
Ex-Googler says she exposed company-wide pay inequality with spreadsheet - cgtyoder
https://twitter.com/EricaJoy/status/622079372367781888
======
ChuckMcM
The issue with pay was always a thorny one for me at Google. Not what they
paid me, I thought that was fine, but that there was so much enforced secrecy
around it.

The entire goal, as far as I could ascertain, of that secrecy was to keep
people who had been mislead about how they were being paid, from being able to
prove or disprove that Google was actually paying people what it said they
were paying people.

And what had been presented as a really performance driven, no discrimination,
reward metrics, was perceived to be yet another 'management beauty contest'
where managers could swing bonus dollars toward people they liked (regardless
of their performance) and away from people they didn't care about.

And to be clear, I was ok with that, it's how a lot of bonus systems are set
up, but it bothered me that it was presented as something else. And while I
didn't start a spreadsheet, I did get advised by HR that my questions were not
helpful :-).

It was suggested that if it bothered me that much maybe I didn't really want
to be working there, I thought about that and agreed with that conclusion.

~~~
nullrouted
I'm not disagreeing with the other things you said. But there are a few
reasons I believe companies want to keep salary information private:

1\. They want to get top talent at a cheap price, this is understandable
because lets face it all of us want to get the best deal they can.

2\. They want to avoid a hostile work environment where people are pissed off
because they don't feel Jeff in sales should earn so much.

Those are the only two reasons I can think of that can be legitimate.

~~~
Retra
Those are understandable reasons, but I wouldn't call them legitimate.

Like I can understand why "being angry" sounds like a good justification for
punching someone in the face, but I wouldn't call it a legitimate reason.

If your employees feel Jeff is making too much money, maybe he is? Or maybe
your company is doing a poor job of making it clear what it is that he brings
to the table.

Besides, you already have a hostile environment when you force employees to
keep secrets from each other. (They're certainly not going to be loyal when
they are being exploited as a matter of policy. It breed cynicism.)

~~~
johncolanduoni
> If your employees feel Jeff is making too much money, maybe he is? Or maybe
> your company is doing a poor job of making it clear what it is that he
> brings to the table.

No matter how expertly this is pulled of, human jealousy is still a risk. In
particular, because there are more than a few people who think what other
people do is less valuable just because it isn't what _they_ do. In addition,
I don't think many companies can successfully justify every decision in a
satisfactory way to every employee, no matter what decisions they make. Nor
should they have to.

Not that I'm defending keeping wages secret. I think it creates more problems
than it solves, and that it doesn't even solve this problem in most cases.

~~~
eyko
Then don't pay someone 50K and someone 250K when their value is fairly
similar. I think it's common sense that if there's a certain sense of equality
among your workers, nobody is going to be bothered because Jeff in sales earns
15K/year more than them, if in general there's not such a big margin between
Jeff and Jane.

I also believe making salaries public are also a good way to fight against
gender-inequality in the work place and it makes workers think collectively
rather than individually.

~~~
hueving
I take it you've never worked in or around sales with a commission? One big
deal can easily quadruple a salesperson's salary for the quarter. When that
happens, people will downplay the deal as just being luck and get upset that
the salesperson is making so much. However, they don't bat an eye when the
salesperson doesn't make their quota a couple quarters in a row and gets
fired.

People get jealous and can't handle the truth because a huge chunk of people
don't even understand how a business works. Especially from an engineering
side, it's really hard to swallow the fact that you have all of the skills and
actually created the product, yet you will make 10% of what good salespeople
make.

~~~
ghaff
Pretty much. The same people who see salespeople as overpaid schmoozers and
order-takers (some are, many aren't) would be utterly horrified at the thought
they themselves could be fired without a second thought because of an
organizational change or budget cut at a key account.

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
This happens to engineers often enough.

~~~
ghaff
Well, yes, projects get canceled and people get fired as a result. But there
tends to be less of a direct linkage with this quarter's revenue than in the
case of sales.

------
anongler000
(ex googler here who has gotten, given, and approved peer bonuses)

A lot of confusion here is coming from how the peer bonuses are awarded so
I'll give a brief explanation. You can nominate someone for any reason you
like but you provide a justification, their manager sees it and decides if
they should approve it or not (almost all are approved). Now the important
point is the rules state you can't receive more than one peer bonus for a
single thing that you do.

It's almost surely the case that 1.) her manager knew that and the other
manager didn't or 2.) she had so many pending when her manager saw it that
they thought to ask someone what the rules were. For #2 imagine you are her
manager and you see 20 people queued up nominating the same person for the
same thing, you are responsible for enforcing the rules (in this case giving
your report Google's money, it's in the manager's best interest to _approve_
it since their report will be happier) so you don't want to make a mistake and
ask around, then someone tells you 'sorry one bonus per thing they do' and you
have to deny all of the rest.

I couldn't applaud her more for the salary spreadsheet she put together (it
took serious courage) and the really healthy dialog that it brought (I was
glued to it when it came out), but the peer bonus part of the story is almost
surely not malicious on her manager's part and I hope she hears that somehow.
It'd be really sad for everyone involved if this is just a misunderstanding
(the peer bonus part at least).

~~~
ectoplasm
It looks like a major part of the problem she had with the PB rejections was
some kind of hypocrisy or inconsistency which she attributed to racism,
especially with all that Ida B. Wells stuff:

> Meanwhile, one of the other people involved, a white dude (good friend I
> won't name, he can name himself if he wants), was also getting PBs.

