
Google Moves to Address Wage Equity, and Finds It’s Underpaying Many Men - gatsby
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/04/technology/google-gender-pay-gap.html
======
oarabbus_
Reminiscent of Simpson's Paradox, the most famous example being a gender
discrimination lawsuit alleging UC Berkeley discriminated against women in
admissions (57% men vs. 43% women).

It turned out there WAS bias - in favor of the women!

"The lawsuit triggered a study. The study results showed that not only were
women not discriminated against, but that women had a statistically
significant advantage!

Here’s what happened. Some departments had high acceptance rates and some had
low acceptance rates. Women applied to more competitive departments. Men
applied to more accessible departments. Taken on the whole men had an
advantage. When broken down per department it was women who were more
favored."

[https://www.forrestthewoods.com/blog/my_favorite_paradox/](https://www.forrestthewoods.com/blog/my_favorite_paradox/)

~~~
slg
You got too distracted by the Simpson's Paradox reference to see the actual
Simpson's Paradox in play. As sokoloff [1] pointed out in a below thread,
Google having an overwhelming male workforce means that there could still be a
large bias against women at the same time that more man are being underpaid.

There is simply not enough information presented in this article to know
whether there is truly a gender bias (in either direction) regarding how
Google pays their employees.

[1] -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19303989](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19303989)

~~~
mpweiher
> There is simply not enough information...

Hmm...

"Men account for about 69 percent of the company’s work force, but they
received a _disproportionately higher percentage of the money_. "

So, yes, we do have that information.

~~~
slg
Yet we don't know what jobs women and men do at Google. There can be bias
elsewhere in the system. For example women might be disproportionately hired
as administrative assistants and men might be disproportionately hired as
senior engineers. Both groups could then be compensated fairly and it would
result in men receiving a disproportionately higher percentage of the money.

~~~
skywhopper
You've missed the point entirely. The comparisons are among peers in the same
jobs. But it sounds like Google can't get its own data together in a sensible
way, so you can't really trust any numbers in this article.

------
sleepysysadmin
The gender wage gap is real in the sense that there is a gap, but when you
analyze it, they are comparing apples to oranges. I'm sure everyone here knows
this.

[https://data.oecd.org/earnwage/gender-wage-
gap.htm](https://data.oecd.org/earnwage/gender-wage-gap.htm)

The countries with the highest wage gaps are the countries with the most
equality in the workplace. Women in Korea are not treated poorly.

The important thing though is the people proposing that the wage gap is a
problem has a solution. They are pushing equality of outcome. They want
everyone to be paid exactly the same. That's the problem that they have. They
don't care that they are comparing apples to oranges. They want pay to be
exactly the same.

~~~
bandrami
It's only "apples to oranges" if you're willing to beg the entire question.
_Why_ is elementary teaching less highly paid than university teaching? _Why_
is nurse practitioning less highly paid than anaesthesiologizing?

~~~
kbutler
Amount of training required.

I'd be fine with a random anesthesiologist teaching my grade schooler, but I'd
hesitate to have a random elementary school teacher giving him anesthesia.

Elementary school teaching: a teaching certificate.

University professor: PhD, pre-tenure work & published research (Note that
there are less-qualified people teaching in universities that are compensated
much less.)

Nurse practitioner: Master's degree (undergraduate plus 2 years)

Anesthesiologist: Undergraduate + medical degree (4 years) + residency (4
years) + possible specialty training.

~~~
organsnyder
How do software developers fare under that regime? I make 3x more as a
software developer than my teacher friends that have had far more schooling
(masters degrees in many cases, plus continuing education requirements). I
don't know where you live, but in my state (Michigan) teachers have rigorous
certification requirements.

And I definitely would NOT expect someone without training to be an effective
teacher. I'm in awe of what my kids' teachers are able to do. Classroom
management is a skill that is incredibly difficult to master.

~~~
kbutler
Successful software engineers have a lot of knowledge & skill that is often
acquired informally, so it may not be reflected in university history. Because
of the demand for developers and the apparent difficulty of acquiring the
skills, they are well-compensated.

If a person has a bachelor's degree, they can get a Michigan interim teaching
certificate by passing a test.
[https://www.teachercertificationdegrees.com/certification/mi...](https://www.teachercertificationdegrees.com/certification/michigan-
alternative/) Permanent certification then requires 12 hours (1 semester full-
time) of courses, or working toward a masters degree would probably give an
immediate and permanent bump in pay.

Imagine a random liberal arts graduate: Would it be easier to go into
elementary teaching in Michigan or software development?

~~~
organsnyder
I see a lot of parallels between this alternative certification route and a
bootcamp: yes, the route is shorter, but you're at a huge disadvantage when
applying for entry-level positions.

The teachers I know personally obtained traditional four-plus-year bachelors
degrees before applying for jobs. In most cases, they had to do a year or more
of subbing before finding a permanent position.

(edit to add: education degrees are very hard to get done in four years,
especially with the aiding, student teaching, etc.)

------
rhegart
High school, college, any STEM fields are all overwhelmingly biased in terms
of favoring women. 57% of college graduates are women. Men are not only
getting the short end of the stick but are being told by every voice that they
are privileged, it’s their fault, they are bad whereas women have sooooo many
extra programs and positive reinforcement to succeed.

No one with a straight face can tell me women in entry level tech programs are
not incredibly favored. All my below average coder friends that are women got
awesome jobs with high salaries extremely easily. Yes, I talk with them and
they agree with what I’m saying.

The actual discrimination against women comes in PhD programs, programs where
their success is determined by 1 or 2 superiors (mostly men in advanced
research programs), areas with primarily male coworkers, and creepy bosses.
The area with most discrimination for women is in non major liberal cities. I
went to the Midwest twice and saw more blatant sexism in the workforce than I
have my entire life. 2 friends confided that they were asked to trade sexual
favors for promotions albeit this was 20 years ago and that was the deciding
factor for them moving to the Bay. These things are horrible and I can’t
imagime the emotional trauma for that.

However, in the Bay Area and the majority of society the pendulum has swung
way too far the other way. I don’t care if people think me sexist, these are
my observations over my lifetime from both sides and unlesss convinced
otherwise this is what I believe.

