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Oracle allegedly underpaid $400M in wages to underrepresented employees

334 points by samfisher83 8y ago

anilshanbhag 8y ago
There is no shortage of jobs for someone working at Oracle. If someone feels underpaid, they can just jump ship. I have friends who work at Oracle and their salaries are fairly competitive. I am no Oracle fanboy but this just seems like a bunch of jobless federal employees dragging their feet around.
- bobthepanda 8y ago
  This is only great advice if Oracle is the only one giving lower pay to minority or female employees. Google is subject to a similar probe, and Palantir had to settle with the government. And these are the cases that we know about publicly. Given that Apple, Google, Intel, and Adobe were conspiring to limit labor competition, constant vigilance of tech companies' labor practices are totally warranted.
  - dhh2106 8y ago
    How were they conspiring to limit labor competition? Completely agree constant vigilance is important. It also shouldn't matter that many employees can switch jobs. All employees cannot (personal circumstances, visas, etc). It also doesn't waive the company of its responsibility for fair pay.
    - dinedal 8y ago
      I believe the parent post is referring to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
    - locopati 8y ago
      http://fortune.com/2015/09/03/koh-anti-poach-order/ http://fortune.com/2015/09/03/koh-anti-poach-order/
    - njarboe 8y ago
      This lawsuit[1] should be better well known in tech circles. I think it is one of the reasons salaries have been going sky-high at to top tech companies over the last five years. It is really too bad the class action lawyers settled for a relatively small amount and did not go to trial for a larger settlement and to expose more info on what they did. [1]https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2014/04/24/google-apple-intel-adobe-settle-high-tech-workers-lawsuit/ https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2014/04/24/google-apple-in...
  - epicureanideal 8y ago
    I'm genuinely interested to see the research that shows that women and minorities (other than those clearly disadvantaged by visa status) are being underpaid for the same qualifications and same work. I've worked at many companies, including as a hiring manager, and I have not observed anyone ever trying to intentionally underpay female or minority candidates. If anything, the female or minority candidates were sought after by multiple companies to improve their diversity statistics, so had a better bargaining position and eventual salary outcome than an equivalently qualified male non-minority candidate. On the other hand, I have heard with my own ears in company meetings (not my current employer) that we already employ "enough" non-minority males, and should prefer to hire minorities and women over others. I've personally experienced and also heard from others that they've been pressured to give female and minority candidates the benefit of the doubt when they would've failed interviews had they been someone else. As an alternative explanation for any observed difference in pay... Anecdotally, there are lots of non-minority male nerds who spend ridiculous amounts of time reading tech books and working on work related side projects, to the point that they have no social lives and may never have a family. Even if we compare a sample of male and female candidates with the education and years of experience, a few outlier workaholic geeks (especially given power-law compensation) could throw off the averages and make it seem that women are discriminated against. I'd also like to see research that controls for things like... what school did the individuals study at, not just their degree? A CSU grad will probably make less than a UC grad. What classes did they take? (To control for people who take minimums vs take intense courses.) How many hours per week do they devote to their career outside of work on average? How many hours do they work on average? And so on. If these are difficult variables to control for, that makes my point... we can't say it's a result of discrimination unless we've controlled for all the actual variables. To zoom out for a minute... I'm very much interested in everyone getting equal opportunity and equal pay for equal work. But it does NOBODY any favors to try to make political points with sloppy or intentionally misleading research, because all it does is alienate potential allies and make them think the debate is not honest.
    - torpidor 8y ago
      I think you don’t understand the point of view of diversity advocates. (I don’t mean this negatively, it’s often difficult to understand people who have very different perspectives) > I have not observed anyone ever trying to intentionally underpay female or minority candidates Most bad things that happen in our world are not intentional. Car accidents kill millions each year. One idea you may want to consider is that salaries are often set based on what someone earned previously. Therefore one bad actor can roll through 10 or more later positions without anyone acting intentionally. > there are lots of non-minority male nerds who spend ridiculous amounts of time... to the point that they have no social lives and may never have a family An alternative way to parse these same facts is that white men are more likely to be in an economic condition where it is possible to spend time on non-income-generating activities. For that matter I think at least some men believe a social or family life is not something they could have achieved. In any case I think it is harder to disentangle choices from cultural forces than you think. > I’d also like to see research that controls for things like... how many hours do they work on average? I’d like to see research that explains why working more hours is good for society. Buried in your questions are assumptions like “equal pay is fine as long as it doesn’t change the system too much” but the diversifist assumption is “lack of equal pay is a code smell for underlying problems in the system.” > we can’t say it’s a result of discrimination unless we’ve controlled for all the actual variables I think here you are projecting your values onto another position. (Intentional) discrimination is the problem that would annoy you, and so therefore diversity advocates should do research to establish a problem you would care about. From the perspective of incorporating you as a political constituency I don’t think you’re wrong. However, the actual pro-diversity position is something like “I’m annoyed that our society values traits common to X group and not traits common to Y or Z.” As a person in X group this argument is statistically unlikely to impress you, but it is harder to tease out if this is because you intentionally dislike Y (“intentional discrimination”), if there is something important we will lose if we start to prefer more Y traits (perhaps a traditional conservative type position) or if it is just hard to envision a society different than the actual one we live in.
  - pc86 8y ago
    > And these are the cases that we know about publicly. Well, we know about all the cases publicly because case records are public.
    - richardknop 8y ago
      All the cases that made it to court. Very likely this is still going on, just better concealed.
- ProAm 8y ago
  What division of Oracle do your friends work in? Oracle is massive and salary range is diverse through each division/sector.
- matt4077 8y ago
  This is the oldest argument against all employment anti-discrimination efforts, namely „The free market will take care of it” It’s quite obvious that this idea was never true: companies were quite willing to forgo some money to keep their workforce male & white, to not approve mortgages for minorities trying to move to the “wrong” part of town (redlining), etc. In any case, your suggestion, even if workable, would seem to be eminently discriminatory: changing jobs, and everything it can entail such as moving a whole family, is in itself a harm nobody should suffer just for their gender/skin color/etc. In practical matters, people are often not aware of discrimination they suffer until long after, because compensation information is regarded as secret, and because it requires aggregation of many data points to show systemic biases.
