
Accused of underpaying women, Google says it's too expensive to get wage data - dsr12
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/26/google-gender-discrimination-case-salary-records
======
rayiner
In litigation, there is the expectation that parties shouldn't be expected to
bear discovery costs that are out of proportion with the value and relevance
of the requested data. "It'll cost too much" is thus a stock answer to
discovery requests. Google can absorb the $100k cost--they'll likely spend
tens of thousands to just to litigate over the discovery dispute. But they're
entitled to hold the government to it's burden of articulating why that data
justifies the cost.

Obviously the real reason is that Google doesn't want to hand over the data.
But you should never just hand data over to the government. Government lawyers
can get pretty creative with spreadsheets of numbers.

~~~
jdavis703
Google is a federal contractor. These documents are being requested because
they do federal business, not because of any civil or criminal inquiry. Now of
course these documents might lead to a civil case, but it's within the bounds
of each agency's Office of Civil Rights to request this data.

~~~
ball_of_lint
Would that apply to all of googles employees though? I assume that people
working on nongovernmental products would not be included.

~~~
jdavis703
As a legacy of modern civil rights gains, any company that does federal
business has to comply with a stricter set of civil rights law. Of course, if
they don't want to that's their prerogative, but they can't receive federal
funds.

------
skywhopper
It's the legal team's job to push back on any new requests for data. Obviously
there _is_ a reasonable limit of what the government can ask Google to
provide. This particular cost is obviously far less than that limit ought to
be given the stakes involved and the size of Google, but again, Google should
push back too early and the government should ask for too much, and the judge
should find the reasonable middle ground. That's fine, that's how our legal
system works, and I suspect this article is overblowing a typical procedural
step in the process.

All of that said, Google is not coming out looking like the good guy by
fighting this case so hard. Their compensation analysts ought to be running
these sorts of reports themselves. If they truly aren't, then that in itself
is evidence (in my opinion) that Google is willfully neglecting its
responsibility not to underpay its female employees.

~~~
eastWestMath
If they aren't making efforts with their women employees, it would follow they
aren't doing much to help out their black/Hispanic employees either.

~~~
bArray
Asians are apparently "paid too much", so er, docking wages for being Asian,
anybody?

~~~
helthanatos
White males are certainly paid too much! They should make half of what
minority employees do!

~~~
bArray
I think you've been down-voted because your humour is too subtle.

>White males are certainly paid too much! They should make half of what
minority employees do!

It certainly feels like this won't stop until that's the case.

~~~
bookmarkacc
Its not about bringing down white males. Its about bringing women and
minorities to the same level. The comment is in poor taste

~~~
bArray
Firstly, do we agree it was in jest?

>Its about bringing women and minorities to the same level.

I'm not sure I understand the difference? And I'm not sure other people do
either. You're measuring from the average, so moving either moves the average
which you're measuring from.

From my understanding, you cannot tell the difference, therefore:

"bringing down white males" == "bringing women and minorities to the same
level"

>The comment is in poor taste

Personal perception. Nobody is telling anybody what to like or dislike. I had
to read it twice to understand it, I think a little more obvious would have
been better. But again, personal perception.

------
scarface74
So Google can organize the worlds information, has AI good enough to
categorize and automatically tag my pictures, has some of the most brilliant
minds on earth, but can't do what would be a simple SQL statement for most
companies?

~~~
philipov
If Google released such wage data, they would have to pay people more, and
that would cost a lot, and so collecting wage data is too expensive. Get it?

~~~
trendia
This is the truth.

Total Cost = Cost to acquire data ($200,000) + Back pay to employees
($20,000,000)

~~~
nojvek
My respect for Google has gone down significantly. I would not work for
Facebook and Google even if I was offered a million dollars.

I predict that the Golden years of FB and Google are right now, they will
slowly head into a plateau

~~~
659087
I never really understood the Google worship. "Don't be evil" was an ingenious
PR move which earned them an army of useful idiots willing to defend their
every move, but never actually applied internally as far as I could tell. I
think the reality was "see how much evil we can get society acclimated to".

As for Facebook, I think anyone who ever had a positive opinion of them should
be evaluated by a psychiatrist.

~~~
pacala
Google is [was?] a geek company. You could get a good pay by being really good
at coding. Most companies out there, the only way to get a high compensation
is to play Games of Thrones on the management ladder. Actually doing any work
is shunned upon.

~~~
jedberg
> Actually doing any work is shunned upon.

You clearly don't understand what a manager does if you believe what they do
isn't work.