~~~
adamsea
> No one with a straight face can tell me women in entry level tech programs
> are not incredibly favored. All my below average coder friends that are
> women got awesome jobs with high salaries extremely easily. Yes, I talk with
> them and they agree with what I’m saying.

.... and yet, how many workplaces have an engineering team which are 50%
female? 25% female? 10% female? 5% female?

~~~
NotAnEconomist
It's possible to both discriminate against men, yet have more men in the
workforce, if women voluntarily are choosing not to enter a profession.

In fact, that seems to be the problem: no amount of discrimination against men
resolves that women simply are choosing careers in a different distribution to
what men do, but the only policy lever that can really be utilized is
discrimination at various stages of education or employment.

This has left people aiming for a fantasy, and using increasingly aggressive
discrimination to try and carry it out, biology be damned.

~~~
fasdetwaew
> that women simply are choosing careers in a different distribution to what
> men do

Why is that, though?

Are women not encouraged to pursue technology careers? Or are they being
encouraged to chose other careers instead?

Are they driven away from it by a toxic work place culture?

Or just the perception of tech as having toxic workplace cultures?

Are women moving into roles with more flexibility because they are expected to
take on more domestic duties?

Or my hunch... Do women just feel less comfortable entering an industry with
such an unbalanced gender ratio to begin with, and it becomes a self
perpetuating cycle?

You say Biology be damned, but I don't think it's settled that biology is the
main factor here.

And I'm not saying it is or it isn't. I'm saying we don't know.

~~~
AlexTWithBeard
Or... may I dare to suggest they simply don't like it?

I used to work at school. Not for a long time, but enough to make some
observations. One of them: school kids are passionate. If they're interested
in something, no amount of persuasion, toxicity or whatever else will distract
them.

~~~
mikeash
It’s perfectly reasonable to consider that maybe women are inherently drawn
away from the field for whatever reason. There are biological differences
between men and women and it’s possible that this is one.

What I don’t understand is why so many people insist that this must be the
explanation, as if the current state of things is definitely a level playing
field (or biased toward women) and the fact that there are so many more men in
the field _must_ therefore be due to something innate.

We’re only a few decades out from a time when women couldn’t open a bank
account without their husband’s permission, and when raping a woman was
perfectly legal as long as you were married to her. I think we should give it
a _little_ more time and effort before we declare that everything is now fair
and any remaining discrepancies must be biological.

~~~
ZeroFries
Why do you think your last paragraph hasn't prevented women from becoming
numerous and successful in many other fields, such as becoming doctors? Could
it be because of one of the most reproducable and statistically significant
findings in social psychology, that women are generally more interested in
people and men more interested in things?

~~~
mikeash
A quick search shows that male doctors outnumber female doctors in the US by
about a 2:1 ratio, so I don’t think that’s the best example. Your point
remains, since there are fields where women are at parity or beyond.

I think that because it seems unlikely that we’ve managed to completely
eliminate thousands of years’ worth of systemic sexism in such a short time.
It’s highly improbable that, with so many things changing all the time, this
just _happens_ to be the moment when we’ve achieved a level playing field.

And to address the specific claim, why would being interested in people keep
women away from computer jobs? It’s an intensely collaborative field. And why
didn’t this keep women out of the field a few decades ago when women
programmers were much more (relatively) numerous? If women are generally more
interested in people and this drives sex disparities in different professions,
why are there so few women in politics, the most people-heavy profession
imaginable?

~~~
Izkata
> A quick search shows that male doctors outnumber female doctors in the US by
> about a 2:1 ratio, so I don’t think that’s the best example.

I think it's a good example, you (and GP) just missed the more interesting
part: Nurses handle the patients on a more intimate level than doctors, and
female nurses outnumber male nurses roughly 10:1 in the US.

[https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/total-number-of-
pr...](https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/total-number-of-
professionally-active-nurses-by-
gender/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D)

------
magneticnorth
I've talked to one expert about a similar result in a company where I worked,
and the flip side to results like this is sometimes promotion velocity - women
looked "overpaid" for their level relative to the men, and that was often
because they had been at that level much longer than most men at the same
level.

If you set initial salaries fairly with respect to gender but promote men more
quickly, then you end up with a company where it looks like women are paid
more when you control for job title.

~~~
ordinaryradical
So would you say the accurate way to study this is to examine "lifetime
pay"\--look at the pay of demographics over a time period at the company? That
would show if men are making more in 5 years of accumulated employment vs
women, right, and potentially unearth some of this "promotion velocity"
numerically?

~~~
bluGill
That is one part of the picture. This situation is so complex that I don't
believe everybody has actually figured out all the important parts to study in
the first place.

~~~
shados
This is it, and definitely step 1.

Step 1: Let's agree that this is a complicated problem, and that quick feel
good knee jerk reactions may end up having negative impacts.

Step 2: Work on solutions to complicated problems.

Easier said than done, but few things worth doing are simple, and there's
already a lot of people doing great work on sustainable, informed solutions
(but too many people just going "lets pay everyone the same, its the only way
to be fair!!!" hurting everyone else)

------
eqdw
If you assume:

a) Google is about 70% men; and b) The "error" in pay (eg how under- or over-
paid you are) is randomly distributed

Then it will be trivially true that more men than women are underpaid

If you, in addition to this, assume some level of sex discrimination, such
that in addition to (b) there is additional 'error' in womens' pay, depending
on the relative strengths of each of these errors, the following two things
can both be true at the same time:

1) A higher percentage of women are underpaid than are men. 2) Most of the
people who are underpaid are men.

