Google Accused of 'Extreme' Gender Pay Discrimination By US Labor Department (theguardian.com) 312
The U.S. Department of Labor is accusing Google of discriminating against its female employees and violating federal employment laws with its salaries for women. "We found systemic compensation disparities against women pretty much across the entire workforce," Janette Wipper, a Department of Labor regional director, testified in court in San Francisco on Friday. The Guardian reports: Google strongly denied the accusations of inequities, claiming it did not have a gender pay gap. The allegations emerged at a hearing in federal court as part of a lawsuit the DoL filed against Google in January, seeking to compel the company to provide salary data and documents to the government. Google is a federal contractor, which means it is required to allow the DoL to inspect and copy records and information about its its compliance with equal opportunity laws. Last year, the department's office of federal contract compliance programs requested job and salary history for Google employees, along with names and contact information, as part of the compliance review. Google, however, repeatedly refused to hand over the data, which was a violation of its contractual obligations with the federal government, according to the DoL's lawsuit. Labor officials detailed the government's discrimination claims against Google at the Friday hearing while making the case for why the company should be forced to comply with the DoL's requests for documents. Wipper said the department found pay disparities in a 2015 snapshot of salaries and said officials needed earlier compensation data to evaluate the root of the problem and needed to be able to confidentially interview employees.
ATTN: Potential New Hires (Score:3)
No need to specify your gender...
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You can Google average salary info for the type of position you are looking for. No need to specify your gender...
If its average then about half the current employees are below it. And why would an applicant think they are going to start above average, above half the current employees at Google, employees who have had reviews, raises, etc? Ask for average and you price yourself out of a job possibly, regardless of whether you are male or female.
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I think you are confusing mean with median.
I think you are confusing the phrase "about half", especially in the context of what Google's N would be. P.S. The audience is not math/stat students.
There could well be a few very well paid people that skew the mean...
Except that the data being referred to is pay by position. Exceptionally talented people would have very different positions than what most applicants are applying for.
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I think you are confusing mean with median.
I think you are confusing the phrase "about half", especially in the context of what Google's N would be. P.S. The audience is not math/stat students.
There could well be a few very well paid people that skew the mean...
Except that the data being referred to is pay by position. Exceptionally talented people would have very different positions than what most applicants are applying for.
Then I think you would want to go with the mode average for a given position...
http://www.purplemath.com/modules/meanmode.htm [purplemath.com]
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At this point in Google's corporate life cycle, I don't think the exceptionally talented people are even giving them a second glance when it comes to what jobs they apply for.
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No need to specify your gender...
> Implying Google hasn't already figured out the gender of the user from their normal data-mining.
Top kek.
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And black people can't play hockey because they're missing a bone in their feet. You can look it up.
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He's not saying that women can't be good at salary negotiation, just that, on average, they are worse than men.
Re: ATTN: Potential New Hires (Score:4, Informative)
You want similar pay, you have to actually ask for it.
No you don't. If Google's hiring process results in equally qualified men and women being paid significantly and systematically differently, then it is illegal. They can't use the lame excuse that the qualified women "deserve" to be paid less because they are bad negotiators. Being a "good negotiator" is not relevant to being a qualified engineer. For large companies, the DOJ does not need to prove the hiring process is "unfair", they only need to show that the results of the process are unequal.
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You want similar pay, you have to actually ask for it.
No you don't. If Google's hiring process results in equally qualified men and women being paid significantly and systematically differently, then it is illegal. They can't use the lame excuse that the qualified women "deserve" to be paid less because they are bad negotiators. Being a "good negotiator" is not relevant to being a qualified engineer. For large companies, the DOJ does not need to prove the hiring process is "unfair", they only need to show that the results of the process are unequal.
I think your last sentence is wrong. At least when it comes to employees, that a fair process exists is far, far more important than whatever the statistics afterwards say. If Google massaged the numbers to make them look equal, that would be giving off a false appearance - likewise, I don't know why we'd punish a company for not having more engineers of a certain ethnicity, assuming they can show their hiring process isn't biased. Otherwise you get shit like gender quotas or such, which while I realize som
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that a fair process exists is far, far more important than whatever the statistics afterwards say.
That is your opinion. The law says otherwise. Discrimination in hiring on the basis of gender is illegal, and it doesn't matter what process you use to justify that discrimination, or even if the discrimination is unintentional. If the END RESULT is systematic discrimination, then you are going to lose in court.
