On a related note, someone at Google started a spreadsheet about a year ago where people could post (anonymously or not) their salary and a few more interesting datapoints (gender, age, location, etc.) I'm not sure whether the spreadsheet did anything to highlight gender/ethnicity/visa-status disparities (the biggest disparities I remember seeing were based on location, but that's understandable) but it was a great tool to start a conversation about increased transparency in salaries.
I have to praise Google for the way the situation was handled: the company didn't force the spreadsheet to be taken down (in fact, it's still up as I write this), nobody that I know of was fired for it and it generated a healthy amount of internal discussion. After hearing some stories from the Amazon counter part, I wouldn't expect the reaction to be the same.
> I have to praise Google for the way the situation was handled: the company didn't force the spreadsheet to be taken down (in fact, it's still up as I write this), nobody that I know of was fired for it and it generated a healthy amount of internal discussion. After hearing some stories from the Amazon counter part, I wouldn't expect the reaction to be the same.
Taking action against this would've been a violation of US labor law with steep penalties.
Well you know how that goes. It's not like that has stopped companies from firing people in the past. This is an "at will" employment state, so if they really wanted to fire people they could've made any excuse up and fire them. Actually, they wouldn't even need to make anything up.
Can't I praise one thing without necessarily agreeing with another?
I'm not saying Google is this shining company without a single flaw, but I'm definitely impressed with the way they seem to take their employees as adults that have strong opinions that need to be addressed.
Far from trying to apologize for anyone related to that lawsuit, but in my opinion what happened was a set of people thought they could get away with certain stuff because "everyone in the industry is doing it". Kind of the same with making people sign NDAs which are, for all practical purposes, unenforceable in California. They tried it, got tested in court, failed miserably. Good for us, bad for them.
No, they did not fail at all - far from it. They collectively paid only a $400M settlement, which is likely only a small fraction of how much they got out of the scheme.
IIRC other Googlers chimed in on HN and said that it was normal practice that managers wouldn't allow someone to get multiple peer bonuses for the same piece of work.
And this is, in fact, both true and one of the few pieces of guidance around peer bonuses. The other is that you're not allowed to peer bonus someone who peer bonused you [in the same quarter], for obvious reasons.
I have to praise Google for the way the situation was handled: the company didn't force the spreadsheet to be taken down (in fact, it's still up as I write this), nobody that I know of was fired for it and it generated a healthy amount of internal discussion. After hearing some stories from the Amazon counter part, I wouldn't expect the reaction to be the same.