5 ms·

One 'side' is a non-anonymous first-person account from one of the major parties in the described event. The other 'side' is a post from Redditor 'dickbutt_md'

One 'side' is a non-anonymous first-person account from one of the major parties in the described event. The other 'side' is a post from Redditor 'dickbutt_md', who claims to have called up "a friend" who works at Google. In dickbutt's account, the friend claims not to know Joy personally, and not to have been involved in the events, but manages to describe Joy as "passive aggressive" and "not classy", and closes by saying "Google is fucking awesome and anyone who says otherwise is talking out their ass." I kind of wish this were not the top-voted comment on an HN thread about pay equity.

sergiotapia 11y ago
It would not be the first time we've been duped by people with an agenda. See the whole dongle shitfest for an example. So until Wired does actual research into what happened and quotes people, who the hell knows what happened. The purpose of my comment above was just to share an opposing side of the story. It's good to question things.
cpncrunch 11y ago
Here is an (apparently) non-anonymous comment from HN which seems to be saying the same thing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9908030 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9908030
- acdha 11y ago
  There are a few things in common but that account is far more professional – note the lack of personal disparagement directed at her and the direct acknowledgement that they had significant problems in parts of the company. Explaining how salary disparities might have happened is very different from saying she's making it up or calling them a rabble-rouser.
  - cpncrunch 11y ago
    Erica is strongly implying that she was discriminated against either because of her colour or her sex, but these reports seem to suggest that there were other reasons for her PB rejection and the salary disparities, and therefore her entire spiel is (probably) invalid. Some disparagement seems reasonable, unless she has some more evidence to back up her claims of discrimination.
    - acdha 11y ago
      Or, as many others have pointed out, that her experience with her immediate management and group can be true without being representative of the entire company. Note that, unlike the unverifiable hecklers, deelowe did not claim that her experience was invalid or that the numbers in the spreadsheet were inaccurate but instead discussed the question of sampling bias or simply the sample size being small enough to be skewed by other known factors.
      - cpncrunch 11y ago
        As I pointed out in my comment, I'm talking about the accusations of racism/sexism. In particular the accusations of racism regarding her peer bonuses, telling the "known racist" to "fuck off", etc. That seems to be completely unsubstantiated/refuted. It's fair enough being upset about your peer bonuses being rejected. What is not okay is to just to some invalid conclusion about racism and then slander your company in public.
aniket_ray 11y ago
Google has a lot of internal discussions in town halls, G+, TGIFs, memegen etc. You don't have to know someone personally to know how they approach issues. Also I can completely understand why the Googler on reddit chose to remain anonymous. There's a pretty vocal brigade of "rabble rousers"(for lack of a better term) at Google.
jsight 11y ago
I agree that the Reddit user lacks the same level of credibility as the original author. On the other hand he is basically spelling out all of the things that I noticed from the original tweets. 1) The tweets mentioned normalizing currencies. In every international company that I have worked in, pay ranges varied by geography. I'm not sure how you could do this accurately as the cost of living between many countries in which Google operates is not directly comparable. 2) In reading the tweets it seemed clear that peer bonuses were only being rejected when they appeared to be for the work on the spreadsheet. I haven't worked at many companies with peer bonus systems, but most of them would have frowned on sending bonuses for something like this. It is outside of the purpose of the system. 3) Yeah, this person likes to "stir the pot" a bit. That's not always a bad thing, but it is bound to have some impact on a person's career (politics are everywhere). It's hard to separate the signal from the noise about what actually happened here.

sergiotapia 11y ago

It would not be the first time we've been duped by people with an agenda. See the whole dongle shitfest for an example. So until Wired does actual research into what happened and quotes people, who the hell knows what happened. The purpose of my comment above was just to share an opposing side of the story. It's good to question things.

cpncrunch 11y ago

Here is an (apparently) non-anonymous comment from HN which seems to be saying the same thing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9908030 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9908030

acdha 11y ago
There are a few things in common but that account is far more professional – note the lack of personal disparagement directed at her and the direct acknowledgement that they had significant problems in parts of the company. Explaining how salary disparities might have happened is very different from saying she's making it up or calling them a rabble-rouser.
- cpncrunch 11y ago
  Erica is strongly implying that she was discriminated against either because of her colour or her sex, but these reports seem to suggest that there were other reasons for her PB rejection and the salary disparities, and therefore her entire spiel is (probably) invalid. Some disparagement seems reasonable, unless she has some more evidence to back up her claims of discrimination.
  - acdha 11y ago
    Or, as many others have pointed out, that her experience with her immediate management and group can be true without being representative of the entire company. Note that, unlike the unverifiable hecklers, deelowe did not claim that her experience was invalid or that the numbers in the spreadsheet were inaccurate but instead discussed the question of sampling bias or simply the sample size being small enough to be skewed by other known factors.
    - cpncrunch 11y ago
      As I pointed out in my comment, I'm talking about the accusations of racism/sexism. In particular the accusations of racism regarding her peer bonuses, telling the "known racist" to "fuck off", etc. That seems to be completely unsubstantiated/refuted. It's fair enough being upset about your peer bonuses being rejected. What is not okay is to just to some invalid conclusion about racism and then slander your company in public.

aniket_ray 11y ago

Google has a lot of internal discussions in town halls, G+, TGIFs, memegen etc. You don't have to know someone personally to know how they approach issues. Also I can completely understand why the Googler on reddit chose to remain anonymous. There's a pretty vocal brigade of "rabble rousers"(for lack of a better term) at Google.

jsight 11y ago

I agree that the Reddit user lacks the same level of credibility as the original author. On the other hand he is basically spelling out all of the things that I noticed from the original tweets. 1) The tweets mentioned normalizing currencies. In every international company that I have worked in, pay ranges varied by geography. I'm not sure how you could do this accurately as the cost of living between many countries in which Google operates is not directly comparable. 2) In reading the tweets it seemed clear that peer bonuses were only being rejected when they appeared to be for the work on the spreadsheet. I haven't worked at many companies with peer bonus systems, but most of them would have frowned on sending bonuses for something like this. It is outside of the purpose of the system. 3) Yeah, this person likes to "stir the pot" a bit. That's not always a bad thing, but it is bound to have some impact on a person's career (politics are everywhere). It's hard to separate the signal from the noise about what actually happened here.