14 ms·

The Secret Shame of an Unacquired Tech Worker

122 points by Libertatea 13y ago

frodopwns 13y ago
I can't say I am surprised. Google probably needs about 1 designer for every 50 engineers. They could have given her a year though.
LaurensBER 13y ago
It's a bit hard to make sense of this story. Google might not think that her UX/Design talent is a good fit for them (the Design and engineering teams at Google are "separate" from what I've seen). That doesn't say anything about her. I also don't really think that the part about her rich boyfriend is relevant and it feels a bit weird that the article mentions it. She also sounds very, very negative towards the end of the article. Some of my friends in other sectors have applied to 100 jobs, received one offer and got fired after 6 months because of budget cuts. They still get up every day and try again. If I was her I would ask why they didn't hire me (feedback is always useful), take the 10k. Travel for a month and get ready to try again. I get that it hurts but working for a startup company the possibility of failure is always around the corner and "selling" to Google and getting some money doesn't sound like the worst way to fail.
- vellum 13y ago
  The article mentioned her boyfriend because: her financial cushion had made it easier for her colleagues to leave her behind. "Their attitude was, We can leave you with nothing because you’re a girl and you have a rich boyfriend," she said.
mblack68 13y ago
>It was seeming proof that even within the happy-go-lucky world of tech start-ups, there are winners and losers, and more often than not, the losers in situations like these are the designers, who are more likely to be female than their engineer counterparts, and whose "soft" skills are seen as less valuable than coding chops. If a field is dominated by women, the pay tends to be less. Anecdotal, no proof. But this rule of thumb has worked for me. I am often asked to do UI and design stuff. I could be good at it, but I refuse to do it because it shunts me into a lower paid position. I stick to programming and don't allow my male counterparts to make the assumption that I will do their prettifying. Design work is necessary, and I enjoy my attempts at it on personal projects. If it were my dream job, maybe I would feel differently? I don't know. I just know that as someone who is viewed as "creative", my personal experience is that the stereotype is stunting.
- badman_ting 13y ago
  Agreed, and that is shrewd thinking, though I'm not sure if it is related to gender. It may be part of it, but I think also design is a more attractive job than coding which is gross and technical, so there are more people who want to do it -> more labor supply -> lower pay. Same thing with games, tons of people grow up playing them and want to make them -> more supply of workers -> get paid & treated like crap.
  - theorique 13y ago
    It is definitely a supply demand thing. Lots of people go to art/design school, and jobs are scarcer. Also, look at your average consumer/business startup - by the time you get to 10-20 coders, you might have one full-time designer. Maybe. Or a freelancer whom you bring in for a project when you need them.
- disbelief 13y ago
  I have to disagree. Designers who can actually write serious code are rare unicorns and can typically demand a higher salary because of it. I wouldn't downplay my design skills (if I had any). I'm not sure what your pay grade is at the moment, but an engineer that can design is worth more than someone who is solely a designer or engineer in my books. Maybe it depends on the size/type of company? A small-ish company or startup would be more likely to value someone with multiple toolsets, whereas larger companies look more for specialists.
  - mblack68 13y ago
    The problem is, once you demonstrate skills in creative, if you are female, that's now your label. Period. At least, that's my personal, anecdotal experience.
dnlbyl 13y ago
The article really tries to make this about her gender when on the face of it it's about her role. "she had been paid a salary of $60,000, half what her male colleagues made" doesn't sound as bad when stated as "the designer had been paid a salary of $60,000, half what her engineering colleagues made". I'm sure I'd feel pretty bad too if I was in her place. I hope she can get through it and learn and grow from the experience.
- mrxd 13y ago
  The average salary for a UX designer in Mountain View is 7% less than an engineer. http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=User+experience+designer&l1=Mountain+view%2C+ca&q2=Software+engineer&l2=Mountain+view%2C+ca&tm=1 http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=User+experience+designer&l1=...
  - mh_yam 13y ago
    Could be any number of reasons for this. Salary is surprisingly rigid over time for many because people simply don't like negotiating. Women especially negotiate less than men. Maybe she had a $40k salary at her previous job and $60k looked like an amazing deal when in reality is is way below market. Who knows...
  - johnny99 13y ago
    Depends tremendously on experience level, whether or not the designer can implement in code (ie, works in HTML/CSS rather than Photoshop), and other important factors. Having recently hired both designers and engineers, I can say with confidence that the pay differential is a hell of a lot more than 7%. Double is absolutely plausible.
- steveklabnik 13y ago
  There is a pretty high correlation between gender and roles at technology companies... "You see, it's not that women get paid less than men... it's that women are designers, and men are programmers, and programmers make more than designers!" It does sound as bad. The lack of appreciation for 'non-technical' employees labor is pretty sad. I am highly technical, and the designers on my team are the most valuable ones in my eyes... they can do something I can't. All roles help build the company.
kenjackson 13y ago
It sounds like she sort of got a raw deal, IMHO. Although I blame Google less, and more her company. For a company this small I don't think I'd let Google acquire us w/o hiring everyone. Or at least really compensating the one they didn't hire. Maybe there is more to this story, but at face value, I think this is a failure of leadership to protect the team.
- michaelochurch 13y ago
  For a company this small I don't think I'd let Google acquire us w/o hiring everyone. I doubt you'd get that. As of 2011, Google's pretty firm on regular employees of acquisitions being contractors first, and sub-80 conversion rates happen. Or at least really compensating the one they didn't hire. I agree. They should have done that. I think the founders took a deal that was good for them and failed to make sure it worked for everyone. She got a crappy severance; they got jobs at twice what they'd get under normal terms. Not that it excuses their betraying her, I think they were probably a bit panicked about their own job security. Maybe there is more to this story, but at face value, I think this is a failure of leadership to protect the team. They saved themselves. You could say that they weren't leaders, then. It's unclear what their other options were.
