84 ms·

At Google, Employee-Led Effort Finds Men Are Paid More Than Women

54 points by bspn 9y ago

lagadu 9y ago
It's unfortunate that Alphabet declined to present their data, that way we'd likely be able to correct for things like location and seniority along with having solid deviation rates.
sysdyne 9y ago
Incoming flagged by Google corporate drones.
- sctb 9y ago
  The guidelines ask you not to do this, especially with the cheap insult. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - dilemma 9y ago
    Hardly an insult. Why do you treat Google different than other companies?
    - striking 9y ago
      They don't. You just have a really boring comment. It doesn't bring anything new to the table.
      - sysdyne 9y ago
        Actually I 1. Made a prediction 2. Turn out to be accurate Step 3 Publish "The HN echo chamber manifesto" Step 4 ???? Step 5 Profit
        dang 9y ago
        It wasn't accurate at all, because you don't know who flagged the story. Moreover you're breaking the HN guidelines not only by calling names but by insinuating astroturfing/shillage without evidence. Plus you've done this before. Please stop.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
OzzyB 9y ago
> At Google, Employee-Led Effort Finds Software Engineers Are Paid More Than Front-End Developers > At Google, Employee-Led Effort Finds Data Scientists Are Paid More Than Web Designers > At Google, Employee-Led Effort Finds AI Researchers Are Paid More Than Project Managers I could do this all day... Any chance they'll release the data that backs up this statistical claim?
- to_bpr 9y ago
  >Any chance they'll release the data that backs up this statistical claim? It was probably a pretty half baked, self-reported Google form so the data may not be worth much.
- gyardley 9y ago
  Yes, it would be nice to see the raw data, but note that they've bucketed Level 1 through Level 6 employees, and have still found gender discrepancies. Are you suggesting that different jobs might occupy the same level but have widely differing compensation? That might be true - I don't know Google well enough - but that's not how salary bands usually work.
  - guitarbill 9y ago
    It's exactly how salary bands work - they're designed to be opaque. If you have women who largely choose to work in Foo with a compensations which puts them at the top of the band 1 and at the bottom of band 2, and men who work in Bar that starts with compensation at the bottom of band 1, but a promotion gets you to the middle of band 2, then you'll get that in band 1, women earn more, but in band 2, men earn more. This is why you must know the actual distributions (which includes weighting and deviation/variance), and the job role. Indeed, in level 2, seems like women earn more - maybe? might not even be significant though. In any case, I'll bet job role correlates far more strongly with compensation than gender.
- alexashka 9y ago
  You mean any chance they'll release data, do proper analysis, post an unbiased view on things to inform the public on the issue? Do real journalism? I highly doubt it.
qaq 9y ago
We would need a lot more data, I work for a much smaller company vs Google yet we can easily have people who while formally at a lower level can make beyond VP level comp. because of their unique tech. skills and experience. I imagine Google has a fairly large group of famous eng. etc. who could scew results greatly should they get to be part of the sample.
throwaway-g 9y ago
Why is it that stupid memos are leaked while the raw data to this prefabricated conclusion isn't? If properly anonymized I don't see harm done to anybody.
wpietri 9y ago
One of the things this misses is that even if these numbers were even, systemic gender bias means that things would likely be unfair. Even if Google were perfectly fair internally, women coming in from academia are likely to have faced gender bias [1], meaning less impressive resumes and therefore lower starting positions. Similar logic applies to women coming in from industry: one component to hiring pay and title is previous pay and title; external bias can easily be imported. But it would be a miracle if Google were perfectly fair internally given our society's long history of sexism, documented gender bias in academia (from which Google draws some of its culture and a lot of its people), and the ongoing issues in the tech industry. I'd expect Google's promotion ladder to reflect that to one extent or another, meaning that the levels themselves have some level of bias to them. [1] e.g., http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.abstract http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.abstract and http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/apl-0000022.pdf http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/apl-0000022.pdf
- guitarbill 9y ago
  > Even if Google were perfectly fair internally, women coming in from academia are likely to have faced gender bias [1], meaning less impressive resumes and therefore lower starting positions. To play devil's advocate, if the performance review process was good/perfect and skill = compensation, factors like "less impressive resumes" should even out pretty quickly, right?
  - wpietri 9y ago
    I doubt it. I once had an employee who had accepted an entry-level engineering position when they really were qualified for two levels above that. I was explicitly told they couldn't skip levels, and that I could only put them up for promotion so often. But even at a place that didn't have slow-down-there bias built in to the promotion process, the way you prove you're qualified for the next level is by doing work that's above your current level. Nobody will give staff engineer work to somebody in an entry level position; there's too much jockeying for that work by people one level down. So there's a practical limit to the rate at which somebody can advance even with no bias.
- 9y ago
redm 9y ago
I'm interested to know if pay varies between men in the same positions too. Are bonus amounts fixed or are there other variables?
