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Google Schools US Government About Gender Pay Gap (cnet.com)
Google wants the US government to know that it takes gender pay equity very seriously -- and is baffled by the contention that a gap exists at the tech giant. From a report: In responding to allegations lodged by the US Department of Labor that Google systematically pays its female employees less than it pays men, the search giant said in a blog post that employee gender doesn't factor into compensation decisions. Google described the process that it arrives at suggested compensation as "extremely scientific and robust," relying on the employee's role, job level and location, as well as recent performance ratings. What isn't considered in determining pay is whether the employee is male or female -- that information is masked out to those making the compensation decisions, Eileen Naughton, Google vice president for People Operations, explained in the post late Tuesday. "The analysts who calculate the suggested amounts do not have access to employees' gender data," Naughton wrote. "An employee's manager has limited discretion to adjust the suggested amount, providing they cite a legitimate adjustment rationale.
Most of the time pay gap statistics are brought out, they don't seem to compare apples to apples. The average female employee at company A makes less than the average male employee at Company A. And yet lower-paying office roles are predominantly sought out by female employees, which is what brings down that average if you're not comparing equivalent job titles and experience levels.
Women who do not have children get paid the same or more. But when you have to take several weeks or months off to take care of a child you slow your career. So don't have kids if you want a big pay check. If you want to have the biological and emotional fulfillment of giving birth and raising a child then realize you have to sacrifice your overall income.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
... is that the so-called "gender pay gap" is actually due to life decisions, not rampant sexism?
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
there is no pay gap. As soon as women fill the roles of garbage collector, coal miner, oil rig worker... then we can talk. When YOU risk severe physical injury or long-term illness, THEN you can come crying to me.
As long as women only seek equal representation in cushy office jobs, you can all go to hell!
Many companies have had studies that show "within a given grade/level people are paid equally". Yes we understand, if you are a level 6, you get paid between 75,000 and 85,000 per year. and everyone within the grade is relatively equal.
The real issue that is being artfully tap danced around is qualified women getting passed over for promotion for equal or lesser qualified men. Or just getting held up an extra 6-12 months before the promotion comes through. So men get promotions every 12-18 months and women get promotions every 18-24 months.
No I don't have actual data to back this up. There are plenty of anecdotes though. And the larger companies are carefully not taking the time for this kind of study, or have performed this kind of study and don't like the results and are not releasing the results because it makes them look awful and confirms the rumors of a BRO FIRST culture.
Architectural plans are like computer source code with a couple of differences: You only compile once.
It's really annoying.
Managers have nothing to do with my performance ratings, I'm sure. Scientific and robust.
Come on, this is easy stuff for stats:
Suppose I want to discriminate based on a trait, but I can't explicitly use that trait. How can I do it?
Well, I can construct a proxy variable that correlates with trait X. Or several that correlate. And base a measure on that.
For example - if I don't want to discriminate based on gender, I could discriminate based on height, weight etc, knowing that men are on average taller than women. Sure it wouldn't be explicitly sexist, but the outcome would be that the average woman was disadvantaged compared to the average man. There are, of course, cases where height and weight could be important, but in a lot of cases (office work for example) they aren't. Likewise, for race we already see clear examples of this in the law - different sentencing for crack vs powder cocaine. School districts based on geographic location - sure we're not sending your kids to a bad school because they're black, but because they're from a certain neighborhood that just happens to have a large black population.
And here's the best part: I don't even have to do it consciously! I can just let a model run and fluctuate until I get the results that I think I should get (I just /know/ Tim is a better programmer than Sarah, and this metric works for that).
Proxy sexism is easy. It even comes with the added advantage of occasional counter-examples (Well, Shawn's black, but he's from the right side of town so he went to a good school - see we're not racist!) and yet continues the destructive behaviour. We don't pay women less, we pay positions that are majority female less. It's the "position" we value less, not the woman, when it comes to defending ourselves against sexism, and any correlation can be explained by the proxy variable, which we find some way of claiming is actually important - "No, tall people are just better leaders, so we pay them more, women are on average shorter, therefore they get paid less on average, nothing to do with gender, just about what makes a good leader!"