  - nissimk 13y ago
    It's typical bad business. At such a small firm especially when the employees are underpaid with the expectation of some large payoff in the future, the management should ensure that there is a positive outcome for all of their employees. Unfortunately, this frequently does not happen. This scenario is similar to when companies sell out for a per share value below the employee stock option strike price and the senior people all have stock so they get paid while all of the option holders get nothing. Or the startup that fired a lot of their employees with unvested options just prior to the ipo announcement. These things happen and they are upsetting. There are many bad operators who wouldn't think twice about screwing over the people who helped them get where they are. On the other hand, there are folks who will try to do their best to make sure everyone comes out ok and these are the people who you should try to seek out.
endtime 13y ago
The following is personal opinion/experience and I do not represent Google, etc. My experience at Google is that we love hiring women both for SWE roles and PM roles. All three tech leads I've had over 2.5 years have been women, and I've worked with about as many female PMs as male ones. However, we generally hire PMs with a solid technical background (often a CS major or minor), which the author doesn't mention and so I assume does not have. I would be flabbergasted if she wasn't hired because she's a woman.
smartician 13y ago
Do acqui-hires go through the same rigorous hiring process as regular hires at Google? I wonder how many engineers that are hired as part of an acquisition would actually pass the infamously hard interviewing process at Google.
- michaelochurch 13y ago
  As of 2011: regular employees convert to contractors (red badges) and have 12 months to prove themselves. Obviously, executives get a sweetheart deal they arguably don't deserve.
  - rdl 13y ago
    What are the financial terms? i.e. would people who don't convert lose everything due a a 1 year cliff?
    - michaelochurch 13y ago
      That I don't know. I'd hope not.
      - rdl 13y ago
        I do know I'd be "orange" or more when negotiating with Google in general, based on this kind of thing. It really is down to the CEO to make sure the whole team gets a fair deal in an exit (not necessarily the same deal, but something as far as possible for each of them). Where it will really hurt Google is not so much acquihires (where you're doomed otherwise, especially without other options), but when there's any competition. Taking 75% as much money overall but having a great work outcome for everyone for the next 2-6 years is probably worth it, especially if you ever plan to do a startup again. Which is sad, because Google sounds like an amazing place to work (your concerns for early-career people might be valid, but for senior people, people in infosec, or people at Google Labs, it sounds awesome).
- tensafefrogs 13y ago
  It varies by deal. If you are a hot-shit growing company, you obviously have more leverage to negotiate for your employees and can get them full-time positions with good retention bonuses/stock. If you are running out of money and don't have a choice, then your employees are probably going to be rolled into an existing product, and at that point, there's probably not a lot of benefit to Google to hire sub-par employees, so they may not get an offer or might get less than in the above case. It also depends on what your team does: A failing company that does hard core research and employs a bunch of Phds might be worth a lot more than a random social startup that just employs a bunch of randos.
sunir 13y ago
I'm really dismayed by this story, because it reminds me of too many conversations with young professionals who are stuck in their career because they are not professionally developing out of some inner rage. Quoting: > "Amy admits she'll "never know" if she wasn't hired by Google because she's female, because she's not an engineer, or whether there was something else wrong with her application." If you go through life believing that any prejudice (sexism, in this case) is dominating your career growth, you will always look for it in the tea leaves, project it onto any situation, and in return invite it. In truth, the person who is prejudiced is you. You have to live your life assuming good faith unless you have direct evidence of bad faith. You're crippling yourself to assume an ethereal, non-specific, constant prejudice against you because you are putting the locus of control outside yourself. http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/AssumeGoodFaith http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/AssumeGoodFaith http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locus_of_control http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locus_of_control In fact, in Amy's words: > "I feel like I have no power, that this happened to me, and it’s my fault," she said. "I feel so betrayed. And, at this point, I don't really feel like I have it in me to fail again." It's critical as a professional to believe that the situation is something specific, direct, and within you sphere of influence, so you can look to ways to improve. In this situation, if you start with the assumption no one was being sexist, it's not that difficult to identify the most probable reason she was not hired and her salary was lower. Google acquihired the engineering team; she was a designer. Therefore, she was not hired. If you see that as a cause, then it becomes easier to think of ways to improve, such as gaining software development skills or taking on a larger and larger product design roles to make yourself more valuable as an employee. Or just looking for another job. Of course, they could have been sexist towards her, but the article doesn't provide direct evidence, only Amy's perception of their attitude, which I fully trust she believes is fact even though I also believe she is just projecting. > "'Their attitude was, We can leave you with nothing because you’re a girl and you have a rich boyfriend,' she said." The lesson in an nutshell is to never assume prejudice. Only draw that conclusion from direct evidence.
- kenjackson 13y ago