> His weren't getting rejected. I told him mine were. He was pissed. Wanted to
> tell everyone what was happening. I declined.

Personally I think 7 x $150 is such a trivial amount of money that it was a
mistake to say anything about it at all, certainly not worth losing one's job
over.

~~~
plicense
Lol, coming to think of it, 7x$150 is my monthly pay!

~~~
pmelendez
Where do you live? That makes a big difference.

~~~
maccard
Absolutely. not everyone on here lives in San Francisco and is paid 100k+ a
year.

~~~
hueving
Yeah, apparently some of these people live in Mountain View and make 250k+ a
year.

~~~
jvehent
... but can't buy a decent house for less than $800k. (note: I don't live in
CA)

~~~
zeroonetwothree
Try $1.5 million.

------
marcell
Yes, I remember this spreadsheet. It listed pay by SWE (software engineer)
level and geography.

Google has ~10 levels for SWE's. Most people are either SWE II, SWE II, or
Senior SWE, and about 10% are higher than Senior SWE. In the Bay Area, IIRC,
pay is in the $110k range for SWE II (base), around $140k for SWE III, and
around $170k for senior. There is additional bonus (15%) and stock (can be
15-30% of base, depending on circumstances), and health insurance. Within
level it varies by +/\- $10k in base, and there are proportionally fewer women
at Senior SWE and higher levels.

~~~
hobo_mark
What's left after-tax in the Bay Area for this kind of salaries?

~~~
hueving
Awful. Then it gets even worse when you consider that you pour a huge chunk
into rent and you make too much to get any deductions for student loan
payments, rent, etc. Don't forget to tack on the higher cost of living as
well.

If you get an SF offer and are comparing it to normal US cities (not NY), just
chop 40% off.

This will give you an idea:
[https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=moving+from++San+Franc...](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=moving+from++San+Francisco+to+St+Louis+salary+%24150%2C000)

~~~
githulhu
Sure, but then you have to live in St. Louis, Missouri.

I'm sure I could move to a third world country and have an even lower cost of
living. As though it were otherwise equivalent to living in a top US city.

~~~
pyrophane
SF is a tech echo-chamber with terrible public transit and rental market that
probably wouldn't be so expensive if anyone were allowed to build anything. On
top of all that it has managed to attract more douchebags ("tech gold rush")
per capita than Manhattan.

I'm not sure the density of craft cocktails bars and farm-to-table
restaurants, or the fact that it never gets too hot makes up for the
drawbacks.

~~~
wutbrodo
I've yet to meet someone who feels this way who's actually tried getting out
of their house beyond going to the aforementioned cocktail bars. If you're an
uninteresting person and uninterested in exploring, the city you're in isn't
going to magically be interesting the second you step out the door. But hey no
complaints here, that just means the fun parts of sf are all the less crowded.

Complaints about the rent and transit are obviously legitimate, though you may
be overestimating the quality of transit in most other cities.

~~~
orangecat
_Complaints about the rent and transit are obviously legitimate, though you
may be overestimating the quality of transit in most other cities._

Other cities either have similarly insane rent and much better transit (NYC),
or similarly bad transit and much cheaper rent (basically everywhere else).

------
cperciva
I shudder at the data reliability issues of a self-selecting sample of
individuals being asked to self-report salaries.

There may well be real pay inequity issues -- in fact, my default presumption
is that such problems exist anywhere that there has not been a systematic
effort to avoid them -- but unless there's far more to this spreadsheet than
the article describes, I don't see how it can reasonably be taken to have any
large-scale significance.

~~~
georgemcbay
Well, the obvious solution to the self-selecting issue is just have the
company publish all salaries publicly.

Of course, very few would dare to do that because they know that the data will
be hiding all sorts of embarrassing and possibly resignation-causing truths.
Which is kind of shitty if you think about it, especially when taken with the
notion that "companies are people"... sociopathic, lying, cheating people...

~~~
icebraining
On the other hand, if I was a manager at an established company with thousands
of workers, I'd be very wary of "just publishing all salaries publicly" even
if I did think they were all fair (which I don't believe it's true for most
companies, granted).

For one thing, fairness is subjective. For many, "equal pay for equal work" is
fair, but many others believe that seniority, or a better CV, or many others
factors should be rewarded differently.

Secondly, there are issues of perception. A worker might think (s)he should be
paid more because (s)he always leaves later than his/her colleague, without
taking into account that the colleague prefers to take shorter lunches or
fewer breaks and leave earlier. You can explain it to them, but why would they
believe you?

It'd be different if a company published the salaries from the start, but
switching after growing to a huge size can be very disruptive, and I don't
blame managers for avoiding opening that can of worms.

(Again, I don't believe the salaries at Google _are_ perfectly fair, I'm
talking about an hypothetical company)

~~~
mtrimpe
Then again; in all of Sweden everybody's tax returns are public information
and their economy still seems to do just fine...

~~~
icebraining
Yes, but that's been open for over 100 years. What I was talking about was the
issues surrounding the transition from closed to open, not the openness
itself.

------
bigdipper
We did a similar thing at Microsost a few years ago. We discovered that it was
not just the gender, but also your race mattered. A lot of us (south East
Asians) were paid a lot less at the same engineering levels and there was a
disparity in the bonus payouts too. The data was not insignificant, and we got
to a statistically significant size really quick at some engineering levels
(senior and principal).

~~~
caractacus
You may have reached what you thought was a statistically significant size but
unless you were selecting perfectly randomly - which I doubt you could in such
an exercise - then it could not be called truly significant.