Take advantage of the situation if one parent gets paid less than the other. Stay home and raise kids for a few years! If you aren't near older relatives or neighbors that you can hang out with, find another like-minded stay at home parent and you can have adult conversation time every other day as well.
Screw getting a bigger house, a more expensive car, or whatever at that point in your life. Take two to seven years off to raise your kids... one income is fine if you don't go nuts spending money. Besides, daycare costs a fortune and your kids will love those people almost more than you. Is that normal or healthy? F*ck no! Babies need their parents (mom especially) 90% of their waking life. Buy a smaller house than your friends and you'll have the freedom to do whatever you want.
"extremely scientific and robust," relying on the employee's role, job level and location, as well as recent performance ratings"
So basically they are claiming that performance ratings are scientific, and that there's no possibility those are biased.
Right.
This exactly. Google "schools" government indeed. So they have "schooled" the same government that already has all the salary information google is going on about? Riiiight.
It's no surprise google's method of determining pay is empirically based. The thing is, the way regulations are setup now, even if google verifiably does not include gender (or sex) in their decision making, if there is a difference in pay between genders, that's enough for the government to bring suit against google. Of course, once they are in court, that's when google can bring out their evidence and say, look, there's a difference in pay, but it's for legitimate reasons. The gov should have been more careful in making the decision to go after google in this area.
In order to determine that there's no pay gap, the only relevant information is the current pay controlled for other factors. I will almost guarantee that a pay gap exists, although it could be very small. This is beyond the "life decisions" canard that a lot of people like to play. If men are more likely to be offered internships, and I offer increased pay for internship experience, then I'm introducing a pay gay based on sex - indirectly, certainly, but the result is still the same. Given the massive amount of cultural and sociopolitical discrimination that have been present historically, it's extremely unlikely that the criteria Google chooses are entirely free of sex bias.
In a more practical and yet simple example, Google claims to account for performance ratings in their salary calculation. Yet women are more often given lower performance ratings for the same behavior in competitive environments; for example, men who are assertive are praised, whereas women who are assertive are penalized. Therefore, unless we can show that performance ratings themselves don't have a sex bias, we can't assume that any system that includes performance rating as a criteria doesn't have a sex bias. I won't even get into the ambiguity of "other variables".
Google may very well be right and their system eliminates gender bias, but simply saying it doesn't prove it.
I see they have a replacement for "don't be evil" beyond the vapid "do the right thing" as an excuse to justify occasionally allowing evil to seep through.
It's the classic turning a blind eye motto:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.
As long as no one can say you were aware of the evil, it is beyond reproach and punishment, and so can be joyously benefited from, even theoretically at great cost to others.
Also known as corruption, the corporate maturity process, the profession of 'corporate law', and allowing evil "for the greater good".
Life is full of choices, and the world certainly isn't ideal, and there are nearly infinite ideals - but organizing information to be intentionally blind to the systematic shortchanging of women would be firmly in the 'evil' side of anything, I'd think.
This isn't intended from a 'social justice' perspective, but from a philosophical motivation perspective - why do people with enormous resources tend to push themselves in these directions over time?
There's an enormous system of gives and takes going on - contracts and legal challenges constrain business, while investment systems provide a force in one motivating direction: greed. It's a machine to pull rights and resources from anyone not spending their life litigating everything.
Women getting systematically shortchanged is one output of such a process. Massive inequality is another. Massive political instability is a side-effect of that. Profiteering is a side-effect of that. And willful blindness feeds into it all.
That's what half of debates seem to be these days: Some massive failure or catastrophe being documented on one side, and justifications of willful blindness on the other.
Don't get me wrong: In general, the world is improving over time, and by most standards, we're more peaceful and well-off per person than we've ever been. But where we have had massive statistical issues are exactly where we're falling now: inequality leading to massive suffering, and environmental spoiling. Those are exactly the things that lead to dramatic collapses, and are exactly what we're playing political games to blind ourselves towards.
So yeah, for now, the game is rigged and folks are clearly benefiting from the rigging.
