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One of my friends (white female) is a long time Oracle employee. Oracle systemically underpays "underrepresented people." She ended up finding out she was maki

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.
  - pkaye 8y ago
    At one workplace, I and a bunch of others were software leads/managers who rose up through many years hard work, promotions and raises. A new VP of engineering joins and finds out about our salary during the next review. He berates us individually why were are paid so much. What he didn't realize is the team leads did the heavy lifting for development at this company. Many of us said nothing and just looked for new opportunities. From what I heard, projects quickly fell behind schedule, got cancelled. The VP was eventually fired.
    - infinite8s 8y ago
      And he probably just moved on to a new opportunity.
      - pkaye 8y ago
        I've looked him up. He is working on a "startup" idea but I don't think he has gone anywhere with it.
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    "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. " That's pretty weird. Usually the bosses know what everyone is making or can find out. Looking at cost is one of the main duties of a boss.
    - GlickWick 8y ago
      Not that weird. There are lots of employees and the big bosses tend to only see birds-eye views like project/staffing budgets. They care if a team of 10 costs 2.5m/year. They don't dig into why unless they have a problem with the budget to begin with.
      - maxxxxx 8y ago
        Interesting. In any case, bosses already have salary transparaceny if they care so giving transparency to employees wouldn't change this particular case.
        vetinari 8y ago
        They don't have the need to dig into individual salaries, only once they want to start optimize (read: where to cut down) the salaries. Otherwise, it doesn't help with overall goals.
  - pjdemers 8y ago
    I worked at place where we did stack ranking, but added a formula that basically divided rank by salary. Anyone making more than about 1.2 times the average of their piers had to constantly justify it.
- RodericDay 8y ago
  I love that every time someone brings this amazing obvious solution up, some dumbass chimes in "why, you can check glassdoor?"
- briandear 8y ago
  With salary transparency, wouldn’t everyone be paid less? (Not a challenge, just a curiosity.)
  - toomuchtodo 8y ago
    I'd argue everyone gets paid more, as lower paid staff will churn more rapidly for higher paying positions, and in a tight labor market pay must rise to attract talent to roles. With that said, you should always be interviewing for your next role, as you will never get a salary bump at an annual review near what you would make switching jobs. Always Be Interviewing. You are looking out for you first.
  - tdb7893 8y ago
    Why would you say that? I figured it would give employees more power in salary negotiations so I figured the salary would go up mostly.
    - TomMarius 8y ago
      Because in most cases there are some or even many people who are available to work for less. The management then would argue that "you can't earn more than they do for the same work, everyone would have to get a raise but there is no justification for that". Secrecy makes it an individual discussion as a by-product.
      - yholio 8y ago
        In either case, managers would not entertain talk about a raise unless there ware actually not that many people willing to do the same work for less. So a secret negotiation allows them to hide that information from the rest of the workers and only compensate those aware of their market worth. An open negotiation would not lower compensation for the latter since they can always just quit, it would raise salaries for the less informed.
        sokoloff 8y ago
- mjevans 8y ago
  That should include everyone up through the top. Including their options and bonus etc.
  - sethammons 8y ago
    not everything is your title+tenure; someone with the same profile might not have the same impact as another. I could see someone getting upset about another person making more and thinking they should be equals when the other person has a greater positive impact on the organization. I'm not as much a fan of open transparency for all positions, including options and bonuses, as I am in favor of published ranges for each position that are reflective of the overwhelming majority of folks in that role at that company.
    - bsanr 8y ago
