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Companies pay some employees more for pretty good reasons. I don't think they're thinking "Jim's a dude so we should pay him $50K more than Sally." No, they'r

Companies pay some employees more for pretty good reasons. I don't think they're thinking "Jim's a dude so we should pay him $50K more than Sally." No, they're paying somebody more because they don't want them to leave. And if they are paying you less than somebody else, it's probably partially because they don't think you are as much of a flight risk. And if Google is wrong about these decisions, I'd guess we'd see a lot more female engineers leaving Google to start their own companies. But is that what we see?

feminist17 9y ago
> Companies pay some employees more for pretty good reasons. I think you give companies too much credit. Those pretty good reasons are typically that that's how much they asked, it wasn't unreasonable, and they passed the interviews. People's salaries are all over the map for the same sorts of positions, and it's not just IT and development. But, even though it might not be a clearcut answer to whether there is discrimination or bias in salaries, it should be explored. Even data with a wide, overlapping range doesn't mean that the mean and median can't be compared and valid conclusions drawn about probable bias. Google seems to take bias seriously, and I think if it could be proven with adequate certainty that salaries were affected by the sex of the employee alone, they'd do something about it.
- stretchwithme 9y ago
  I tend to think that successful companies tend to know what they are doing better than observers.
  - ajross 9y ago
    But the problem is "know what they are doing" can still be unfair. Consider: you're staffing up a company and need folks now. You've found two candidates who seem equally qualified and want to hire them. Both are asking for only a modest raise over their current salaries, but one happens to make 50% more than the other due to arbitrary reasons[1] having nothing to do with qualifications. What do you do? Realistically you give them both what they ask and pay them unfairly. Congratulations, you're now part of the problem. [1] Yeah, one is a dude.
    - TeMPOraL 9y ago
      And if we change [1] to "Yeah, one is a gal", then I'd expect a lot of pro-diversity people suddenly stop complaining that there's a problem. Ultimately, the only alternative is to pay people equally. Which won't fly generally, as companies always want to pay the minimum amount that can keep the employee from leaving.
      - kamaal 9y ago
        >>I'd expect a lot of pro-diversity people suddenly stop complaining that there's a problem. Isn't that their very argument? Their point is a few need to be paid more even if they don't work for it, to make up for what is lost. They are asking for inequality by very argument. Equality by their definition would be injustice to them.
      - spaceseaman 9y ago
        > I'd expect a lot of pro-diversity people suddenly stop complaining that there's a problem. The fun thing about making a straw-man is you make yourself immune from criticism. I can't attack this point without having to completely define someone who is "pro-diversity" (what's that even mean?), and give evidence that no one in that group has the traits you claim of ("look at this feminist, see I was right!"). More importantly, what's even your point if this straw-man were true? I could just as easily say this about anything. "Oh your life is shitty? Well I bet you wouldn't complain if things were working out well." It's an interesting case of vacuous truth! The argument is to make things better for the people who have it worse at the moment, correcting for previous inertia. In this case, the inertia is that men were previously paid more or gained an initial advantage that allowed them to be paid more, and then that advantage has percolated across their various positions until the difference becomes more stark all because as you say "companies always want to pay the minimum amount that can keep the employee from leaving". If that's the case, then if companies could pay women less for the same work, why wouldn't they? Similar arguments apply to affirmative action and similar programs. That's the argument at least, whether I agree with it is an entirely different question. What irks me is you dismissing the argument with your little straw-man and moving on to "the only alternative". You completely disregarded the points of everyone opposite the aisle of you in the most condescending way.