  If you go through life believing that any prejudice (sexism, in this case) is dominating your career growth, you will always look for it in the tea leaves, project it onto any situation, and in return invite it. In truth, the person who is prejudiced is you. For better or worse, disadvantaged minorities always have to consider this. It's probably one of the biggest privileges that white males have in day to day life -- they rarely need to consider if race/gender played a role in any decision they encounter. There was an interesting experimental study that showed that a white male just released from prison was as likely to get a job callback as a black male with no criminal record [1]. There are typically multiple factors at play for any employment decision, but race and gender loom very large -- large enough that ignoring it is just ignorance. And note, that the domain matters. Jeremy Lin faced discrimination as a basketball player being Asian. But for most domains, being a white male is preferred. [1] Discrimination in a Low-Wage Labor Market: A Field Experiment, Am Sociol Rev. Oct 1, 2009; 74(5): 777–799, http://www.princeton.edu/~pager/ASR_pager_etal09.pdf http://www.princeton.edu/~pager/ASR_pager_etal09.pdf
ef4 13y ago
I've grown keenly aware of the gender disparities in tech and it's an issue I care about fixing. Which is why I want the "tech undervalues non-coders" meme to stop getting dragged into these gender discrimination discussions. It muddies the waters and only serves to discredit the person bringing it up in the eyes of technology people who still need to be convinced that we have a gender discrimination problem. A similar example I saw recently at (http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/sex-and-the-startup-men-women-and-work http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/sex-and-the-startup-men-w...) put it clearly: "The roots of the vast gap in power and value between men and women in Silicon Valley begin very early in the life-cycle of a startup, often before the startup officially has employees or executives. For example, in a company like Facebook... women from the beginning of the company did work that had not yet been conceived or compensated as work. Women who casually dated the founders before the company had employees found themselves doing everything from recruiting engineers from their social networks, mediating founder relationships and disputes, providing product feedback, designing social events, and performing emotional and affective labor." "When startups begin hiring employees, the fact that nontechnical work may have been originally done for free by friends often leads founders to continue to devalue that labor, considering it optional or “fun,” perhaps a matter of social obligation, rather than serious and valuable. Engineers become highly prized commodities to hunt and value highly, while labor that isn’t technical is often expected to be freely performed by people who may have other jobs at the company (such as administrators) or who may not have any job at the company at all (such as girlfriends and dates). And because this labor often goes underpaid or not paid at all, it also doesn’t signify when equity is divided up." The author of that needs to ask: why can you find people to do the non-coding work for free or cheap, but you can't find people to do the coding for free or cheap? It has everything to do with the supply and demand of skills. Developers are still more scarce than all those other roles. Full stop. We absolutely need more powerful women in tech -- by letting more women become great coders. Not by pretending coding ability doesn't matter.
- phillmv 13y ago
  You're missing out entirely on the point of the article. The notion is that "women's work" is devalued, and there are all these social reasons women find themselves being underpaid or not paid at all for above and beyond "supply and demand". It's ultimately shitty that everyone in the company but the designer got to fail upwards and land in cushy jobs while she got $10k and a pat on the head. Did she not put in long hours? Did she not sacrifice her personal life, etc, in a way commensurate with the developers? You need one designer for every 3 or 4 programmers, but that doesn't mean you still don't need good designers or that their individual contribution is automatically less valuable.
zengr 13y ago
I don't think this has to do anything with Amy being a woman. I personally know about 2 cases where a silicon valley big corp company interviewed employees before an acquisition and let go some of them. Maybe because they are not that important for the job.
steven2012 13y ago
"Talking through her tears on Monday night, Amy said she didn't know if she'd be able to recover from what she considered the worst setback of her professional life. After what happened at Google, she wasn't even sure she could bring herself to interview for another job." One of my friends lost his job during the dot-com bust. He was married only a few weeks earlier. He was on an H1B and about to get kicked out of the country. He couldn't find a job anywhere because of the bust. He paid money to a body shop to keep his H1B "active", and then he got whatever jobs he could for 2 years, moving around CA taking the shittiest jobs just so that he had money for his family. He went from a software engineer to pumping gas during the midnight shift in Redwood City and getting paid under the table, just so that he would have money. Finally after two years, he got a break and got a job at a big tech company, moved to Austin, and is thriving in his job, made senior manager, and has 3 kids. He suffered great indignities just to survive and to make money and his perseverance paid off, thankfully. To hear this person say they don't know if they can never interview again because they weren't good enough to join Google, and they would look bad in front of their rich friends, frankly it sickens me. No wonder the hate of Silicon Valley is increasing in these past few years, it's producing people like this that can't take the fact that their feelings were hurt.
- ebiester 13y ago
  What we say in the emotional raw state is not what is going to determine our future. Otherwise, I would have given up more times than I can count. :) And it's not just her feelings that were hurt -- it could have short term negative consequences on her job prospects. "If Google didn't want her, what's wrong with her?"
  - nissimk 13y ago
    > And it's not just her feelings that were hurt -- it could have short term negative consequences on her job prospects. "If Google didn't want her, what's wrong with her?" If she doesn't know how to spin that, she should get someone to help her out because it's really just a matter of perception. I'm no communications expert but I'd start with "Google wanted engineers," "Google was looking for a different skillset," etc. This is the type of thing that a good recruiter can actually really help with.
neilk 13y ago