  - zozbot123 8y ago
    The free market can only take care of persisting discrimination by adjusting compensating differentials, so as to provide an incentive for hiring those who are being discriminated against. So the fact that females and minorities are both said to be discriminated in hiring and underpaid at some places is per se proof that the free market is in fact working to address discrimination in hiring. Sure, we'd like to see equal pay for equal work too, but you gotta start somewhere...
    - jessaustin 8y ago
      This is reasonable, but now you've given up the game entirely. Oracle and similar firms receive massive benefits from society. First, they are allowed to exist in the first place, which is not obviously a just decision. Also, so many aspects of society are tweaked to make it easier for gigantic inefficient firms to profit consistently. Because of this, Oracle and firms like it owe us something more than merely responding to market conditions. At the very least, not discriminating against employees in illegal ways is part of what they owe.
      - Consultant32452 8y ago
        You guys seem really interested in this topic, so I thought I'd recommend the book The Economics of Discrimination by Becker. A lot of seemingly intuitive things about wage discrimination fall apart upon closer inspection. It's a really complex problem that in some cases has counter intuitively gotten worse since the Jim Crow days.
- TheOperator 8y ago
  Except that Oracle has colluded with other large companies in the past to fix wages. Enforced through the means of blacklisting employees who leave one large tech company to apply for jobs at another. Also enforced via non-complete clauses. While people working at Oracle may make more than the average person their wages are still depressed through big business cartels presenting a united front and thus a monospony. There is a market failure and people are responding by suing Oracle.
- airstrike 8y ago
  > If someone feels underpaid, they can just jump ship. Except if you're an immigrant, you can't just jump ship. But you have friends who work at Oracle, so you must have a very informed view. Great insight.
da_chicken 8y ago
Here's a followup[0][1] to the OFCCP vs Google suit mentioned in the article. Google showed it would cost more to produce the data than the value of the Federal contract, so OFCCP did not get complete access. [0]: https://www.shrm.org/ResourcesAndTools/legal-and-compliance/employment-law/Pages/Google-refusal-to-give-OFCCP-information-upheld.aspx https://www.shrm.org/ResourcesAndTools/legal-and-compliance/... [1]: https://outsolve.com/blog/alj-rules-in-ofccp-vs-googles-denial-of-access-case https://outsolve.com/blog/alj-rules-in-ofccp-vs-googles-deni...
- pc86 8y ago
  I was curious to see what the OFCCP asked for and it seems like an insanely huge undertaking to compile it, which was probably why the court ruled "OFCCP's request was not reasonable and was unduly burdensome." My favorite one is a tie between "salary and job history for each employee going back to the founding of the corporation in 1998 for any long-term employees" without defining long-term employees (perhaps OFCCP did define it?) and "the name, address, telephone number and personal email of every employee" in the 21,000-employee 2015 snapshot or the 19,539-employee 2014 snapshot.
  - sjg007 8y ago
    Doesn't seem that expensive to comply with this.
    - sokoloff 8y ago
      Imagine that you’ve changed payroll vendors, HR system vendors twice, and payroll/HR leads 5x across the timeframe in question. Now how hard/costly is it?
      - coredog64 8y ago
        Doesn’t Oracle sell a widely used financials package? I’m guessing they eat their own dog food.
    - Gibbon1 8y ago
projectramo 8y ago
Does the order of causality matter (either legally or ethically)? What I mean to say is, the article suggests that Oracle hired women and minorities to "funnel" them into low paying jobs. What if they set a very low wage and only minorities and foreign students were willing to accept those rates. Would that be just as bad? The difference of course is that the former is a critique of Oracle whereas the latter is a critique of the industry. This wording struck me as odd: Oracle “impermissibly denies equal employment opportunity to non-Asian applicants for employment, strongly preferring a workforce that it can later underpay. Once employed, women, Blacks and Asians are systematically underpaid relative to their peers,” the complaint alleges. Does that mean that people don't know the compensation associated with the position during the hiring negotiation?
- commandlinefan 8y ago
  I'm too cynical to see this as anything more than the first move by the tech companies themselves to push down waged for everybody in tech. Whether underrepresented minorities are being underpaid or not the net result of all of this will end up being everybody being paid less rather than a few people being paid more.
  - fucking_tragedy 8y ago
    > I'm too cynical to see this as anything more than the first move by the tech companies themselves to push down waged for everybody in tech What do you mean by first move? Google, Apple, Intel, Pixar, Adobe, Lucasfilm, eBay and Intuit were all found guilty of colluding to keep engineer compensation low[1][2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L... [2] http://fortune.com/2015/09/03/koh-anti-poach-order/ http://fortune.com/2015/09/03/koh-anti-poach-order/
- da_chicken 8y ago
  > What if they set a very low wage and only minorities and foreign students were willing to accept those rates. That is literally what the trial is intended to determine. E: Clarity
perpetualpatzer 8y ago
Leaving aside the merits of the underlying claim, the word "withheld" in the article's title seems a little misleading. I'd normally think of withholding wages as refusing to hand out paychecks which had been agreed upon. From the body of the article, the OFCCP seems rather to be claiming that there's a differential in salary between female/black/asian employees and white male employees and that foreign-born employees on student visas worked disproportionately in entry-level jobs, which are lower-paying.
- duxup 8y ago
  I felt the same way about the title. I went to read to see if they were actively holding back bonuses or something .... that isn't the case.
- larrik 8y ago
  I agree, "withheld" is a specific term with a specific meaning when it comes to employee payments. The headline does NOT match reality at all.
  - sctb 8y ago
    OK, we've gone with “underpaid” as in, “Once employed, women, Blacks and Asians are systematically underpaid relative to their peers,” from the complaint.
    - perpetualpatzer 8y ago
      Oh, great. Out of fairness to OP, the "withheld" wording was used in the source article, but think this title is probably clearer.
- rafiki6 8y ago
  Agreed, sensationalist and inaccurate title. I find that when publications or blogs with massive readership do this, it reflects poorly on their potentially valid argument and editorship. A better title might be "Oracle purposely underpays minorities"
duxup 8y ago
>Oracle’s underpayment of certain employees is driven by the company’s reliance on prior salary information Anyone know how that works exactly?
- 40acres 8y ago
  Discrimination is like compound interest, it builds upon itself. If you're a underrepresented minority, its more likely that at each stage of your career you've been low balled compensation wise, if a potential employer is going to use your previous salary as a baseline, there is no way out of the spiral that initially started with your first job.