If this is surprising to anybody, they should be taking a remedial statistics
class immediately.

To illustrate, assume that Google is 100 people: 30 women, 70 men. assume that
25% of men are underpaid, and 50% of women are underpaid.

That means that 0.25 _70 =~ 18 men and 0.5_ 30 = 15 women are underpaid.

That means that more men are underpaid than women.

That means that 18/(18+15)*100 =~ 55% of the people who are underpaid are men.

So in my hypothetical, is Google biased against men? Or is Google biased
against women? Or is Google not biased at all?.

~~~
haberman
The information provided in the article directly contradicts your
hypothetical.

It says that the raises resulting from the study _disproportionately_ went to
men. Not just in absolute terms, but proportional terms:

> The study, which disproportionately led to pay raises for thousands of men,
> is done every year [...]

> In response to the study, Google gave $9.7 million in additional
> compensation to 10,677 employees for this year. Men account for about 69
> percent of the company’s work force, but they received a higher percentage
> of the money.

------
johnny313
> Kelly Ellis, a former Google engineer and one of the plaintiffs in the
> gender-pay suit against the company, said in a legal filing that Google
> hired her as a Level 3 employee — the category for new software engineers
> who are recent college graduates — in 2010 despite her having four years of
> experience.

> Within a few weeks of Ms. Ellis being hiring, Google hired a male engineer
> for her team who had also graduated from college four years earlier. But he
> was hired as a Level 4 employee, meaning he received a higher salary and had
> more opportunities for bonuses, raises and stock compensation, according to
> the suit. Other men on Ms. Ellis’s team whose qualifications were equal to
> or less than hers were also brought in at Level 4, the suit says.

This feels like a part of the issue, but could be really hard to analyze
easily.

~~~
rifung
> Kelly Ellis, a former Google engineer and one of the plaintiffs in the
> gender-pay suit against the company, said in a legal filing that Google
> hired her as a Level 3 employee — the category for new software engineers
> who are recent college graduates — in 2010 despite her having four years of
> experience.

I worked for around 4 years before joining Google and was also hired as an L3.
I'm male.

Two of my new grad friends were hired as L3's at Google too but make like 100k
more than I do in total compensation. One is male and one is female.

I'm not saying there isn't sexism but I'm not really convinced by this
example. It's pretty common that people get "demoted" when coming in from
other companies.

I made the mistake of not getting competing offers (I wasn't actually looking
to change jobs at the time).

~~~
ralusek
Also, number of years worked does not dictate how good of an engineer you are.

~~~
kamaal
No, its mostly because turning down a offer(no matter what that is) from
Google screams privilege. There are a lot of things related to prestige, and
other hiring marketing related things that have built up this enormous clout
of you having arrived at a big place in life if you land a job at FAANG
companies.

So people just take whatever is offered. Because, there are tens of thousands
of people applying for these jobs. Most of them are likely to better than you
and they didn't crack all competitive coding style interview to land a job
like you did. So people just find it hard to turn down the offer and take it.

It's only later do they realized they are not building the next search engine.
Nor building the next gen e-commerce platform, but building Jsons and posting
to dataservices. By then you are conditioned to free food and you are not
comparing your salary with people outside but _inside_.

Its always hard to admit you didn't negotiate well or fell for the marketing
appeal of the company. Its easy to find conspiracies and accuse others of
malice. The later story is more appealing, makes you a victim and makes the
other side look bad.

~~~
rifung
> So people just take whatever is offered. Because, there are tens of
> thousands of people applying for these jobs. Most of them are likely to
> better than you and they didn't crack all competitive coding style interview
> to land a job like you did. So people just find it hard to turn down the
> offer and take it.

I don't speak for everyone obviously but the reason I took the offer is that
it will still >50% what I was making previously. I didn't bother looking into
how much other people make.

> It's only later do they realized they are not building the next search
> engine. Nor building the next gen e-commerce platform, but building Jsons
> and posting to dataservices. By then you are conditioned to free food and
> you are not comparing your salary with people outside but inside.

Somehow I feel you have a bone to pick? I've been on 3 different teams and
this has not been my experience at all.

People at Google seem to be just like people at other companies. They're happy
they have a good job but look forward to retirement.

~~~
kamaal
>>I didn't bother looking into how much other people make.

>>People at Google seem to be just like people at other companies. They're
happy they have a good job but look forward to retirement.

Not sure what's your point here. The whole reason this discussion seems to be
happening is because a segment of people think that is not true.

If that is true in your case, why would you even argue? It does not even apply
to you.

------
maxxxxx
That's why we need salary transparency to really address this. There are a lot
underpaid men and a lot of overpaid women. Making this into a male vs. female
issue does nothing to address the fact that people are underpaid.

~~~
xienze
I think it would quite quickly turn into yet another source of conflict
between employees. The problem with "equal pay" is direct comparisons only
work in jobs that are essentially assembly line work, e.g., person A and
person B do exactly the same thing every single day, and their output can be
measured in exactly the same way, namely how many widgets each person produces
in a given time period. Finding a difference in pay in that situation is cause
for concern.

But that's not how a lot of jobs, software development included, work. It's
entirely possible for someone fresh out of school to be a far more valuable
team member than someone with ten years experience... yet we would point to a
disparity in pay between those two people as [sexist, ageist, whatever-ist].
Now let an experienced employee find out they're getting paid less than
someone with far less experience? Hooo boy, talk about creating a toxic
environment.