guitarbill 9y ago
It feels like these things become self-fulfilling prophecies, because of the way this issue is reported on. If "seven of nine technology companies, including Apple, Amazon.com and Microsoft, [disclosed] that data", would it be too much for an article to compare the unofficial Google numbers to that data? I'm not a big fan of large companies, I don't think they can win. Even if you have good numbers, that doesn't fit the narrative of "Silicon Valley has established itself as the boys’ club". Say for example, we applauded companies who are doing better, maybe even close to statistical significance, then you could say, "Hey, it's still not quite there yet, but it's close and we're doing better than others. Come work for us and help us make it right." And then that would be actionable advice, and companies would have a great reason to strive for this. But we'd also have to be honest about statistical error rates, and maybe some other stuff. I'll close on this, I've heard people say stupid and offensive shit when they're drunk, but never "Hey, let's pay women less", although I'm not an executive. So I feel like it isn't a common thought... unless you keep reading articles like this one.
- manyxcxi 9y ago
  I've hired plenty of people, and been in three times as many discussions of pay with everyone from the janitor to the CEO and I've never heard someone insinuate that we could pay less because the person is female, but I've heard people say "...and we get the bonus of having her be female to make our numbers look better..." before. Here's what I think a big driver is (you're going to have to walk down premise lane with me as I don't want to spend the time on citations ATM): Presuming that women are in general more agreeable than man in the workplace and that they don't fight as hard and as often for raises, I would expect an otherwise equal male counterpart that is more aggressive to have higher pay. Why? Because the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Every year when we did promotions we'd start out with a zero-sum raise pool. Let's say if everyone got exactly the same, they'd get 2%. But if I give Bob a raise of 4% I have to go 'take' that extra 2% from people or everyone. If I'm worried about Bob leaving, or he's asked for a raise and plead a good case, he's going to get it. If Alice or Charlie have been silent all year but have been doing an otherwise good job, they're going to get what's leftover- in general. There have been a number of cases where we idtenified someone silently kick major ass and threw money at them, but that I think it is because we had very conscientious managers that worked closely with their subordinates, unlike BigCo. I'm not even going to touch on all the other reasons that people have laid out as possible reasons why women tend to earn less. I think if you've got two people working well, doing the exact same job and producing the exact same outputs, they should be paid nearly equally, but we're humans and life is messy. Some people haggle better than others, some had a very low salary before that the new job used to baseline, etc. If you really want to maximize your salary at an given job, argue for every last penny coming in. All future raises (for the most part) will be based off that number and it will haunt you for your entire tenure at the company- most likely.
dreta 9y ago
I'd ask what constitutes "same level", and what's the overtime gap between genders, if there is one, but why do that when we can have a good ol' laugh at how Google made their own bed, and now we can watch them use the same "it's more complicated than that" arguments used by people who Google think are "propagating sexist stereotypes".
wolco 9y ago
Not a surprise google tends to hire the best and the pool of men are bigger thus the best of that group will require more salary to land the talent.
air7 9y ago
I keep wondering what is the economical explanation for the existence of the gender pay gap? Assuming women and men employees are (generally speaking) equally skilled yet differently compensated (for whatever reason), rational employers would actually prefer to hire women over men. Just like with any other purchase, all things being equal, cheaper is better. Perhaps "old" companies with a "tradition" might have a status-quo bias, but new startups/smart CEOs that really try to minimize their burn rate would obviously see this. Over time more and more women employees would be sought after more then men, which would eventually lead to an equilibrium and remove the pay gap. So why hasn't this happened (yet)?
- paperpunk 9y ago
  Because it's more complicated that. Hiring decisions, career progression decisions, salary decisions are not made by an algorithm trying to balance the sheets. They're made by humans with biases.
- michaelt 9y ago
  Companies actually do irrational things all the time. Have you seen how many people on here report they have to change jobs to get a raise? Or how often companies will spend $200 worth of employees' time on bureaucracy before replacing a $100 broken chair?
- mikeash 9y ago
  "rational employers" Well there's your problem. Humans are mostly irrational. Massively so. Rationality isn't the default state, it's not to be expected, it's a rare and precious jewel. So many nerds dismiss the idea of systematic bias because "rational people wouldn't do that." This is true. It's also true that leprechauns wouldn't do that. Both statements are equally tied to reality.
  - guitarbill 9y ago
    Except that the "systematic" bias only seems to be happening in some fields, and ironically in a field that kind of relies on rationality, or at least logic. Obviously, it's because everybody in that field is either a frat boy or evil, and there can be no other explanation /s
Kiro 9y ago