  - duxup 8y ago
    I assumed that was the case as far as the systemic problem goes. Just wondering how Oracle was determining past pay, just asking? Using some site?
    - 40acres 8y ago
      I assume they just ask, outside of the H1B database, I have not seen a 100% credible representation of salary data for tech workers. Even then, the H1B database is anonymous and you'd have to do a lot of work to try to pin someone to a salary range. For the common man, negotiating really isnt a skill that has been developed. My girlfriend is interviewing with tech companies right now and I'm consistently reminding her to state a higher number not only if they ask for current salary (and to first off be diligent in not providing a number), but for the eventual negotiation upon job offer. Also, most people really aren't in a position to negotiate, especially if they are in a discriminated class.
      - pc86 8y ago
        How does being in a discriminated class remove any of your "position" to negotiate? If the person interviewing you is objectively racist or sexist you're just not getting the job. But if you're talking about subconscious, systemic issues that's going to come up in initial offers but how is going to affect one's ability to negotiate? And for what it's worth, while I am 100% on board with never discussing prior salary, I would advise against outright lying about it. On the chance that you're called out on it lying will most likely disqualify you immediately (and forever).
justinph 8y ago
Oracle did something unethical (and illegal)? Zero surprise.
epicureanideal 8y ago
> “These students required work authorization to remain in the United States after graduation,” the suit alleges. “In other words, Oracle overwhelmingly hires workers dependent upon Oracle for sponsorship to remain in the United States.” Tech company abuses H1B or other visas to underpay staff and undercut local labor market? Not surprising.
- davidw 8y ago
  The fix to this is give more rights to H1B workers, so they aren't stuck with one employer, rather than not letting them come in the first place.
  - fuzz4lyfe 8y ago
    If H1B workers had the same rights and could demand similar salaries as their local counterparts (while also requiring additional effort and costs to hire) I suspect you would find that firms wouldn't hire very many H1B workers. in effect both policies have the same result.
    - davidw 8y ago
      Eh, I suspect they would. Talented people are born throughout the world, and historically, an 'unfair advantage' of the US has been our ability to attract them. Look how many big companies were founded by a 1st or 2nd generation immigrant. It'd be a great way of letting the market figure out how many work visas we need, in any event, rather than having a number someone plucked out of their ass.
      - fuzz4lyfe 8y ago
        That assumes no local candidate can do the work, there will be some exceptions but why hire someone is more of an administrative hassle with greater costs for no benefit? If the person in question is somehow better than a local candidate by enough of a margin to justify the costs then they probably are priced incorrectly. (IE miss classified as a junior dev as opposed to a senior)
TheyCallMeMaxi 8y ago
Ok, let me put this from another viewpoint. (I do not work for/endorse Oracle.) Every year, hundreds of thousands of Asian students (~90% Indian and Chinese) flock to US universities for grad studies. They work hard, get a good GPA and want to continue their stay here. When they apply for jobs, the pool is very very limited because not all companies want to carry the burden of VISA/lawyers/immigration etc. Oracle is one of the handful of big firms that feed on such students. They have the capital and resources to carry the immigration burden. And they hire students in bulk. I personally know a lot of students-turned-Oracle employees from all major universities. At that point, the students just want to stay in the US legally, salary takes a backseat. They know the fact that if they can stay for long, money will eventually come.
- purplezooey 8y ago
  Sure, the free market might allow it, but discrimination is something we don't tolerate here.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - existencebox 8y ago
    This is a hard question to ask because of how touchy this subject is, but I promise this is a question born out of a situation I personally was in. Does there need to be discrimination for the result to be skewed in this way? The way I read the parent, immigrant employees are willing to do more for less due to a logical judgement about their situation, and from a pool of "Available jobs" may chose to throw a wider net, where someone who has more leeway can be pickier. (In my situation, I was making negligible money and when offered what seemed like a _mind-blowing_ salary of 3x my prior, accepted off the bat, without realizing until much later that I was being paid far below the rate of both my cohort and my experience level for the work being done)
    - saghm 8y ago
      > I was making negligible money and when offered what seemed like a _mind-blowing_ salary of 3x my prior, accepted off the bat, without realizing until much later that I was being paid far below the rate of both my cohort and my experience level for the work being done) That still sounds like the company that made you the offer was exploiting you; they took advantage of your tough situation to pay you less than they would have if you had more leverage.
jameane 8y ago
One of my friends (white female) is a long time Oracle employee. Oracle systemically underpays "underrepresented people." She ended up finding out she was making 40-50% less than new interns were getting out of college. And was underpaid compared to her male peers with less responsibility and impact. She ended up getting a raise and additional stock to make up for it, after her VP got involved to rectify the situation. Her boss was like "whatever." So imagine if white women are underpaid - it is a lot worse for people for color.
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  That's why I am for salary transparency. These issues would go away quickly if people knew what everybody else is paid.
  - bilbo0s 8y ago
    You should be careful with that though, because it can cut both ways. I was a part of a company early in my career where certain people were being paid less than others, only the thing was that the big, BIG, bosses didn't know about it. They were told what the average pay was, but they thought that was the pay level that all of the workers were receiving. Long story short, when the whole thing came out, imagine their surprise, (and delight), to discover a class of workers who would happily work for cheap. The big, BIG bosses proceeded to demand that everyone take a paycut. (Well, everyone who was making more than the average.) So a whole lot of colleagues ended up leaving and looking for other jobs etc. In the end, it didn't really help the people on the bottom at all. I was just a lowly intern, but that experience definitely taught me a lesson about how the corporate world works.
    - toomuchtodo 8y ago
      It sounds like the system worked as intended.
      - bilbo0s 8y ago
        Touché. I guess I never thought about it that way.
NearAP 8y ago
I interviewed at Oracle, was made an offer but didn't take it. I know people who took the offer. My knowledge/experience is 1) For H1B, the offer made by Oracle was higher than the minimum wage guideline by DOL for those specific positions. You get a copy of the H1B petition submitted by Oracle and it includes all of this data. 2) Your salary is dependent on what you negotiated with your recruitment coordinator (Oracle will not change your figure once an offer has been sent to you). The recruitment coordinator makes an offer and you try as much as possible to counter. If you have prior work experience, you will most likely use your previous salary information as a basis for negotiation. I assume this figure you have quoted will form a basis for what Oracle will offer you. If you don't have prior work experience, then of course, they will make you an offer that they prefer. 3) Oracle pay increases are rare and typically small. This is why your starting salary is quite important because it basically forms the basis for your income for your years at Oracle