~~~
munk-a
I think this only really comes up when pay disparity is as extreme as it is
now, when some people at a company (outside of C-level) are making 300k and
others are making 32k there is a good reason to be aggressive about fixing pay
disparity.

~~~
renholder
> _...when some people at a company (outside of C-level) are making 300k and
> others are making 32k there is a good reason to be aggressive about fixing
> pay disparity._

You're completely throwing context out of the window, though, and that's a
dangerous precedent. Is the person making 300k in sales? Is the person making
32k merely the frontline helpdesk?

To try to "even it out, to decrease the dispairity, and - thus - the
inequality" would mean the sales person and the helpdesk person making around
150k but only one of them is performing highly skilled, desired, sought-after
work and the other is a generalist whom can easily be replaced. You
intentionally devalue the sales person to add unwarranted value to the
frontline helpdesk person.

So, your sales person leaves and your helpdesk person stays with your company
until they either die or company runs under or what-have-you. They _could_
improve themselves to move up the ranks but where's the onus for that, if
they're already making gold bars, without having had to have done anything to
actually _earn_ that value?

The entire premise is wrought with problems because it doesn't address the
principal fact that the desparities probably exist for a reason...

------
krn
As a side note: I have recently come over a university which promised a gender
equality in "all our science degrees", which it explained as an "admission of
50% males, 50% females". But how can it be a "gender equality", if 80% of the
applicants are males?

~~~
int_19h
Was it in advertising or other official materials? If so, could you reference
them?

~~~
krn
It was one of the universities in Germany, but I cannot find the source now. I
was primarily reading material on the postgraduate studies. As a semi-
reference, this Spegiel article[1] explains how important the perception of
gender equality has become in German academia in recent years.

[1] [http://spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/potsdam-
university...](http://spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/potsdam-university-
removes-masculine-generic-from-official-documents-a-909696.html)

------
kareninoverseas
This debate is exhausting.

I agree with some previous posters that women may be more favoured by formal
systems now, while men remain more favoured by informal systems.

I think that part of the issue is that there are more ways to be male and a
successful senior engineer or team lead than there are female.

We tend to look towards people who are similar to ourselves to see how we
should advance. There are many fewer female role models than there are male
ones. Many women who make it to leadership positions are encouraged to act
masculine.

Women who make discrimination claims that later ring false are usually
villainized. I think it might be useful to think about why these might be
occurring. In particular, I think women as a whole still feel a great deal
more insecurity WRT their positions in the workplace. The equality that's been
won in the last few decades has been to some extent manufactured, so it feels
a lot more fragile.

I don't think that a good reaction to this news article is to feel upset that
men are now being discriminated against.

~~~
eecks
> I don't think that a good reaction to this news article is to feel upset
> that men are now being discriminated against.

Why not? It's good and bad news for men but men definitely shouldn't be
discriminated against

------
esturk
I read the article first and then came in to read the comments. I feel that
most people commenting did not actually read the whole article. To put it
simply:

It is not just about pay equity in a particular level. It is also about the
ingress and egress rate of a level.

As the article mentions, some woman was hired as L3 while all of her co-
workers were hired as L4. Was she overpaid as a L3? Maybe. But she was
underpaid overall because she could've gotten L4.

Similarly, women and under represented minorities also face similar issues in
promotions.

~~~
tziki
Sure, but there's zero data to suggest either of those are a factor at Google.
That's just moving the goal post.

~~~
organsnyder
How is that moving the goal post? The question at hand is whether individuals
are fairly compensated based on their amount of experience and ability to
contribute. Compensation is affected by job title, therefore job title is
absolutely relevant.

~~~
renholder
> _Compensation is affected by job title, therefore job title is absolutely
> relevant._

Levels (on hiring) can be affected by negotiation. You can, quite literally,
negotiate a better level before signing the employment contract.

Why Miss Ellis' level was only Level 3 and everyone around her seemed to be
hired at a Level 4, I won't even presume to know but I think it is a
disservice to argue over facets surrounding something not publicly known
specifically because those facts aren't known.

For example, the man that was hired - after Ms. Ellis was hired - was also
hired four years after he graduated university and came on at Level 4.

Did he graduate with a master's? Did he have the same (or more) experience
dev'ing? Is there any other plausible reason than the nefarious one we assume?

If not, then, sure let's deride away.

If so, then are we saying that prior experience and education level[s] (or
quality) should not matter? That there should be a "maximum minimum level" for
all workers entering the force?

------
oarabbus_
To me the key takeaway is that google systematically underpays both men and
women.

~~~
kgwgk
The takeaway is that compensations are not perfectly aligned with whatever
model was used in the study. Which is expected because compensations were not
set using that model, so they won’t be exactly the same. And at that point, if
the model is calibrated for everage compensation to be the same, it’s obvious
that some people will get compensations below the prediction of the model and
some people will get compensations above the prediction of the model.

~~~
oarabbus_
> And at that point, if the model is calibrated for everage compensation to be
> the same, it’s obvious that some people will get compensations below the
> prediction of the model and some people will get compensations above the
> prediction of the model.

This is true of most models (in practice - _any_ model which models salary in
the real world) yet not every company is being accused of these payment
discrimination lawsuits.

~~~
lstodd
> yet not every company is being accused

maybe because attacking them is not worth it?

------
Cyclone_
Too bad they fired James Damore for simply wanting to have a discussion about
it. I think discouraging people from speaking up on issues is ultimately how
we got here.

------
danaliv
Do read the fine article for the details:

 _But the study did not tell the whole story of women at Google or in the
technology industry more broadly, something that company officials
acknowledged._

 _Most significantly, it did not address ingrained issues that, according to
workplace experts, cannot be overcome simply by considering how much different
people are paid for doing the same job: Women and racial minorities often do
not get the same opportunities and they must overcome certain biases when they
are hired or compete for promotions._

Etc.

~~~
nostromo
> according to workplace experts

The media really needs to stop this practice of just saying "experts say"
without any attribution.

I suggest when reading any article, when you read, "experts agree" or "sources
say" or "critics have said" or "others are saying" \-- just replace it with,
"I, the author of this article, think ..."