~~~
bigdipper
Data was from random volunteers, and at that moment in time over 10% of the
U.S. employee base. I say size was statistically significant not quality of
data because there were senior engineers who had been with the company for 15+
years and would skew the datasets. We had lots of demographic data too. Can
you guess which race and gender won?

~~~
pmelendez
>I say size was statistically significant not quality of data

Size is not necessarily significant unless is a random selected sample (and
I'm not sure volunteers would count as random).

Let's say you have a population of 100 and there are two groups (A-80% and B-
20%). Let's say that individuals in group A are more keen to voluteer
themselves. You could have a sample of 50% of the population and still not
have a representative sample of their entire population (ie. 49 from A and 1
from B), so the sample size didn't matter to much in that case.

~~~
notfoss
> Size is not necessarily significant unless is a random selected sample (and
> I'm not sure volunteers would count as random).

I would say that most surveys/studies are done on a voluntary basis.

~~~
pmelendez
>I would say that most surveys/studies are done on a voluntary basis.

Also most surveys/studies carefully say that they are not necessarily
representative.

~~~
notfoss
Yes, a disclaimer over the validity of the results would be nice ;). But to be
fair, most surveys are taken rather seriously, especially by the common
populace and the main stream media, ignoring the lack of absoluteness in the
results.

------
nullrouted
I have a serious question and please don't crucify me but can this partly be
because women aren't as confrontational as men and won't argue for a higher
salary when hired (since we know thats when you get your good base salary)? I
remember when my girlfriend got hired at her current tech company and I begged
her to make sure they put her stock and bonuses in writing but she refused
because she didn't want to piss the company off and lets say the deal went bad
for her. Obviously this is an anecdote about one situation but I wonder could
this be one of the reasons? Companies want to pay you as little as possible to
get your talent, it is up to you to negotiate for a better salary and if that
isn't happening then I'm not sure what you do? I believe for equal pay for
equal work totally but I'm wondering if one of the reasons we don't see that
is the salary negotiation process. Please share your thoughts.

~~~
geofft
Yes, definitely. This is a common hypothesis, and it gets some study. See, for
instance,

[http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Women_Don't_Ask](http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Women_Don't_Ask)

[http://geekfeminism.org/2011/06/17/quick-hit-one-reason-
wome...](http://geekfeminism.org/2011/06/17/quick-hit-one-reason-women-make-
less-money/)

[http://fdiv.net/2012/01/20/pseudo-science-and-pseudo-
feminis...](http://fdiv.net/2012/01/20/pseudo-science-and-pseudo-feminism-
women-dont-ask)

There is both the possible cause of women being socially conditioned (or
biologically wired, or whatever causes this) to be less confrontational, and
the possible cause of women finding it riskier / being in worse negotiating
positions for structural-inequality reasons.

~~~
wisty
Why is it women being socially conditioned?

Maybe men are socially conditioned to seek higher salaries (to support their
family).

I suppose working for more than $100k might be a rational decision, but
research shows it's probably more trouble than it's worth (if you're only
thinking of yourself, and don't have an addiction or a boat).

~~~
dcre
I think this can be read as a different way of saying the same thing. If men
_are_ socially conditioned to do something and women are not, then you can see
that as women being socially conditioned to _not_ do that thing.

------
thomaskcr
I think one of her tweets points towards a less malicious explanation for the
problem, the one where she says "people asked for and got equitable pay". I'd
like to see another column on a sheet like that basically asking "have you
ever asked for a raise or just taken what was given?".

My anecdata and limited experience is that women rarely ask for raises and men
do -- even if you don't mean to have uneven pay, over time that will create
that situation.

It seems like other people have similar experience, I believe this is what
prompted the no-negotiation policy at Reddit (which I think is a terrible
policy for talent retention, if someone feels undervalued and comes to talk to
you about it and your response is "no raises sorry" I'm not sure how you can
possibly retain your higher performing employees).

------
mrgriscom
The title of this post seems a little inflammatory. The main story is the
borderline-illegal heat she got from management for providing a forum to share
salaries, and the difference in treatment regarding the peer bonuses, which
may or may not have been "technically correct" according to internal Google
rules.

The only comment relevant to the post title I could find was "pivot tables
that did spreadsheet magic that highlighted not great things re: pay", and to
go from that to "exposed company-wide pay inequity" seems like a bit of a
leap. Absent any further details about what those things are, how is this not
just speculation?

~~~
wutbrodo
She's apparently never heard of sampling bias either. 5% of the company, self-
selected? "Exposing company-wide inequity" is a dramatic leap. I was at Google
at the time the sheet spread and I treated it as more of a curiosity than
anything else (though I do think it was a cool idea).

~~~
mrgriscom
Eh, I'm sympathetic to the argument, when you literally have nothing else to
go on. Uniform sampling is often a dream in sociology.

~~~
wutbrodo
Oh I agree. As I said, I found it rather cool. But perhaps when you have
literally nothing else to go on, that's a signal that you shouldn't be using
phrases as dramatic as "company-wide inequity".

------
tytso
The following Planet Money story is worth listening to; there are some real
challenges and downsides with making all salaries public.

