6 ms·

If Google released such wage data, they would have to pay people more, and that would cost a lot, and so collecting wage data is too expensive. Get it?

trendia 9y ago
This is the truth. Total Cost = Cost to acquire data ($200,000) + Back pay to employees ($20,000,000)
- nojvek 9y ago
  My respect for Google has gone down significantly. I would not work for Facebook and Google even if I was offered a million dollars. I predict that the Golden years of FB and Google are right now, they will slowly head into a plateau
  - wcummings 9y ago
    Same, their recruiters email me every couple of months... Yeah no thanks. Id sooner work for MSFT these days. How the times has changed.
  - 659087 9y ago
    I never really understood the Google worship. "Don't be evil" was an ingenious PR move which earned them an army of useful idiots willing to defend their every move, but never actually applied internally as far as I could tell. I think the reality was "see how much evil we can get society acclimated to". As for Facebook, I think anyone who ever had a positive opinion of them should be evaluated by a psychiatrist.
    - pacala 9y ago
      Google is [was?] a geek company. You could get a good pay by being really good at coding. Most companies out there, the only way to get a high compensation is to play Games of Thrones on the management ladder. Actually doing any work is shunned upon.
      - jedberg 9y ago
        > Actually doing any work is shunned upon. You clearly don't understand what a manager does if you believe what they do isn't work.
        pacala 9y ago
        There are indeed many definitions of work. I'm using "something produced or accomplished by effort, exertion, or exercise of skill", https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/work https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/work. But then again, managers are very skilled at power games, and the ultimate sign of power is taking credit for what your subordinates produced.
        scarface74 9y ago
        You're working for a bad manager. I appreciate the management at my company. They keep the lights on and take care of all the stuff I would never want to do and I can concentrate on development.
      - 659087 9y ago
        From my experiences with friends who worked or work at Google, you could fit in just as well by being a mediocre programmer or graphic designer who really enjoyed kool-aid. The terms "Googley" and "Googler" quickly became the equivalent of nails on a chalkboard to me thanks to these people.
  - skookumchuck 9y ago
    > I would not work for Facebook and Google even if I was offered a million dollars. I would. Where do I sign up?
  - pdimitar 9y ago
    I know this is gonna be an unpopular opinion: IMO both of them are already on a plateau. Google keeps abandoning products, Facebook keeps buying promising startups and quietly shuts them down (Google does it too). In Google this mostly happens due to some weird geekdom culture / peer pressure thing (coding hipster-ism?), and in Facebook it's more like "we want to conquer the world". Both companies' strategies are not sustainable. The world is already catching up and I suspect that now it's time for suing the hell out of everybody who isn't sharing their vision while being even slightly competitive to them (opinion, not a fact, no evidence for that, don't kill me). One only needs to follow recent HN for news about decentralization efforts and slightly increased amount of articles about self-hosting to understand that a good part of the tech world is getting fed up with Google and Facebook.
    - concede_pluto 9y ago
      Google code can't age gracefully. They constantly replace key infrastructure in their monorepo, so either a project is important enough for engineers to keep it on the upgrade treadmill, or it needs to be shut down before it abruptly fails.
      - pdimitar 9y ago
        For internal projects that's absolutely the right approach. However, once you go around the net and see how people are laughing at Google for their "bazillion chat apps", then you understand that they use the same approach for their public projects, and that's just being inefficient on their part. And damages their brand and name.
- rusk 9y ago
  I don't get this - why would there be back payments? A contract is a contract right? Regardless of what's in other people's contracts... Perhaps it might mean new contracts might have to demand more but I guess on the other hand they could probably squeeze other areas that are overpaid?
  - ble 9y ago
    Nah, if gender-based wage discrimination is 'proven' in court, the people who got shorted are going be awarded some multiple of the amount of wages that can be attributed, according to whatever calculation gets used to determine the existence or non-existence and magnitude of any such discrimination. (Not a lawyer, but I've listened to Lilly Ledbetter give a speech.) Please tell me that your focus on "contracts" doesn't mean you are a sincere, "omg the right to contracts" libertarian?
    - rusk 9y ago
      > you are a sincere, "omg the right to contracts" libertarian? No .. I just understand that's how most Western legal jurisdictions work. Hadn't considered the compensation claim aspect but surely it could be argued it's just an emergent pattern - not as a result of any policy decision? Would be a very interesting test-case ...
      - ble 9y ago