      That doesn't really solve the problem of the opposite situation, nor of the one that was originally under consideration: when a worker with greater impact is paid less, or when workers of similar impact are compensated differently. For that, you do need an accurate understanding of how your peers are compensated. I make less than peers I objectively outperform, and I would not have known unless they had told me personally. If that information had been accessible during my last review, I would have pressed for higher pay, but now that that's passed, both I and my employer have to worry about what my next step is. This could have been avoided if they'd been more transparent up-front.
      - maxxxxx 8y ago
        "I make less than peers I objectively outperform" From my experience you can go to management and tell them that you think you should be paid X. If that's within the normal range you often get the raise. At my first company in the US I was told that everybody is making as much as I was offered so I said yes. After half a year I found out that most people made 30% more. I talked to my CTO and told him that I want more and I got more than 30% without much hesitation. I wouldn't worry about asking for more. They won't fire you.
  - 8y ago
- ken 8y ago
  How? As in, what is the actual mechanism by which this issue would go away? These "workers dependent upon Oracle for sponsorship to remain in the United States" are supposed to do what with that new information, exactly? Threaten to leave the country? I hear this a lot from well-paid tech workers. Just two days ago I responded to a comment here where someone said the solution was for people to "just negotiate better". Right. That's why I am for unions. Get professionals to negotiate on the workers' behalf, and have everyone agree on precisely the factors (experience, etc) that should be used for determining salaries. Then nobody is dependent on either the goodwill of their employer or their own bargaining skills for a fair salary.
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    In this specific case the person didn't know she was underpaid. Once she found out she pointed it out and got more money. She wasn't dependent on sponsorship.
    - ken 8y ago
      In other words, the way to deal with an company which is behaving unfairly towards you is to tell them a piece of information they already know, and then depend on them becoming more fair. You’ll understand why I’m suspicious. If this worked reliably, why would anyone need to file a lawsuit over $400M in lost wages? Wouldn’t the company have just fixed the problem when they first saw it? Unions exist in fields and countries where wages are more transparent, too. Transparency is necessary, but not sufficient. That’s why we have a free press, but also elections and courts.
      - maxxxxx 8y ago
        "In other words, the way to deal with an company which is behaving unfairly towards you is to tell them a piece of information they already know, and then depend on them becoming more fair." You don't depends on them but on an individual basis you can point this out and often you can correct this for yourself. They will still try to screw other employees. And yes,unions are a good way of ensuring this doesn't happen.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
trhway 8y ago
Long time employees are naturally severe underpaid. The long timers around who recently finally left our BigCo got 2-2.5x raises into 350-500+ range, male or female.
- pc86 8y ago
  What are you doing where people are making close to 2x what you need to be in top 1% of income?
  - dmoy 8y ago
    2x top 1% of income would be like 900k household. It is more rare for a single household to have two extremely high paid professionals, so a single income of 350-500k is not 2x of 1% income. It is in the 1% (~420-450k household or so). Also 350-500k sounds about the right range for senior-ish at top large tech company as a software engineer.
    - pc86 8y ago
      You "only" need $300k (give or take) to be in the top 1% of individual income. Edit to add: > Also 350-500k sounds about the right range for senior-ish at top large tech company as a software engineer. Senior"-ish," implying some not-so-senior folks are making $350-500k a year is absolutely ridiculous. But even barring that, I know HN is home to many, many highly paid folks at large technical companies in SV making boatloads of money. Most software dev jobs in the country top out in the $150-200k mark for non-managerial, senior high-level architectural type jobs. Very good senior devs in my area are $110-135. I've never personally seen a salary or heard someone claim they made anything higher than $185. Surely they exist but they're well above-market or have extremely specialized skills that make it borderline impossible to get any sort of "market rate" for.
