Google Schools US Government About Gender Pay Gap (cnet.com) 238
Google wants the US government to know that it takes gender pay equity very seriously -- and is baffled by the contention that a gap exists at the tech giant. From a report: In responding to allegations lodged by the US Department of Labor that Google systematically pays its female employees less than it pays men, the search giant said in a blog post that employee gender doesn't factor into compensation decisions. Google described the process that it arrives at suggested compensation as "extremely scientific and robust," relying on the employee's role, job level and location, as well as recent performance ratings. What isn't considered in determining pay is whether the employee is male or female -- that information is masked out to those making the compensation decisions, Eileen Naughton, Google vice president for People Operations, explained in the post late Tuesday. "The analysts who calculate the suggested amounts do not have access to employees' gender data," Naughton wrote. "An employee's manager has limited discretion to adjust the suggested amount, providing they cite a legitimate adjustment rationale.
Pay gap is real, but exaggerated (Score:5, Informative)
Most of the time pay gap statistics are brought out, they don't seem to compare apples to apples. The average female employee at company A makes less than the average male employee at Company A. And yet lower-paying office roles are predominantly sought out by female employees, which is what brings down that average if you're not comparing equivalent job titles and experience levels.
Re: Pay gap is real, but exaggerated (Score:4, Insightful)
Except google refuses to reveal statistics. All they have shown is a power point slide that says "trust us" and we are supposed to trust them? Show us the data if you have nothing to hide.
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Re: Pay gap is real, but exaggerated (Score:5, Informative)
And *why* should a random company show its confidential internal data?
They're applying for government contracts, which is how this whole mess got started. The government says "you have to be X fair to chicks to get contracts" and so they need to show that they are at least X fair to chicks.
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They would need to show it to a government representative, not you.
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Is it classified information?
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Government representatives are the people we hire to specifically deal with this sort of shit so we don't have to.
If you want to look at every little detail like that, then you go be a representative. The rest of us don't really need to know what every employee at Google makes. All we need to know is that there is someone we hired looking out for us*.
(*How well those representatives are actually looking out for us is outside the scope of this discussion)
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How quaint that you actually trust government employees. Even those you elect. It's especially quaint given the historically ongoing reality that they've not shown themselves worthy of said trust.
No one is suggesting you have to look at it. You however, are suggesting that I should be prevented.
No, it is exactly the point.
How, pray tell, are we citizens supposed to oversee our representatives if we'
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Don't mistake my apparent trust of government employees for naivete. Your condescending tone (and apparent paranoia) not withstanding, there is very little evidence of actual actionable corruption in most government agencies. WE put these people in place. If you don't like them, too bad. Organize an effort to remov
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True. So the question remains, what does that have to do with you or I? We can't afford to buy a representative.
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At least they reveal their process to calculate their numbers, while I haven't heard anything so far what makes Gouvernment think there is a paygap at all.
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no, pay gap is mythical, just google that phrase. it is a meme by femi-nazis who want superiority and more pay than a man for less effort.
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I recently read an article by a lady who said she was being discriminated on pay, I think it was on the BBC. What was funny is in it she described exactly why it was that she got paid less, and it wasn't discrimination. She said she'd been at the company for like 7 years, she'd risen through the ranks to a management role and discovered a guy who'd been there 6 months made more than her. And then she went on about taking the job straight out of college and thought that being under a female director would
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The solution is obvious... discriminate against women who want those low-hanging-fruit office jobs. There are lots of men who aren't typically aggressive or whatever stereotypical male traits you want to measure by. Hire them.
Attempt job equity at a job description level using a standard of "do you meet the qualifications and are you of the sex that is currently at under 50% representation for the job category?". A simple lack of qualified female applicants will have to suffice to explain the disparity at
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"do you meet the qualifications and are you of the sex that is currently at under 50% representation for the job category?".
Forget programming jobs. Sounds like it's time to talk to the garbage collectors here in town, health care, and primary education.
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The solution is making the jobs attractive. Men are dumb enough to fall into the trap of the 60-hour work week with no life balance and women seem to not be. It's probably due to an inflated ego that thinks of possible advancement that won't happen.
Re:Pay gap is real, but exaggerated (Score:5, Insightful)
>Men are dumb enough to fall into the trap of the 60-hour work week with no life balance and women seem to not be.
As a middle-aged career man, I'm marginally qualified to respond to this with authority.