slyfocks 9y ago
This assumes venture capitalists don’t exhibit a bias towards male founders. Depending on the extent of bias (if any), female engineers would lose a bit of bargaining power with Google. Also, empirically, women tend to be more risk-averse than men on average, so Google (and other companies) could be paying less knowing the chance they’d leave is lower than a man of similar skill.
- runevault 9y ago
  It doesn't even have to be for the startup life. They could just leave to work at another established company. Though the rest of your point about being risk averse and so sticking with a job (and therefore being less of a flight risk) is more interesting and would be worth exploring.
- intoverflow2 9y ago
  Is venture capital a requirement to start a company?
- slavak 9y ago
  This is an interesting thought! If an employer pays people who are a flight-risk more (a-la "the squeaky wheel gets the grease"), and women are on average a lower flight risk because they are more risk-averse - is the resulting pay disparity a case of illegal discrimination? My intuition says no, but I'm not sure everyone (including the legal system) necessarily agrees.
krastanov 9y ago
It is definitely not that straightforward. You are probably right when referring to the top talent, but for the majority of the workforce it comes down to negotiations and raises. There is plenty of guilt to be spread around for everybody involved (like, "why don't women negotiate more"), but there are also known well-measured biases against female engineers (SWE has a neat "research" page listing reproduced studies on the topic, same with Project Implicit).
majormajor 9y ago
The biggest one I've seen is "we pay them Y because they already made X." So if it's biased externally it's gonna look that way internally if you're not proactive.
stale2002 9y ago
Unfortunately for Google, paying women less because "They can get away with it" (ie, women are less of a flight risk), is still illegal.
- stretchwithme 9y ago
  I don't think that's the situation I'm describing. If a company could replace an engineer that is more likely to leave with an equally productive one who is likely to stay, they wouldn't hesitate to wave good bye. What amazes me is the confidence with which people equate the work of engineers when they actually have no stake in making that judgement correctly. You see, if you are paying the money and living with the results, you have a much greater incentive to make this call correctly. And those who are unhappy with these judgements have a much greater incentive to equate engineers who aren't actually comparable. It's called politics.
  - stale2002 9y ago
    The business reason as to why a company would discriminate against certain groups is perfectly rational. I mean, if a company can get away with paying women 70 cents on the dollar, because women are worse at negotiating or have less negotiation power (ie everyone ELSE is also discriminating against them, therefore they have less counter offers), then of course they would do it. It has nothing at all to do with "making the correct call". It has to do with making the profit maximizing decision to pay a group of people less because you can get away with it. That doesn't change the fact that this is still illegal.
    - Spivak 9y ago
      Bit in the same breath if you can get away with getting an equally talented employee for 70¢ on the dollar then why would you ever hire a man?
      - stale2002 9y ago
        The way that it works is that you hire anyone at all who can pass the hiring bar, and then negotiate salary afterwords. The problem is quantity. At the end of the day, if only X people that you interview pass your hiring bar, it is impossible to hire more than X. You can't just say "Lets double X!". Now, would companies do things like try to reach out to women groups, so as to increase the amount that interview with them, and therefore increase the proportion that are hired? Yes, absolutely they would do that. As has been demonstrated by all the diversity reachout efforts that companies are doing to women and minority groups. Diversity efforts are PROFITABLE.
Romanulus 9y ago