I don't understand why Google gets so much heat when they seem to be one of the better companies in the world in regards to diversity. I've been at several companies where literally all managers are men and women no more than objects that are hired based on their looks. Executive meetings are spent discussing female coworkers attributes and who has managed to get laid with who.
- stephenr 9y ago
  > they surely must be one of the better companies in the world I have no idea how google rates on any employee scale but why "surely"?
  - Kiro 9y ago
    You're right. I rephrased it.
- ci5er 9y ago
  That doesn't sound like the kind of behavior anyone would want to encourage. I will say (anecdotally) that the women that I hired as individual technical contributors and promoted to managers were (on average -- with a small sample size) better at adapting to their new responsibilities than the men. I didn't hear much of the kind of talk you are talking about -- but I discouraged employee fraternization of that type -- and maybe I was wrong to do so. (This was a while back - maybe norms have changed?)
imaginenore 9y ago
This is useless, if you don't control for factors other than sex. Men tend to work longer hours, take fewer sick days. Education and extra-curricular activities don't seem to be taken into account, which can easily explain the gap in the lower tiers.
- walshemj 9y ago
  how does that apply for salaried positions google doesn't pay by the hour outwith janitorial and similar blue collar staff - who are probably out sourced
  - imaginenore 9y ago
    They know men will work longer hours, so it makes sense to offer more.
gaius 9y ago
What Google pays men versus women is at the heart of a dispute with the Department of Labor. The company is fighting over how much data it needs to hand over What are they hiding? They must know what that data will reveal is the only explanation.
Radim 9y ago
For a good (if scary) insight into the "hidden bias" and "forced diversity" culture inside Google, have a listen to the recent James Damore interview at Joe Rogan's podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQ1JeII0eGo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQ1JeII0eGo They recount the ways people have been misrepresenting James' (rather meek) position, right down to accusations of sexism, nazism, malicious removal of academic references and outright lies. A sad testimony of this day and age and the current media climate in the US. It's like people think covering their ears shouting "LALALA NOT TRUE, WILL NOT DISCUSS" has ever been a constructive way of addressing social issues. I wish Google would come clean and release the raw stats. I understand that's one politically loaded and sensitive dataset, but nothing beats drawing your own conclusions. Right now, Google is getting flak from all sides, lose-lose.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- bedhead 9y ago
  Heck, if I recall, Google hasn't even disclosed what exact part of their own code of conduct Mr. Damore was in violation of. Kind of important, don't we think? I suspect these things are purposefully written to be so vague that virtually anything can be interpreted as being in violation. Their reluctance to disclose what specifically he violated (they wouldn't even him when they fired him) suggests they know they would be laughed at.
  - throw789asd789 9y ago
    He was fired for insinuating women are genetically inferior to men. The fact he couched it in pseudo-science, doesn't make that any less true. That's harmful to Google's image, and no woman would want to work with him after that, so he's toxic. They have every right to fire such a person.
    - bedhead 9y ago
      Yawn
kirillkh 9y ago
I wonder whether the effort in question was scientific. In particular, did it control for life-style (e.g., single without children, married with children)? Sociological results on sex-related biases have been reversed when properly controlled for this parameter [1], which warrants skepticism towards any study that doesn't give it a serious consideration. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4418903/pdf/pnas.201418878.pdf https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4418903/pdf/pna...
rakshithbekal 9y ago
So?
- dang 9y ago
  Please don't break the HN guidelines by posting like this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
curtis 9y ago
It doesn't just matter that men are paid more than women, it also matters why. The article is more nuanced than the title on this point, but it still doesn't come off as very nuanced. But then none of the discussion around this topic ever does.
Veratyr 9y ago
> The self-reported Google salary spreadsheet [...] That's all I needed to see. Nothing worthwhile here. The people who'll tend to report will be the people who are worried about how much they earn. I'd say all this shows is that men are less worried about how much they earn than women.
mindcrash 9y ago
Did they also look at the reasons why men are paid more? Because "men are paid more than women" alone simply says NOTHING. In the company I used to work there were HUGE salary differences between men with the same job title, and the difference sometimes could run up hundreds of euros. The main reason was that the better paid men negotiated their terms of employment WAY better than those that got paid less. I suspect to see something very much alike here. Also, I would like to see the salary distribution within men and women, because I can almost certainly guarantee that some women are paid more than some men, but I don't think we will ever see that because that would destroy the entire "all men are paid more than women for no reason other than they are men" narrative some people are still trying to push, while it is related to a LOT of other things other than just pure gender. BTW, if a salary difference is SUCH a big problem why stick with the companies who do this? Why not find employment somewhere else, or start your own company with better working conditions? It isn't like you are FORCED to work for Google or any other of the big corps in Silicon Valley if you don't like how they treat people there.