I WANTED to work those hours at the expense of outside life. I ENJOYED it. A young man is full of enthusiasm and competitiveness. The chance to succeed at something I was told couldn't be done, the challenge of proving I was the best... that was worth more than my paycheque to me.
Of course I slowed down a bit with time, and now I have a nice, strong dividing line between work and personal life, but I don't regret those early years at all. They were extremely satisfying.
Maybe that's testosterone, and maybe that's why women don't have that experience as a general rule, but so what? You couldn't have made me slow down and smell the roses and even if you had, it would have LOWERED my perceived quality of life at the time.
So from some people's point of view I gave up a decade of my personal life in return for a significant career advancement. I'm OK with that.
More importantly, *any woman can choose to do the same thing*. If they don't, *that is also their right*.
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Good post - I largely feel the same way. When I worked like that, it was mostly years when I was single and without kids. Now I still have crazy weeks sometimes (I work in live entertainment, so I have always accepted the crazy schedule), but then I have down weeks, and because of my schedule I can take care of the family (driving to school, events, whatever) and have created a fairly unique position at my company (I'm not saying I can't be replaced, but it would be difficult) that affords me certain perk
Also a self-perpetuating cycle (Score:3)
My wife took a couple years off when my daughter was born. We could (barely) afford that because more than half of our income was from me. While she was taking time off, I found a new job that almost doubled my pay, in a city four hours away. For double the pay, we moved. Now I make four times as much as my wife.
The next time we consider a move, suppose we can go to city A and increase my wife's income by 25% ($7,000 increase) or we can move to city B and increase my income by by 25% ($30,000 increase). Wh
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And what line of work is she in - what STEM job does she have that only pays $28,000? Or is this even relevant to the discussion at all?
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Your thinking is utterly rational, but it fails to take into consideration the possibility of divorce. If your wife were left to fend for herself, then she would bear the brunt of all those logical decisions to sacrifice her earning potential in favor of your much greater income. It's not just a matter of what would happen if you were to die - though I guess your plans for a death contingency might help her some in case of a divorce. No life insurance to live on, though.
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We intentionally don't plan to divorce (much) (Score:4, Insightful)
My ex-wife and I planned for divorce, and surprise surprise we got divorced. My wife and I plan for "the two shall become one, till death do you part, for better or worse" and indeed we've worked through tough times and come out stronger.
Partly that's related to having our daughter - a decision that we feel like going our separate ways is no longer possible (we'll always be connected, like it or not), and to the extent it's possible, it's not right - I have no right to take away my daughter's father or mother just because I feel like boning some other chick. I've made a COMMITMENT to my family.
That works for us largely because we look at everything in our marriage, including all conflicts, from the perspective of *we*. If your arm is causing pain, you don't get mad at your arm, you figure out how to heal it. If my foot is giving me trouble, I don't yell at my foot (or cut it off), I care for it. If my wife is giving me trouble, I don't yell at my wife, or divorce my wife, I care for my wife. Probably sometimes you're not sure what to do - perhaps you want to eat cake, but you also want to lose weight. You want to buy a new toy, but you also want to save for a house. You think about these things, basically "discuss them with yourself." We are the same way - sometimes we want this and we want that. We think, discuss, and we decide. We (my wife and I) don't fight and get angry when we have two different viewpoints, anymore that you fight with yourself when you have two perspectives on something.
That's worked for us all the way to even when we've been attracted to someone else. We have a problem, we've been having inappropriate conversations with someone we find attractive. That's dangerous to us, our family. So how do we address this to protect ourselves from our family being torn apart? If she cheated on me, it wouldn't hurt *me*, it would hurt *her*, our daughter, AND me - it would hurt *us*. So we treat inappropriate conversations as a danger that could hurt us.
Having said all that, we are aware that divorce happens, and she's going to finish her degree - after she's more clear about what kind of degree she wants. During the roughest part of our marriage, during a mental health crisis, there was a risk that the person going through the mental health issues might do something crazy, and we took some precautions during that time in case we had to seperate. But generally, you tend to get what you plan for, so we don't plan on divorce.
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This thread went from 5 insightful to full retard at the speed Womyn being typed.
It's very easy to see where the real problem is. unfortunately it's going to take money and time spent in court to combat it.
How long until this crap goes away again?
Common Sense calling - Women have babies (Score:5, Insightful)
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I know a lot of women that find this argument offensive and feel taking leave to have a kid should not impact pay or advancement.