~~~
pacala
There are indeed many definitions of work. I'm using "something produced or
accomplished by effort, exertion, or exercise of skill", [https://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/work](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/work).

But then again, managers are very skilled at power games, and the ultimate
sign of power is taking credit for what your subordinates produced.

~~~
scarface74
You're working for a bad manager. I appreciate the management at my company.
They keep the lights on and take care of all the stuff I would never want to
do and I can concentrate on development.

------
PKop
Can someone explain how they would be able to get away with paying women less
than men?

And if your answer is: "They just pay them less."

1) Why? What is the purpose of them doing this?

2) Why don't they also just pay men less as well?

3) Wages trend, in a competitive market, towards marginal productivity of
labor. What is preventing competitors in the market for engineers from
poaching all of the underpaid yet equally talented women at below market
costs, say half the gap Google is assumed to be creating? Surely this would be
a clear path towards extra profits, no?

~~~
mikeash
Wages are set by supply and demand. Systematic discrimination results in less
demand for women, which results in lower wages.

There is some profit opportunity for companies who take advantage of this, but
it's not enough to erase the difference.

Consider, for example, how pervasive racial discrimination was (and still is)
in business despite the fact that accepting minorities as customers and
employees would be financially advantageous.

~~~
PKop
Why don't the people (like you) that exist in different businesses (don't tell
me you think there are 0) hire the underpaid women, either for a small raise,
or a complete gap-eliminating raise? Surely you don't think you're a lone
voice supporting wage equality.. just look at this thread.

They'd either be doing a purely altruistic social good righting the injustice
of sexist wage discrimination and/or making more money. That both avenues
exist, implying enormous incentives, the discriminatory gap should disappear.
Why isn't this happening? When Bezos said "Your margin is my opportunity"? Did
he secretly imply an asterisk to that statement carving out the unspoken rule
that he and his competitors certainly would not compete for the underpaid
women labor?

You use the example of racial discrimination. So, is Silicon Valley filled to
the brim with sexist hiring managers?

Are there no whistle blowers courageous enough to out their bosses that
refused to pay equal rates when confronted with the discrepancies? The tech
industry is one of the most progressive... are you telling me these
progressive minded people are standing idly by at best or actively carrying
out this travesty at worst?

~~~
mikeash
"That both avenues exist, implying enormous incentives, the discriminatory gap
should disappear."

But it doesn't. You can talk about "should" all you want but ultimately you
need to look at the world.

I don't have answers to all of your questions. Certainly some companies _are_
being hurt by this, and others take advantage. That doesn't eliminate the
problem unless you believe in perfectly efficient markets with no friction,
barriers to entry, etc.

~~~
PKop
Those are all questions that naturally follow from the assumption that men
(women too?) are discriminating against women against the best interests of
the companies they work for because .... well I'm not sure you've spelled out
the motive... but essentially "sexism"? It doesn't sound plausible when
everywhere you look you have people shouting on the rooftops about how women
deserve equal pay. So who the hell isnt paying them equally?

~~~
mikeash
They're great questions, and important questions. But if you're asking them
rhetorically to argue that sexism doesn't affect pay, you've got things
backwards.

Start with the data. See how men and women's pay stacks up. Once you know the
outcome, _then_ start asking questions about how it happens. (Note that I'm
not saying what answer you'll find, only that you need to find the answer by
looking at what happens, rather than making basic economic arguments.)

There are only two possibilities here. Either there is a wage gap, or there is
not. If there is not, then you're being awfully strident about something where
you could instead just point out "hey, this doesn't actually happen, here are
the numbers." And if there is a gap, then your rhetorical questions don't
eliminate it, so either the implication is wrong or there's something else
going on.