No, the law does not say otherwise. Here's the reason why; the national act that says so, the Equal Employment and Opportunities Act of 1972, specifies that, "All employees ... shall be made free from any discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin." This applied at the time only to Federal employees and those who worked in interstate service jobs, like hotels and restaurants, but has been expanded over the years to encompass all businesses. What does"free from any discrimination"
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No, the law does not say otherwise. Here's the reason why ...
You are giving your opinion on what the law should mean. But the courts have interpreted the law, case precedent, and regulations differently.
Even if you treat all ethnicities fairly, there are far fewer black people in the IT industry
Evidence for discrimination is not based on the general population. It is based on the qualified candidate pool.
... if you had to give people useless jobs just for a census count ...
That means they were not qualified. Google is not arguing that women are less capable than men. If they made that argument, and had evidence to back it up, then they could justify the wage gap. But basing the wage gap on "ability to negotiate aggressiv
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If the END RESULT is systematic discrimination
I don't think a process is the end result. The end result is the end result, a process is how you get there.
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Employers are free to discriminate against people that do not negotiate by paying them less.
No they aren't. It is illegal to systematically pay significantly less to members of a protected class on any basis other than qualification for the job.
If Google's hiring and promotion process results in men systematically getting higher salaries for equal qualifications, then it is illegal and they need to fix it.
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But who decides what is a "fair" compensation?
If members of a protected class are systematically paid less than other employees, then you need to be able to justify that on the basis of objective qualifications for the job. The compensation does not have to be "fair', it just has to be equal for equal qualifications.
Either it's the free market ...
Employment is nowhere close to being a "free market". There are mountains of laws and regulations for every aspect of employment. You need less government paperwork to buy plutonium than to hire an employee.
Re: ATTN: Potential New Hires (Score:5, Insightful)
It's illegal to negotiate your salary ? What if two people get hired for identical positions, with identical degrees and years of experience, but one of them turns out to be 10 times as productive as the other, and wants a bonus and a raise. What are you going to do ?
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one of them turns out to be 10 times as productive as the other, and wants a bonus and a raise. What are you going to do ?
Pay differentials based on qualifications for the job are legal.
But Google is NOT claiming that women employees are less qualified, or less productive, so that is irrelevant.
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But Google is NOT claiming that women employees are less qualified, or less productive, so that is irrelevant.
Google IS claiming there's no gender pay gap. So any difference in pay must be the result of productivity or qualifications.
Re: ATTN: Potential New Hires (Score:5, Insightful)
Everyone will choose the idiot over a disaster any day of the election cycle. Margaret Thatcher would have pwned Trump in every metric.
It has to be the *right* woman, not just the only one running.
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>
It has to be the *right* woman, not just the only one running.
Please read my sig.
Re:Everyone didn't (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a lot of things wrong with your statement:
1. The 'majority' of those votes weren't more than the margin of error.
2. The recounts that Jill Stein initiated became silent as soon as the recount was showing in Trumps favor.
3. The electoral college was created to prevent 'ivory towers' from dictating the vote over the rest of the nation.
4. The Internet and the 'social' media that exists there only accounts for a small percentage of the voting population and not representative of any demographic as a whole.
And honestly if you really want to end slavery then you need to join a military and fight Islam. They are the ones selling people *today*. It's Illegal in the 'Western' world and has been for generations. It's alive and well in the middle east.
Please get some perspective.
Our forefathers were far more educated and experienced in the ways of the world than all the young-adults in America today put together. When I was young and stupid I thought like you. Now that I have a family, job and certain responsibilities I see the wisdom that went into creating America. Without the revisionist history or the altruistic ideology that I learned doesn't work. You kids have some nice ideas, but you should spend more time off the Internet learning what makes people tick.
Good luck out there.
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The thing I kept hearing was "Yes, we want a woman president. Badly. Just not her." A huge lost opportunity for America, all because it was "her turn."
I don't think we want a woman president for the sake of having a woman president. The most powerful office in the world isn't, and shouldn't, be subject to affirmative action. We need the *right* person for the job, with the most qualifications. Arguably the least two qualified individuals were put before the public to vote on. That's not a systemic failure of the electoral college, but a failure of the representatives of the parties to choose the right leader for America.
Re: ATTN: Potential New Hires (Score:2)
what's wrong with having a bit of sex on the side?
You Americans are such puritans.
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Spread of disease
Breakdown of families
Unhappiness of the faithful partner.