Re:Common Sense calling - Women have babies (Score:5, Insightful)
I realize that. But look at this from a business's view: Jane is assigned to a 16 month project. She announces that she is pregnant. She will have several doctor's appointments. By the Medical Leave Act I can assume she will gone from 2-6 weeks minimal assuming no complication.
I now have to train someone to take up the slack while Jane is out, When Jane comes back she will not be working at 100% because of the toll on her body and new medical issues she has. Jane is going to have to come up to speed with the changes on her project. Both her and the child will need further medical time off through out the rest of their lives. If she has another child all of this time lose is compounded.
If you removes emotion and look at the issue from a reasonable and logical point of view you will see why the average a woman will get paid will never be the same as a man. An individual can easily exceed the average. But babies complicate things and distract from your career.
Life is a sacrifice. And I appreciate and celebrate women for that sacrifice.
Re:Common Sense calling - Women have babies (Score:5, Insightful)
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In the USA, maybe. In Canada and other countries both parents are entitled to parental leave.
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Or to cover the 14+ weeks of holidays kids have in a year. When I look at my siblings and friends who have kids in kindergarten and elementary school, most are being picked up by their grandparents.
If you don't have that social support from family, and you are a single parent, you're pretty much forced to work half-time or find employment that matches perfectly with the
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And there is the crux.
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If you removes emotion and look at the issue from a reasonable and logical point of view
Well, there's your problem...
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The male contribution to child care is missing in your response.
Why is that?
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Life is a sacrifice. And I appreciate and celebrate women for that sacrifice.
Life shouldn't be a sacrifice in this regard though. In some cultures, people still have the attitude that you work to support the stuff you want to do with your life - you know, like having a family, and doing things you enjoy. It is just that in western countries we have become massively defined by our jobs, and the hyper competitive economic system we have accepted as immutable means that a single income family can barely survive in a world dominated by double income couples.
If you told a family in the 1
Re:Common Sense calling - Women have babies (Score:4, Insightful)
Jane is assigned to a 16 month project. She announces that she is pregnant...
The other way a manager could look at it is I'm hoping to have Jane around for 5-10 years. This one project may be a hassle but it's only for 16 months. For a project that short, everyone is coming up to speed for the duration of the project. A year from now there will be another project and Jane can be just as effective as anyone else. If I want to hire and develop for the long term, I'll ignore this short term hiccup just like I'd deal if someone who has to take a few months off for a back issue or sabbatical.
In other words, taking two-four months off is largely noise and should barely have a measurable effect. Yes, in theory it's there but it will be swamped by confounding factors.
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More pay or the ability to soon get more pay. Stay at work, put in the hours, do the work and advancement with more pay might be the result over decades.
Reentering the work force and its back to the same pay and same projects. Take more time off, go part time and the pay and projects stay the same.
The team members who stayed at work are then in upper and middle level positio
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Re:Common Sense calling - Women have babies (Score:4, Informative)
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What role does the male play in all of this?
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Following specific tenets or not is a choice.
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And you have to do it for everyone, not just women. Men don't yet have that privilege either.
Men do have that privilege - in places that are not the backwards hellhole that is the US.
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Adoption doesn't pass along my genes which is what I want.
Sometimes you want things and they come with a cost. Weather you will pay the cost is up to you. This should not be a difficult or new concept for any adult.
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Average career is ~50 years or so. Max time allowed by FMLA for birth/bonding is 12 weeks. How many kids are they having?
P.S. Lots of families with children also have two parents.
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Women now have new medical conditions that need attention
Kids have schools need like field trips, supplies, presentations, dances, picked up and dropping off
Kids generally need things like food and attention
A child have a lot more needs and generally have a longer life span then the average pet.
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Children get sick and need shots both require time off from a parent
Kids have schools need like field trips, supplies, presentations, dances, picked up and dropping off
Kids generally need things like food and attention
A parent - any parent. There are often two. This is not a job only for women.
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That's not what the current pay gap seems to suggest. Most men just tend to be too cowardly or want to use their job as an excuse while at the same time calling it a "woman" problem.
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None of those things are specific to women though, just parenting. Men have lots of new medical conditions, and either parent can do all the other stuff.
For some reason men don't get the same career/salary hit when they have kids. In fact stats show they get a small bump, despite in theory accepting the same responsibilities for many years. The female-only bit where there is significant, unavoidable disruption is maybe 3 months max (latter stages of pregnancy, a few weeks after birth).
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Most of those things can involve a second parent.
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You should look at the % of women that actually return to their jobs after the 12 weeks. Last I looked it was about 50%. The rest just take the bene then bail for more time at home with their snot monkey..