- ones_and_zeros 8y ago
  Was it you or a friend? Or did you forget to log in to your other sock puppet account? What was the DoL level, job classification, location and wage offered?
  - pc86 8y ago
    "Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say face-to-face. Don't be snarky. Comments should get more civil and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."[0] "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."[0; emphasis mine] "Please don't impute astroturfing or shillage. That degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about it, email us and we'll look at the data."[0; emphasis mine] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
jqt 8y ago
What is a Latinx? Like a super cool Latino?
- jordigh 8y ago
  It's a gender-inclusive term for latinos and latinas, which themselves are terms mostly in use in the US. I have not seen "Latinx" receive a warm welcome in Spanish-speaking countries, but it seems to be gaining traction in the US. I think it's pronounced, in English, "latin-ecks". I'm not sure anyone has attempted a Spanish pronunciation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latinx https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latinx
  - yourbandsucks 8y ago
    You know, maybe we ought to think twice before we tell a billion spanish speakers how they should or shouldn't talk? Maybe it's just me, but I'm getting the mental image of some silicon valley kid with a 2 million dollar house telling people who live in corrugated-roof shacks that they're 'uninclusive'. And it pisses me off unreasonably.
  - jessaustin 8y ago
    I would have guessed "la-tinks"... Not surprised that this isn't popular where Spanish is the primary language. It seems to be a sort of "white feminist" thing, rejecting/correcting aspects of a non-Anglo culture for reasons that have no relevance in that culture.
  - turtlecloud 8y ago
    It’s mainly feminists / activists attempting to change the language. Many languages have masculine/ feminine words. Ie Latino/Latina and la/el. For them it is deconstructing the oppressiveness of genders but imo most don’t fundamentally think there is anything wrong with something being particularly masculine or feminine.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - umanwizard 8y ago
ada1981 8y ago
One of my coaching clients is a founder of a large SV tech company. I love their salary negotiation method. They have a top end in mind and will give the person the job if they agree on anything up to the amount. They leave room for negotiation as some people need to feel like they negotiated well. If you don’t negotiate your pay up to 100% the preset amount, after you accept the job they just tell you they are paying you more (the 100%). Both people are happy in this set up.
- venantius 8y ago
  This is an amazing way to run a company. I love it.
- phinnaeus 8y ago
  What real incentive do they have to go all the way up to 100% on behalf of the employee? If they ended up at 90% they could probably add 5% and get a very similar result (employee happiness).
  - ada1981 8y ago
    They want people to be paid what they are worth to them in that role regardless how well they negotiate - it’s an investment in the culture. The incentive is to create an actual loving and supportive culture which they believe pays off. They also feel like it’s the right thing to do given their values. They are one of the top rated corporate cultures in the world and recently valued at around $2B 10 years in.
  - modwilliam 8y ago
    Maybe less resentment if employees compare salaries
- tom_mellior 8y ago
  So no matter what happens during the "negotiation", the end result is always predetermined? They could just cut the silly game and come out and say what they are going to pay.
bondolo 8y ago
I am a former Oracle employee, white male from Canada, who was underpaid based on my immigration status and that continued after I became a permanent resident. This seemed routine–Oracle tries to underpay everyone and will use whatever advantages they have to do so. If you've worked at Oracle for any length of time you are probably not being competitively compensated unless you make a regular fuss. Even if you make a fuss they may still do nothing betting that you won't leave. That said, I don't think it is entirely fair to pile on Oracle for this problem. Oracle doesn't seem especially atypical of the rest of the industry or even the bottom of the barrel. I saw much worse treatment at my first US employer for myself and others. Mid-tier employers and body-shop consultancy companies use underpaying people as a strategic core component of their profitability. I had prospective employers directly say that they were pleased they could use my immigration status to pay me less, specifically that they would offer employer sponsored permanent residency application instead of paying me competitive rates, bonuses, promotions. If you want to end the abuses decouple visas and permanent resident applications from the employer or make it much easier to maintain or continue status and applications when moving between employers.
- sokoloff 8y ago
  > they could use my immigration status to pay me less, specifically that they would offer employer sponsored permanent residency application instead of paying me competitive rates, bonuses, promotions. Offering that sponsorship has very real costs to the company, well into the thousands of dollars per year. It seems perfectly reasonable to me for the employer to deduct that cost relative to what another employee who doesn’t bring those additional costs.
  - bondolo 8y ago
    It would be expected that employers would quantify the costs and adjust compensation to factor that in. However, many (most?) employers use employer sponsored permanent residency as effectively an indentured servitude program and their gains from undercompensation of the sponsored employees greatly exceed their actual costs. In particular the longer the process takes the more the employee has to lose by complaining or leaving.
davesque 8y ago
Positively shocking.
tway111 8y ago
This is is actually the case of "free market already taking care of this". Most women can't negotiate effectively and end up with lower wages. Diversity hires sometimes end up getting paid less.
williesleg 8y ago
Interesting, we've always OVERPAID for their crap software and shitty outsourced support.
CyanLite2 8y ago
They've hired a total of 6 black people in the last 8 years and they claim they're an equal opportunity employer?
- throwawaywhynot 8y ago
  wtf. I call bullshit. Source? I regularly see people of all sorts of skin tone as oracle has an office visible from my window. Maybe it's a US thing
  - CyanLite2 8y ago
    Read the lawsuit. Summary here: https://seekingalpha.com/news/3424872-u-s-sues-oracle-pay-discrimination https://seekingalpha.com/news/3424872-u-s-sues-oracle-pay-di... "According to the complaint filed today, Oracle hired around 500 people into tech jobs over a five-year period, and only five were Hispanic and only six were African American." Correction: OP should have said 5 year period instead of 8 year period. Either way. That's averaging one black person per year.
digitalzombie 8y ago
Programmers should have a union. Especially the ones that are working in the gaming industry.
profalseidol 8y ago
Everyone is underpayed. The work you are doing are mostly going to the pockets who do nothing. Bitter truth.
IloveHN84 8y ago
Oracle isn't the only one, trust me