What you're talking about is referred to as a 'market opportunity', which in this case doesn't hold water since I don't know of any successful all-female (or majority-female) tech companies.
- Consultant32452 9y ago
  In order to believe that you have to believe that literally 100% of tech hiring companies/managers are sexist. If even ONE was not, they'd wind up with all the women because they'd be willing to pay those women more money than every other company. I'm very open to the idea that there's sexism in tech, but the idea that literally 100% of everyone is sexist doesn't seem plausible.
  - spaceseaman 9y ago
    Huh? It's not that the companies are sexist Or the managers are sexist Or the engineers are exist Or you're sexist. That's not what anyone has been saying this whole time - ever. You have completely misunderstood the point. The system is sexist. Not the people in the system, but the system itself (similar arguments exist for police departments being racist - it's not the cops that are, but the system). In this case, the general consensus is that women are paid less than men in tech due to a variety of reasons. A culture can also be sexist. While the people within it can harbor no ill will whatsoever, their behaviors and group dynamics can actively prevent a woman from being welcome. In this case, people are calling the tech "culture" sexist. Here's a couple examples of a sexist culture I've seen in my own workplace. Note that none of the people here meant any harm, nor were there actions actively "sexist" in the common parlance, but they still did things that made people want to GTFO if they're a chick: * I had a coworker who used to grill the woman on the team much more fiercely than the men. I never asked why this was - didn't have a great way to broach the topic. But it was always extremely obvious, and I have noticed it on HackerNews, Reddit, and pretty much every video game I've ever played. Men are very critical of women in jobs that men are already the predominant workers in. Female doctors and lawyers have had this issue for decades as well. It's not a sexist action. In my eyes it happens totally accidentally (My pet theory is that because we aren't used to seeing women in the field, we tend to be more involved when giving them criticism) * My coworker had this anime poster in his cube with some half-naked bikini clad girl. Do I even have to mention why a girl might feel a little awkward here? See how these things aren't actually bad in isolation? But over time, and in great numbers, they add up and make women feel like shit working at your company because they can never truly "fit in" with the guys. That's sexism in work culture and whether it's ever truly fixable is a great question. I highly recommend you read some literature from across the aisle to become more familiar with the arguments you're facing, rather than the arguments you think you're facing. I highly recommend bell hooks' books on the subject. She's extremely clear and lucid and helped me grok a lot of the logic my first time around.
linkregister 9y ago
I feel you missed something important in the article. The plaintiffs are asserting that there is a pervasive irrational cultural bias by managers that assumes people like them are superior engineers. The entire premise of the lawsuit is that the managers are working contrary to the best interest of Google. Companies are made of people, and no matter how much CEOs might want employees to behave a certain way, employees are still beholden to their cognitive biases. The optimum situation for Google would be to pay all employees the market rate for the level of quality they desire. This would basically yield a meritocratic pay structure. But this is not what happened. The plaintiffs were awarded different pay grades for measurably comparable ability. This is suboptimal for Google and for society; that is why Google is being sued.
- lloyd-christmas 9y ago
  > But this is not what happened. The plaintiffs were awarded different pay grades for measurably comparable ability. The article doesn't say that. It says they were awarded different pay grades given an equal time spent in the worforce, not that their abilities were comparable.
Chris2048 9y ago
I think to complete the picture, we need to consider "what percentage of ex-google engineers leave.. and fail". The difference might make up the pay gap.