You anti-Americans are such sluts.
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How does it feel living in the middle ages?
Have you paid your daily homage to the Church?
Also, statistics are strange. More = fewer (Score:5, Interesting)
There are many factors that affect these things. Asking for a raise is one factor among many.
The government once sued a university for gender discrimination because they accepted a significantly higher percentage of male students than female. It was a pretty clear case, they accepted something like 60% of male applicants and 40% of female applicants. Here's the weird thing - every department at the school accepted a higher rate of female students. For any given program at the school, women were *more* likely to be accepted than men. At first, that might seem mathematically impossible. Here's how it happened:
The school's crown jewel was its very highly regarded nursing* program. It had some other departments too, but the school was known for the nursing program. The nursing program had a lot more applicants than the available slots. Most people who applied to the nursing program weren't accepted. Also, most people who applied for the nursing program were female.
Therefore, most women weren't accepted, even though the nursing program and every other program at the school were biased toward admitting a higher percentage of female applicants than male applicants. Males just didn't tend to apply for the nursing program as much, and that was the program that had the most competitive admissions.
Statistics are strange sometimes.
Ps - I think nursing, maybe something else (Score:3)
I forgot the footnote. I don't remember for sure if the competitive program was nursing, or something else. The interesting bit to me is that *every* department admitted a higher percentage of women, but they got sued by the feds because the university as a whole admitted a higher percentage of men. That seems like a mathematical paradox at first, so I was paying attention to the math, not which department it was.
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The name for this phenomenon is "Simpson's paradox". Wikipedia has a great article.
There must be a mistake ... (Score:4, Funny)
Re: There must be a mistake ... (Score:2, Insightful)
This has got to be the worst, if not most idiotic, defense of discriminatory pay I have ever seen.
Please, go hang yourself.
P.S. You make slashdot comments garbage
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Yes, we all know that women and blacks are inferior, why should the government look into it if a company refuses to hire them?
(YES I'm being sarcastic, ok?)
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Nope, pretty much women tend to be more conformist on average, get along to go along (more oestrogen less testosterone) and thus take a lower wage. Men on the other hand on average are more competitive (more testosterone less oestrogen) and demand a higher wage. As the salaries are negotiated, on average female employees miss out. Set salaries they are done, negotiated salaries, well, I am afraid that is just a psychological study worth a paper.
Now that fucking explains why the major corporations want mor
Re:There must be a mistake ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope, pretty much women tend to be more conformist on average, get along to go along (more oestrogen less testosterone) and thus take a lower wage. Men on the other hand on average are more competitive (more testosterone less oestrogen) and demand a higher wage.
There's more to it than that - women do the choosing in sexual selection. They set the criteria. Men compete with each other to meet that criteria. Men who aren't competitive don't reproduce.
Open Competitiveness is a characteristic required for men to pass on their genes, while it is not required for women to pass on their genes, hence the men who *don't* compete never reproduced and their strain passed out of our system well before we were fully human.
Women can fix this by changing their selection criteria en masse. As long as women only choose those men who can support themselves and others while men choose women with youth and beauty, the future will be still be filled with men who have to compete and women who don't.
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Women can fix this by changing their selection criteria en masse. As long as women only choose those men who can support themselves and others while men choose women with youth and beauty, the future will be still be filled with men who have to compete and women who don't.
Women are working on that now. Have you seen some of the wimpy dolts that couldn't survive on their own for a month, but as long as they speak the correct drivel they have dumb college girls clinging to them?
The balancing force of that species suicide is that when the useless dolts manage to impregnate them, the girls get abortions because they realize that the dolts can't support themselves, much less a new child.
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There's more to it than that - women do the choosing in sexual selection
Oh boy. Where to begin.
So basically, what you're saying is that you will have sex with literally ANY woman who comes up to you. Any. Including the a randy, senile granny with a personal hygeine problem. Think about that for a minute. If you actually wouldn't then guess what, bucko, you're doing the choosing too.
They set the criteria.
Yeah, pretty sure I have these things called "standards" too. Ya know? Or, perhaps you don't...
Men compe
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Technically, racism and discrimination are still official policy, just now it's against the majority with the intent of balancing out the assumed racism in society.
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Technically, racism and discrimination are still official policy,
There are lies, damned lies, and idiots intentionally[*] misunderstanding the law.