54 points by bspn 9y ago

It's unfortunate that Alphabet declined to present their data, that way we'd likely be able to correct for things like location and seniority along with having solid deviation rates.

sysdyne 9y ago

Incoming flagged by Google corporate drones.

sctb 9y ago
The guidelines ask you not to do this, especially with the cheap insult. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- dilemma 9y ago
  Hardly an insult. Why do you treat Google different than other companies?
  - striking 9y ago
    They don't. You just have a really boring comment. It doesn't bring anything new to the table.
    - sysdyne 9y ago
      Actually I 1. Made a prediction 2. Turn out to be accurate Step 3 Publish "The HN echo chamber manifesto" Step 4 ???? Step 5 Profit
      - dang 9y ago
        It wasn't accurate at all, because you don't know who flagged the story. Moreover you're breaking the HN guidelines not only by calling names but by insinuating astroturfing/shillage without evidence. Plus you've done this before. Please stop.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

OzzyB 9y ago

> At Google, Employee-Led Effort Finds Software Engineers Are Paid More Than Front-End Developers > At Google, Employee-Led Effort Finds Data Scientists Are Paid More Than Web Designers > At Google, Employee-Led Effort Finds AI Researchers Are Paid More Than Project Managers I could do this all day... Any chance they'll release the data that backs up this statistical claim?