334 points by samfisher83 8y ago

There is no shortage of jobs for someone working at Oracle. If someone feels underpaid, they can just jump ship. I have friends who work at Oracle and their salaries are fairly competitive. I am no Oracle fanboy but this just seems like a bunch of jobless federal employees dragging their feet around.

bobthepanda 8y ago
This is only great advice if Oracle is the only one giving lower pay to minority or female employees. Google is subject to a similar probe, and Palantir had to settle with the government. And these are the cases that we know about publicly. Given that Apple, Google, Intel, and Adobe were conspiring to limit labor competition, constant vigilance of tech companies' labor practices are totally warranted.
- dhh2106 8y ago
  How were they conspiring to limit labor competition? Completely agree constant vigilance is important. It also shouldn't matter that many employees can switch jobs. All employees cannot (personal circumstances, visas, etc). It also doesn't waive the company of its responsibility for fair pay.
  - dinedal 8y ago
    I believe the parent post is referring to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
  - locopati 8y ago
    http://fortune.com/2015/09/03/koh-anti-poach-order/ http://fortune.com/2015/09/03/koh-anti-poach-order/
  - njarboe 8y ago
    This lawsuit[1] should be better well known in tech circles. I think it is one of the reasons salaries have been going sky-high at to top tech companies over the last five years. It is really too bad the class action lawyers settled for a relatively small amount and did not go to trial for a larger settlement and to expose more info on what they did. [1]https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2014/04/24/google-apple-intel-adobe-settle-high-tech-workers-lawsuit/ https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2014/04/24/google-apple-in...
- epicureanideal 8y ago
  I'm genuinely interested to see the research that shows that women and minorities (other than those clearly disadvantaged by visa status) are being underpaid for the same qualifications and same work. I've worked at many companies, including as a hiring manager, and I have not observed anyone ever trying to intentionally underpay female or minority candidates. If anything, the female or minority candidates were sought after by multiple companies to improve their diversity statistics, so had a better bargaining position and eventual salary outcome than an equivalently qualified male non-minority candidate. On the other hand, I have heard with my own ears in company meetings (not my current employer) that we already employ "enough" non-minority males, and should prefer to hire minorities and women over others. I've personally experienced and also heard from others that they've been pressured to give female and minority candidates the benefit of the doubt when they would've failed interviews had they been someone else. As an alternative explanation for any observed difference in pay... Anecdotally, there are lots of non-minority male nerds who spend ridiculous amounts of time reading tech books and working on work related side projects, to the point that they have no social lives and may never have a family. Even if we compare a sample of male and female candidates with the education and years of experience, a few outlier workaholic geeks (especially given power-law compensation) could throw off the averages and make it seem that women are discriminated against. I'd also like to see research that controls for things like... what school did the individuals study at, not just their degree? A CSU grad will probably make less than a UC grad. What classes did they take? (To control for people who take minimums vs take intense courses.) How many hours per week do they devote to their career outside of work on average? How many hours do they work on average? And so on. If these are difficult variables to control for, that makes my point... we can't say it's a result of discrimination unless we've controlled for all the actual variables. To zoom out for a minute... I'm very much interested in everyone getting equal opportunity and equal pay for equal work. But it does NOBODY any favors to try to make political points with sloppy or intentionally misleading research, because all it does is alienate potential allies and make them think the debate is not honest.
  - torpidor 8y ago
    I think you don’t understand the point of view of diversity advocates. (I don’t mean this negatively, it’s often difficult to understand people who have very different perspectives) > I have not observed anyone ever trying to intentionally underpay female or minority candidates Most bad things that happen in our world are not intentional. Car accidents kill millions each year. One idea you may want to consider is that salaries are often set based on what someone earned previously. Therefore one bad actor can roll through 10 or more later positions without anyone acting intentionally. > there are lots of non-minority male nerds who spend ridiculous amounts of time... to the point that they have no social lives and may never have a family An alternative way to parse these same facts is that white men are more likely to be in an economic condition where it is possible to spend time on non-income-generating activities. For that matter I think at least some men believe a social or family life is not something they could have achieved. In any case I think it is harder to disentangle choices from cultural forces than you think. > I’d also like to see research that controls for things like... how many hours do they work on average? I’d like to see research that explains why working more hours is good for society. Buried in your questions are assumptions like “equal pay is fine as long as it doesn’t change the system too much” but the diversifist assumption is “lack of equal pay is a code smell for underlying problems in the system.” > we can’t say it’s a result of discrimination unless we’ve controlled for all the actual variables I think here you are projecting your values onto another position. (Intentional) discrimination is the problem that would annoy you, and so therefore diversity advocates should do research to establish a problem you would care about. From the perspective of incorporating you as a political constituency I don’t think you’re wrong. However, the actual pro-diversity position is something like “I’m annoyed that our society values traits common to X group and not traits common to Y or Z.” As a person in X group this argument is statistically unlikely to impress you, but it is harder to tease out if this is because you intentionally dislike Y (“intentional discrimination”), if there is something important we will lose if we start to prefer more Y traits (perhaps a traditional conservative type position) or if it is just hard to envision a society different than the actual one we live in.
- pc86 8y ago
  > And these are the cases that we know about publicly. Well, we know about all the cases publicly because case records are public.
  - richardknop 8y ago
    All the cases that made it to court. Very likely this is still going on, just better concealed.
ProAm 8y ago
What division of Oracle do your friends work in? Oracle is massive and salary range is diverse through each division/sector.
matt4077 8y ago
This is the oldest argument against all employment anti-discrimination efforts, namely „The free market will take care of it” It’s quite obvious that this idea was never true: companies were quite willing to forgo some money to keep their workforce male & white, to not approve mortgages for minorities trying to move to the “wrong” part of town (redlining), etc. In any case, your suggestion, even if workable, would seem to be eminently discriminatory: changing jobs, and everything it can entail such as moving a whole family, is in itself a harm nobody should suffer just for their gender/skin color/etc. In practical matters, people are often not aware of discrimination they suffer until long after, because compensation information is regarded as secret, and because it requires aggregation of many data points to show systemic biases.
- zozbot123 8y ago
  The free market can only take care of persisting discrimination by adjusting compensating differentials, so as to provide an incentive for hiring those who are being discriminated against. So the fact that females and minorities are both said to be discriminated in hiring and underpaid at some places is per se proof that the free market is in fact working to address discrimination in hiring. Sure, we'd like to see equal pay for equal work too, but you gotta start somewhere...
  - jessaustin 8y ago
    This is reasonable, but now you've given up the game entirely. Oracle and similar firms receive massive benefits from society. First, they are allowed to exist in the first place, which is not obviously a just decision. Also, so many aspects of society are tweaked to make it easier for gigantic inefficient firms to profit consistently. Because of this, Oracle and firms like it owe us something more than merely responding to market conditions. At the very least, not discriminating against employees in illegal ways is part of what they owe.
    - Consultant32452 8y ago
      You guys seem really interested in this topic, so I thought I'd recommend the book The Economics of Discrimination by Becker. A lot of seemingly intuitive things about wage discrimination fall apart upon closer inspection. It's a really complex problem that in some cases has counter intuitively gotten worse since the Jim Crow days.
TheOperator 8y ago
Except that Oracle has colluded with other large companies in the past to fix wages. Enforced through the means of blacklisting employees who leave one large tech company to apply for jobs at another. Also enforced via non-complete clauses. While people working at Oracle may make more than the average person their wages are still depressed through big business cartels presenting a united front and thus a monospony. There is a market failure and people are responding by suing Oracle.
airstrike 8y ago
> If someone feels underpaid, they can just jump ship. Except if you're an immigrant, you can't just jump ship. But you have friends who work at Oracle, so you must have a very informed view. Great insight.