[http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/07/02/327289264/episo...](http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/07/02/327289264/episode-550-when-
salaries-arent-secret)

~~~
zenpaul
Great episode.

Big takeaway for me was that salary transparency generally benefits the
employee more than the employer.

~~~
esturk
That's exactly how sports league handle the issue and there's very little
grudge between the players. Everyone know what everyone is paid and how much
endorsements they get. Perfect symmetric information.

This is largely attributed to the sports union for the pro leagues such as
NFPA, NBPA, etc. Collective bargaining is hated by the owners.

------
uncoder0
On Topic: This seems very shady on behalf of her manager... I've never heard
of the peer bonuses or read the fine print of how they work so I can't comment
beyond my feeling that what happened to Eric doesn't seem right at all.

Off Topic: Is this style of prose common? I feel the proper medium for this
post would be a blog rather than ~20 individual tweets.

~~~
DannyBee
To put this in perspective for you:

Getting peer bonuses for doing things others find funny, amusing, whatever, is
not hard.

I once received 12 peer bonus nominations for flaming a noogler acting very
entitled on an internal mailing list.

My manager approved the best one, which said something like "Dan is very good
at instilling culture into our newer Googlers"

The rest were rejected. While getting one or two peer bonuses for something is
generally okay, approving 12 would likely not make sense from a manager
perspective when their are other recognition/bonus mechanisms that fit better
for that kind of thing.

~~~
uncoder0
Well that makes more sense. If the convention is only one per event or time
period I can see how this would happen. Pretty interesting program. I like it.
Is there a limit to how many one person can give in a given time period or is
the limit more on receipt?

~~~
DannyBee
Due to abuse, there are now limits. Generally, you can give X a quarter, and
you can nominate the same person for a peer bonus only once every X months.

------
Keats
If only there was a medium allowing more than 140 characters at a time.

~~~
kethinov
Good lord I know. It was like reading a short story via telegram.

"once upon a time STOP i got bored at work STOP so i made a spreadsheet STOP
..."

~~~
joshrotenberg
Or hearing a story from someone who just ran up to you and is out of breath.

------
DavidWanjiru
I think the primary problem is the inability to measure performance, and thus
have empirical values for what someone actually brings to the table. In
sectors where measurement is comparatively easier, such as in sports, you can
have players earning orders of magnitude more than their teammates for doing
arguably the same job. Sports have their issues too, but I doubt you'll hear
Yaya Sanogo at Arsenal FC in London complain about all this money that his
teammate Alexis Sanchez is being paid yet both are attacking players. Geoffrey
Colvin of Fortune magazine once wrote about this some years back, you could
probably find it with a bit of google.

------
overpaidgoogler
A lot of people here are saying that if job titles/pay grades are public
(which they are not completely) then so should pay be. The problem with this
is that promotions are already very political. People can and do get very
angry when other people get promoted before them. Non public pay and bonuses
give management some wiggle room to reward people privately.

There is always some question about whether management or popular opinion is
fairer. On this I will just say that more extroverted people will tend to
favor popular opinion while more introverted people will tend to favor
management.

------
TheMagicHorsey
Its almost like Hacker News wants me to feel good about not getting a job
offer at Google. Thanks guys, I really appreciate it.

But as a side note, how many tech companies really have salary transparency. I
suspect its none.

Facebook doesn't. Twitter doesn't. Microsoft doesn't. Uber doesn't. Amazon
doesn't.

Hell, even my less than 50 person startup doesn't.

Nobody does.

Not saying Google didn't fuck up here by retaliating--they are assholes for
that (side note, why is Google so full of frat assholes these days?). But
still, this seems like standard procedure.

------
drcross
Maybe you guys who have a "it's not about the money attitude" won't join me on
this but I wouldn't want someone with two thirds of my skill getting the same
salary as me. Different people do different jobs to different levels. Bringing
ethnicity and gender into this debate is the boogie man which is supposed to
make you sit upright but with such affirmative action in the workplace these
days employers are the same. Better workers should get better paid.

~~~
lk145
That is precisely the point. People with similar qualifications should have
similar salaries. The "not great" trends implies salaries were correlated with
something other than merit and qualifications.

~~~
calbear81
That's not true. There is a market for labor that is constantly in flux based
on supply and demand. Let's say that you were hired when there was excess
supply and limited demand, you might have settled for a reasonably middle-of-
the-curve salary. Fast forward to today where it's much harder to hire and all
of a sudden, fresh grads can command salaries that might be equal to what
someone with 2-3 years of experience was previously offered.

In addition, if you are hurting for someone in order to hit a deadline, it
might just make sense to pay unreasonably as long as the numbers still work
out.

~~~
jsprogrammer
>Fast forward to today where it's much harder to hire and all of a sudden,
fresh grads can command salaries that might be equal to what someone with 2-3
years of experience was previously offered.

Perhaps -- and existing salaries should be adjusted to reflect that.

~~~
cpeterso
Exactly. If companies don't adjust existing salaries to reflect that, then
they are basically telling their employees to quit because the best way to get
a "raise" is to switch companies.

~~~
vacri
The door doesn't swing both ways though - people don't get a salary cut when
supply later exceeds demand. If you wanted a salary system that did respond to
job market fluctuations, you'd have to open up to the possibility of getting
cut pay.

~~~
ctvo
Getting fired has always existed as a correction mechanism for companies.

If your performance:pay ratio is off and the supply of developers is high,
there's nothing stopping them from letting you go.