feminist17 9y ago

> Companies pay some employees more for pretty good reasons. I think you give companies too much credit. Those pretty good reasons are typically that that's how much they asked, it wasn't unreasonable, and they passed the interviews. People's salaries are all over the map for the same sorts of positions, and it's not just IT and development. But, even though it might not be a clearcut answer to whether there is discrimination or bias in salaries, it should be explored. Even data with a wide, overlapping range doesn't mean that the mean and median can't be compared and valid conclusions drawn about probable bias. Google seems to take bias seriously, and I think if it could be proven with adequate certainty that salaries were affected by the sex of the employee alone, they'd do something about it.

stretchwithme 9y ago
I tend to think that successful companies tend to know what they are doing better than observers.
- ajross 9y ago
  But the problem is "know what they are doing" can still be unfair. Consider: you're staffing up a company and need folks now. You've found two candidates who seem equally qualified and want to hire them. Both are asking for only a modest raise over their current salaries, but one happens to make 50% more than the other due to arbitrary reasons[1] having nothing to do with qualifications. What do you do? Realistically you give them both what they ask and pay them unfairly. Congratulations, you're now part of the problem. [1] Yeah, one is a dude.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    And if we change [1] to "Yeah, one is a gal", then I'd expect a lot of pro-diversity people suddenly stop complaining that there's a problem. Ultimately, the only alternative is to pay people equally. Which won't fly generally, as companies always want to pay the minimum amount that can keep the employee from leaving.
    - kamaal 9y ago
      >>I'd expect a lot of pro-diversity people suddenly stop complaining that there's a problem. Isn't that their very argument? Their point is a few need to be paid more even if they don't work for it, to make up for what is lost. They are asking for inequality by very argument. Equality by their definition would be injustice to them.
    - spaceseaman 9y ago
      > I'd expect a lot of pro-diversity people suddenly stop complaining that there's a problem. The fun thing about making a straw-man is you make yourself immune from criticism. I can't attack this point without having to completely define someone who is "pro-diversity" (what's that even mean?), and give evidence that no one in that group has the traits you claim of ("look at this feminist, see I was right!"). More importantly, what's even your point if this straw-man were true? I could just as easily say this about anything. "Oh your life is shitty? Well I bet you wouldn't complain if things were working out well." It's an interesting case of vacuous truth! The argument is to make things better for the people who have it worse at the moment, correcting for previous inertia. In this case, the inertia is that men were previously paid more or gained an initial advantage that allowed them to be paid more, and then that advantage has percolated across their various positions until the difference becomes more stark all because as you say "companies always want to pay the minimum amount that can keep the employee from leaving". If that's the case, then if companies could pay women less for the same work, why wouldn't they? Similar arguments apply to affirmative action and similar programs. That's the argument at least, whether I agree with it is an entirely different question. What irks me is you dismissing the argument with your little straw-man and moving on to "the only alternative". You completely disregarded the points of everyone opposite the aisle of you in the most condescending way.

slyfocks 9y ago

This assumes venture capitalists don’t exhibit a bias towards male founders. Depending on the extent of bias (if any), female engineers would lose a bit of bargaining power with Google. Also, empirically, women tend to be more risk-averse than men on average, so Google (and other companies) could be paying less knowing the chance they’d leave is lower than a man of similar skill.

runevault 9y ago
It doesn't even have to be for the startup life. They could just leave to work at another established company. Though the rest of your point about being risk averse and so sticking with a job (and therefore being less of a flight risk) is more interesting and would be worth exploring.
intoverflow2 9y ago
Is venture capital a requirement to start a company?
slavak 9y ago
This is an interesting thought! If an employer pays people who are a flight-risk more (a-la "the squeaky wheel gets the grease"), and women are on average a lower flight risk because they are more risk-averse - is the resulting pay disparity a case of illegal discrimination? My intuition says no, but I'm not sure everyone (including the legal system) necessarily agrees.

krastanov 9y ago

It is definitely not that straightforward. You are probably right when referring to the top talent, but for the majority of the workforce it comes down to negotiations and raises. There is plenty of guilt to be spread around for everybody involved (like, "why don't women negotiate more"), but there are also known well-measured biases against female engineers (SWE has a neat "research" page listing reproduced studies on the topic, same with Project Implicit).

majormajor 9y ago

The biggest one I've seen is "we pay them Y because they already made X." So if it's biased externally it's gonna look that way internally if you're not proactive.

stale2002 9y ago

Unfortunately for Google, paying women less because "They can get away with it" (ie, women are less of a flight risk), is still illegal.

stretchwithme 9y ago
I don't think that's the situation I'm describing. If a company could replace an engineer that is more likely to leave with an equally productive one who is likely to stay, they wouldn't hesitate to wave good bye. What amazes me is the confidence with which people equate the work of engineers when they actually have no stake in making that judgement correctly. You see, if you are paying the money and living with the results, you have a much greater incentive to make this call correctly. And those who are unhappy with these judgements have a much greater incentive to equate engineers who aren't actually comparable. It's called politics.
- stale2002 9y ago
  The business reason as to why a company would discriminate against certain groups is perfectly rational. I mean, if a company can get away with paying women 70 cents on the dollar, because women are worse at negotiating or have less negotiation power (ie everyone ELSE is also discriminating against them, therefore they have less counter offers), then of course they would do it. It has nothing at all to do with "making the correct call". It has to do with making the profit maximizing decision to pay a group of people less because you can get away with it. That doesn't change the fact that this is still illegal.
  - Spivak 9y ago
    Bit in the same breath if you can get away with getting an equally talented employee for 70¢ on the dollar then why would you ever hire a man?
    - stale2002 9y ago
      The way that it works is that you hire anyone at all who can pass the hiring bar, and then negotiate salary afterwords. The problem is quantity. At the end of the day, if only X people that you interview pass your hiring bar, it is impossible to hire more than X. You can't just say "Lets double X!". Now, would companies do things like try to reach out to women groups, so as to increase the amount that interview with them, and therefore increase the proportion that are hired? Yes, absolutely they would do that. As has been demonstrated by all the diversity reachout efforts that companies are doing to women and minority groups. Diversity efforts are PROFITABLE.