No, it is not official policy. Go read the law. Race is a protected category which means you can't legally discriminate during hiring based on race. Note how it's not whiteness or blackness or anything elseness as a protected category. It's race. As far as the law is written it's equally illegal to discriminate against white people as anyone else.
[*]Is it intent
Re:There must be a mistake ... (Score:5, Insightful)
I see, you think it is 'evil' what Google is doing.
No, I think it is hypocritical. Google supports the political left which indeed demands pay equality. But like many liberal elites, the rules are for others, not for them.
My post was also satire for those coming from the left who equate those giving away free stuff and offering superficial nice words as the good people. Those who judge other by intentions rather than by results, intentions which can easily be a mask.
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Google is a company, not a person. They support whoever's in charge [nytimes.com], although their employees may be quite liberal overall.
The leadership is quite liberal, and their leadership creates a quite liberal culture at the company. Establishing relationships with Republicans when they are in power does not change this nor contradict this.
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Google is a company, not a person. They support whoever's in charge [nytimes.com], although their employees may be quite liberal overall.
The leadership is quite liberal, and their leadership creates a quite liberal culture at the company. Establishing relationships with Republicans when they are in power does not change this nor contradict this.
Like I said, the employees and leadership might be liberal in their personal beliefs, but it dilutes them being partisan. For example, although they currently support net neutrality, I'd bet my ass they're going to be the first in line if it gets repealed. A partisan group, like for example a lobbying company or whatever, wouldn't switch sides just because the government did - whereas I have no doubts Google will get into bed with the Republicans where it benefits them. I don't see how it's especially hypoc
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It's possible that Google is genuinely trying to avoid discriminating, but failing to do so. It's not easy, especially in large companies. Throw in some overzealous lawyers...
It they could just be hypocrites. Not enough information to say at this point.
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My post was also satire for those coming from the left who equate those giving away free stuff and offering superficial nice words as the good people.
So the problem is that they need better nice words? Because the right has the BEST nice words. They are the MOST superficial. The left can't even come up with any nice words most of the time. Sad!
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While I agree with you I think the Karma of this is fucking fantastic. Google supports so much of the crazy liberal bullshit in this country it is only fitting that it comes back to bite the hell out of them. I hope they get reamed out.
Re:There must be a mistake ... (Score:4, Interesting)
While I agree with you I think the Karma of this is fucking fantastic. Google supports so much of the crazy liberal bullshit in this country it is only fitting that it comes back to bite the hell out of them. I hope they get reamed out.
Same thing happened with Joss Whedon. You cannot satisfy extremist demands (whether from the left or the right); they'll come for you eventually, too, if you're not extremist enough.
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Same thing happened with Joss Whedon.
And he's still a useful idiot, championing "progressive" causes, even though he's experienced firsthand just how shitty the never-ending grievances from the cult of victimhood can be.
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I see, you think it is 'evil' what Google is doing. I think it is evil what the government is doing, attacking businesses on any of it at all.
Google asked for it. When you sell services to the federal government, you invite this madness in your life.
I've been there before and while there are financial incentives to do business with the government, the bullshit, red tape and constant probe up your ass that come with it makes the whole thing a stinker. They have buildings full of people with nothing better to do than analyze this or that and make policies to justify their own job. And usually it's low-quality people with poor math skills and a seri
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Actually, not only am I paying you a visit, I'm going to broadcast it live, asshole.
What the fuck are you going to do, boy? Not a goddamned thing, because the second you do, you'll be forced to divulge EVERYTHING to defend yourself, you law-breaking age-discriminating piece of shit.
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The difference is that we can't opt out of the NSA.
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You can opt out of using gmail. I certainly have. I actively sought out an email service that would charge me a few dollars a month for snoop-free email.
Why is longevity in the workforce never discussed? (Score:5, Insightful)
I get that depending on how you slice and dice the numbers there is anywhere from no pay gap to a full blown social crisis.
However, what I don't get is that while there is always ample representation of gender, race, and ethnicity, there never seems to be anything discussed about longevity in the workforce. Let me explain. If a man starts working right out of college and works continuously to the age of 50 he will have achieved a certain salary, depending upon his career and other factors. If a woman were to do the same I would expect that they would achieve to a comparable level. The same goes for minorities, both men and women. However, if a woman drops out of the fast lane at age 25 or 27 for 2 years, 5 years, 10 years, 20 years, etc., to raise a family (by that I mean either stops working, goes part time, or chooses a different full-time job specifically for the added flexibility or other family-friendly benefits), then at age 50 she simply will not have the same level of experience.