da_chicken 8y ago

Here's a followup[0][1] to the OFCCP vs Google suit mentioned in the article. Google showed it would cost more to produce the data than the value of the Federal contract, so OFCCP did not get complete access. [0]: https://www.shrm.org/ResourcesAndTools/legal-and-compliance/employment-law/Pages/Google-refusal-to-give-OFCCP-information-upheld.aspx https://www.shrm.org/ResourcesAndTools/legal-and-compliance/... [1]: https://outsolve.com/blog/alj-rules-in-ofccp-vs-googles-denial-of-access-case https://outsolve.com/blog/alj-rules-in-ofccp-vs-googles-deni...

pc86 8y ago
I was curious to see what the OFCCP asked for and it seems like an insanely huge undertaking to compile it, which was probably why the court ruled "OFCCP's request was not reasonable and was unduly burdensome." My favorite one is a tie between "salary and job history for each employee going back to the founding of the corporation in 1998 for any long-term employees" without defining long-term employees (perhaps OFCCP did define it?) and "the name, address, telephone number and personal email of every employee" in the 21,000-employee 2015 snapshot or the 19,539-employee 2014 snapshot.
- sjg007 8y ago
  Doesn't seem that expensive to comply with this.
  - sokoloff 8y ago
    Imagine that you’ve changed payroll vendors, HR system vendors twice, and payroll/HR leads 5x across the timeframe in question. Now how hard/costly is it?
    - coredog64 8y ago
      Doesn’t Oracle sell a widely used financials package? I’m guessing they eat their own dog food.
  - Gibbon1 8y ago

projectramo 8y ago

Does the order of causality matter (either legally or ethically)? What I mean to say is, the article suggests that Oracle hired women and minorities to "funnel" them into low paying jobs. What if they set a very low wage and only minorities and foreign students were willing to accept those rates. Would that be just as bad? The difference of course is that the former is a critique of Oracle whereas the latter is a critique of the industry. This wording struck me as odd: Oracle “impermissibly denies equal employment opportunity to non-Asian applicants for employment, strongly preferring a workforce that it can later underpay. Once employed, women, Blacks and Asians are systematically underpaid relative to their peers,” the complaint alleges. Does that mean that people don't know the compensation associated with the position during the hiring negotiation?

commandlinefan 8y ago
I'm too cynical to see this as anything more than the first move by the tech companies themselves to push down waged for everybody in tech. Whether underrepresented minorities are being underpaid or not the net result of all of this will end up being everybody being paid less rather than a few people being paid more.
- fucking_tragedy 8y ago
  > I'm too cynical to see this as anything more than the first move by the tech companies themselves to push down waged for everybody in tech What do you mean by first move? Google, Apple, Intel, Pixar, Adobe, Lucasfilm, eBay and Intuit were all found guilty of colluding to keep engineer compensation low[1][2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L... [2] http://fortune.com/2015/09/03/koh-anti-poach-order/ http://fortune.com/2015/09/03/koh-anti-poach-order/
da_chicken 8y ago
> What if they set a very low wage and only minorities and foreign students were willing to accept those rates. That is literally what the trial is intended to determine. E: Clarity

perpetualpatzer 8y ago

Leaving aside the merits of the underlying claim, the word "withheld" in the article's title seems a little misleading. I'd normally think of withholding wages as refusing to hand out paychecks which had been agreed upon. From the body of the article, the OFCCP seems rather to be claiming that there's a differential in salary between female/black/asian employees and white male employees and that foreign-born employees on student visas worked disproportionately in entry-level jobs, which are lower-paying.

duxup 8y ago
I felt the same way about the title. I went to read to see if they were actively holding back bonuses or something .... that isn't the case.
larrik 8y ago
I agree, "withheld" is a specific term with a specific meaning when it comes to employee payments. The headline does NOT match reality at all.
- sctb 8y ago
  OK, we've gone with “underpaid” as in, “Once employed, women, Blacks and Asians are systematically underpaid relative to their peers,” from the complaint.
  - perpetualpatzer 8y ago
    Oh, great. Out of fairness to OP, the "withheld" wording was used in the source article, but think this title is probably clearer.
rafiki6 8y ago
Agreed, sensationalist and inaccurate title. I find that when publications or blogs with massive readership do this, it reflects poorly on their potentially valid argument and editorship. A better title might be "Oracle purposely underpays minorities"

duxup 8y ago

>Oracle’s underpayment of certain employees is driven by the company’s reliance on prior salary information Anyone know how that works exactly?