~~~
vacri
> _there 's nothing stopping them from letting you go._

Not everywhere allows employers to just fire-and-replace an employee on a
whim.

~~~
jsprogrammer
Risk of doing business in those locations.

------
Fede_V
For the company, there's an obvious upside in maintaining secrecy. But, for
people working there, what exactly do they gain by keeping their wages secret?

Google pays very generously, but it seems to me like workers have everything
to gain from a more transparent process. Sure, a few people who are incredibly
good at managing upwards might lose out, but I don't think that's necessarily
a bad thing.

------
deelowe
I guess I'm going to out myself a bit here, but I feel the need to clarify a
few things. Full disclosure. I'm a people manager in TI and have been for a
long time.

First off, I knew Erica a few years ago when she worked in our local office.
She's a wonderful person and I hate that she's had such bad experiences. I
don't know the full details, but I do know that one of the orgs she was in
went through a lot of stuff early on. These are the typical startup is
becoming a big company type of issues. They ended up letting people go,
reorging the team, getting new managers, letting others go, etc... It was a
major shake-up. I wonder how this impacted her. I know she transferred around
the time all of this was happening (as did a lot of people in that team) and
she became very outspoken. Her interpretation of what happened seems to
indicate that she thought she was targeted. I don't know if this is the case,
but I wonder if it was more of a team wide issue at the time than something
specific with her. Also, it didn't help that we didn't have a regional HR
person at the time, so whatever Erica was going through at the time was
probably left unrecognized as she had no one to talk to about it. The company
was growing fast and satellite offices were more of an afterthought at the
time. Keep in mind the context. Google went from a couple thousand to like 60k
employees in just a few years. There were growing pains all over the place and
we certainly felt it in the remote offices. Especially when it came things
like HR, benefits, etc...

I saw the salary spreadsheet. On the surface it seemed alarming. Especially to
people who made assumptions about pay at Google. Here's some context. Again, I
don't know any details about what's going on with Erica's department. This is
just what I see on my end of things (I'm not in SRE, but am under the same
VP).

First off, location is a big factor due to needing to be competitive in a
particular region. Secondly, performance impacts both raises and the rate you
come in at after promotion. People with good ratings tend to get better base
pay. Yearly bonuses get a performance multiplier as well. Managers can see all
of these factors (base pay, proposed adjustment for raises and promotions,
multipler, etc...) We get insight into this during our salary planning process
which happens twice a year for promotions and once a year for non-promo. The
constants that are used for base pay are all decided based on a formula and in
my experience it's completely fair and consistent. The formula literally takes
a base pay for a particular job ladder, level, and region and then adds an
adjustment for performance. Bonus is calculated as a flat % against pay + a
multiplier for annual performance. There is no bias in this as it's all done
via software. As a manager, I can do some small adjustments here and there,
but it's usually at most a percentage or maybe two. It would be very difficult
for me to directly influence someone's pay by say 10% or so. I don't think
managers or bias in performance management is the primary cause for pay
dependencies. Slight, yes, but not huge differences.

So how do people end up with such huge pay differences? Well, a few ways.

1) Google's job ladders and pay scales were kind of screwed up for a while. In
one case I remember, people were adjusted by over 10% (up) in a given year,
because the company realized they had the market rate set incorrectly. Google
generally doesn't adjust salaries down, so if you got lucky early on and came
in at a high salary, it sticks until something changes it (e.g. promo). There
were a lot of people who got "lucky" as job ladders and market rates were
refined over time. Keep in mind that Google went through all this during the
great recession. There are a lot of factors here. In general, pay varied a lot
early on. There are a lot of people in SRE who still have these
inconsistencies reflected in their base pay.

2) Hiring negotiations. We all know this is an issue. Some people are very
good at this and can get a huge difference of pay coming in. I won't go into
details here as I feel it's probably a bit confidential, but I do see big
differences in pay due to the negotiation skills of the person getting hired.
Note that Google has tried to fix this lately by not negotiating base pay as
much, but it still happens and was a bigger issue historically. In general,
the higher the level, the more this is an issue.

3) Ladder/job transfers. Again, Google doesn't like to adjust people's pay
down, so if someone transfers from one job type to another, they may come in
making significantly more than what is typical for the new job. There are some
rules in place to prevent this, but they aren't stringent enough to completely
eliminate it as extremely tight rules would make transfers nearly impossible.
Note that Google encourages transfers across ladders and teams.

4) Tenure (raises). If someone stays in a position for a long time and
consistently performs well, but doesn't get promoted, they may see their pay
go up more (within the range for their ladder) as they get raises year over
year. That said, I don't see this very much as usually someone who performs
consistently well will get promoted, but there are some cases like when an
individual refuses to put themselves up for promotion or they are at the top
of their job ladder and can't get promoted.

And of course, there's a lot of other things that could be possible for people
who've been with the company more than 5 or 6 years. In the early post IPO
days, there was a lot of chaos. There were jobs without ladders, weird things
with contractor conversions, very little consistently across eng teams, etc...
It was a bit wild west like. HR was a bit of a mess back then too. Again,
since pay doesn't usually get adjusted down, you'll see these inconsistencies
and on the surface, they'll look odd. Typically, if you dig a little deeper
though, there's a good reason.

Alright, so back to the spreadsheet. Ah... the infamous spreadsheet. This just
seems like it has bad news written all over it. Here's how this thing came to
be. An email went out and basically said "hey, put your pay into this sheet."
Now, please note that the person who sent it had been pretty vocal previously
about bias, unfairness, etc. I'm pretty sure there might be some selection
bias in this methodology... Also, Google spreadsheets tracks revision history,
so nothing was anonymous. When I looked it over, I didn't really see anything
alarming to be honest. There certainly inconsistencies, but they seemed to be
linked to the issues I mentioned above. The biggest factor seemed to be
location. Note that this spreadsheet was shared PUBLICALLY for a while. The
whole way this was done wasn't that great. I don't take issue with the
concept, but I personally found the way this was conducted a bit
unprofessional. An anonymized survey would have been much better.

Finally, let's talk about bonuses (outside of annual bonus). There are ways
for people to give bonuses to others at Google for deeds they deem to be
outside of normal work duties. Typically these are things like assisting with
something that's not part of one's job ladder, helping with volunteer
projects, or having significant impact on a large project. The amount of
review these bonuses receive depends on the dollar amount. Peer bonuses are a
relatively small fixed amount. Anyone can award them to anyone else and they
only require manager approval. By design there is little guidance and
oversight. How these get awarded is EXTREMELY inconsistent, but so far the
company seems to be somewhat ok with this given that they are a very small
amount. My policy (and the general guidance) is that they should be for small
efforts that are outside the scope of the individual's job ladder. These are
like 1-2 day things here and there. Not large project contributions and not
for things that someone is consistently doing. If the individual is performing
something consistently, then we are expected to reflect that in the persons
performance reviews so that it gets factored into their yearly bonus and
annual pay increase. Hopefully the reason for this makes sense (hint: it's
better for the individual).

Finally, I also don't think I would have approved peer bonuses for what was
done with this spreadsheet. Not because of the fact that these individuals
collected people's pay, but because their methods were very poor. I'm pretty
sure all it did was anger or confuse people. Why not collect the data
anonymously, rope in an analytics team, do an analysis, control for bias etc..
and then present at a CFR or even all hands? I find it hard to believe that
anyone would push back on this at Google.