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The leave period is relatively short even on a two year scale as far as what your actual career accomplishments are. And if you are valued and appreciated, it's only a small bump in your career unless you are multiplying like rabbits.
The two parent thing is twofold - someone is going to mention leave related to a sick child. And also, fathers are eligible for job protection for leave after a new child too. It's not like those first few months are all about medical recovery from childbirth. It's an insan
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tell your new employer that you need to strictly work 8 to 4 so you can do something completely unrelated to work or your career.
You wouldn't have to negotiate with your employer if you were in a union - it would be part of your contract. Strange how people who would benefit the most from unions are the most anti-union.
Re:Common Sense calling - Women have babies (Score:4, Informative)
Women who do not have children get paid the same or more. But when you have to take several weeks or months off to take care of a child you slow your career.
Google offers several months' paid leave to both mothers and fathers, and all are strongly encouraged to take it. In part this is due to competitive pressure -- all the big tech companies are fighting over the same pool of employees and it's a really awesome perk, but it's also quite explicitly an attempt to eliminate this aspect of gender preference. Women who give birth do get a little extra time for "medical leave", but the actual maternity/paternity leave is the same. Oh, and it applies to employees who adopt, too (not the medical part, obviously).
If you want to have the biological and emotional fulfillment of giving birth and raising a child then realize you have to sacrifice your overall income.
Not at Google. Oh, I suppose it may slow you a little because the time you're on leave is time you're not doing promotion-worthy things, but in practice it doesn't seem to have any significant effect. I see people with families of all sizes at all levels of the career ladder. That even includes a few quite senior people who take maternity/paternity leave every year. I know one engineer who has had a child every year for six years, and taken all of the leave, and leads a large and important team. I know another who has negotiated a deal with management to accept a 60% salary in exchange for working only three days per week, and also to spread maternity/paternity leave over time, taking one day of it per week, with the net effect of a two day per week work schedule -- and just got a major promotion. That particular engineer is something of a rock star and I'm not sure that sort of deal is generally available (though fractional salary for reduced work schedule is, with management approval). Note that I didn't specify the gender of either of those examples. One is a man and one is a woman; their gender doesn't affect the options available to them.
As a Google employee, my reaction to the DOL claim was "WTF"? The claim is so utterly at odds with the way Google operates.
Here's my guess as to how the DOL came to their conclusion: They just looked at average male and average female compensation, without considering job role. Because women are underrepresented in engineering, and engineering jobs are better-compensated than most other categories, the average female compensation is probably lower. That women are underrepresented in engineering is something Google regularly and publicly discusses, and the company has a wide variety of initiatives aimed at improving that situation, mostly by trying to increase the number of women in the hiring pipeline.
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Google offers several months' paid leave
Actually, that should be "a few months' paid leave". "Several" to me implies 5-7, and it's not that much. I haven't looked at the details (I'm long past having kids so it's not relevant to me personally), but I think it's on the order of three months.
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Sorry, but "several", "a few", "a handful of", and many similar terms are all interchangeable in common use, and all mean "3 or more".
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Sorry, but "several", "a few", "a handful of", and many similar terms are all interchangeable in common use, and all mean "3 or more".
Not to me :-)
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So, the government are guilty of failing to take Simpson's Paradox into account? Again? Nice to hear an insider account, as that's more than most of us who pontificate on the matter have to go with.
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Now try to keep that same skepticism when you hear similar claims by the government or some academic paper about places you don't know about directly (other companies, industries or the country as a whole) and you'll be closer to the truth than if you just believe them.
The confusion comes from the goal of these sorts of accusations not actually being to convince people to treat other people equally. If you can do the math on the statistics, then y
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Now try to keep that same skepticism when you hear similar claims by the government or some academic paper about places you don't know about directly (other companies, industries or the country as a whole) and you'll be closer to the truth than if you just believe them.
In fact, I do. Or try to. The same applies to news stories. I've yet to read a news story about which I had personal knowledge that was accurate. They try, but fail.
The confusion comes from the goal of these sorts of accusations not actually being to convince people to treat other people equally. If you can do the math on the statistics, then you'll realize: 1. Based on normal distributions, a significant number of companies will have these sorts of "problems" even when there is zero actual illegal discrimination. 2. The only way for a company to ensure it doesn't get labeled as discriminating by these people is to start discriminating against non-favored groups in order to make the numbers come out "right".