40acres 8y ago
Discrimination is like compound interest, it builds upon itself. If you're a underrepresented minority, its more likely that at each stage of your career you've been low balled compensation wise, if a potential employer is going to use your previous salary as a baseline, there is no way out of the spiral that initially started with your first job.
- duxup 8y ago
  I assumed that was the case as far as the systemic problem goes. Just wondering how Oracle was determining past pay, just asking? Using some site?
  - 40acres 8y ago
    I assume they just ask, outside of the H1B database, I have not seen a 100% credible representation of salary data for tech workers. Even then, the H1B database is anonymous and you'd have to do a lot of work to try to pin someone to a salary range. For the common man, negotiating really isnt a skill that has been developed. My girlfriend is interviewing with tech companies right now and I'm consistently reminding her to state a higher number not only if they ask for current salary (and to first off be diligent in not providing a number), but for the eventual negotiation upon job offer. Also, most people really aren't in a position to negotiate, especially if they are in a discriminated class.
    - pc86 8y ago
      How does being in a discriminated class remove any of your "position" to negotiate? If the person interviewing you is objectively racist or sexist you're just not getting the job. But if you're talking about subconscious, systemic issues that's going to come up in initial offers but how is going to affect one's ability to negotiate? And for what it's worth, while I am 100% on board with never discussing prior salary, I would advise against outright lying about it. On the chance that you're called out on it lying will most likely disqualify you immediately (and forever).

justinph 8y ago

Oracle did something unethical (and illegal)? Zero surprise.

epicureanideal 8y ago

> “These students required work authorization to remain in the United States after graduation,” the suit alleges. “In other words, Oracle overwhelmingly hires workers dependent upon Oracle for sponsorship to remain in the United States.” Tech company abuses H1B or other visas to underpay staff and undercut local labor market? Not surprising.

davidw 8y ago
The fix to this is give more rights to H1B workers, so they aren't stuck with one employer, rather than not letting them come in the first place.
- fuzz4lyfe 8y ago
  If H1B workers had the same rights and could demand similar salaries as their local counterparts (while also requiring additional effort and costs to hire) I suspect you would find that firms wouldn't hire very many H1B workers. in effect both policies have the same result.
  - davidw 8y ago
    Eh, I suspect they would. Talented people are born throughout the world, and historically, an 'unfair advantage' of the US has been our ability to attract them. Look how many big companies were founded by a 1st or 2nd generation immigrant. It'd be a great way of letting the market figure out how many work visas we need, in any event, rather than having a number someone plucked out of their ass.
    - fuzz4lyfe 8y ago
      That assumes no local candidate can do the work, there will be some exceptions but why hire someone is more of an administrative hassle with greater costs for no benefit? If the person in question is somehow better than a local candidate by enough of a margin to justify the costs then they probably are priced incorrectly. (IE miss classified as a junior dev as opposed to a senior)

TheyCallMeMaxi 8y ago

Ok, let me put this from another viewpoint. (I do not work for/endorse Oracle.) Every year, hundreds of thousands of Asian students (~90% Indian and Chinese) flock to US universities for grad studies. They work hard, get a good GPA and want to continue their stay here. When they apply for jobs, the pool is very very limited because not all companies want to carry the burden of VISA/lawyers/immigration etc. Oracle is one of the handful of big firms that feed on such students. They have the capital and resources to carry the immigration burden. And they hire students in bulk. I personally know a lot of students-turned-Oracle employees from all major universities. At that point, the students just want to stay in the US legally, salary takes a backseat. They know the fact that if they can stay for long, money will eventually come.

purplezooey 8y ago
Sure, the free market might allow it, but discrimination is something we don't tolerate here.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- existencebox 8y ago
  This is a hard question to ask because of how touchy this subject is, but I promise this is a question born out of a situation I personally was in. Does there need to be discrimination for the result to be skewed in this way? The way I read the parent, immigrant employees are willing to do more for less due to a logical judgement about their situation, and from a pool of "Available jobs" may chose to throw a wider net, where someone who has more leeway can be pickier. (In my situation, I was making negligible money and when offered what seemed like a _mind-blowing_ salary of 3x my prior, accepted off the bat, without realizing until much later that I was being paid far below the rate of both my cohort and my experience level for the work being done)
  - saghm 8y ago
    > I was making negligible money and when offered what seemed like a _mind-blowing_ salary of 3x my prior, accepted off the bat, without realizing until much later that I was being paid far below the rate of both my cohort and my experience level for the work being done) That still sounds like the company that made you the offer was exploiting you; they took advantage of your tough situation to pay you less than they would have if you had more leverage.

jameane 8y ago

One of my friends (white female) is a long time Oracle employee. Oracle systemically underpays "underrepresented people." She ended up finding out she was making 40-50% less than new interns were getting out of college. And was underpaid compared to her male peers with less responsibility and impact. She ended up getting a raise and additional stock to make up for it, after her VP got involved to rectify the situation. Her boss was like "whatever." So imagine if white women are underpaid - it is a lot worse for people for color.

maxxxxx 8y ago
That's why I am for salary transparency. These issues would go away quickly if people knew what everybody else is paid.
- bilbo0s 8y ago
  You should be careful with that though, because it can cut both ways. I was a part of a company early in my career where certain people were being paid less than others, only the thing was that the big, BIG, bosses didn't know about it. They were told what the average pay was, but they thought that was the pay level that all of the workers were receiving. Long story short, when the whole thing came out, imagine their surprise, (and delight), to discover a class of workers who would happily work for cheap. The big, BIG bosses proceeded to demand that everyone take a paycut. (Well, everyone who was making more than the average.) So a whole lot of colleagues ended up leaving and looking for other jobs etc. In the end, it didn't really help the people on the bottom at all. I was just a lowly intern, but that experience definitely taught me a lesson about how the corporate world works.
  - toomuchtodo 8y ago
    It sounds like the system worked as intended.
    - bilbo0s 8y ago
      Touché. I guess I never thought about it that way.