~~~
betaby
Sounds like a "typical" 10k+ employees enterprise. What puzzles me, I've read
in the past (like 5, or ?10? years ago) stories what someone got hired from
the street, got promoted, got 1M$ options, got 5M$ base withing 3 years and so
on. Again all the story above sounds all that is over and google is just
another mature big enterprise with typical "games", am I correct?

~~~
deelowe
I don't know much about SWE pay or SR, fellow, etc.. levels. There are
positions that are like that, but not in any orgs im familiar with.

That said, Google pays very well and has excellent benefits. Its rare we lose
a candidate due to pay.

------
egonschiele
Is there a link to the spreadsheet? I think open salaries are important, and
that would be really interesting data.

~~~
aiiane
No. It's not available externally.

~~~
jsprogrammer
As in, google does not make it available? Or, no copy has made it out?

~~~
jsmthrowaway
As in, Google has an entirely internal set of applications that mirror the
externally-available ones, including G+, and there is no technical way for you
to see it without an employee threatening their LDAP to give it to you.

Given that journalists from Fusion have already started basically harassing
Google sources to get them to release it, the chances of this sheet making it
out are near zero because there will be additional scrutiny on the logs. (I
use the term 'journalist' loosely, because once both Googlers declined an
interview the reporters in question decided to awkwardly badger the primary
sources[0][1].)

[0]:
[https://twitter.com/kashhill/status/622136985465950208](https://twitter.com/kashhill/status/622136985465950208)

[1]:
[https://twitter.com/coryaltheide/status/622165475502362624](https://twitter.com/coryaltheide/status/622165475502362624)

------
jaseemabid
I don't normally do this, buts hard to not nitpick this time.

Why would you split a story into 50 tweets? Its the hardest way to read
content.

------
superplussed
Stories like this put me more in favor of going with a Buffer-style
transparent salary policy [1] with my startup. Whether to open it up to the
public or not is a separate issue, but having it be transparent internally
just seems to make so much sense.

[1] [https://open.bufferapp.com/introducing-open-salaries-at-
buff...](https://open.bufferapp.com/introducing-open-salaries-at-buffer-
including-our-transparent-formula-and-all-individual-salaries/)

~~~
dsl
Have you thought about the fact that your employees may not want their
salaries to be public? Sure it is trendy and feel good and omg transparency,
but it seems a bit douchey to me.

Nevermind the fact you're opening up a whole can of worms for any of your
employees that might be going through a divorce, fighting for custody in
family court, the target of a scam artist, robbery target, trying to negotiate
splitting rent with a friend, etc. You don't know peoples current or future
personal situations, and they probably don't want to come to you and have to
explain when it does become a problem.

~~~
woah
Could you provide examples where an open salary would affect any of the things
you mentioned? I'm curious.

------
drumdance
I've long thought all salaries should be disclosed, especially for public
companies. Look at professional sports leagues and Hollywood. Free agency
changed everything in sports, and Hollywood's studio system collapsed when
stars realized how much power they had.

It would take some adjustment, but I believe full disclosure would level out
some of the inequality. As it stands the CEO captures the lion's share of
value created by the whole enterprise.

------
golemotron
I saw an article about Google about six months ago that said that people in
the same position could be paid wildly different amounts based on the
company's assessment of their contribution and the cost to replace them.