      - Domenic_S 8y ago
        It's just a cost of living thing. One calculator says, > A salary of $185,000 in Boise, Idaho should increase to $450,797 in San Jose, California https://www.bestplaces.net/cost-of-living/boise-id/san-jose-ca/185000 https://www.bestplaces.net/cost-of-living/boise-id/san-jose-... Total comp in the $200-300k range is common for seniors at tech companies in SV. But people tend to not understand exactly what that amount of money means here because it seems like so much money. It doesn't mean people in, say, Boise are underpaid or whatever, just that everything is way, way more expensive in the Bay Area.
extrememacaroni 8y ago
"So imagine if white women are underpaid - it is a lot worse for people for color." How did you arrive at this conclusion?
- phs318u 8y ago
  Probably extrapolating from anecdotal evidence (possibly including personal experience). Also, some studies have shown systemic underpayment of minorities. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-27/u-k-s-underpaid-ethnic-minority-workers-lose-4-billion-a-year https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-27/u-k-s-und... https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/eeoc-nyc-owes-underpaid-minority-female-employees-246m-article-1.2175144 https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/eeoc-nyc-owes-underpaid... https://www.pinnaclepeople.com.au/news/underpayment-of-hospitality-workers-commonplace/16041/ https://www.pinnaclepeople.com.au/news/underpayment-of-hospi...
totallysnowman 8y ago
Oracle pays its long-term employees less than newjoiners, that is no news. If you think you can get a raise by switching positions within the company - wrong! You get exactly the same no matter the position. Also nobody in the office got a raise in years (not even the inflation rate). The only option to get some raise is to be promoted, which does not happen very often. I don't think it has anything to do with race/gender.
- drugme 8y ago
  So your reaction also seems to be... "whatever".
  - Kephael 8y ago
    They need to LeetCode and go work elsewhere, if they want to come back then Oracle will pay them market rates.
    - totallysnowman 8y ago
      No. If you leave and come back within 2 years (I think), you get the same as you had before you had left.
      - Kephael 8y ago
        If a company wants you they will pay you market rates, you may need to present them with competing offers if you don't want to be lowballed.
        totallysnowman 8y ago
        They don't give a ... You are just a number. Even if the hiring manager really wants you, s/he is not given the budget, so they are powerless.
  - totallysnowman 8y ago
    I was trying to say they don't seem racist or discriminating to me. They just want to save as much as possible. But they seem rather oblivious to the fact the system is set in a bit demotivating way.
kolinko 8y ago
In general, women tend to negotiate less aggressively (there's research supporting that), so if your friend was paid less, it doesn't necessarily mean there was discrimination. The question is: is she as good at negotiating her salary as her male friends? Also, it sometimes happens that the market's salaries increase over time, and new employees get paid more than the old ones. It's a difficult and well known manager's dilemma - I cannot hire a new person for the same price as the current employees, but if I have to raise everyone's pay first, I won't be able to hire the new person anyway. So, the question is - did the interns' wages differ between them according to gender? Did she earn less than female interns, or male interns? How good/aggressive are the people you compare in terms of salary negotiation?
- crooked-v 8y ago
  > In general, women tend to negotiate less aggressively (there's research supporting that), so if your friend was paid less, it doesn't necessarily mean there was discrimination. That's not a given. Courts tend to look at end results, not how you get there.
- SolaceQuantum 8y ago
  Women who do negotiate aggressively are often less likely to be granted what they ask for, also. There’s a new study I recall that women ask for raises at the same rate as men but are not granted raises at the same rate as men.
  - extrememacaroni 8y ago
    Sounds like they don't negotiate efficiently. "Please give me a raise" is not efficient negotiation, no matter how aggressively or often you say it.
    - SolaceQuantum 8y ago