~~~
naasking
Seriously, I read that and I immediately wondered who these experts are and
what their data actually says, considering the entire article is about how
empirical data actually debunked the commonly accepted narrative.

------
soheil
How did this fall off the front page with almost 500 points and less than 6
hours? There are submissions with fewer points and older that are still pretty
high on the front page. Can anyone explain? Is it possible this is getting
flagged too many times?

------
MarkMc
Several related facts:

1\. In countries that empower women, they are less likely to choose math and
science professions: [https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-
more...](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more-gender-
equality-the-fewer-women-in-stem/553592/)

2\. In the past 30 years women have made gains in traditionally male areas
like law and medicine, but have gone backward in software engineering

3\. Men are disproportionately on the autism spectrum

It seems to me that aiming for 50% female representation in software
engineering is not necessarily something we should be aiming at

------
avivo
It's interesting how this sort of discussion is actually leading HN to be
_more_ of an echo chamber. Most of my female friends in tech completely avoid
it now because it seems that discussions that get voted up tend to ignore or
belittle their experiences—even if there may be lots of great points and
perspectives mixed in. In fact, the only response I noticed explicitly from
someone who identified as female was being downvoted last I checked:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19306248](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19306248)

That can feel rather insulting and demoralizing, and why would anyone want to
subject themselves to that? Instead many women just avoid HN—which in turn
means that it becomes more male dominated, with more upvotes and mindshare to
comments about experiences of "the other" that may not by particularly well
informed—because it's not worth the time of a woman to even chime in.

Regardless of your opinions on these specific issues, this dynamic of driving
away women decreases the likelihood of everyone gaining a well informed
perspective. It doesn't just impact gender issues. It impacts discussions on
the importance and potential markets of startups that provide products which
aren't just male focused. And you can end up with more things like:
[https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/feb/23/truth-w...](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/feb/23/truth-
world-built-for-men-car-crashes)

Not an easy dynamic to "fix", but a useful thing to remember when thinking
about communities, incentives, and impacts...

~~~
dragonwriter
> accurate opinions

You can have an accurate or inaccurate belief on a question of fact, but
“accuracy” is not a measure that applies to matters of opinion.

~~~
avivo
Whoops. Good catch. Edited to make more sense.

------
treis
Should we read "Many Men" as "Those on H1B visas"?

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
$60K and the privilege of working for a FANG should be good enough for
everyone.

~~~
leesec
Pretty sure this is a troll but if it's not then I Disagree.

~~~
munk-a
I'm almost certain that's a troll or else someone that forgot a "/s"

~~~
logfromblammo
> _should be good enough for everyone_

This is an "inside" indicator, referencing that ol' ungenerous-but-pithy
paraphrase of a since-disavowed Bill Gates quote regarding 640 kB of personal
computer memory. It's like the phrase "modest proposal", in that you only know
it's marking something as insincere with some out-of-band knowledge.

------
MRD85
Talking about the additional compensation - "Men account for about 69 percent
of the company’s work force, but they received a disproportionately higher
percentage of the money."

Doesn't this imply that men, per capita, were being underpaid more than women?

~~~
slg
Yes, which is why the per capita number is not the proper way to measure this.

For example, imagine a company with 7 male employees and 3 female employees.
That company has 9 engineers and one administrative assistant. All the
engineers are underpaid. The male engineers are underpaid by $1000 and the
female engineers are underpaid by $1200. The administrative assistant is a
woman who is fairly compensated. That means the men are underpaid by $7000
total and the women are underpaid by $2400 total. Men make up 70% of the
employee workforce and are roughly 75% of the underpaid total. More men are
underpaid than women. The per capita underpayment of men is $200 more than the
underpayment of the average woman. There are plenty of ways to frame this data
that make it look like men are the biggest victims and yet woman engineers are
all payed $200 less than their male counterparts.

~~~
MRD85
I understand how that works but we're going to need to draw a line somewhere.
Going by job, rank, and salary alone could ignore hours worked per week
(statistically men tend to do more in the same role), bonuses for high quality
work (who knows how this plays out?), etc. I could choose whatever filters I
want to frame the data how I want it to, it's one of the biggest tricks of the
"women are paid X less than men" camp.

~~~
slg
You asked a direct question and I gave you an answer why that question isn't
the right one to ask. You are now shifting the debate to be about something
completely different.

As I have said in other comments in this thread, there is simply not enough
information in this article to say definitely whether there is any gender
discrimination in pay at Google and if there is, what gender benefits from
that discrimination. Too many people in these comments are approaching this
article with biases of their own (on both sides).

~~~
JBSay
There is never going to be enough information and no matter how you slice the
data you have it will always be arbitrary and biased. This whole debate is
silly.

------
rootusrootus
I keep telling my wife she should learn Python and become a developer. Women
are highly valued in tech right now, at least in corporations of any
significant size.

~~~
FartyMcFarter
I suppose that is one way to give someone imposter syndrome...

------
YeGoblynQueenne
>> One effect of the adjustments was to create a pronounced imbalance in
compensation among lower-level software engineers, one of Google’s largest job
groups, with a large number of men identified as being underpaid compared with
their female peers.

The article refers throughout to "numbers" rather than "proportions", or
"ratios", "percentages" etc, meaning that it is actually a larger _absolute_
number of men rather than a larger _relative_ number of men who are underpaid,
compared to women.

Most of google's engineers are men, so even if equal proportions of men and
women were underpaid, the absolute number of men being underpaid would be
higher.