        So IANAL but "an emergent pattern" (which doesn't sound as bad as, e.g., internal memos to the effect of "let's pay the gurls less hahaha") may be more than enough for the government to categorize Google's behavior as gender-based wage discrimination. If/when the government does that, I think 2 things happen: 1. the government announces some punitive action against Google; things they must do, things they must pay, etc; 2. the probability of every Jane, Jill, and Hillary who worked for Google winning a wage discrimination case skyrockets, at least some workers file such cases or enter negotiations to settle such discrimination. The Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 means (pardon my rough summarization) that a worker can sue over discriminatory pay even if the discrimination / 'lost' wages occurred a while ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilly_Ledbetter_Fair_Pay_Act_of_2009 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilly_Ledbetter_Fair_Pay_Act_o...
- stillmotion 9y ago
  Back pay would be signicantly higher than $20m.
YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
The US government is not asking for the data to be made public, it's asking for it to be made available to their officials: The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs asked the technology giant to submit information in September 2015 about its equal opportunity program and to provide supporting documents as part of a scheduled compliance review. As a federal contractor, Google must agree to permit the federal government to inspect and copy records and information relevant to its compliance with the equal employment laws administered by OFCCP. Google employees would be none the wiser about the fairness of their wages. Source: US DoL website, https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/ofccp/ofccp20170104 https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/ofccp/ofccp20170104
- alphonsegaston 9y ago
  Right, but if the Department of Labor finds them to be out of compliance with Equal Pay laws, the resulting consequences will be made public in some form. That in itself (and rightfully so) could set off further legal action by current or former employees.
oval-atom 9y ago
Get this! Google and companies allocate a tremendous amount of money in corporate lawyers and legal staff. These companies have a well-documented history of suing other companies when they feel a contract has been abused or unfulfilled. Google entered into a contract with the Federal Government, they received compensation. Google was fully aware of their requirements to fulfill the contract. And just in case they did not, too damn bad. And that is exactly how Google would view it when suing another company for not meeting contract obligations. Unfortunately, there are a lot of companies that attempt to weasel out of their contractual obligations with the government at the cost of taxpayers. But put the shoe on the other foot, these companies and for sure Google would be applying the full resources of their respective legal departments to make sure the Federal Government met their obligations under the contract. So don’t fool yourself into thinking that Google was not aware of their obligations under the contract. If they didn’t like the terms, they should not have entered into the contract. There is nothing sneaky about the terms of this contract, nothing unique, and nothing vague. All companies that enter in to contractual obligations with the Federal Government meet the required obligations. And when you consider the Federal Government has had for decades prominent contracts with Defense contractors, who are notorious for seeking any weasel room they can to get around these obligations, I seriously doubt Google can come up with any revolutionary excuse. Google has used the foolish excuse that they are trying to protect the “PRIVACY” of their employees, and this is a bunch of crap, because the IRS, another Federal Government Agency has that wage data. So I can only surmise, that Google, one of the “BIG” voices of social reform, liberalism and whatever other causes that are emitted from the Silicon Valley complex may just be a hypocrite. Took a shower! I think Google is being disrespectful to the citizens of this country. They are relying on leveraging this social movement of keeping the government out of their private lives. As if some old greasy fart, is sitting in some underground secluded vault reading your emails, texts, and whatever just for fun. But you have Google, Facebook, Apple, Uber, Microsoft, Twitter and so on writing complex algorithms to monetize where you have been, where you are, where you are going, what you read, how you shop, what you buy, using your phone to listen in on what commercials you are watching, where you are in the mall, who you are with, when you sleep and how you sleep or maybe even who you are sleeping with, what toys you buy, your phone number, extracting data from your emails and on and on. And these companies throw these pages of EULA agreements at you, and they know you don’t read them. They have an algorithm for that. Then some of these companies have the audacity to state that the “MAY SHARE” the data with third parties. Really? So just what part of your life do you consider PRIVATE? And more importantly, just what do you consider PRIVATE? And what do these companies tell you what their objective is in collecting all this data? “We are enhancing the consumers experience!”. If they really wanted to “enhance the consumer’s experience” allow the consumer the “OPT IN” and not throw a bunch of convoluted Setting screens to with obtuse worded options to “OPT OUT”. That is a lot of data that they extract, analyze and monetize. And Google says the Department of Labor’s request is more that they can handle and too costly to extract. How the heck do they even send out employee’s W-2s?
Gibbon1 9y ago
One of my observations is a companies profit is often wholly dependent on underpaying women, minorities, and other workers.