      Note that aggressive tactics are not as effective when women do them. We also have studies that state that women who attempt to be assertive similar to men are not received as well as men. So women are disadvantaged because there is no way to ask for a raise or negotiate as effectively as a man in the general case.
ALittleLight 8y ago
Do either of you have an opinion on the cause of being underpaid? e.g. Is there a corporate plan to pay women less?
- GlickWick 8y ago
  That's almost never the case. It's not some evil cabal in a boardroom deciding to do bad things. It's almost always a combination of tons of societal and cultural factors that compound on each other. You can imagine that their mid-level manager probably didn't fight for them as hard, perhaps due to some bias. Said manager may have evaluated said employee more harshly in yearly reviews as well without realizing it. Their peers may have essentially done the same, lowering their perceived performance. Their peers may have also essentially boxed them out, making it more difficult to succeed. Projects may have been handed to employees that were not underrepresented. This happens often, and is a strong motivator for career growth. The hiring manager(s) originally responsible for bringing on the employee may have used algorithms or generally biased data that showed them the potential hire could be acquired at a low salary. These are only small pieces of the puzzle, and may or may not be part of what happened at Oracle. They're all small/insidious factors that may not even be detectable or measurable at an individual level, but if you pay attention to larger trends, you can start to see them.
chris_wot 8y ago
So Oracle is worse than screwing over customers and just awful quality of their database. They are now actively screwing over their employees! Remind me why they are so widely used again?
- hannasanarion 8y ago
  Vendor lock-in, and buying IP from companies who had much better records. People in open source have been pissed at Oracle since they pissed on OpenSolaris and started suing everybody who uses Java after buying Sun. Oracle is famous for having a corporate philosophy of "make lots of money, nothing else matters". Larry Ellison is famous for being a selfish megalomaniac: he owns an island on which hawaiian natives labor for him as serfs, and he has made two donations to charity in his whole life: one in exchange for dropping charges in a security fraud scandal, and one to establish an anti-senescence research institute for his own use. Don't take a job at Oracle, don't buy their products when possible, they are the back alley mobsters of silicon valley.
geebee 8y ago
That does sound bad, but I would want to know more about the specific situation. For instance, top law firms often pay interns the same salary as a first year associate (prorated for summer months, of course). That can be $180k/yr for some firms. My guess is that you could be a fairly senior paralegal, with arguably more responsibility and a greater impact on the firm, but still earn less than the summer associates. It would seem unfair, though I suppose the answer could be, well, go get admitted to the University of Chicago law school, give up three years salary and spend 200k on tuition, and get high enough grades to be hired into a top law firm, and we'll pay you at the rate of 180k a year. This situation is starting to emerge in some Silicon Valley companies, where a bi-modal pay system similar to law is emerging. Just as graduates of lower ranked law firms might never earn a salary comparable to a first year associate from an elite school at a top firm, I have noticed that starting salaries for recent grads at Facebook may exceed what veteran programmers elsewhere earn. I wouldn't be terribly surprised to hear that the intern salaries are higher than some other job titles at the company.
lern_too_spel 8y ago
If you want to be paid what you're worth, plan to interview regularly. That is the only sure way. The promotion game is by and large for suckers.
m0zg 8y ago
>> she was making 40-50% less than new interns were getting out of college This is called salary compression, and it's not unique to just minorities. Companies have to pay market to hire. They don't have to pay market to people who might be reluctant to leave, for a variety of reasons. It's fairly common for new hires to be earning significantly more than nominally "senior" employees who have been with the company for a decade or more.
- gaius 8y ago
  Right. If you are doing the work at salary X then you have sent the signal that you are willing to do the work at salary X. The only way to send a new signal is to leave for a job paying salary X+n, then repeat the cycle in a few years.