Google obviously has people good enough with numbers to know this. However,
it's perhaps not surprising to see that there seems no mention of it in the
above article. Google is, after all, defending a lawsuit by some of its former
female software engineers who allege they were underpaid compared to their
male peers. There is a clear incentive to allow a certain lapse from google's
usual pride in employing people who understand numbers.

------
myrandomcomment
I love the irony of this. Accused of underpaying women - their reaction is
"let us get some data". Nope. underpaying men. This is the way you do things.
You collect the data, analyze and react. Wash rinse repeat.

~~~
sokoloff
Given that Google's workforce is 69% men, it's quite possible that they found
3 men underpaid for every 2 women who were underpaid (60%/40%), which would
mean they gave more men than women salary equity adjustments while still
having a bias in the direction of the original complaint.

~~~
oarabbus_
It's not a contest of who is _more_ underpaid. This would indicate that Google
systematically underpays, regardless of gender. THAT is the real issue here.

~~~
CydeWeys
How can everyone be underpaid? Does that even make sense?

~~~
wsy
Not everybody is underpaid, but among the underpaid, they found men as well as
women. As random illustration, they might pay 200k+-5% to 80% of all level X
developers, and the other 20% might only earn 150k+-5%.

I still agree that 'underpaid' is a difficult term here. Maybe the 80% are
overpaid? The only hard fact in this example would be that the salary is more
skewed than it should be for a 'fair' compensation.

~~~
CydeWeys
What does the ideal salary distribution curve look like, anyway? Should it be
a bell curve? A long-tail distribution? Should it have distinct peaks, i.e.
everyone with the same YOE is paid exactly the same?

Should the salary distribution mirror the talent distribution, or no?

~~~
wsy
Good questions. I think that compensation should mirror the value an employee
provides to the company. However, in many cases, that is very hard or even
impossible to measure.

In large companies with many career levels, the role level indicates the
perceived value for the company. Then, the distribution within the level
doesn't matter that much, as long as the difference between minimum and
maximum pay is relatively small, and there is not much overlap to the
neighborhood levels. Of course, there is no objective criterion what
"relatively small" means in this context.

And, as the article already points out, this only covers fairness within the
same level. Maybe even more important is if everybody is evaluated in the same
way when it comes to career progress.

------
asveikau
Nobody in these discussions seems to attack the elephant in the room:
performance review systems.

These are openly meant to overpay some employees and underpay others. Though
they can be coated in HR-speak to appear neutral and objective, the decisions
that come out of them are typically arbitrary; they enforce biases of all
kinds. So we should not be surprised at the results.

------
hylianwarrior
None of this analysis accounts for leveling.

If women are disproportionately hired at lower levels, pay equity will still
be _very_ off, even if the data says otherwise on the surface-level.

Ex: Woman w/ 4 years experience hired at T3. Man w/ 4 years experience hired
at T4. Both are "in range" of their median comp per level, but the man is
being paid more for his expertise.

------
memmcgee
The solution to this is the solution to many problems in tech: unionization.

Many tech workers think unions cap the maximum achievement and result in
people getting underpaid. In reality, we're _already_ underpaid when you look
at how much the ownership of a company gets. Additionally, Hollywood's
unionization hasn't hurt their pay.

------
40acres
Here's what I think happened: women become a hot commodity. Tech companies
have been trying to get their diversity numbers up for years know and the best
way to do so is to hire some URMs, but the supply is still low, thus the cost
to hire URMs has risen, leading to the higher average salary, and the
subsequent adjustment.

------
SeanLuke
I don't know what the results really were but:

> it found that more men than women were receiving less money for doing
> similar work

NY Times needs to learn the difference between absolute numbers and rates.
This is awful reporting.

------
thewizardofaus
I once applied for a scholarship that did not advertise itself as a Male or
Female only scholarship. In the fine print it quoted: "women will receive
first priority for this scholarship."

------
ScoJoh
If you look at the amount they increased wages by, 9.7 million and by 10667
employees and just take an average... that's only 908 bucks a person. Don't
get me wrong, 908 bucks a year is 908 bucks. But take into considering hours,
that's only a pay increase of just under 44 cents an hour.

So at the end of the day, they weren't severely underpaying employees.

Good to see a company take this step. I had this happen to me at one company I
worked for... it actually resulted in a pay increase of over 4 bucks an hour,
now THAT was nice!

------
ocdtrekkie
I am sure the Labor Department will absolutely _love_ Google giving raises
specifically to men whilst under investigation for "systematically"
underpaying women.

~~~
sokoloff
I strongly suspect they'll be fine giving raises to anyone specifically _being
underpaid_ while under such investigation.

~~~
jandrese
I've seen a couple of studies that suggest that the pay gap isn't so much
sexism as it is men just being better at negotiating in general. But with all
generalizations it's not true for the entire group, so there will be some
women who are better at negotiating and some men that are worse and have
salaries that reflect that.

Basically the real world is a lot more complicated than people think and there
are many factors that lead to pay discrimination. Claiming that it is due to
sexism is an oversimplification.

~~~
repolfx
That's the explanation when men get paid more than women.

When women are getting paid more than men, there are no known explanations
beyond sexism. Especially at Google who notoriously fired Damore for stating
that maybe men and women have different preferences - it's pretty clear from
the article, biased though it is, that the issue here is really Google
managers systematically awarding pay increases to women rather than men, in
order to try and boost their numbers.

------
dominotw
from my experience women get promoted to managerial positions much sooner and
much more ease than men. Upper managment finds women more agreeable, less
threatening, less combative and more likely to run with their plans without
question and make upper manager look good. Women are also eager than men to
move out of coding roles into JIRA management roles. My last two managers were
women both of them given that position for purely reasons I described above.

------
thaumasiotes
> In response to the finding, Google gave $9.7 million in additional
> compensation to 10,677 employees for this year.

Doesn't sound like they were underpaying by very much...

~~~
izzydata
On average $900 additional salary per employee. Probably not a huge raise for
most of them.