It may not have been any better for her if she joined. A friend of mine was an evangelist of a startup, acquired by Google for their technology. She was humiliated by having to essentially re-apply for her job and be ejected a few months later. (Incidentally, this woman is an accomplished programmer and project leader, but not quite the C++ rock star that Google looks for). As for the OP's case - we only have only her side of the story. If the team jettisons one of their own when acquired, it may be that they are contemptible, or that she is and they were happy to get rid of her. Or, possibly both.
gozmike 13y ago
Faced with a similar prospect in my small company, the founders agreed (in writing) to set aside a portion of their proceeds (including a portion of gross salary) to ensure that payments were made to anyone on the team who was not hired. In my opinion, even if your teammate doesn't "need the money", it's important that you express how valuable they have been to you (for even just believing in your journey and sticking through it).
- 001sky 13y ago
  A nice gesture like this done before the fact helps mitigate perception problems. The problem is "damaged goods" repulation, its not the "rejection". New hiring managers will silently discriminate against her (surely). By giving your employees something to point to, you are being more responsible in how you do the buyout transaction. I actually don't agree with the view that this is some type of mis=placed "entitlement", because the problem is a real problem regardless of who it impacts. Although she also shouldn't over-worry if she's falling into a hot market with a strong support network.
mynewwork 13y ago
What a ridiculously terrible article. The company "decided to sell itself to Google as a last resort, after failing to find traction in the market". But the engineers got hired, so probably the product was good but the failure was in marketing, branding, etc. Who was in charge of that? "I did our user experience, our logo, the marketing – all that stuff," she said. So the article could have been written "Strong technical team makes valuable product, but bad marketing and UI prevents success" and no one would be surprised that the engineers got hired and the marketing & design people didn't. But that wouldn't fit with the sexism in tech narrative the author wanted, so let's ignore the most significant and obvious facts.
- prodigal_erik 13y ago
  Being acqui-hired means the company managed to recruit a team that's probably decent, but failed to do anything substantially more valuable than that. If the product were inherently strong they'd continue it with different marketing staff.
- wpietri 13y ago
  Your notion that good programmers = good product is absurd. As is your rush to blame somebody for failing to find traction. If a startup fails to find traction, there's no clear reason to blame anybody. Most startups do that.
  - mynewwork 13y ago
    I edited my comment several times and I think the message I was originally trying to convey got less clear as a result. I don't for a moment believe the startup actually failed due solely to the designer. And yet, it's more likely that the designer just wasn't google-quality than libelling google by claiming it was sexism that caused them to hire a few engineers but not the designer from a failed startup.
    - wpietri 13y ago
      Show me where she libeled Google and claimed it was sexism?
elchief 13y ago
I'm getting tired of these stories. If you want to make more money, try to train in and work in a field that makes more money.
- thanatropism 13y ago
  Relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kZg_ALxEz0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kZg_ALxEz0 Coffee's for closers.
  - ForHackernews 13y ago
    You realize that he's not a positive role model, right?
    - thanatropism 13y ago
      He's not a role model at all. He's not in the original text, and does not appear again in the movie. It's a talking reality check.
evan_ 13y ago
The first time I heard about "Secret" I thought it sounded awful, and assumed it would be full of spiteful gossip and behind-the-back-talking, and decided I'd never use it and would ignore anything I learned that was sourced from it. Anyway recently a friend showed it to me on their phone and it turns out it's actually full of banal not-interesting-enough-for-twitter observations, obviously made-up half-jokes, and trite glurge nonsense that sounds like it was stolen from my grandmother's email forwards. In a way, this reality is even worse.
onmydesk 13y ago
> "'Their attitude was, We can leave you with nothing because you’re a girl and you have a rich boyfriend,' she said She wasn't an engineer. Perhaps they wanted engineers. Whats wrong with pointing out she happens to be cared for financially so won't have that to worry about? Its not the reason, its a fortunate circumstance. Playing the sexism card is in rather poor taste. Did she complain when they took her on board because she suspected there was positive discrimination at play? Doing 'the logo' and 'all that stuff' is suitably vague. Is she not fortunate to have got away with coining 60k for a lowly role in the first place?
- nissimk 13y ago
  I didn't get that. It looked to me like she took 60k at the startup instead of a higher number at a more established company with the expectation that she'd get paid out the difference at the exit. Isn't that the risk/reward expectation of startup employment? And what's wrong with pointing out her external financial situation is that it is not relevant to the decisions of the business. Is it less wrong to screw over a girl with a rich boyfriend than it is to screw over anybody else?
thanatropism 13y ago
> Amy admits she'll "never know" if she wasn't hired by Google because she's female, because she's not an engineer, or whether there was something else wrong with her application Because she's not an engineer. The company folded, the underlying tech may have some value. The branded design? Her years of toil? Did the company have a cleaning person for the office as well? Someone post this to /r/TumblrInAction already.
protomyth 13y ago
The actual link has a lot more comments than the published story https://www.secret.ly/p/feexnrnpunzjadkhinaegigziy https://www.secret.ly/p/feexnrnpunzjadkhinaegigziy I would love to hear the other side, but I cannot help but think leaving one of your team to fend for themselves is not exactly the act of a standup person.
jqm 13y ago
It sucks and I feel for Amy. Then again, she did make 60K a year for period. As a designer. And 10K isn't much but it's enough to buy a few nice things. Really, I guess I don't feel that sorry. People work their hearts out all over the world for little more than subsistence. Work and business is brutal and full of millions of sad stories. The level of self entitlement displayed by the "startup culture" is astounding at times.