I find arguments from economic efficiency and profit motive to be highly
unconvincing. If stuff actually worked that way then you wouldn't have, for
example, store brand products next to identical name brand products selling at
a higher price, or a million other economically inefficient human behaviors we
see.

~~~
PKop
Have you looked at the data? Here's a sympathetic-to-the-cause article, one
that fully endorses the issue that there is some problematic pay gap:

[http://www.payscale.com/data-packages/gender-pay-
gap](http://www.payscale.com/data-packages/gender-pay-gap)

What do we make of this statement, buried somewhat deep in the article (I
would have made this the first line of the post):

"Nationally, when we control for job title, job level and other important
influencers of wages (like years of work experience), women still only make 98
cents for every dollar earned by men."

I've seen similar from other studies, including a Harvard study that gets
cited often.

I'm strident because I 100% think this is a political issue. It's gender
politics. It's perhaps a lot of things. If the issue doesn't exist (certainly
to the extent of "77% gap oh my!"), why do so many people get caught up in
proclaiming the issue is a crisis?

I think it is a purposefully divisive issue who's propagation has serious
consequences for women who are instilled with the idea they are being actively
discriminated against, and who are lectured constantly that the only way they
can be respected in modern society is by joining the workforce and being
equally as career minded as the average ambitious man.

This social advocacy is perfectly fine. People can have a position on what
they think the ideal role of women or men or whoever in society is. But be
honest about it. And be tolerant of other viewpoints (namely, that perhaps
many women _would_ be happier at home, and those who otherwise would not be
highly motivated to move up the corporate ladder shouldn't be shamed into
having to do so.)

And damnit, be explicit about what you mean by "gap". Equal job, equal
experience, equal "apples to apples" the gap is 2%.

If you don't see the obvious fact that people not explicitly stating the
actual gap instead of disingenuously fooling people into believing it is 23%,
then you won't understand why I'm strident about the issue. Those pushing it
are without question strident about it, are they not?

~~~
mikeash
Why not just post that study and be done? I think you've missed the point of
my comment, which is that making these vague economic arguments is completely
pointless. They tell us nothing about what's actually happening. If you want
to point out that the wage gap isn't very big then say it's been measured and
isn't very big.

I don't mind that you're strident about it, I mind that you're strident about
pushing a bad argument.

------
tyingq
Funny with the context of how much, for example, Levandowski was compensated.

It also makes you wonder about their statements that they have no gender pay
gap. If you can't get the data together, how do you "know"?

------
loup-vaillant
> _Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it
> universally accessible and useful._ ¹

Yet this particular bit of information is too expensive to make accessible and
useful. They have this giant correlation machine, and they don't use it to
know as much as they can about their own company? How _convenient_.

I know, "one does not simply", but still: aren't you supposed to keep salary
records anyway. Wouldn't you keep them even if you didn't have to, just in
case? Wouldn't you run some statistics over them, just to see the trends?

Obviously, as rayiner says, Alphabet have other reason not to hand over the
data.

[1]:
[https://www.google.com/intl/en/about/](https://www.google.com/intl/en/about/)
(meta description tag)

~~~
659087
Google is a strong proponent of privacy, for Google.

------
mythrwy
The issue of possible underpayment aside, It has to be in the interest of the
company to provide as little information as they can.

It's a court case. The attorneys wouldn't be doing their job if they didn't
use every legal means at their disposal.

And they may in fact have a point (to an extent). Government shouldn't be able
to accuse a firm of something, then demand the firm spend money assembling
data to prove the governments case. The fact Google "makes a bunch of money so
no big deal" (which is what the .gov attorneys are apparently arguing) is
irrelevant to that principal.

~~~
ubernostrum
_Government shouldn 't be able to accuse a firm of something, then demand the
firm spend money assembling data to prove the governments case._

First of all: when you sue someone, you _do_ get to demand exactly that. They
also get to demand it of you! It's called "discovery", and it's a bog-standard
basic normal everyday part of lawsuits.

Second of all: if you have a look through the reporting on this, Google was
being audited for compliance with equal-pay laws and refused to supply records
the government said were relevant to the audit. So the government is now suing
to force Google to hand over the records. Auditors are allowed to do that, and
being required to assemble and hand over information is pretty much the
literal definition of an audit.

~~~
mythrwy
This isn't a civil suit though.

And fishing expeditions (at the firms cost) shouldn't be allowed. We'll see
what the court decides.

~~~
ubernostrum
An audit isn't a fishing expedition. Being audited for compliance with
relevant laws is part of being in business; if it's an unbearable burden, your
options are

1\. Get out of business, or

2\. There is no second option.

~~~
mythrwy
Any reasonable audit also has clearly defined limits though. Like I say, we'll
see what the court decides.

~~~
ubernostrum
Your comments strongly advocated for the "limits" being that no company could
ever be compelled to compile or produce information for an audit at its own
expense. Have you now recognized the error in your earlier position, since you
seem to be trying to walk it back?

~~~
mythrwy
I've tried to figure out how I can walk back on something nowhere near what I
stated in the first place but haven't come up with a solution yet.

So until I do I'll have to answer "no" to your question.

~~~
ubernostrum
_Government shouldn 't be able to accuse a firm of something, then demand the
firm spend money assembling data to prove the governments case._

Direct quote of you.