to_bpr 9y ago
>Any chance they'll release the data that backs up this statistical claim? It was probably a pretty half baked, self-reported Google form so the data may not be worth much.
gyardley 9y ago
Yes, it would be nice to see the raw data, but note that they've bucketed Level 1 through Level 6 employees, and have still found gender discrepancies. Are you suggesting that different jobs might occupy the same level but have widely differing compensation? That might be true - I don't know Google well enough - but that's not how salary bands usually work.
- guitarbill 9y ago
  It's exactly how salary bands work - they're designed to be opaque. If you have women who largely choose to work in Foo with a compensations which puts them at the top of the band 1 and at the bottom of band 2, and men who work in Bar that starts with compensation at the bottom of band 1, but a promotion gets you to the middle of band 2, then you'll get that in band 1, women earn more, but in band 2, men earn more. This is why you must know the actual distributions (which includes weighting and deviation/variance), and the job role. Indeed, in level 2, seems like women earn more - maybe? might not even be significant though. In any case, I'll bet job role correlates far more strongly with compensation than gender.
alexashka 9y ago
You mean any chance they'll release data, do proper analysis, post an unbiased view on things to inform the public on the issue? Do real journalism? I highly doubt it.

qaq 9y ago

We would need a lot more data, I work for a much smaller company vs Google yet we can easily have people who while formally at a lower level can make beyond VP level comp. because of their unique tech. skills and experience. I imagine Google has a fairly large group of famous eng. etc. who could scew results greatly should they get to be part of the sample.

throwaway-g 9y ago

Why is it that stupid memos are leaked while the raw data to this prefabricated conclusion isn't? If properly anonymized I don't see harm done to anybody.

wpietri 9y ago

One of the things this misses is that even if these numbers were even, systemic gender bias means that things would likely be unfair. Even if Google were perfectly fair internally, women coming in from academia are likely to have faced gender bias [1], meaning less impressive resumes and therefore lower starting positions. Similar logic applies to women coming in from industry: one component to hiring pay and title is previous pay and title; external bias can easily be imported. But it would be a miracle if Google were perfectly fair internally given our society's long history of sexism, documented gender bias in academia (from which Google draws some of its culture and a lot of its people), and the ongoing issues in the tech industry. I'd expect Google's promotion ladder to reflect that to one extent or another, meaning that the levels themselves have some level of bias to them. [1] e.g., http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.abstract http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.abstract and http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/apl-0000022.pdf http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/apl-0000022.pdf

guitarbill 9y ago
> Even if Google were perfectly fair internally, women coming in from academia are likely to have faced gender bias [1], meaning less impressive resumes and therefore lower starting positions. To play devil's advocate, if the performance review process was good/perfect and skill = compensation, factors like "less impressive resumes" should even out pretty quickly, right?
- wpietri 9y ago
  I doubt it. I once had an employee who had accepted an entry-level engineering position when they really were qualified for two levels above that. I was explicitly told they couldn't skip levels, and that I could only put them up for promotion so often. But even at a place that didn't have slow-down-there bias built in to the promotion process, the way you prove you're qualified for the next level is by doing work that's above your current level. Nobody will give staff engineer work to somebody in an entry level position; there's too much jockeying for that work by people one level down. So there's a practical limit to the rate at which somebody can advance even with no bias.
9y ago

redm 9y ago

I'm interested to know if pay varies between men in the same positions too. Are bonus amounts fixed or are there other variables?

guitarbill 9y ago

It feels like these things become self-fulfilling prophecies, because of the way this issue is reported on. If "seven of nine technology companies, including Apple, Amazon.com and Microsoft, [disclosed] that data", would it be too much for an article to compare the unofficial Google numbers to that data? I'm not a big fan of large companies, I don't think they can win. Even if you have good numbers, that doesn't fit the narrative of "Silicon Valley has established itself as the boys’ club". Say for example, we applauded companies who are doing better, maybe even close to statistical significance, then you could say, "Hey, it's still not quite there yet, but it's close and we're doing better than others. Come work for us and help us make it right." And then that would be actionable advice, and companies would have a great reason to strive for this. But we'd also have to be honest about statistical error rates, and maybe some other stuff. I'll close on this, I've heard people say stupid and offensive shit when they're drunk, but never "Hey, let's pay women less", although I'm not an executive. So I feel like it isn't a common thought... unless you keep reading articles like this one.