122 points by Libertatea 13y ago

I can't say I am surprised. Google probably needs about 1 designer for every 50 engineers. They could have given her a year though.

LaurensBER 13y ago

It's a bit hard to make sense of this story. Google might not think that her UX/Design talent is a good fit for them (the Design and engineering teams at Google are "separate" from what I've seen). That doesn't say anything about her. I also don't really think that the part about her rich boyfriend is relevant and it feels a bit weird that the article mentions it. She also sounds very, very negative towards the end of the article. Some of my friends in other sectors have applied to 100 jobs, received one offer and got fired after 6 months because of budget cuts. They still get up every day and try again. If I was her I would ask why they didn't hire me (feedback is always useful), take the 10k. Travel for a month and get ready to try again. I get that it hurts but working for a startup company the possibility of failure is always around the corner and "selling" to Google and getting some money doesn't sound like the worst way to fail.

vellum 13y ago
The article mentioned her boyfriend because: her financial cushion had made it easier for her colleagues to leave her behind. "Their attitude was, We can leave you with nothing because you’re a girl and you have a rich boyfriend," she said.

mblack68 13y ago

>It was seeming proof that even within the happy-go-lucky world of tech start-ups, there are winners and losers, and more often than not, the losers in situations like these are the designers, who are more likely to be female than their engineer counterparts, and whose "soft" skills are seen as less valuable than coding chops. If a field is dominated by women, the pay tends to be less. Anecdotal, no proof. But this rule of thumb has worked for me. I am often asked to do UI and design stuff. I could be good at it, but I refuse to do it because it shunts me into a lower paid position. I stick to programming and don't allow my male counterparts to make the assumption that I will do their prettifying. Design work is necessary, and I enjoy my attempts at it on personal projects. If it were my dream job, maybe I would feel differently? I don't know. I just know that as someone who is viewed as "creative", my personal experience is that the stereotype is stunting.

badman_ting 13y ago
Agreed, and that is shrewd thinking, though I'm not sure if it is related to gender. It may be part of it, but I think also design is a more attractive job than coding which is gross and technical, so there are more people who want to do it -> more labor supply -> lower pay. Same thing with games, tons of people grow up playing them and want to make them -> more supply of workers -> get paid & treated like crap.
- theorique 13y ago
  It is definitely a supply demand thing. Lots of people go to art/design school, and jobs are scarcer. Also, look at your average consumer/business startup - by the time you get to 10-20 coders, you might have one full-time designer. Maybe. Or a freelancer whom you bring in for a project when you need them.
disbelief 13y ago
I have to disagree. Designers who can actually write serious code are rare unicorns and can typically demand a higher salary because of it. I wouldn't downplay my design skills (if I had any). I'm not sure what your pay grade is at the moment, but an engineer that can design is worth more than someone who is solely a designer or engineer in my books. Maybe it depends on the size/type of company? A small-ish company or startup would be more likely to value someone with multiple toolsets, whereas larger companies look more for specialists.
- mblack68 13y ago
  The problem is, once you demonstrate skills in creative, if you are female, that's now your label. Period. At least, that's my personal, anecdotal experience.

dnlbyl 13y ago

The article really tries to make this about her gender when on the face of it it's about her role. "she had been paid a salary of $60,000, half what her male colleagues made" doesn't sound as bad when stated as "the designer had been paid a salary of $60,000, half what her engineering colleagues made". I'm sure I'd feel pretty bad too if I was in her place. I hope she can get through it and learn and grow from the experience.

mrxd 13y ago
The average salary for a UX designer in Mountain View is 7% less than an engineer. http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=User+experience+designer&l1=Mountain+view%2C+ca&q2=Software+engineer&l2=Mountain+view%2C+ca&tm=1 http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=User+experience+designer&l1=...
- mh_yam 13y ago
  Could be any number of reasons for this. Salary is surprisingly rigid over time for many because people simply don't like negotiating. Women especially negotiate less than men. Maybe she had a $40k salary at her previous job and $60k looked like an amazing deal when in reality is is way below market. Who knows...
- johnny99 13y ago
  Depends tremendously on experience level, whether or not the designer can implement in code (ie, works in HTML/CSS rather than Photoshop), and other important factors. Having recently hired both designers and engineers, I can say with confidence that the pay differential is a hell of a lot more than 7%. Double is absolutely plausible.
steveklabnik 13y ago
There is a pretty high correlation between gender and roles at technology companies... "You see, it's not that women get paid less than men... it's that women are designers, and men are programmers, and programmers make more than designers!" It does sound as bad. The lack of appreciation for 'non-technical' employees labor is pretty sad. I am highly technical, and the designers on my team are the most valuable ones in my eyes... they can do something I can't. All roles help build the company.

kenjackson 13y ago

It sounds like she sort of got a raw deal, IMHO. Although I blame Google less, and more her company. For a company this small I don't think I'd let Google acquire us w/o hiring everyone. Or at least really compensating the one they didn't hire. Maybe there is more to this story, but at face value, I think this is a failure of leadership to protect the team.