Perhaps. Maybe I'm naive but I think there is another way, which is to prove with data that the numbers fall within appropriate statistical distributions. I'm sure that's what Google is going to do with the DOL.
It's sexist unless and until men can also choose.. (Score:2)
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I don't find this entirely convincing. When the companies I've worked at hire people, we assume it's for years, hopefully decades. I work in software engineering where typical job stints are 3-10 years at any one company. Taking a few months off for childbirth is lost in the noise. If a person decides to take a few years or decades off to raise children, that's a different story. But I suggest you need to look at the time off as a proportion of one's entire career length of 40-50 years.
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And when she told them that she would quit unless she would get the same pay as her male co workers, how did they react ?
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And when she told them that she would quit unless she would get the same pay as her male co workers, how did they react ?
Can I blame someone for their poor job skills ? If so, then I can blame them for their poor negotiation skills.
You really are a bit out of touch with how businesses really work aren't you? First, you aren't supposed to know how much the other person is making. Second, you go in (as a female, maybe a non-white female at that) and then you are stereotyped as an "angry woman." Lastly, if there are levels assigned to job titles then you just change the person's job title for them to get the higher pay, As far as "blaming someone for poor job skills" You should go back and read how she got the highest scores out of a
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victim_blaming [wikipedia.org]
Can I blame someone for their poor job skills ? If so, then I can blame them for their poor negotiation skills.
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When you work for someone, it's supposed to be a two-way relationship. The employer expects you to treat them fairly - not slack off all the time, not steal stuff, and be loyal. So where's the company's loyalty to their female employees? Why are they not just paying equally for equal work?
Or just post everyone's pay, so that women have the necessary knowledge to dig their heels in when this sort of bullshit happens?
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It's completely equal. Everybody gets paid what they negotiate for.
What you suggest will quickly devolve into seniority pay. Which means you can't hire/afford the best workers.
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Who is punishing these women? My original point was that the women doing things that may cause physical harm to themselves, taking time away from their career, and adding a long term distraction to their lives.
The idea of punishment has to abolished. Women are choosing to have a child. Everone has to acknowledge the sacrifice will be required the rest of a parent's life. Businesses have to plan around the lack of productivity of an individual woman based on her's performance.
Some women have no issue wi
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women who choose to become mothers are so heavily penalize
As a man I'll never have that sensation of giving birth, holding a child knowing it came from my body, enjoying the nurturing and raising of that new human.
Why am I being punished by being forced to work to earn money for my simple pleasures in life?
In Europe and the US having a baby is a life choice. Women can choose to contribute to the overpopulation of the planet or enjoy a healthy salary. They make that choice. Nobody punishes them for it.
So, what you're saying... (Score:5, Insightful)
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While this is true I think that Google, which loves liberalism and all it's proponents in the media and politics, should be held to the same ridiculous standard that all American companies are. If they pay women less than they do men then they are obviously biased against women. I love Karma.
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No, Google loves money. Everything else is PR.
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... is that the so-called "gender pay gap" is actually due to life decisions, not rampant sexism?
I'd say it's much more likely it's due to life decisions, priorities, and preferences instead of rampant, systematic, and explicit sexism.
Mark Perry writes about this often at the AEI blog. Let's take the 20% number at face value. That means that if you pick two identical employees (same job, same tenure, same experience, same skills, same performance ranking), and one is male and one is female. The 20% story says the man, on average, gets 20% more income than the woman. In some cases the gap will be zer
So wait... (Score:3)
"extremely scientific and robust," relying on the employee's role, job level and location, as well as recent performance ratings"
So basically they are claiming that performance ratings are scientific, and that there's no possibility those are biased.
Right.
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"extremely scientific and robust," relying on the employee's role, job level and location, as well as recent performance ratings"
So basically they are claiming that performance ratings are scientific, and that there's no possibility those are biased.
No, they said pay calculation was scientific, not performance ratings. Performance ratings are an input to the pay calculation, and one that inevitably has a subjective element, though Google does a lot to try to identify and eliminate bias -- vastly more than any other company I've worked with/for.
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I got a goddam performance review at Mobil Oil in Dallas that said, "The users love you. However, your methods don't fit the Corporate mold."
They were right.
I had a fucking burr headed kid under my wing who had the best computers in his office and I told him to shove all that shit to the floor where actual workers were struggling with POS crap.
He complained to management so I fired that bitch.
I asked management, "Can you actually hear what you're saying? The "users" are our goddam CUSTOMERS!