Every time that I hear the gender pay gap brought up I have to wonder if the numbers being analyzed account for that situation. Now, some people advocate making it illegal to be stay at home mom. I don't think that is the right solution. Perhaps we need to encourage fathers to spend more time with their families and less time working.
Either way, boiling it down to a single number: 1) doesn't tell the whole story; and 2) does a disservice to those women who have made a conscious choice to prioritize family above work. My mother did that and I am very happy that she did.
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Yes, I've wondered the same thing. I've seen several studies that show that that accounts for some of the gap, but by no means all of it. Another related factor is that women often need more flexible work hours to manage families, which impacts pay in many fields. Still, even after accounting for factors like that, women earn less than men.
Re:Why is longevity in the workforce never discuss (Score:4, Insightful)
Some men do, but what you're seeing is the difference between anecdotes and statistics. Statistically, men are less likely to do those things than women. When looked at in the aggregate, this creates a bigger wage gap than would otherwise exist.
And the difference doesn't end there. You also have to factor in people choosing whether to ask for a promotion or not. Most people (men and women alike) assume that higher pay means greater demands on their time, and choose not to ask rather than take on the extra responsibility. Women are more likely to not ask, at least in aggregate, because they are statistically more likely to have greater outside responsibilities beyond work.
Re:Why is longevity in the workforce never discuss (Score:5, Interesting)
I am a man, and have done this for my family. My contract was not renewed for 'poor attendance' with a fortune 100 company in Portland. This feedback was not shared with me until after I had left.
It's not that we don't want to, we aren't *allowed* to.
Re:Why is longevity in the workforce never discuss (Score:4, Interesting)
I get that depending on how you slice and dice the numbers there is anywhere from no pay gap to a full blown social crisis.
However, what I don't get is that while there is always ample representation of gender, race, and ethnicity, there never seems to be anything discussed about longevity in the workforce.
Uhhh, almost every single study I've read over the last few decades on gender pay gap takes that very thing (longevity) into account.
If you see an analysis that doesn't in some way take into account longevity, then you know you're looking at a waste of time.
Re:Why is longevity in the workforce never discuss (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, most studies account for the time off. They basically show both the general all men vs all women numbers and ALSO show equivalent comparisons - years at work, degrees, all roughly equal. Not that hard to do statistically. It comes out to about $5,000, on average.
What they usually do NOT account for is height. Every inch of MALE height adds about $789 a year (female salary is not as dependent on height - some studies say not at all.) Men are taller than women by about 5-6 inches, which roughly translates to $4330, which is pretty close to the difference between male and female salaries, after accounting for education and experience.
To add insult to injury, some studies attempt to claim that this is 'justified', as the tall men are supposedly better educated and better socialized - without questioning whether the education and socialization are simply the result of prejudice in their favor when they were children.
Re:Why is longevity in the workforce never discuss (Score:5, Insightful)
Men get more money, and more women have access to a lifestyle in which they don't have to work at all, to which men have little access. I'm not saying it's fair; I'm saying it's all unfair, and both genders are maintaining this state of affairs together. With, by the way, a little help from biology. After a birth, men aren't physically debilitated. Only economically :) (like everyone else. god damn kids are expensive.)
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I'm going to play devil's advocate here.
I'm going to agree with you that the wage gap is largely not a result of sexism, but of women having to choose between work and family.
It's more complicated than that. In companies like Google, you have to ask for raises and promotions. While ambition and desire fo better compensation are common across genders and races, the preferred way to get ahead vary.
Imagine you are at a restaurant and you want a second dessert. Would you feel more comfortable if you had to ask a waiter for it, or if you could simply go to the buffet and grab a second one without having to deal with the waiter? Or what about buying sex toys, do you prefer to shop onl
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In companies like Google, you have to ask for raises and promotions.
Promotions yes, raises no (except for the raises that come with promotions). At Google you have to apply for promotion. Raises are just allocated annually by management.
Re:Why is longevity in the workforce never discuss (Score:4, Interesting)
I understand and agree with all of that, but my point was that if our main focus was not on equality, but on what is ultimately best for society and economy, then the arguments about the whys and hows and what is fair become irrelevant.
True. The problem with that is that basic freedom and also politically correct bullshit stand in the way of what is "good for society".