michaelochurch 13y ago
For a company this small I don't think I'd let Google acquire us w/o hiring everyone. I doubt you'd get that. As of 2011, Google's pretty firm on regular employees of acquisitions being contractors first, and sub-80 conversion rates happen. Or at least really compensating the one they didn't hire. I agree. They should have done that. I think the founders took a deal that was good for them and failed to make sure it worked for everyone. She got a crappy severance; they got jobs at twice what they'd get under normal terms. Not that it excuses their betraying her, I think they were probably a bit panicked about their own job security. Maybe there is more to this story, but at face value, I think this is a failure of leadership to protect the team. They saved themselves. You could say that they weren't leaders, then. It's unclear what their other options were.
- nissimk 13y ago
  It's typical bad business. At such a small firm especially when the employees are underpaid with the expectation of some large payoff in the future, the management should ensure that there is a positive outcome for all of their employees. Unfortunately, this frequently does not happen. This scenario is similar to when companies sell out for a per share value below the employee stock option strike price and the senior people all have stock so they get paid while all of the option holders get nothing. Or the startup that fired a lot of their employees with unvested options just prior to the ipo announcement. These things happen and they are upsetting. There are many bad operators who wouldn't think twice about screwing over the people who helped them get where they are. On the other hand, there are folks who will try to do their best to make sure everyone comes out ok and these are the people who you should try to seek out.

endtime 13y ago

The following is personal opinion/experience and I do not represent Google, etc. My experience at Google is that we love hiring women both for SWE roles and PM roles. All three tech leads I've had over 2.5 years have been women, and I've worked with about as many female PMs as male ones. However, we generally hire PMs with a solid technical background (often a CS major or minor), which the author doesn't mention and so I assume does not have. I would be flabbergasted if she wasn't hired because she's a woman.

smartician 13y ago

Do acqui-hires go through the same rigorous hiring process as regular hires at Google? I wonder how many engineers that are hired as part of an acquisition would actually pass the infamously hard interviewing process at Google.

michaelochurch 13y ago
As of 2011: regular employees convert to contractors (red badges) and have 12 months to prove themselves. Obviously, executives get a sweetheart deal they arguably don't deserve.
- rdl 13y ago
  What are the financial terms? i.e. would people who don't convert lose everything due a a 1 year cliff?
  - michaelochurch 13y ago
    That I don't know. I'd hope not.
    - rdl 13y ago
      I do know I'd be "orange" or more when negotiating with Google in general, based on this kind of thing. It really is down to the CEO to make sure the whole team gets a fair deal in an exit (not necessarily the same deal, but something as far as possible for each of them). Where it will really hurt Google is not so much acquihires (where you're doomed otherwise, especially without other options), but when there's any competition. Taking 75% as much money overall but having a great work outcome for everyone for the next 2-6 years is probably worth it, especially if you ever plan to do a startup again. Which is sad, because Google sounds like an amazing place to work (your concerns for early-career people might be valid, but for senior people, people in infosec, or people at Google Labs, it sounds awesome).
tensafefrogs 13y ago
It varies by deal. If you are a hot-shit growing company, you obviously have more leverage to negotiate for your employees and can get them full-time positions with good retention bonuses/stock. If you are running out of money and don't have a choice, then your employees are probably going to be rolled into an existing product, and at that point, there's probably not a lot of benefit to Google to hire sub-par employees, so they may not get an offer or might get less than in the above case. It also depends on what your team does: A failing company that does hard core research and employs a bunch of Phds might be worth a lot more than a random social startup that just employs a bunch of randos.

sunir 13y ago

I'm really dismayed by this story, because it reminds me of too many conversations with young professionals who are stuck in their career because they are not professionally developing out of some inner rage. Quoting: > "Amy admits she'll "never know" if she wasn't hired by Google because she's female, because she's not an engineer, or whether there was something else wrong with her application." If you go through life believing that any prejudice (sexism, in this case) is dominating your career growth, you will always look for it in the tea leaves, project it onto any situation, and in return invite it. In truth, the person who is prejudiced is you. You have to live your life assuming good faith unless you have direct evidence of bad faith. You're crippling yourself to assume an ethereal, non-specific, constant prejudice against you because you are putting the locus of control outside yourself. http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/AssumeGoodFaith http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/AssumeGoodFaith http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locus_of_control http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locus_of_control In fact, in Amy's words: > "I feel like I have no power, that this happened to me, and it’s my fault," she said. "I feel so betrayed. And, at this point, I don't really feel like I have it in me to fail again." It's critical as a professional to believe that the situation is something specific, direct, and within you sphere of influence, so you can look to ways to improve. In this situation, if you start with the assumption no one was being sexist, it's not that difficult to identify the most probable reason she was not hired and her salary was lower. Google acquihired the engineering team; she was a designer. Therefore, she was not hired. If you see that as a cause, then it becomes easier to think of ways to improve, such as gaining software development skills or taking on a larger and larger product design roles to make yourself more valuable as an employee. Or just looking for another job. Of course, they could have been sexist towards her, but the article doesn't provide direct evidence, only Amy's perception of their attitude, which I fully trust she believes is fact even though I also believe she is just projecting. > "'Their attitude was, We can leave you with nothing because you’re a girl and you have a rich boyfriend,' she said." The lesson in an nutshell is to never assume prejudice. Only draw that conclusion from direct evidence.