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.
- pkaye 8y ago
  At one workplace, I and a bunch of others were software leads/managers who rose up through many years hard work, promotions and raises. A new VP of engineering joins and finds out about our salary during the next review. He berates us individually why were are paid so much. What he didn't realize is the team leads did the heavy lifting for development at this company. Many of us said nothing and just looked for new opportunities. From what I heard, projects quickly fell behind schedule, got cancelled. The VP was eventually fired.
  - infinite8s 8y ago
    And he probably just moved on to a new opportunity.
    - pkaye 8y ago
      I've looked him up. He is working on a "startup" idea but I don't think he has gone anywhere with it.
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  "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. " That's pretty weird. Usually the bosses know what everyone is making or can find out. Looking at cost is one of the main duties of a boss.
  - GlickWick 8y ago
    Not that weird. There are lots of employees and the big bosses tend to only see birds-eye views like project/staffing budgets. They care if a team of 10 costs 2.5m/year. They don't dig into why unless they have a problem with the budget to begin with.
    - maxxxxx 8y ago
      Interesting. In any case, bosses already have salary transparaceny if they care so giving transparency to employees wouldn't change this particular case.
      - vetinari 8y ago
        They don't have the need to dig into individual salaries, only once they want to start optimize (read: where to cut down) the salaries. Otherwise, it doesn't help with overall goals.
- pjdemers 8y ago
  I worked at place where we did stack ranking, but added a formula that basically divided rank by salary. Anyone making more than about 1.2 times the average of their piers had to constantly justify it.
RodericDay 8y ago
I love that every time someone brings this amazing obvious solution up, some dumbass chimes in "why, you can check glassdoor?"
briandear 8y ago
With salary transparency, wouldn’t everyone be paid less? (Not a challenge, just a curiosity.)
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  I'd argue everyone gets paid more, as lower paid staff will churn more rapidly for higher paying positions, and in a tight labor market pay must rise to attract talent to roles. With that said, you should always be interviewing for your next role, as you will never get a salary bump at an annual review near what you would make switching jobs. Always Be Interviewing. You are looking out for you first.
- tdb7893 8y ago
  Why would you say that? I figured it would give employees more power in salary negotiations so I figured the salary would go up mostly.
  - TomMarius 8y ago
    Because in most cases there are some or even many people who are available to work for less. The management then would argue that "you can't earn more than they do for the same work, everyone would have to get a raise but there is no justification for that". Secrecy makes it an individual discussion as a by-product.
    - yholio 8y ago
      In either case, managers would not entertain talk about a raise unless there ware actually not that many people willing to do the same work for less. So a secret negotiation allows them to hide that information from the rest of the workers and only compensate those aware of their market worth. An open negotiation would not lower compensation for the latter since they can always just quit, it would raise salaries for the less informed.
      - sokoloff 8y ago
mjevans 8y ago
That should include everyone up through the top. Including their options and bonus etc.
- sethammons 8y ago
  not everything is your title+tenure; someone with the same profile might not have the same impact as another. I could see someone getting upset about another person making more and thinking they should be equals when the other person has a greater positive impact on the organization. I'm not as much a fan of open transparency for all positions, including options and bonuses, as I am in favor of published ranges for each position that are reflective of the overwhelming majority of folks in that role at that company.
  - bsanr 8y ago
    That doesn't really solve the problem of the opposite situation, nor of the one that was originally under consideration: when a worker with greater impact is paid less, or when workers of similar impact are compensated differently. For that, you do need an accurate understanding of how your peers are compensated. I make less than peers I objectively outperform, and I would not have known unless they had told me personally. If that information had been accessible during my last review, I would have pressed for higher pay, but now that that's passed, both I and my employer have to worry about what my next step is. This could have been avoided if they'd been more transparent up-front.
    - maxxxxx 8y ago
      "I make less than peers I objectively outperform" From my experience you can go to management and tell them that you think you should be paid X. If that's within the normal range you often get the raise. At my first company in the US I was told that everybody is making as much as I was offered so I said yes. After half a year I found out that most people made 30% more. I talked to my CTO and told him that I want more and I got more than 30% without much hesitation. I wouldn't worry about asking for more. They won't fire you.
- 8y ago
ken 8y ago
How? As in, what is the actual mechanism by which this issue would go away? These "workers dependent upon Oracle for sponsorship to remain in the United States" are supposed to do what with that new information, exactly? Threaten to leave the country? I hear this a lot from well-paid tech workers. Just two days ago I responded to a comment here where someone said the solution was for people to "just negotiate better". Right. That's why I am for unions. Get professionals to negotiate on the workers' behalf, and have everyone agree on precisely the factors (experience, etc) that should be used for determining salaries. Then nobody is dependent on either the goodwill of their employer or their own bargaining skills for a fair salary.
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  In this specific case the person didn't know she was underpaid. Once she found out she pointed it out and got more money. She wasn't dependent on sponsorship.
  - ken 8y ago
    In other words, the way to deal with an company which is behaving unfairly towards you is to tell them a piece of information they already know, and then depend on them becoming more fair. You’ll understand why I’m suspicious. If this worked reliably, why would anyone need to file a lawsuit over $400M in lost wages? Wouldn’t the company have just fixed the problem when they first saw it? Unions exist in fields and countries where wages are more transparent, too. Transparency is necessary, but not sufficient. That’s why we have a free press, but also elections and courts.
    - maxxxxx 8y ago
      "In other words, the way to deal with an company which is behaving unfairly towards you is to tell them a piece of information they already know, and then depend on them becoming more fair." You don't depends on them but on an individual basis you can point this out and often you can correct this for yourself. They will still try to screw other employees. And yes,unions are a good way of ensuring this doesn't happen.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