The first thing I thought was that this is a good way to compensate people.
Second thought was that it would cause much gnashing of teeth to anyone who
decides to look at equal pay for equal work based on job title and seniority.

Does anyone have that article?

------
forrestthewoods
More and more I feel that income for all workers should be public information.
Sweden does that and so far their world hasn't ended.

------
happywolf
After reading through a lot of the comments and the tweets, I have a burning
question: "where is the spreadsheet?", if one is willing to divulge the
salary, I believe he/she doesn't mind this figure to be seen by the public.
Or, we can redact the name (if any) and just leave the salary, position, and
gender. I am seeing a lot of arguments when the most important item, the
spreadsheet, is nowhere be seen.

Did I miss anything?

------
tweeter
On the one hand, salary should be between the employer and employee; a private
contract. On the other hand, there needs to be a way to protect individuals
from the oversights, (intentional or otherwise) of powerful organizations.

At the moment it seems the only way to enforce that is to share this
information that so many feel should be private. If there were a better way...
what would it be?

------
bsaul
I wonder if anyone that's ever ran a team of people would complain about
salary secrecy.

I mean there are so many occasions for employees to be pissed of at or jealous
from each others, you know bringing money into it is the worst idea.

Plus, the biggest screw up you can get with your salary is if you don't
compare it with offers from _different_ companies. Not inside it.

~~~
Bahamut
I ran a frontend team and I didn't like salary secrecy. I am a big believer in
having people earn what they deserve, and if they gathered the knowledge that
they are underpaid or if I have that knowledge, I went to bat for them.

I've no doubt that most companies in the Bay Area abuse salary secrecy -
startups are often so concerned about runway that they hedge on treating their
employees right.

------
alexqgb
"All the world's information, organized."

"You mean like this?"

"Holy crap, no."

~~~
thaumasiotes
[http://chainsawsuit.com/comic/2012/01/17/ask-your-
doctor/](http://chainsawsuit.com/comic/2012/01/17/ask-your-doctor/)

------
grondilu
> "just because, for example, one employee negotiated harder than the other"

Isn't that a perfectly valid reason, though?

------
kzhahou
GOOD managers can only dream about such a strong opportunity to champion their
reports.

------
chrisbennet
That's pretty hard to believe. Next they'll be telling us that Google
conspired with Apple and other large firms to suppress wages!

~~~
aceperry
LOL

Sounds like the unfortunate result of PHBs who don't have any common sense or
backbone to support their team. The fact that Erica's manager rejected the
"peer bonuses" given to Erica suggests that her manager is really unfit to be
a manager.

------
akhilcacharya
Don't Googlers openly state that they pay unequally?

------
geofft
This is just a recopying of the tweets without any additional story. Better
URLs may be the first tweet in the stream

[https://twitter.com/EricaJoy/status/622079372367781888](https://twitter.com/EricaJoy/status/622079372367781888)

or the Storify with her consent:

[https://storify.com/_danilo/ericajoy-s-salary-
transparency-e...](https://storify.com/_danilo/ericajoy-s-salary-transparency-
experiment-at-googl)

Per HN guidelines on linking to the original source, I think this should be
changed to one of these.

The subject of the story / author of the tweets also has problems with this
particular reporting:

[https://twitter.com/EricaJoy/status/622198075453353984](https://twitter.com/EricaJoy/status/622198075453353984)

(What's the legality of writing a news article that is primarily a bunch of
tweets -- long enough to be copyrightable -- from someone else, without a
copyright license, and without significant independent commentary? What's the
ethics of posting it without their approval?)

~~~
dang
Good point. We changed the URL from [http://fusion.net/story/168986/ex-
googler-says-she-got-in-tr...](http://fusion.net/story/168986/ex-googler-says-
she-got-in-trouble-for-exposing-company-wide-pay-inequality/).

------
brobdingnagian
Release the spreadsheet.

~~~
discardorama
Why? It's an internal company matter. Why is it our business to see who makes
what?

~~~
asgard1024
I upvoted parent, not because I agree with him, but I deeply disagree with
your attitude.

I think even internal criticism of companies should be considered free speech
and protected as such. That doesn't mean that it should be released to the
public, but employees should have the freedom to release the information if
they decide so, just like whistleblowers.

> Why is it our business to see who makes what?

Of course it is your business (if you are an employee). Employee wages are
determined by supply and demand, therefore, they depend on other's people
wages. That aside though, any exposition of the way other employers treat
other employees in similar position (such as discrimination) also should be
your business, because it may affect behavior of your employer as well.

These are the reasons why we have free speech, to prevent people doing wrong
things in secrecy, as to avoid collective moral correction to take place.

~~~
incepted
> I think even internal criticism of companies should be considered free
> speech and protected as such.

I think you misunderstand what free speech is: it simply means the government
can't arbitrarily prevent you from saying whatever you think (well, most of it
anyway, you can still go to jail for saying certain things).

We're talking about corporations and individuals here, no free speech laws
apply. It's perfectly legal for a company to restrict what its employees can
talk about publicly (within certain boundaries, e.g. whistle blowers, ...).

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Yes, certainly. But not American companies; not companies that purport to have
American values. The principle of free speech was incorporated into our
constitution, not because the idea started and ended there, but to push an
American ideal into Government unequivocally. The ideal exists outside the
constitution.

A private company can suppress free speech; it can perform searches and
seizures on its grounds; it can profile and discriminate and have pay
inequality. But it cannot claim any moral high ground. To say "at least we
don't violate the letter of the constitution" is a shamefully low bar.