------
habosa
HN is a very civilized place, and this thread is the closest I have ever seen
to a toxic environment.

A lot of people (men) here complaining about women getting things too easy in
tech. Talk to a woman in tech. Look around you and see how many women there
are. Men are still running the show.

~~~
malvosenior
Why can't we talk to men in tech? Are they not allowed to voice their
concerns? If men are running the show, why were they being systematically
underpaid at Google? Why are there so many anecdotes from men in this thread
about watching less qualified women move ahead of them? Do you not believe the
data? Men being upset by this isn't "toxic", it's a natural, healthy and
correct reaction to the _data_ they were presented with.

------
roguecoder
Systems that can serve the least-privileged fairly are more fair for everyone.
The people who are resistant to making things more fair are usually the people
afraid they are getting away with something.

~~~
malvosenior
The only "fair" wait to do things is to reward people based on merit.
Artificially propping up someone because they're less "privileged" (as
determined by ?) is the epitome of unfair.

------
tchaffee
Google is being sued by the government for under paying women. This result,
which is based on some objective and some _subjective_ criteria sure does come
at a convenient time for the company.

------
AcerbicZero
Didn't google fire a guy for trying to talk about this topic?

------
blaze33
We're nowhere near any common definition of what a fair wage should be.
Especially for knowledge workers whose work ain't easy to value.

Say I build some engine and buy a bunch of identical bolts I need: each one
obviously costs the same. But now I'm building a business and need some human
cogs to run it, why would I have to discuss the particular cost of each one?

Same work, same pay. But... unique person and custom pay? How do we reconcile
this apparent contradiction?

------
benatkin
> Men account for about 69 percent of the company’s work force, but they
> received a disproportionately higher percentage of the money.

If women were underpaid, things are less equal on average. If men were
underpaid, as the study suggests, things are more equal on average. That said,
would it be fair to keep underpaying some people in order to keep it more
equal on average? I think not.

~~~
logfromblammo
Using aggregate measures like that rolls up the wrong numbers into a final
metric. It tells me that the men who were underpaid had a lesser gap between
what they were being paid and what they should be paid, or that the men who
were overpaid were overpaid to a greater extent.

They needed to compare the number of men who were underpaid as a proportion of
all men to the number of women who were underpaid as a proportion of all
women.

Using bum-pulled numbers, your company has 1000 employees, 667 are men, and
333 women, and they all do pretty much the same job. Your payroll is $100M,
and 70% of it goes to the male employees. The mean pay for men is $105k, and
the mean pay for women is $90k. Mean pay is $100k--let's say this is fair pay
for the work. Overall, the men are overpaid, and the women underpaid.

But the mean is a fool's game; the median is more telling. Now say 445 men get
$90k, and 222 get $135k. 2/3 of men are underpaid. Now let's say 222 women get
$101k, and 111 get $68k. 1/3 of women are underpaid.

On a per-person basis, a man working for the company is twice as likely to be
underpaid as a woman, but the amount by which they would be underpaid is much
less. Going by the aggregate numbers, one could say "men at Company X are
overpaid, compared to the women" and then any given underpaid man might not
even realize they are being underpaid, thanks to the misleading statistic.
When one of the $68k-paid women complains (naturally, as the worst-off of the
bunch), and the company analyzes its own payroll at a more detailed level, it
realizes that men are more likely to be underpaid than women (and also that
increasing its payroll by 8% would make _no-one_ underpaid).

------
repolfx
> _Google, Ms. Emerson said, seemed to be advancing a “flawed and incomplete
> sense of equality” by making sure men and women receive the same salary_

This quote would appear to sum up the entire debate, using the term
generously.

There is a large and vocal minority in society who abuse the word "equality"
to mean "more money and power for women". They don't care about equality. They
want inequality, but they know they can't say that, so they simply redefine
equality to mean inequality in the Orwellian style and carry on as if the
language hadn't just been horribly violated.

Ms. Emerson should stop talking until she can say what she means, although
given her job is 'diversity consulting' I'm going to guess she will never be
able to say what she means.

~~~
joshuamorton
The next line is very important:

>That is not the same as addressing “equity,” she said, which would involve
examining the structural hurdles that women face as engineers.

Consider the following situation:

Men get promoted faster than women for similar work. They're seen as more
assertive or something. Managers, noting the systemic inequality, take
individual action to compensate women fairly for their contributions, despite
the failure of the larger system.

The structural hurdle: that women find it more difficult to get promoted, is
not addressed. And as a result, they end up paid less for similar work,
despite attempts by ground level mangers to address the inequity.

The HN guidelines suggest that you

>Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone
says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

I think this should apply to articles posted as well.

~~~
repolfx
But that's not what the word "equity" means either.

Regardless, if she wants to define a word to mean "the structural hurdles that
women face as engineers" specifically she should not criticise other people
for using the word equality to mean equal treatment. She definitely has no
right to claim those who disagree with her have a "flawed and incomplete"
understanding of anything - she simply has no intellectual leg to stand on.
Put differently, there is simply no plausible interpretation of what she's
saying here that isn't a nasty attempt to manipulate the language.

~~~
joshuamorton
So you're saying that my clearly plausible interpretation of her words is a
nasty attempt to manipulate language?

What about "remember that there are structural issues that affect women" isn't
fighting for equal treatment? I'd think that an argument to reduce the
structural issues that unfairly impact women would be seen as a move towards
equality, but apparently you disagree? And further think it's nasty?

------
el_don_almighty
Do you want the government to set pay scales for all STEM employees?

Keeping digging this hole and see whose grave you find at the bottom...

------
jiveturkey
#himtoo

------
losvedir
Well. Glad that's settled then.