manyxcxi 9y ago
I've hired plenty of people, and been in three times as many discussions of pay with everyone from the janitor to the CEO and I've never heard someone insinuate that we could pay less because the person is female, but I've heard people say "...and we get the bonus of having her be female to make our numbers look better..." before. Here's what I think a big driver is (you're going to have to walk down premise lane with me as I don't want to spend the time on citations ATM): Presuming that women are in general more agreeable than man in the workplace and that they don't fight as hard and as often for raises, I would expect an otherwise equal male counterpart that is more aggressive to have higher pay. Why? Because the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Every year when we did promotions we'd start out with a zero-sum raise pool. Let's say if everyone got exactly the same, they'd get 2%. But if I give Bob a raise of 4% I have to go 'take' that extra 2% from people or everyone. If I'm worried about Bob leaving, or he's asked for a raise and plead a good case, he's going to get it. If Alice or Charlie have been silent all year but have been doing an otherwise good job, they're going to get what's leftover- in general. There have been a number of cases where we idtenified someone silently kick major ass and threw money at them, but that I think it is because we had very conscientious managers that worked closely with their subordinates, unlike BigCo. I'm not even going to touch on all the other reasons that people have laid out as possible reasons why women tend to earn less. I think if you've got two people working well, doing the exact same job and producing the exact same outputs, they should be paid nearly equally, but we're humans and life is messy. Some people haggle better than others, some had a very low salary before that the new job used to baseline, etc. If you really want to maximize your salary at an given job, argue for every last penny coming in. All future raises (for the most part) will be based off that number and it will haunt you for your entire tenure at the company- most likely.

dreta 9y ago

I'd ask what constitutes "same level", and what's the overtime gap between genders, if there is one, but why do that when we can have a good ol' laugh at how Google made their own bed, and now we can watch them use the same "it's more complicated than that" arguments used by people who Google think are "propagating sexist stereotypes".

wolco 9y ago

Not a surprise google tends to hire the best and the pool of men are bigger thus the best of that group will require more salary to land the talent.

air7 9y ago

I keep wondering what is the economical explanation for the existence of the gender pay gap? Assuming women and men employees are (generally speaking) equally skilled yet differently compensated (for whatever reason), rational employers would actually prefer to hire women over men. Just like with any other purchase, all things being equal, cheaper is better. Perhaps "old" companies with a "tradition" might have a status-quo bias, but new startups/smart CEOs that really try to minimize their burn rate would obviously see this. Over time more and more women employees would be sought after more then men, which would eventually lead to an equilibrium and remove the pay gap. So why hasn't this happened (yet)?

paperpunk 9y ago
Because it's more complicated that. Hiring decisions, career progression decisions, salary decisions are not made by an algorithm trying to balance the sheets. They're made by humans with biases.
michaelt 9y ago
Companies actually do irrational things all the time. Have you seen how many people on here report they have to change jobs to get a raise? Or how often companies will spend $200 worth of employees' time on bureaucracy before replacing a $100 broken chair?
mikeash 9y ago
"rational employers" Well there's your problem. Humans are mostly irrational. Massively so. Rationality isn't the default state, it's not to be expected, it's a rare and precious jewel. So many nerds dismiss the idea of systematic bias because "rational people wouldn't do that." This is true. It's also true that leprechauns wouldn't do that. Both statements are equally tied to reality.
- guitarbill 9y ago
  Except that the "systematic" bias only seems to be happening in some fields, and ironically in a field that kind of relies on rationality, or at least logic. Obviously, it's because everybody in that field is either a frat boy or evil, and there can be no other explanation /s

Kiro 9y ago

I don't understand why Google gets so much heat when they seem to be one of the better companies in the world in regards to diversity. I've been at several companies where literally all managers are men and women no more than objects that are hired based on their looks. Executive meetings are spent discussing female coworkers attributes and who has managed to get laid with who.

stephenr 9y ago
> they surely must be one of the better companies in the world I have no idea how google rates on any employee scale but why "surely"?
- Kiro 9y ago
  You're right. I rephrased it.
ci5er 9y ago
That doesn't sound like the kind of behavior anyone would want to encourage. I will say (anecdotally) that the women that I hired as individual technical contributors and promoted to managers were (on average -- with a small sample size) better at adapting to their new responsibilities than the men. I didn't hear much of the kind of talk you are talking about -- but I discouraged employee fraternization of that type -- and maybe I was wrong to do so. (This was a while back - maybe norms have changed?)