For instance, studies show that children raised by foster parents have a better than average chance of achieving success and financial security when they grow up, while children of single moms are massively over-represented in jail. And yet, single moms are treated like heroes in the mainstream media, and any politician who would promote adoption for children of single moms would be crucified in public.
I'm not taking a side in that issue, all I'm saying is that the "good of society" thing is too vague. I think some things are unavoidable - for instance, women give birth, not men - and those things should drive public policy, but even that is asking a lot. I mean, recently people had to choose between a reality TV star and a crooked evil witch for their next President; that's how fucked up society is. We can't expect common sense to prevail.
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Reality sucks sometimes.
The real problem (Score:4, Insightful)
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I don't think that was stated as eloquently but as someone who used to be in the industry, I was always challenged on starting salary and raises more by men than by women. I'm in NY and I'm not sure if it's the area or the struggle for men to be considered the wage earners but that was my experience. In one case I had to encourage one of my co-workers to ask for more money because they were one of the most talented and the least paid. You don't get raises if you don't ask, and the men seemed to be more head
Its not just asking, its being willing to leave (Score:5, Informative)
You don't get raises if you don't ask, and the men seemed to be more headstrong about asking.
Its not just asking, its being willing to leave. I worked at a company part time as a software developer while in school working on a computer science degree. It was a great job, flexible hours to accommodate my class schedule, etc. When I graduated I brought up the topic of my salary, expecting at least the industry average of the region. Management said that would be too large a percentage increase and offered me something below the industry average. I pointed out that I have been with them for over two, am fully trained for their specialties, and have received very good reviews. My manager said his hands were tied, too big a percentage increase. I started a job search that night.
Six weeks later I was back in front of my manager submitting my resignation after accepting a new job elsewhere. He instantly offered to match my current job offer, which was a little above what I had originally asked of him. I asked what happened to the percentage increase problem. He said that in light of the new circumstances that could be waived. I told him I was sorry (I lied) but that I had already accepted the other offer and would not be breaking my word (the truth).
I was happy, liked the work, liked my coworkers, but I was young, aggressive and not going to take that sort of BS.
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because the chances go up of not getting the job at all.
Isn't this the case for everyone, though?
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Isn't this the case for everyone, though?
Statistics from many studies do not bear that out. Guys tend to be seen as assertive (positive quality) and engaging (positive quality) for the same actions.
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More guys should try switching names with a female co-worker for a week.
https://medium.com/@nickyknack... [medium.com]
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If it worked so well for her, why did she switch back after a week ?
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you get a reputation for being bitchy
Heaven forbid... its no wonder a person doesnt ask for reasonable compensation when the threat is getting "a reputation" for being "bitchy" when you do...
Here in the real world, everyone has a fucking reputation. Deal with it. Grow the fuck up.
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Funny, 90% of my former (male) bosses were selfish assholes, hated by most employees, but that never stopped them reaching the top.
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Most companies have annual raises and the amount is set by your perceived value to the company.
Argue about the amount of your raise just once, and management takes note of the fact and offers you less the next time, so that you'll be satisfied with the amount you argue up to.
There are companies that encourage aggressive behaviour (and if you're a nice guy they're miserable places to work) and such places will follow your model, but those places are not in the majority.
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Gentlemen, I know many of you don't want to believe it, but we are collectively biased against hiring women even (especially)
Not just gentlemen are biased. The other ladies also don't want combative bitchy competent co-workers.
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In every company I've worked for, the head HR person was a woman. Maybe they are the majority of the problem.
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DoL Hypocrisy (Score:2)
Sure, you can go for women's pay, but you cant go for age discrimination since we're not over the age of 40, despite supposed equal protection under the law.
Fucking hypocrites.
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Wonderful means of attacking opposition (Score:4, Funny)
Whether Google really is violating the law, the prosecution itself is a convenient means of suppressing opposition. Google was [washingtontimes.com] "with her" [breitbart.com] all the way [democracynow.org]. Could this be a payback from the Trump's Administration?
Or, the other way around, has the previous Administration sat on it because Google was all for the Democratics [opensecrets.org]? Worse, maybe, Google's unprecedented cooperation [freebeacon.com] was due to the subtle blackmail in the first place?
Whatever the answers to these questions, I'd rather they not be asked at all — there should be no thoughtcrimes for the government to prosecute. At all.
Discrimination may be stupid and unethical, but it should not be illegal.