This is exactly what the government is allowed to do. This is exactly how an
audit works when they think they've found something.

The government needs the information to determine whether the company is in
compliance. The company has the information. How else would you solve this,
besides the government having the power to compel production of the
information?

~~~
mythrwy
So, your second statement isn't what I originally stated at all.

This isn't how an "audit" works at all, an "audit" and an accusation are two
different things entirely. Your bias has apparently led you into reading
things that aren't there. A common fallacy so don't feel bad.

"The government needs information"

I'm not sure it really does to this extent, but assuming you are right, how
much legal responsibility does Google have to provide it?

And this is exactly what we are going to find out from the courts. Back to the
original point, the attorneys for Google have no duty, and in fact, every
duty, to minimize the amount of information provided.

------
sterex
How can a corporation like Google that handles Peta bytes of data on a daily
basis say it is too hard for them to keep track of their own employee
payments?

If they were honest enough, they would have found a way to comply. This is
just their attempt at lawyering out of the situation.

------
tyingq
Apparently, their payroll software for North America is something called
"UltiPro": [http://www.ultimatesoftware.com/UltiPro-Solution-Features-
Pa...](http://www.ultimatesoftware.com/UltiPro-Solution-Features-Payroll-
Administration-Tax-Management)

From a job listing for the North America Payroll Core Operations Lead:
[https://www.glassdoor.com/job-listing/north-america-
payroll-...](https://www.glassdoor.com/job-listing/north-america-payroll-core-
operations-lead-google-JV_IC1147431_KO0,42_KE43,49.htm?jl=2420728831) _"
Advanced scripting and extensive UltiPro knowledge"_

------
falcolas
Err, too expensive for Google? And pardon my only partially feigned ignorance,
but if you're paying them based off the position and not gender, why do you
need additional wage data?

~~~
bArray
>And pardon my only partially feigned ignorance, but if you're paying them
based off the position and not gender, why do you need additional wage data?

Aren't Asians "overpaid" in the US tech industry? Any investigations into
this? Of course not. This stinks of hidden agenda.

------
Radim
What other individual traits and axes (apart from gender) are "protected from
pay discrimination" in the US?

I'm genuinely curious -- is there an official enumeration?

I ask because there's no limit to the number of ways you can slice and dice a
human population, based on a million facets each person has. So I wonder,
where did the legislators draw the line? And why? Why not somewhere else?

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_class](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_class)

~~~
Radim
Thanks. That seems a fascinating topic, the emergence and evolution of these
"protected classes" over time.

I'll try to descend into your links once I have more time, but a TL;DR
discussion on "why we drew the line here, not there" would be great too.

Is it mainly a function of how vocal or powerful a subpopulation is? Something
else? What other subdivisions will become privileged next? Where is this trend
headed?

------
itsdrewmiller
If google doesn't have this information readily available it is pretty hard to
believe their claim that they analyze salary data every year and definitely
don't have a wage gap.

~~~
SamReidHughes
If gathering salary data was high cost they could still address the question
of having a wage gap with random sampling.

And that's what they'd have to do anyway -- salary data wouldn't tell you if
they had a discriminatory wage gap.

------
packetized
Salesforce can do this, but Google can't?

[https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2017/04/salesforce-equal-
pay...](https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2017/04/salesforce-equal-pay-
assessment-update.html)

------
kuschku
"Too big to comply", now that’s an interesting term.

Shouldn’t all this data be in a single consistent database anyway? I mean,
Google can manage all historic payments people do via their payment processor,
but can’t manage all historic wage payments automatically?

~~~
dboreham
Through a family connection I know quite a bit about how salary data is
analysed inside silicon valley companies. That analysis, in turn, is largely
driven by the need to comply with various DOL regulations.

Based on what I know I find it inconceivable that Google doesn't have this
data in a spreadsheet that could be emailed in a few seconds to whoever needs
to see it.

------
throwaway-1209
Standard strategy. Google has the info, they data mine this to death on a
yearly basis only to find that when confounding factors are accounted for
there's no "wage gap". That's not something you can publicly say though, if
you don't want to be lynched by an angry mob. The only gap they could find was
that women are less likely to nominate themselves for a promo, and they've
been encouraging them to self nominate for many years. Not a heck of a lot the
company can do if you don't want more responsibility though.

------
montyboy_us
Couldn't the government paint a pretty accurate picture using IRS data? Title
and earnings via W-2 is at least a start.