------
flowerlad
I don’t get this. It is not possible to underpay (when there is no allegation
of discrimination) because if a person X is willing to work for salary Y then
that’s exactly what he should be paid. In capitalism, corporations have a
fiduciary duty to pay no more than is necessary to keep the employee.

------
Glyptodon
"You're in private mode.

Log in or create a free New York Times account to continue reading in private
mode."

How obnoxious. (I think trying to make people using private browsing register
is offensive. FWIW you can also stop the effect by blocking requests to their
graphql subdomain.)

~~~
gnicholas
FYI, you can get free accounts through many public library systems, including
those around Silicon Valley.

They don't give unlimited access to all content (recipes and crosswords are
apparently excluded), but you can read all the articles you want.

------
scarmig
Someone should write a manifesto.

------
voctor
Off-topic: Why almost all words in the title begin by an uppercase letter?

~~~
wincy
Are you asking in general? That’s one of the first things a student learns in
middle school English is that the title is all capitalized except for words
like “the, to, and, or”, unless those words are at the beginning of the title.

This site looks like it has the rules more formalized, if you’re interested. I
think it’s something most native English writers do without thinking by
adulthood.

[https://capitalizemytitle.com/](https://capitalizemytitle.com/)

~~~
voctor
I've often noticed this pattern but only ask myself now, so, yes, in general.
From what I remember I never learnt that in school, but I'm obviously not a
native English writer. @Raphmedia already gave me a good link, but thank you
for the one you gave me too.

------
alecco
Let's see how long is this post allowed to stay in the front page before it
gets flagged out. I'm surprised it stayed 2hs.

------
EGreg
I sometimes find that I have to write a comment questioning the very premises
of the discussion, whether it's Net Neutrality (Title I vs Title II) or the
Pay Gap (women vs men). This is one of those times.

There are many factors for why women are paid less than men for the same type
of position. Many of these factors have to do with hours worked and
expectations around child rearing. And when this is taken out, the women are
found to make as much or more than men.

My position can be summed up like this:

The corporate world is about 100 years old, with its crazy commutes and uses
of energy just to sit in a chair. This comes at the expense of future
generations (fossil fuels), and current family values (taking care of
children, elderly, etc.)

Why do we say that women have to keep learning from men on how to move up the
corporate ladder, work long hours and get paid more. Perhaps men should learn
more from women about how to have a healthy work-life balance, take care of
the kids more, and their parents.

Today's kids are overmedicated with methamphetamines for ADHD, there is an
opiod crisis among adults, 1 in 4 middle aged women is on antidepressants, the
elderly are in nursing homes.

The wages have stagnated largely because both sexes flooded the labor pool,
globalization and outsourcing and automation caused everyone to go into a race
to the bottom. Now both parents are working for corporations. Fewer working
Americans are becoming parents. They're in a Red Queen rat race, 1/3 of
Americans are one paycheck away from homelessness. Is this really the best
outcome for Americans?

Today's world isn't that of your grandfather, the company man who had loyalty
both ways for decades and got a pension. Today we have two year stints, gig
economy, part time work.

Andrew Yang wants to do what Nixon almost did, and institute a UBI for all
Americans like the Permanent Fund in Alaska (lowest inequality of all states,
year after year).

Why do we think Corporate Careers should take so many of our hours a week? Why
should we trade time with our children and elderly for more money, just to
survive? In the past, indirectly, child rearing was valued because one of two
parents simply didn't take the job, so there was less available labor, so one
parent could pay for the whole thing.

The system is broken, and we are accomplices by talking about how women can
match the men in their "career opportunities" of long hours, instead of
talking about parental leave for men like in Scandinavian countries, making
the school day shorter, etc.

Read this for more info:
[http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=286](http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=286)

~~~
crooked-v
Along with making family life in general easier, a basic UBI program would
also be a huge boost to small business ownership, since it acts as a general-
purpose safety net in that sort of situation.

------
syndacks
Can't wait to see how Jordan Peterson uses this one...

[edit: minor wording change; why am I being downvoted? I'm seriously asking]

~~~
ptd
If I had to guess, a)Not adding anything to the discussion, b)the implication
that Jordan Peterson has anything of value to add to the conversation, and
c)the tone of the message.

~~~
eecks
Jordan Peterson has been controversial in this topic in the past. I'm not
really read up on the specifics though and I guess OP could have added more
opinions to his post

------
zouhair
One word: Union.

Unionize and wage equity magically disappears.

~~~
plainOldText
And so does the ability of talented individuals to negotiate their own
salaries.

~~~
8note
of individuals talented at negotiating*

not necesarily talented at doing the job

~~~
plainOldText
There will always be exceptions.

But I don't think most people go to an interview without having googled "how
to ..." about the interview process first. Thus even those not naturally
talented at negotiation have a reasonable chance at negotiating decently.

Talent/job competence + a little bit of research and preparation prior to
interviewing will ensure superior results IMHO.

------
notadoc
Many companies avoid these kind of issues by having a strict experience-based
salary scale for all positions.

Gender or any other identity factor is then irrelevant if pay is based
entirely upon candidate experience, right?

Edit: I have no knowledge of how Google handles salary. If anyone knows, feel
free to share.

~~~
jimbokun
Sounds like a union shop.

~~~
notadoc
I don't know of any tech cos or startups with unions, do you?

------
fromthestart
The only surprising part to this is that it was made public.

>Women and racial minorities often do not get the same opportunities and they
must overcome certain biases when they are hired or compete for promotions.

My problem with these kinds of "intrinsic biases" that white men are accused
of is that they can only be shown to exist by accepting the fundamentally
unproven assumption that we all enter the workforce equally capable in all
industries, a position which is clearly untenable at a minimum because of
cultural differences.

This is practically the definition of ideological, institutional bias, and the
results will either be reduced efficiency across the workforce, or a violent
swing of the ideological pendulum.