trhway 8y ago

Long time employees are naturally severe underpaid. The long timers around who recently finally left our BigCo got 2-2.5x raises into 350-500+ range, male or female.

pc86 8y ago
What are you doing where people are making close to 2x what you need to be in top 1% of income?
- dmoy 8y ago
  2x top 1% of income would be like 900k household. It is more rare for a single household to have two extremely high paid professionals, so a single income of 350-500k is not 2x of 1% income. It is in the 1% (~420-450k household or so). Also 350-500k sounds about the right range for senior-ish at top large tech company as a software engineer.
  - pc86 8y ago
    You "only" need $300k (give or take) to be in the top 1% of individual income. Edit to add: > Also 350-500k sounds about the right range for senior-ish at top large tech company as a software engineer. Senior"-ish," implying some not-so-senior folks are making $350-500k a year is absolutely ridiculous. But even barring that, I know HN is home to many, many highly paid folks at large technical companies in SV making boatloads of money. Most software dev jobs in the country top out in the $150-200k mark for non-managerial, senior high-level architectural type jobs. Very good senior devs in my area are $110-135. I've never personally seen a salary or heard someone claim they made anything higher than $185. Surely they exist but they're well above-market or have extremely specialized skills that make it borderline impossible to get any sort of "market rate" for.
    - Domenic_S 8y ago
      It's just a cost of living thing. One calculator says, > A salary of $185,000 in Boise, Idaho should increase to $450,797 in San Jose, California https://www.bestplaces.net/cost-of-living/boise-id/san-jose-ca/185000 https://www.bestplaces.net/cost-of-living/boise-id/san-jose-... Total comp in the $200-300k range is common for seniors at tech companies in SV. But people tend to not understand exactly what that amount of money means here because it seems like so much money. It doesn't mean people in, say, Boise are underpaid or whatever, just that everything is way, way more expensive in the Bay Area.

extrememacaroni 8y ago

"So imagine if white women are underpaid - it is a lot worse for people for color." How did you arrive at this conclusion?

phs318u 8y ago
Probably extrapolating from anecdotal evidence (possibly including personal experience). Also, some studies have shown systemic underpayment of minorities. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-27/u-k-s-underpaid-ethnic-minority-workers-lose-4-billion-a-year https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-27/u-k-s-und... https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/eeoc-nyc-owes-underpaid-minority-female-employees-246m-article-1.2175144 https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/eeoc-nyc-owes-underpaid... https://www.pinnaclepeople.com.au/news/underpayment-of-hospitality-workers-commonplace/16041/ https://www.pinnaclepeople.com.au/news/underpayment-of-hospi...

totallysnowman 8y ago

Oracle pays its long-term employees less than newjoiners, that is no news. If you think you can get a raise by switching positions within the company - wrong! You get exactly the same no matter the position. Also nobody in the office got a raise in years (not even the inflation rate). The only option to get some raise is to be promoted, which does not happen very often. I don't think it has anything to do with race/gender.

drugme 8y ago
So your reaction also seems to be... "whatever".
- Kephael 8y ago
  They need to LeetCode and go work elsewhere, if they want to come back then Oracle will pay them market rates.
  - totallysnowman 8y ago
    No. If you leave and come back within 2 years (I think), you get the same as you had before you had left.
    - Kephael 8y ago
      If a company wants you they will pay you market rates, you may need to present them with competing offers if you don't want to be lowballed.
      - totallysnowman 8y ago
        They don't give a ... You are just a number. Even if the hiring manager really wants you, s/he is not given the budget, so they are powerless.
- totallysnowman 8y ago
  I was trying to say they don't seem racist or discriminating to me. They just want to save as much as possible. But they seem rather oblivious to the fact the system is set in a bit demotivating way.

kolinko 8y ago

In general, women tend to negotiate less aggressively (there's research supporting that), so if your friend was paid less, it doesn't necessarily mean there was discrimination. The question is: is she as good at negotiating her salary as her male friends? Also, it sometimes happens that the market's salaries increase over time, and new employees get paid more than the old ones. It's a difficult and well known manager's dilemma - I cannot hire a new person for the same price as the current employees, but if I have to raise everyone's pay first, I won't be able to hire the new person anyway. So, the question is - did the interns' wages differ between them according to gender? Did she earn less than female interns, or male interns? How good/aggressive are the people you compare in terms of salary negotiation?