~~~
ubernostrum
That would require the Department of Labor to have that data. They don't have
that data; the IRS has it, and they'd probably have to get a court to order
the IRS to hand it over, and the court might well not do that.

------
JBiserkov
Microsoft can do it: [https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2016/04/11/ensuring-
equal-p...](https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2016/04/11/ensuring-equal-pay-
equal-work/)

------
0xcde4c3db
Suppose that there's compelling statistical evidence that Google underpays
women, but no evidence of any specific intent to do so (which, IIRC, is how
these things usually play out). Beyond the immediate legal remedies, how do
they they fundamentally fix the processes that led to that outcome? Would they
even really know where the leaks are in this machinery that admit such biases?
How many other companies have the same fundamental problems that go unexamined
because their outcomes happen to not suggest a legal issue (e.g. a bias based
on alma mater, favorite movies, shared hobbies, etc.)?

------
ramblerman
Google hires in the top echelons of talent for software engineering. Due to
forces of society or biology most of that talent is male.

By forcing the company to first hire more women it follows that you have to
find women who are not in the top. To pay them the same is then just downright
naive.

tldr Should we not be solving this at the bottom rather than top down, by
placing the burden unfairly on the companies?

------
skookumchuck
Given today's demand for engineers, it's hard to see how Google systematically
underpaying a group of them is sustainable.

~~~
sudosteph
Not really. A woman at Google can be paid well above industry average, and
still be paid less than her male Google peers. In that case, she would have no
incentive to leave for higher pay elsewhere (since few places beat Google
pay), but Google would still have broken employment law if that pay
discrepancy is pervasive.

~~~
skookumchuck
Industry average doesn't really apply. What the Silicon Valley local market is
does apply, and if there are places that pay better, they'd go there. Why stay
at a place where you're underpaid relative to your peers when another place
down the street offers more money? I wouldn't.

Besides, I've read that there's a lot of job hopping going on in SV for better
pay, and that includes googlers. It's hard to see how one could make
systematically underpaying a group of people work.

------
thinkingemote
I was interested to learn about the "Yes at Google" anonymous mailing list for
Google employees to report in work sexism etc. is this list discussing this
topic too? Are there other internal anonymous lists at the company that would
be discussing this?

------
yeukhon
Has anyone ever experiment and come up with a fair compensation calculation
model?

I want to start with base compensation for every seniority and every job
title. Then adjust according to both inflation, location, as well as
guaranteed yearly growth of salary.

------
wolco
The only way to fix this is to pay everyone the same pay regardless of job
title / history / experience.

If you are hiring the best you need to offer the best pay across the board.
Google does this already.

------
kwhitefoot
What happened to "Don't be evil"

------
PantsMan
Sorry legal punks, but the RICHEST company in the world can't use that excuse.

Also, this is a systemic issue: Stop paying women less.

No wonder people can't get ahead.

------
TP4Cornholio
Their attorneys probably cost at least 1000 an hour. Would be cheaper to
release the data than to fight this.

~~~
mythrwy
You know what happens if you give up your lunch money to a bully once?

Maybe better in the long run to not be seen as an easy mark, even if it causes
some short term pain.

~~~
659087
Are you really trying to imply that poor little Google is being bullied here?

~~~
mythrwy
No, I'm suggesting perhaps Google's attorneys understand the general principal
of the undesirability of apparent weakness while being cash rich.

------
peter303
You cant google this information?

~~~
659087
Google doesn't like being Googled. Remember what happened when some
journalists Googled Eric Schmidt?

[http://money.cnn.com/2005/08/05/technology/google_cnet/](http://money.cnn.com/2005/08/05/technology/google_cnet/)

------
wiz21c
Fortunately, with AlphaGo rising, the pay will be optimized by AI, based on
what you do and you need (based on history of web searches).

~~~
mbaha
I hope this will help in reducing bias in the recruiting process, but your
statement is a prime example that we just want to move the problem somewhere
else in the career pipeline.

We won't achieve parity in the workplace simply because there is no parity in
STEM programs (and particularly in Computer Science).

So, if everything was done w/ IA, I would just force a 50/50 split for
employees to encourage girls to take up coding classes (at the _tiny_ expense
of coding abilities).

~~~
wiz21c
I was absolutely and totally cynical here :-)

------
bArray
I guess Uber is no longer the popular tech company to rip into. I've seen some
articles surfacing about Facebook, they'll probably be the next people to hate
for a little while.

Everything about this is so wrong. It all comes down to laundering money out
of Google, thinly veiled with this false idea of "justice" from incorrectly
used statistics.