kenjackson 13y ago
If you go through life believing that any prejudice (sexism, in this case) is dominating your career growth, you will always look for it in the tea leaves, project it onto any situation, and in return invite it. In truth, the person who is prejudiced is you. For better or worse, disadvantaged minorities always have to consider this. It's probably one of the biggest privileges that white males have in day to day life -- they rarely need to consider if race/gender played a role in any decision they encounter. There was an interesting experimental study that showed that a white male just released from prison was as likely to get a job callback as a black male with no criminal record [1]. There are typically multiple factors at play for any employment decision, but race and gender loom very large -- large enough that ignoring it is just ignorance. And note, that the domain matters. Jeremy Lin faced discrimination as a basketball player being Asian. But for most domains, being a white male is preferred. [1] Discrimination in a Low-Wage Labor Market: A Field Experiment, Am Sociol Rev. Oct 1, 2009; 74(5): 777–799, http://www.princeton.edu/~pager/ASR_pager_etal09.pdf http://www.princeton.edu/~pager/ASR_pager_etal09.pdf

ef4 13y ago

I've grown keenly aware of the gender disparities in tech and it's an issue I care about fixing. Which is why I want the "tech undervalues non-coders" meme to stop getting dragged into these gender discrimination discussions. It muddies the waters and only serves to discredit the person bringing it up in the eyes of technology people who still need to be convinced that we have a gender discrimination problem. A similar example I saw recently at (http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/sex-and-the-startup-men-women-and-work http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/sex-and-the-startup-men-w...) put it clearly: "The roots of the vast gap in power and value between men and women in Silicon Valley begin very early in the life-cycle of a startup, often before the startup officially has employees or executives. For example, in a company like Facebook... women from the beginning of the company did work that had not yet been conceived or compensated as work. Women who casually dated the founders before the company had employees found themselves doing everything from recruiting engineers from their social networks, mediating founder relationships and disputes, providing product feedback, designing social events, and performing emotional and affective labor." "When startups begin hiring employees, the fact that nontechnical work may have been originally done for free by friends often leads founders to continue to devalue that labor, considering it optional or “fun,” perhaps a matter of social obligation, rather than serious and valuable. Engineers become highly prized commodities to hunt and value highly, while labor that isn’t technical is often expected to be freely performed by people who may have other jobs at the company (such as administrators) or who may not have any job at the company at all (such as girlfriends and dates). And because this labor often goes underpaid or not paid at all, it also doesn’t signify when equity is divided up." The author of that needs to ask: why can you find people to do the non-coding work for free or cheap, but you can't find people to do the coding for free or cheap? It has everything to do with the supply and demand of skills. Developers are still more scarce than all those other roles. Full stop. We absolutely need more powerful women in tech -- by letting more women become great coders. Not by pretending coding ability doesn't matter.

phillmv 13y ago
You're missing out entirely on the point of the article. The notion is that "women's work" is devalued, and there are all these social reasons women find themselves being underpaid or not paid at all for above and beyond "supply and demand". It's ultimately shitty that everyone in the company but the designer got to fail upwards and land in cushy jobs while she got $10k and a pat on the head. Did she not put in long hours? Did she not sacrifice her personal life, etc, in a way commensurate with the developers? You need one designer for every 3 or 4 programmers, but that doesn't mean you still don't need good designers or that their individual contribution is automatically less valuable.

zengr 13y ago

I don't think this has to do anything with Amy being a woman. I personally know about 2 cases where a silicon valley big corp company interviewed employees before an acquisition and let go some of them. Maybe because they are not that important for the job.

steven2012 13y ago

"Talking through her tears on Monday night, Amy said she didn't know if she'd be able to recover from what she considered the worst setback of her professional life. After what happened at Google, she wasn't even sure she could bring herself to interview for another job." One of my friends lost his job during the dot-com bust. He was married only a few weeks earlier. He was on an H1B and about to get kicked out of the country. He couldn't find a job anywhere because of the bust. He paid money to a body shop to keep his H1B "active", and then he got whatever jobs he could for 2 years, moving around CA taking the shittiest jobs just so that he had money for his family. He went from a software engineer to pumping gas during the midnight shift in Redwood City and getting paid under the table, just so that he would have money. Finally after two years, he got a break and got a job at a big tech company, moved to Austin, and is thriving in his job, made senior manager, and has 3 kids. He suffered great indignities just to survive and to make money and his perseverance paid off, thankfully. To hear this person say they don't know if they can never interview again because they weren't good enough to join Google, and they would look bad in front of their rich friends, frankly it sickens me. No wonder the hate of Silicon Valley is increasing in these past few years, it's producing people like this that can't take the fact that their feelings were hurt.

ebiester 13y ago
What we say in the emotional raw state is not what is going to determine our future. Otherwise, I would have given up more times than I can count. :) And it's not just her feelings that were hurt -- it could have short term negative consequences on her job prospects. "If Google didn't want her, what's wrong with her?"
- nissimk 13y ago
  > And it's not just her feelings that were hurt -- it could have short term negative consequences on her job prospects. "If Google didn't want her, what's wrong with her?" If she doesn't know how to spin that, she should get someone to help her out because it's really just a matter of perception. I'm no communications expert but I'd start with "Google wanted engineers," "Google was looking for a different skillset," etc. This is the type of thing that a good recruiter can actually really help with.

neilk 13y ago

It may not have been any better for her if she joined. A friend of mine was an evangelist of a startup, acquired by Google for their technology. She was humiliated by having to essentially re-apply for her job and be ejected a few months later. (Incidentally, this woman is an accomplished programmer and project leader, but not quite the C++ rock star that Google looks for). As for the OP's case - we only have only her side of the story. If the team jettisons one of their own when acquired, it may be that they are contemptible, or that she is and they were happy to get rid of her. Or, possibly both.

gozmike 13y ago

Faced with a similar prospect in my small company, the founders agreed (in writing) to set aside a portion of their proceeds (including a portion of gross salary) to ensure that payments were made to anyone on the team who was not hired. In my opinion, even if your teammate doesn't "need the money", it's important that you express how valuable they have been to you (for even just believing in your journey and sticking through it).