crooked-v 8y ago
> In general, women tend to negotiate less aggressively (there's research supporting that), so if your friend was paid less, it doesn't necessarily mean there was discrimination. That's not a given. Courts tend to look at end results, not how you get there.
SolaceQuantum 8y ago
Women who do negotiate aggressively are often less likely to be granted what they ask for, also. There’s a new study I recall that women ask for raises at the same rate as men but are not granted raises at the same rate as men.
- extrememacaroni 8y ago
  Sounds like they don't negotiate efficiently. "Please give me a raise" is not efficient negotiation, no matter how aggressively or often you say it.
  - SolaceQuantum 8y ago
    Note that aggressive tactics are not as effective when women do them. We also have studies that state that women who attempt to be assertive similar to men are not received as well as men. So women are disadvantaged because there is no way to ask for a raise or negotiate as effectively as a man in the general case.

ALittleLight 8y ago

Do either of you have an opinion on the cause of being underpaid? e.g. Is there a corporate plan to pay women less?

GlickWick 8y ago
That's almost never the case. It's not some evil cabal in a boardroom deciding to do bad things. It's almost always a combination of tons of societal and cultural factors that compound on each other. You can imagine that their mid-level manager probably didn't fight for them as hard, perhaps due to some bias. Said manager may have evaluated said employee more harshly in yearly reviews as well without realizing it. Their peers may have essentially done the same, lowering their perceived performance. Their peers may have also essentially boxed them out, making it more difficult to succeed. Projects may have been handed to employees that were not underrepresented. This happens often, and is a strong motivator for career growth. The hiring manager(s) originally responsible for bringing on the employee may have used algorithms or generally biased data that showed them the potential hire could be acquired at a low salary. These are only small pieces of the puzzle, and may or may not be part of what happened at Oracle. They're all small/insidious factors that may not even be detectable or measurable at an individual level, but if you pay attention to larger trends, you can start to see them.

chris_wot 8y ago

So Oracle is worse than screwing over customers and just awful quality of their database. They are now actively screwing over their employees! Remind me why they are so widely used again?

hannasanarion 8y ago
Vendor lock-in, and buying IP from companies who had much better records. People in open source have been pissed at Oracle since they pissed on OpenSolaris and started suing everybody who uses Java after buying Sun. Oracle is famous for having a corporate philosophy of "make lots of money, nothing else matters". Larry Ellison is famous for being a selfish megalomaniac: he owns an island on which hawaiian natives labor for him as serfs, and he has made two donations to charity in his whole life: one in exchange for dropping charges in a security fraud scandal, and one to establish an anti-senescence research institute for his own use. Don't take a job at Oracle, don't buy their products when possible, they are the back alley mobsters of silicon valley.

geebee 8y ago

That does sound bad, but I would want to know more about the specific situation. For instance, top law firms often pay interns the same salary as a first year associate (prorated for summer months, of course). That can be $180k/yr for some firms. My guess is that you could be a fairly senior paralegal, with arguably more responsibility and a greater impact on the firm, but still earn less than the summer associates. It would seem unfair, though I suppose the answer could be, well, go get admitted to the University of Chicago law school, give up three years salary and spend 200k on tuition, and get high enough grades to be hired into a top law firm, and we'll pay you at the rate of 180k a year. This situation is starting to emerge in some Silicon Valley companies, where a bi-modal pay system similar to law is emerging. Just as graduates of lower ranked law firms might never earn a salary comparable to a first year associate from an elite school at a top firm, I have noticed that starting salaries for recent grads at Facebook may exceed what veteran programmers elsewhere earn. I wouldn't be terribly surprised to hear that the intern salaries are higher than some other job titles at the company.

lern_too_spel 8y ago

If you want to be paid what you're worth, plan to interview regularly. That is the only sure way. The promotion game is by and large for suckers.

m0zg 8y ago

>> she was making 40-50% less than new interns were getting out of college This is called salary compression, and it's not unique to just minorities. Companies have to pay market to hire. They don't have to pay market to people who might be reluctant to leave, for a variety of reasons. It's fairly common for new hires to be earning significantly more than nominally "senior" employees who have been with the company for a decade or more.

gaius 8y ago
Right. If you are doing the work at salary X then you have sent the signal that you are willing to do the work at salary X. The only way to send a new signal is to leave for a job paying salary X+n, then repeat the cycle in a few years.