and demand compensation that reflects that.

datamgr 10y ago

Has anyone ever considered that women regardless of industry get paid less because they don't negotiate for more? As a female from the tech and other industries including talent acquisition rarely do I come across another female who asks for more or alternative compensation in either the hiring, review, or promotion stage of their career. As a benefits manager I've known the top limit companies will pay and sat quietly as female executives accepted offers that were 20-30k away from what the company was willing to give. Bottom line if you don't ask for more you won't get it. Men ask, women rarely do.

anonymous555 10y ago

GnwbZHiU 10y ago

Just identify those workers as male. Problem solved.