001sky 13y ago
A nice gesture like this done before the fact helps mitigate perception problems. The problem is "damaged goods" repulation, its not the "rejection". New hiring managers will silently discriminate against her (surely). By giving your employees something to point to, you are being more responsible in how you do the buyout transaction. I actually don't agree with the view that this is some type of mis=placed "entitlement", because the problem is a real problem regardless of who it impacts. Although she also shouldn't over-worry if she's falling into a hot market with a strong support network.

mynewwork 13y ago

What a ridiculously terrible article. The company "decided to sell itself to Google as a last resort, after failing to find traction in the market". But the engineers got hired, so probably the product was good but the failure was in marketing, branding, etc. Who was in charge of that? "I did our user experience, our logo, the marketing – all that stuff," she said. So the article could have been written "Strong technical team makes valuable product, but bad marketing and UI prevents success" and no one would be surprised that the engineers got hired and the marketing & design people didn't. But that wouldn't fit with the sexism in tech narrative the author wanted, so let's ignore the most significant and obvious facts.

prodigal_erik 13y ago
Being acqui-hired means the company managed to recruit a team that's probably decent, but failed to do anything substantially more valuable than that. If the product were inherently strong they'd continue it with different marketing staff.
wpietri 13y ago
Your notion that good programmers = good product is absurd. As is your rush to blame somebody for failing to find traction. If a startup fails to find traction, there's no clear reason to blame anybody. Most startups do that.
- mynewwork 13y ago
  I edited my comment several times and I think the message I was originally trying to convey got less clear as a result. I don't for a moment believe the startup actually failed due solely to the designer. And yet, it's more likely that the designer just wasn't google-quality than libelling google by claiming it was sexism that caused them to hire a few engineers but not the designer from a failed startup.
  - wpietri 13y ago
    Show me where she libeled Google and claimed it was sexism?

elchief 13y ago

I'm getting tired of these stories. If you want to make more money, try to train in and work in a field that makes more money.

thanatropism 13y ago
Relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kZg_ALxEz0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kZg_ALxEz0 Coffee's for closers.
- ForHackernews 13y ago
  You realize that he's not a positive role model, right?
  - thanatropism 13y ago
    He's not a role model at all. He's not in the original text, and does not appear again in the movie. It's a talking reality check.

evan_ 13y ago

The first time I heard about "Secret" I thought it sounded awful, and assumed it would be full of spiteful gossip and behind-the-back-talking, and decided I'd never use it and would ignore anything I learned that was sourced from it. Anyway recently a friend showed it to me on their phone and it turns out it's actually full of banal not-interesting-enough-for-twitter observations, obviously made-up half-jokes, and trite glurge nonsense that sounds like it was stolen from my grandmother's email forwards. In a way, this reality is even worse.

onmydesk 13y ago

> "'Their attitude was, We can leave you with nothing because you’re a girl and you have a rich boyfriend,' she said She wasn't an engineer. Perhaps they wanted engineers. Whats wrong with pointing out she happens to be cared for financially so won't have that to worry about? Its not the reason, its a fortunate circumstance. Playing the sexism card is in rather poor taste. Did she complain when they took her on board because she suspected there was positive discrimination at play? Doing 'the logo' and 'all that stuff' is suitably vague. Is she not fortunate to have got away with coining 60k for a lowly role in the first place?

nissimk 13y ago
I didn't get that. It looked to me like she took 60k at the startup instead of a higher number at a more established company with the expectation that she'd get paid out the difference at the exit. Isn't that the risk/reward expectation of startup employment? And what's wrong with pointing out her external financial situation is that it is not relevant to the decisions of the business. Is it less wrong to screw over a girl with a rich boyfriend than it is to screw over anybody else?

thanatropism 13y ago

> Amy admits she'll "never know" if she wasn't hired by Google because she's female, because she's not an engineer, or whether there was something else wrong with her application Because she's not an engineer. The company folded, the underlying tech may have some value. The branded design? Her years of toil? Did the company have a cleaning person for the office as well? Someone post this to /r/TumblrInAction already.

protomyth 13y ago

The actual link has a lot more comments than the published story https://www.secret.ly/p/feexnrnpunzjadkhinaegigziy https://www.secret.ly/p/feexnrnpunzjadkhinaegigziy I would love to hear the other side, but I cannot help but think leaving one of your team to fend for themselves is not exactly the act of a standup person.

jqm 13y ago

It sucks and I feel for Amy. Then again, she did make 60K a year for period. As a designer. And 10K isn't much but it's enough to buy a few nice things. Really, I guess I don't feel that sorry. People work their hearts out all over the world for little more than subsistence. Work and business is brutal and full of millions of sad stories. The level of self entitlement displayed by the "startup culture" is astounding at times.