imaginenore 9y ago

This is useless, if you don't control for factors other than sex. Men tend to work longer hours, take fewer sick days. Education and extra-curricular activities don't seem to be taken into account, which can easily explain the gap in the lower tiers.

walshemj 9y ago
how does that apply for salaried positions google doesn't pay by the hour outwith janitorial and similar blue collar staff - who are probably out sourced
- imaginenore 9y ago
  They know men will work longer hours, so it makes sense to offer more.

gaius 9y ago

What Google pays men versus women is at the heart of a dispute with the Department of Labor. The company is fighting over how much data it needs to hand over What are they hiding? They must know what that data will reveal is the only explanation.

Radim 9y ago

For a good (if scary) insight into the "hidden bias" and "forced diversity" culture inside Google, have a listen to the recent James Damore interview at Joe Rogan's podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQ1JeII0eGo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQ1JeII0eGo They recount the ways people have been misrepresenting James' (rather meek) position, right down to accusations of sexism, nazism, malicious removal of academic references and outright lies. A sad testimony of this day and age and the current media climate in the US. It's like people think covering their ears shouting "LALALA NOT TRUE, WILL NOT DISCUSS" has ever been a constructive way of addressing social issues. I wish Google would come clean and release the raw stats. I understand that's one politically loaded and sensitive dataset, but nothing beats drawing your own conclusions. Right now, Google is getting flak from all sides, lose-lose.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
bedhead 9y ago
Heck, if I recall, Google hasn't even disclosed what exact part of their own code of conduct Mr. Damore was in violation of. Kind of important, don't we think? I suspect these things are purposefully written to be so vague that virtually anything can be interpreted as being in violation. Their reluctance to disclose what specifically he violated (they wouldn't even him when they fired him) suggests they know they would be laughed at.
- throw789asd789 9y ago
  He was fired for insinuating women are genetically inferior to men. The fact he couched it in pseudo-science, doesn't make that any less true. That's harmful to Google's image, and no woman would want to work with him after that, so he's toxic. They have every right to fire such a person.
  - bedhead 9y ago
    Yawn

kirillkh 9y ago

I wonder whether the effort in question was scientific. In particular, did it control for life-style (e.g., single without children, married with children)? Sociological results on sex-related biases have been reversed when properly controlled for this parameter [1], which warrants skepticism towards any study that doesn't give it a serious consideration. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4418903/pdf/pnas.201418878.pdf https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4418903/pdf/pna...

rakshithbekal 9y ago

So?

dang 9y ago
Please don't break the HN guidelines by posting like this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

curtis 9y ago

It doesn't just matter that men are paid more than women, it also matters why. The article is more nuanced than the title on this point, but it still doesn't come off as very nuanced. But then none of the discussion around this topic ever does.

Veratyr 9y ago

> The self-reported Google salary spreadsheet [...] That's all I needed to see. Nothing worthwhile here. The people who'll tend to report will be the people who are worried about how much they earn. I'd say all this shows is that men are less worried about how much they earn than women.

mindcrash 9y ago

Did they also look at the reasons why men are paid more? Because "men are paid more than women" alone simply says NOTHING. In the company I used to work there were HUGE salary differences between men with the same job title, and the difference sometimes could run up hundreds of euros. The main reason was that the better paid men negotiated their terms of employment WAY better than those that got paid less. I suspect to see something very much alike here. Also, I would like to see the salary distribution within men and women, because I can almost certainly guarantee that some women are paid more than some men, but I don't think we will ever see that because that would destroy the entire "all men are paid more than women for no reason other than they are men" narrative some people are still trying to push, while it is related to a LOT of other things other than just pure gender. BTW, if a salary difference is SUCH a big problem why stick with the companies who do this? Why not find employment somewhere else, or start your own company with better working conditions? It isn't like you are FORCED to work for Google or any other of the big corps in Silicon Valley if you don't like how they treat people there.