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It makes me happy too, but for a very different reason than yours. It means that these people actually stand for their principles and are willing to criticize each other when they violate them. Where I live we have feminists defending rapists when they are their best friends and parliament members talking against violating the Shabbat while they drive their own car in it. I don't like SJWs much as well, but I'd rather have them over corruption and hypocracy.
End the secrecy, problem goes away (Score:4, Insightful)
Wage disparity would end almost overnight if we got rid of this ridiculous notion that wages should be a secret. If you knew what everyone else was being paid you'd immediately know if you were getting the short end of the stick. It would be obvious if there was any systemic bias in wages.
Really, why wouldn't you want your peers to know what you make? The only reasons I can only think of are, "I might be getting paid too little and they'd all think less of me if they knew", or "I might be getting paid too much and they'd take it away from me to make it fair".
Keeping it a secret only benefits unscrupulous employers. The ones who will give you a low starting offer and low raises on the grounds that you'll never really know how much better you could be doing if you went elsewhere.
Adam Ruins Everything - Why You Should Tell Coworkers Your Salary [youtube.com]
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Average would be .98 or so on the dollar, assuming the same job, experience, etc. The majority of the advertised pay gap is from the different jobs that men and women gravitate towards, with a significant additional portion being from women being more likely to take time off for family.
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And a few hours later... here's the NYTimes story:
US Regulators Accuse Google of Underpaying Female Workers
https://www.nytimes.com/aponli... [nytimes.com]
So... you're wrong.
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Re:Performance-based pay is sexist? (Score:5, Interesting)
the entire google topic always saddens me. So much potential to make the world better and now completely undone by corporate cancerism, the American business philosophy that buried capitalism
Some companies never make the transition from the "make it or break it" attitude that make startups successful to the more resilient corporate structure that is a safe haven for all types of workers. That's why Google is struggling. The balls-to-the-wall, 80-hour a week culture means that only the Red Bull crowd will thrive in such organization. That leaves a lot of extremely competent people on the sidelines.
Some of the best techies I work with are pure 9-to-5 workers; you can set your watch by them, at 5 minutes past 5pm they're already out of the building so they can join their family or meet with friends. And yet, during the hours they work, they deliver amazing value to the organization. Those people will never work at Google, and that's Google's loss.
Re:Performance-based pay is sexist? (Score:4, Interesting)
Now you're reminding me of How Google Works . My short summary is that they seem to be saying they want most of the google employees to be in the Venn diagram intersection of the set of super-productive engineers, the set of hyper-creative dreamers, and the set of extreme money-grubbers, though they describe the last set more diplomatically. They reworded it in terms of a kind of an acute awareness of the economic realities of how to profit. They also want them to be extremely competitive members of all three sets.
When they get people like that, there really aren't any substitutes to be accepted (or they would have hired them already). You suggest that it's reasonable to accept normal working hours, but that isn't how the google picked them in the first place. The hiring process is so skewed that the candidate who also wanted a home and family life was already eliminated from consideration. At least I think that's how it works most of the time, notwithstanding a few anecdotal exceptions.
Specifically relevant to this article, on that foundation they want to reward employees in relative proportion to their success as measured by bottom-line profits. Since some projects produce huge profits and others don't, the people involved with the the lucky projects get much more money. That's where we get to my speculations of how it produces the gender discrimination. The more I think about it the more I'm inclined towards the credit-claiming theory. Work Rules! hinted how difficult it is to assess proper credit so the aggressiveness on the claims may help produce the extreme results in the compensation.
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Since some projects produce huge profits and others don't, the people involved with the the lucky projects get much more money.
There was a similar management craze in the late 90s: Small Business Units. The idea was to allocate resources (IT, facilities, etc.) according to how much each business unit brought in.
But here's the problem with profit-driven compensation: they give an incentive to take risk, not to manage risk. That's how lots of people lost their pension money and how Uber is burning billions every quarter. It's more gambling than pursuit of a solid business model.
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That's why Google is struggling. The balls-to-the-wall, 80-hour a week culture means that only the Red Bull crowd will thrive in such organization.
I don't think that's how Google works. It's how Apple worked. I think of Google as the place to go if you don't want to work hard.
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I challenge the assumption they are *solely* a data driven company. Any company their size and with their growth and revenue will attract a diverse sample of greedy, scheming assholes. The "data" just serves as a basis for being greedy assholes, it doesn't mean that there are rules that say the data should guide them in being just or fair.
My wife is the corporate rock star in our family and she does very well in an industry where she's often the only woman in the room, but its an old, established industry