Romanulus 9y ago

What you're talking about is referred to as a 'market opportunity', which in this case doesn't hold water since I don't know of any successful all-female (or majority-female) tech companies.

Consultant32452 9y ago
In order to believe that you have to believe that literally 100% of tech hiring companies/managers are sexist. If even ONE was not, they'd wind up with all the women because they'd be willing to pay those women more money than every other company. I'm very open to the idea that there's sexism in tech, but the idea that literally 100% of everyone is sexist doesn't seem plausible.
- spaceseaman 9y ago
  Huh? It's not that the companies are sexist Or the managers are sexist Or the engineers are exist Or you're sexist. That's not what anyone has been saying this whole time - ever. You have completely misunderstood the point. The system is sexist. Not the people in the system, but the system itself (similar arguments exist for police departments being racist - it's not the cops that are, but the system). In this case, the general consensus is that women are paid less than men in tech due to a variety of reasons. A culture can also be sexist. While the people within it can harbor no ill will whatsoever, their behaviors and group dynamics can actively prevent a woman from being welcome. In this case, people are calling the tech "culture" sexist. Here's a couple examples of a sexist culture I've seen in my own workplace. Note that none of the people here meant any harm, nor were there actions actively "sexist" in the common parlance, but they still did things that made people want to GTFO if they're a chick: * I had a coworker who used to grill the woman on the team much more fiercely than the men. I never asked why this was - didn't have a great way to broach the topic. But it was always extremely obvious, and I have noticed it on HackerNews, Reddit, and pretty much every video game I've ever played. Men are very critical of women in jobs that men are already the predominant workers in. Female doctors and lawyers have had this issue for decades as well. It's not a sexist action. In my eyes it happens totally accidentally (My pet theory is that because we aren't used to seeing women in the field, we tend to be more involved when giving them criticism) * My coworker had this anime poster in his cube with some half-naked bikini clad girl. Do I even have to mention why a girl might feel a little awkward here? See how these things aren't actually bad in isolation? But over time, and in great numbers, they add up and make women feel like shit working at your company because they can never truly "fit in" with the guys. That's sexism in work culture and whether it's ever truly fixable is a great question. I highly recommend you read some literature from across the aisle to become more familiar with the arguments you're facing, rather than the arguments you think you're facing. I highly recommend bell hooks' books on the subject. She's extremely clear and lucid and helped me grok a lot of the logic my first time around.

linkregister 9y ago

I feel you missed something important in the article. The plaintiffs are asserting that there is a pervasive irrational cultural bias by managers that assumes people like them are superior engineers. The entire premise of the lawsuit is that the managers are working contrary to the best interest of Google. Companies are made of people, and no matter how much CEOs might want employees to behave a certain way, employees are still beholden to their cognitive biases. The optimum situation for Google would be to pay all employees the market rate for the level of quality they desire. This would basically yield a meritocratic pay structure. But this is not what happened. The plaintiffs were awarded different pay grades for measurably comparable ability. This is suboptimal for Google and for society; that is why Google is being sued.

lloyd-christmas 9y ago
> But this is not what happened. The plaintiffs were awarded different pay grades for measurably comparable ability. The article doesn't say that. It says they were awarded different pay grades given an equal time spent in the worforce, not that their abilities were comparable.

Chris2048 9y ago

I think to complete the picture, we need to consider "what percentage of ex-google engineers leave.. and fail". The difference might make up the pay gap.