trendia 9y ago

This is the truth. Total Cost = Cost to acquire data ($200,000) + Back pay to employees ($20,000,000)

nojvek 9y ago
My respect for Google has gone down significantly. I would not work for Facebook and Google even if I was offered a million dollars. I predict that the Golden years of FB and Google are right now, they will slowly head into a plateau
- wcummings 9y ago
  Same, their recruiters email me every couple of months... Yeah no thanks. Id sooner work for MSFT these days. How the times has changed.
- 659087 9y ago
  I never really understood the Google worship. "Don't be evil" was an ingenious PR move which earned them an army of useful idiots willing to defend their every move, but never actually applied internally as far as I could tell. I think the reality was "see how much evil we can get society acclimated to". As for Facebook, I think anyone who ever had a positive opinion of them should be evaluated by a psychiatrist.
  - pacala 9y ago
    Google is [was?] a geek company. You could get a good pay by being really good at coding. Most companies out there, the only way to get a high compensation is to play Games of Thrones on the management ladder. Actually doing any work is shunned upon.
    - jedberg 9y ago
      > Actually doing any work is shunned upon. You clearly don't understand what a manager does if you believe what they do isn't work.
      - pacala 9y ago
        There are indeed many definitions of work. I'm using "something produced or accomplished by effort, exertion, or exercise of skill", https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/work https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/work. But then again, managers are very skilled at power games, and the ultimate sign of power is taking credit for what your subordinates produced.
        scarface74 9y ago
        You're working for a bad manager. I appreciate the management at my company. They keep the lights on and take care of all the stuff I would never want to do and I can concentrate on development.
    - 659087 9y ago
      From my experiences with friends who worked or work at Google, you could fit in just as well by being a mediocre programmer or graphic designer who really enjoyed kool-aid. The terms "Googley" and "Googler" quickly became the equivalent of nails on a chalkboard to me thanks to these people.
- skookumchuck 9y ago
  > I would not work for Facebook and Google even if I was offered a million dollars. I would. Where do I sign up?
- pdimitar 9y ago
  I know this is gonna be an unpopular opinion: IMO both of them are already on a plateau. Google keeps abandoning products, Facebook keeps buying promising startups and quietly shuts them down (Google does it too). In Google this mostly happens due to some weird geekdom culture / peer pressure thing (coding hipster-ism?), and in Facebook it's more like "we want to conquer the world". Both companies' strategies are not sustainable. The world is already catching up and I suspect that now it's time for suing the hell out of everybody who isn't sharing their vision while being even slightly competitive to them (opinion, not a fact, no evidence for that, don't kill me). One only needs to follow recent HN for news about decentralization efforts and slightly increased amount of articles about self-hosting to understand that a good part of the tech world is getting fed up with Google and Facebook.
  - concede_pluto 9y ago
    Google code can't age gracefully. They constantly replace key infrastructure in their monorepo, so either a project is important enough for engineers to keep it on the upgrade treadmill, or it needs to be shut down before it abruptly fails.
    - pdimitar 9y ago
      For internal projects that's absolutely the right approach. However, once you go around the net and see how people are laughing at Google for their "bazillion chat apps", then you understand that they use the same approach for their public projects, and that's just being inefficient on their part. And damages their brand and name.
rusk 9y ago
I don't get this - why would there be back payments? A contract is a contract right? Regardless of what's in other people's contracts... Perhaps it might mean new contracts might have to demand more but I guess on the other hand they could probably squeeze other areas that are overpaid?
- ble 9y ago
  Nah, if gender-based wage discrimination is 'proven' in court, the people who got shorted are going be awarded some multiple of the amount of wages that can be attributed, according to whatever calculation gets used to determine the existence or non-existence and magnitude of any such discrimination. (Not a lawyer, but I've listened to Lilly Ledbetter give a speech.) Please tell me that your focus on "contracts" doesn't mean you are a sincere, "omg the right to contracts" libertarian?
  - rusk 9y ago
    > you are a sincere, "omg the right to contracts" libertarian? No .. I just understand that's how most Western legal jurisdictions work. Hadn't considered the compensation claim aspect but surely it could be argued it's just an emergent pattern - not as a result of any policy decision? Would be a very interesting test-case ...
    - ble 9y ago
      So IANAL but "an emergent pattern" (which doesn't sound as bad as, e.g., internal memos to the effect of "let's pay the gurls less hahaha") may be more than enough for the government to categorize Google's behavior as gender-based wage discrimination. If/when the government does that, I think 2 things happen: 1. the government announces some punitive action against Google; things they must do, things they must pay, etc; 2. the probability of every Jane, Jill, and Hillary who worked for Google winning a wage discrimination case skyrockets, at least some workers file such cases or enter negotiations to settle such discrimination. The Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 means (pardon my rough summarization) that a worker can sue over discriminatory pay even if the discrimination / 'lost' wages occurred a while ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilly_Ledbetter_Fair_Pay_Act_of_2009 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilly_Ledbetter_Fair_Pay_Act_o...
stillmotion 9y ago
Back pay would be signicantly higher than $20m.

YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago

The US government is not asking for the data to be made public, it's asking for it to be made available to their officials: The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs asked the technology giant to submit information in September 2015 about its equal opportunity program and to provide supporting documents as part of a scheduled compliance review. As a federal contractor, Google must agree to permit the federal government to inspect and copy records and information relevant to its compliance with the equal employment laws administered by OFCCP. Google employees would be none the wiser about the fairness of their wages. Source: US DoL website, https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/ofccp/ofccp20170104 https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/ofccp/ofccp20170104

alphonsegaston 9y ago
Right, but if the Department of Labor finds them to be out of compliance with Equal Pay laws, the resulting consequences will be made public in some form. That in itself (and rightfully so) could set off further legal action by current or former employees.

oval-atom 9y ago

Get this! Google and companies allocate a tremendous amount of money in corporate lawyers and legal staff. These companies have a well-documented history of suing other companies when they feel a contract has been abused or unfulfilled. Google entered into a contract with the Federal Government, they received compensation. Google was fully aware of their requirements to fulfill the contract. And just in case they did not, too damn bad. And that is exactly how Google would view it when suing another company for not meeting contract obligations. Unfortunately, there are a lot of companies that attempt to weasel out of their contractual obligations with the government at the cost of taxpayers. But put the shoe on the other foot, these companies and for sure Google would be applying the full resources of their respective legal departments to make sure the Federal Government met their obligations under the contract. So don’t fool yourself into thinking that Google was not aware of their obligations under the contract. If they didn’t like the terms, they should not have entered into the contract. There is nothing sneaky about the terms of this contract, nothing unique, and nothing vague. All companies that enter in to contractual obligations with the Federal Government meet the required obligations. And when you consider the Federal Government has had for decades prominent contracts with Defense contractors, who are notorious for seeking any weasel room they can to get around these obligations, I seriously doubt Google can come up with any revolutionary excuse. Google has used the foolish excuse that they are trying to protect the “PRIVACY” of their employees, and this is a bunch of crap, because the IRS, another Federal Government Agency has that wage data. So I can only surmise, that Google, one of the “BIG” voices of social reform, liberalism and whatever other causes that are emitted from the Silicon Valley complex may just be a hypocrite. Took a shower! I think Google is being disrespectful to the citizens of this country. They are relying on leveraging this social movement of keeping the government out of their private lives. As if some old greasy fart, is sitting in some underground secluded vault reading your emails, texts, and whatever just for fun. But you have Google, Facebook, Apple, Uber, Microsoft, Twitter and so on writing complex algorithms to monetize where you have been, where you are, where you are going, what you read, how you shop, what you buy, using your phone to listen in on what commercials you are watching, where you are in the mall, who you are with, when you sleep and how you sleep or maybe even who you are sleeping with, what toys you buy, your phone number, extracting data from your emails and on and on. And these companies throw these pages of EULA agreements at you, and they know you don’t read them. They have an algorithm for that. Then some of these companies have the audacity to state that the “MAY SHARE” the data with third parties. Really? So just what part of your life do you consider PRIVATE? And more importantly, just what do you consider PRIVATE? And what do these companies tell you what their objective is in collecting all this data? “We are enhancing the consumers experience!”. If they really wanted to “enhance the consumer’s experience” allow the consumer the “OPT IN” and not throw a bunch of convoluted Setting screens to with obtuse worded options to “OPT OUT”. That is a lot of data that they extract, analyze and monetize. And Google says the Department of Labor’s request is more that they can handle and too costly to extract. How the heck do they even send out employee’s W-2s?

Gibbon1 9y ago

One of my observations is a companies profit is often wholly dependent on underpaying women, minorities, and other workers.