I got a promotio
On what did Google school anyone? (Score:4, Insightful)
Company accused of bias claims there is no bias. No one got "schooled."
but, muh wage gap- (Score:4, Informative)
press the button! [youtube.com]
Just another case (Score:3)
Just another case of feelz before realz!
Government learns stats101 (Score:2)
So, you're saying a difference in outcome when sliced by a factor is not de facto evidence of discrimination based on that factor?
This has always been willful blindness. Many SJWs know plenty about stats and logical inferences, because you can cite similarly constructed scenarios that violate their preferred policy preferences (e.g. crime stats in high gun ownership areas, charter school outcomes, etc) and they will immediately explain to you that there are other factors at play and the difference in outcom
Actual innocence? How quaint! (Score:2)
Google can't be fool enough to think that not actually having a pay gap means they can get off, can they? Richilieu's maxim applies as well or better to statistics as it does to any other testimony; Google can bring its analysis into court showing no wage gap, the Department of Labor can bring theirs, and who is the DoLs own Administrative Law Judge going to believe?
It'd be sad, if Google didn't support this kind of thing as applied to everyone else.
the big problem here is Google's hypocrisy (Score:2)
We can all debate until we're blue in the face whether the gender gap between an average woman and an average man is the product of perfectly reasonable individual choices or societal pressure.
What's really not debatable is that Google leadership has actively advocated for more oversight of business by the government, while simultaneously ignoring regulations when it comes to their own business.
Every other large government contractor has to file these reports. Every other large government contractor is judg
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I've _never_ had an employer not be willing to blow off the 'raise budget' when I've had another offer 'in hand'.
Don't do it. Never take counteroffers, take the new job. At the old job you just _extorted_ a huge raise, at the new job you just got a new basis for all future raises.
They will complain endlessly, but they had their chance to adjust pay when they had to pony up for the new guy and didn't, decisions have consequences.
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http://amstat.tandfonline.com/... [tandfonline.com]
http://journals.plos.org/ploso... [plos.org]
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The racial bias in police behaviour would not be there if there wasn't a racial bias in crime.
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Seriously, there are entire subdisciplines (of sociology, economics, psychology, criminology, etc) that study this, and they have, on net, done a very good job. It is not hard to find really good research on this topic, and it ALL points to a racial bias.
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The articles mistakenly assume that the rate of police bias should be equivalent to the rate of crime bias, but that's nonsense.
Suppose an officer sees 1000 people in a day, 100 that match a crime bias, and 900 that don't. The officer stops 10 people per day. Should he pick all 10 from the first group. or 1 from the first group, and 9 from the other ?
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The articles mistakenly assume that the rate of police bias should be equivalent to the rate of crime bias, but that's nonsense.
No, it doesn't. It has three models that all incorporate previous crime rates by race in different ways, with essentially the same results. It shows very clearly that police stop people of color disproportionately more often than white people, in their sample. That is called racial bias in police behavior.
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Interestingly, there have also been studies that investigate the responses according to race. There is a large statistical bias that shows black police are also more likely to arrest a black person. And that there are significantly more convictions made in this way even when jury composition has been factored for.
There are many possibilities, depending on what you factor in, and things are rarely as cut and dried as people would have you believe, especially when confirmation bias is being involved (and it
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Except the gender masking does not exist and the Google committees use the manager's feedback as a main source of information to rate employee performance as well as promotion worthiness. So of course the managers will not say 'pay her less because she's a woman', all they have to do is to write their feedback to stack rank their direct reports and the committees will follow. I also do not understand how the sex can be masked with the 360 feedback having 'Cindy played a role' or 'she contributed to' all ove
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I used to work at Google for several years and have inquired to 'committee' members about the process.
Re:Proxy Variables and multiple life factors... (Score:2)
Google has become rich for using Proxy Variables as a means to derive inferences. Whether or not its true, if your proxy-sample is representative of the population at large, you still get a valid sampling.
That Google wouldn't know about unconscious bias or how "objective
factors" can be correlated to physical sex sounds ludicrous.
While women taking off for having babies is cited as a reason for pay inequity, Google has provided on-site day-care and facilities to lower the effect of those problems.
Part of th
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That explains the gender differences in suicide rate, life expectancy and mental illness then.
Oh, wait..
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In the UK discriminating on height would be illegal unless explicitly linked to ability to do the job - for precisely the reason you've stated. It's not a protected characteristic but the policy clearly leads to disadvantage to a protected group.