~~~
incepted
> A private company can suppress free speech; it can perform searches and
> seizures on its grounds; it can profile and discriminate and have pay
> inequality. But it cannot claim any moral high ground.

I don't think any company has ever tried to make such a silly claim. If they
fire someone, it will usually be because that employee broke the terms of
their employment contract which nobody forced them to sign in the first place.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Right. Employee agreements that suppress free speech are kind of the subject
of this thread.

~~~
incepted
That's the whole point: employee agreements do not suppress free speech. It's
legal nonsense to claim that they do.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
If you define free speech as 'that part of the American value that is embodied
in a Constitutional amendment' and take it no further. Be fair.

------
davidf18
While the spreadsheet might show differences in pay related to certain factors
such as gender and age, it doesn't really reflect the most important quality
which is how well they produce (e.g., some people code better than others). Is
this piece of info somehow encoded in the spreadsheet?

Of course, merit doesn't matter in countries like (the old) Soviet Union. But
I only want to work for companies and with people that compensate on the basis
of merit and not some otherwise external factor.

------
yarou
Most corporations operate essentially like a cult. You are expected to drink
the Kool-Aid and tow the party line. Pay inequality is just another symptom of
a systemic problem we have in the tech industry. Labor is fundamentally not
respected, nor is it justly compensated at the fair market value.

------
belovedeagle
Interesting that she doesn't just come out and say that Google was paying
women less? I wonder why not?

------
yAnonymous
Creating a spreadsheet to collect salary information isn't really something
that deserves a bonus.

~~~
balazsdavid987
Why do you think that she was expecting the bonus for that reason? I can't see
the connection.

~~~
balazsdavid987
Can somebody tell me why my comment is being down-voted so much? The parent
comment was a rude one and I just asked for an explanation.

------
curiousjorge
Where is the spreadsheet?

~~~
Twirrim
It's internal, as she clearly stated in the thread.

------
kuni-toko-tachi
If you don't like what you are being paid, QUIT.

I sure as hell wouldn't want someone like this working with me. Immature and
highly unprofessional.

------
LGBT_2000
This is fucking horrible. If there was so much as an ounce of truth to all the
noise Google has been making about "diversity" over the past couple years,
they had better have one hell of an answer for all this very, very soon. And
if they don't, well that also is one hell of an answer, although an extremely
discouraging one for any of us concerned with fairness and equality in the
tech space.

Erica: sharing your experiences the way you did was _extremely_ brave. I can
only imagine what you must be going through having already braved such a
minefield of abuse in what ought to be a progressive and accepting work
environment. Keep fighting the good fight.

~~~
cpncrunch
What has this got to do with diversity?

------
issaria
Oh god, stop gossip and you don't need to whine.

~~~
issaria
For those who downvoted, when do you remember you on "One Sunday, some former
coworkers & I were bored, talking about salaries ..."

------
anagor
Since when does a socialists got into a private high tech sectors? Since when
do people have to be paid the same? Each and everyone is unique in their
abilities and the value they bring to the employers, so should be their
salary.

------
marvel_boy
Summing up. Haters gonna hate. Even at "Don´t be evil" GOOGLE.

------
SCAQTony
Her premise smells fishy:

“one Sunday” at her previous company, she and some coworkers “were bored” and
decided to put their salaries in a spreadsheet. As it spread through the
company, thousands of employees added their salaries and it allegedly revealed
“not great things regarding pay. ...”

I find that extraordinarily hard to believe. If the salaries are accurate
within that spreadsheet then I suspect something more sinister took place such
as a blatant theft from HR.

Friendships are lost over the subject of pay and I doubt that Google would be
unaware of a spreadsheet such as hers circulating throughout the company
reaching thousands of people without Google figuring it out. (I am also
surprised still still has a job after bragging about this.)

~~~
aiiane
Believe it or not, it's illegal for companies in the US to prevent employees
from discussing their salaries.

~~~
maloney
Some states are "at will" meaning they can fire you with no cause.

~~~
discardorama
"No cause" does _not_ mean "any cause". They can't fire you in retaliation.
They can't fire you for being male/female. They can't fire you for being
black/white/brown/pink/etc.

~~~
xentronium
How do you distinguish "illegal reasons" from "bullshit reasons"? Genuinely
curious.

~~~
brianwawok
IF you send an email and ask "Why was I fired"

If they reply "Because you are brown"

Instant lawsuit, lots of money.

If they reply "For bad work perf", and it was really for poor work perf, they
are fine.

If they reply "For bad work perf", and it really was because you were brown,
and you prove it, lawsuit. It is obviously hard to prove. One way may be to
show "Look I had 12 performance reviews, on all 12 I got perfect. In fact I
did better on my perf reviews than people who are green, so obviously there is
a bias for green people and against brown people.

Which as you see, the entire argument hinges around the exact reason you are
fired. This is why when people are fired, it is safer from a legal standpoint
to not give a reason. Even though that kind of sucks for self development. If
you really were fired for being a jerk to coworkers... it may be nice to know
that, so you can work on it at your next job.

~~~
pekk
So "no cause" works out to "any cause, as long as you say no cause and didn't
leave obvious signs to the contrary"

~~~
Twirrim
Yup. It's also why references have gone from "so and so was an
excellent/average/terrible worker" to "So and so worked here from xx/yy/zzzz
to xx/yy/zzzz".