NearAP 8y ago

I interviewed at Oracle, was made an offer but didn't take it. I know people who took the offer. My knowledge/experience is 1) For H1B, the offer made by Oracle was higher than the minimum wage guideline by DOL for those specific positions. You get a copy of the H1B petition submitted by Oracle and it includes all of this data. 2) Your salary is dependent on what you negotiated with your recruitment coordinator (Oracle will not change your figure once an offer has been sent to you). The recruitment coordinator makes an offer and you try as much as possible to counter. If you have prior work experience, you will most likely use your previous salary information as a basis for negotiation. I assume this figure you have quoted will form a basis for what Oracle will offer you. If you don't have prior work experience, then of course, they will make you an offer that they prefer. 3) Oracle pay increases are rare and typically small. This is why your starting salary is quite important because it basically forms the basis for your income for your years at Oracle

ones_and_zeros 8y ago
Was it you or a friend? Or did you forget to log in to your other sock puppet account? What was the DoL level, job classification, location and wage offered?
- pc86 8y ago
  "Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say face-to-face. Don't be snarky. Comments should get more civil and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."[0] "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."[0; emphasis mine] "Please don't impute astroturfing or shillage. That degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about it, email us and we'll look at the data."[0; emphasis mine] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

jqt 8y ago

What is a Latinx? Like a super cool Latino?

jordigh 8y ago
It's a gender-inclusive term for latinos and latinas, which themselves are terms mostly in use in the US. I have not seen "Latinx" receive a warm welcome in Spanish-speaking countries, but it seems to be gaining traction in the US. I think it's pronounced, in English, "latin-ecks". I'm not sure anyone has attempted a Spanish pronunciation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latinx https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latinx
- yourbandsucks 8y ago
  You know, maybe we ought to think twice before we tell a billion spanish speakers how they should or shouldn't talk? Maybe it's just me, but I'm getting the mental image of some silicon valley kid with a 2 million dollar house telling people who live in corrugated-roof shacks that they're 'uninclusive'. And it pisses me off unreasonably.
- jessaustin 8y ago
  I would have guessed "la-tinks"... Not surprised that this isn't popular where Spanish is the primary language. It seems to be a sort of "white feminist" thing, rejecting/correcting aspects of a non-Anglo culture for reasons that have no relevance in that culture.
- turtlecloud 8y ago
  It’s mainly feminists / activists attempting to change the language. Many languages have masculine/ feminine words. Ie Latino/Latina and la/el. For them it is deconstructing the oppressiveness of genders but imo most don’t fundamentally think there is anything wrong with something being particularly masculine or feminine.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- umanwizard 8y ago

ada1981 8y ago

One of my coaching clients is a founder of a large SV tech company. I love their salary negotiation method. They have a top end in mind and will give the person the job if they agree on anything up to the amount. They leave room for negotiation as some people need to feel like they negotiated well. If you don’t negotiate your pay up to 100% the preset amount, after you accept the job they just tell you they are paying you more (the 100%). Both people are happy in this set up.

venantius 8y ago
This is an amazing way to run a company. I love it.
phinnaeus 8y ago
What real incentive do they have to go all the way up to 100% on behalf of the employee? If they ended up at 90% they could probably add 5% and get a very similar result (employee happiness).
- ada1981 8y ago
  They want people to be paid what they are worth to them in that role regardless how well they negotiate - it’s an investment in the culture. The incentive is to create an actual loving and supportive culture which they believe pays off. They also feel like it’s the right thing to do given their values. They are one of the top rated corporate cultures in the world and recently valued at around $2B 10 years in.
- modwilliam 8y ago
  Maybe less resentment if employees compare salaries
tom_mellior 8y ago
So no matter what happens during the "negotiation", the end result is always predetermined? They could just cut the silly game and come out and say what they are going to pay.

bondolo 8y ago

I am a former Oracle employee, white male from Canada, who was underpaid based on my immigration status and that continued after I became a permanent resident. This seemed routine–Oracle tries to underpay everyone and will use whatever advantages they have to do so. If you've worked at Oracle for any length of time you are probably not being competitively compensated unless you make a regular fuss. Even if you make a fuss they may still do nothing betting that you won't leave. That said, I don't think it is entirely fair to pile on Oracle for this problem. Oracle doesn't seem especially atypical of the rest of the industry or even the bottom of the barrel. I saw much worse treatment at my first US employer for myself and others. Mid-tier employers and body-shop consultancy companies use underpaying people as a strategic core component of their profitability. I had prospective employers directly say that they were pleased they could use my immigration status to pay me less, specifically that they would offer employer sponsored permanent residency application instead of paying me competitive rates, bonuses, promotions. If you want to end the abuses decouple visas and permanent resident applications from the employer or make it much easier to maintain or continue status and applications when moving between employers.

sokoloff 8y ago
> they could use my immigration status to pay me less, specifically that they would offer employer sponsored permanent residency application instead of paying me competitive rates, bonuses, promotions. Offering that sponsorship has very real costs to the company, well into the thousands of dollars per year. It seems perfectly reasonable to me for the employer to deduct that cost relative to what another employee who doesn’t bring those additional costs.
- bondolo 8y ago
  It would be expected that employers would quantify the costs and adjust compensation to factor that in. However, many (most?) employers use employer sponsored permanent residency as effectively an indentured servitude program and their gains from undercompensation of the sponsored employees greatly exceed their actual costs. In particular the longer the process takes the more the employee has to lose by complaining or leaving.

davesque 8y ago

Positively shocking.

tway111 8y ago

This is is actually the case of "free market already taking care of this". Most women can't negotiate effectively and end up with lower wages. Diversity hires sometimes end up getting paid less.

williesleg 8y ago

Interesting, we've always OVERPAID for their crap software and shitty outsourced support.

CyanLite2 8y ago

They've hired a total of 6 black people in the last 8 years and they claim they're an equal opportunity employer?

throwawaywhynot 8y ago
wtf. I call bullshit. Source? I regularly see people of all sorts of skin tone as oracle has an office visible from my window. Maybe it's a US thing
- CyanLite2 8y ago
  Read the lawsuit. Summary here: https://seekingalpha.com/news/3424872-u-s-sues-oracle-pay-discrimination https://seekingalpha.com/news/3424872-u-s-sues-oracle-pay-di... "According to the complaint filed today, Oracle hired around 500 people into tech jobs over a five-year period, and only five were Hispanic and only six were African American." Correction: OP should have said 5 year period instead of 8 year period. Either way. That's averaging one black person per year.

digitalzombie 8y ago

Programmers should have a union. Especially the ones that are working in the gaming industry.

profalseidol 8y ago

Everyone is underpayed. The work you are doing are mostly going to the pockets who do nothing. Bitter truth.

IloveHN84 8y ago

Oracle isn't the only one, trust me