Until that can be fixed without causing even more evil, best to document evil, speak of evil, and make sure that evil is heard of. Perhaps google might even return to an era of 'Do no evil" with enough of a spotlight on their willful blindness.
Ryan Fenton
Company accused of bias claims there is no bias. No one got "schooled."
This alligation sounds like the same argument and statistical mechanics used to call out cops as being racist. Before any of you meat heads go ballistic, just think about it.
press the button!
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Just another case of feelz before realz!
This Sig does not Exist.
Not if your religion prevents abortion and condom use.
God doesn't allow it and has clearly decided to punish all women who have sex.
You know - like - God.
Plus, having kids is part of God's plan, so if God intended women to be paid the same, then he would fix this too.
You know - like - God.
STFU if you believe in god/dog/God or Gods ... like 90% of the world does. Same if you are agnostic. STFU.
Only atheists deserve equal pay, provided they can avoid the child trap and actually do more/better work.
Post everyone's pay. Public government jobs do it, why not everywhere else?
Any time someone mentions a wage gap, ask them for data that shows women with the same education and experience, working the same job, and for the same number of hours getting paid less. They will not be able to provide you with that data because it doesn't exist. There is no wage gap when education, experience, and working hours are factored in. The source of the "average gap" is that women work less hours than men.
"Gender" while not explicitly part of the remuneration decision is in fact extensively part of the remuneration decision. I am angry at google for being too stupid to realize that. They should know better if any company should.
Gender is pervasive in the vocabulary and word selection.
http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20170329-the-hidden-sexism-in-workplace-language
The reviews have all the information needed for sexism and gender pay inequality.
I dare you to address this without a "top level analysis" which is another name for "a summary of a summary of a summary" engineered to spoon-feed decisions to people paid way too much to not have to think for themselves.
Google, you did evil, you (should) know it, and you are now defending it, triply compounding it, and that is untenable. I hope you get your butt kicked.
Unlike the past, the world now pays lip service to women, which I hardly consider a change.
Jesus, on the other hand, cares about them.
Although not because they are women.
What part of bias do they not understand?
The best way to settle this is for them to publish all pay for all employees (anonymously) by department sorted by gender, using statistics.
After all, google is a big data company; so this should be relatively easy for them to do.
Prove us wrong google.
simply saying it doesn't prove it
where just prior you make several unfounded statements eg:
women who are assertive are penalized
By the left's standards even Elizabeth Warren is a sexist (google her paygap) Oh the irony!
As always, Marxist logic fails to reconcile.
Its obvious that you are a victim of Critical Theory propagandists and historically, that never ends well. Entire societies destroyed by this poison but that is your goal right!?!
I work in a high tech industry that involves 24/7 operations. When a system goes down at 2am, highly trained highly paid individuals get called in. We have many women at work, however they choose day jobs that do not involve on call work or work with hazardous equipment and systems. prsdntl
Google has become rich for using Proxy Variables as a means to derive inferences. Whether or not its true, if your proxy-sample is representative of the population at large, you still get a valid sampling.
That Google wouldn't know about unconscious bias or how "objective
factors" can be correlated to physical sex sounds ludicrous.
While women taking off for having babies is cited as a reason for pay inequity, Google has provided on-site day-care and facilities to lower the effect of those problems.
Part of the problem is that while men may be given equal time off to bond & spend time with newborns, they may not take it as often. Should that be a positive trait that is rewarded? I.e. if someone works an extra 20-30 hours/week over a "40 hour week", should they be rewarded for the long term effects their work-life imbalance, statistically, is likely to cause.
In the case of professional football players, society says "yes" -- they get paid ludicrous sums in their prime so they don't have to make money past their 30's.
One begins to see the reason for having a 40-hour work week and requirements for 50-100% pay to be applied to work over 40-hours. Why shouldn't software engineers be on a similar pay-schedule? Then if it is the case that men earn more because they work more, it will be clear as to why.
As long as it is presumed men and women work @ similar "40-hour-a-week" jobs, then pay inequities can't be justified to the extent they exist, but for them to be documented, "professional positions" would need to have weekly hours documented like any "hourly" employee.
How much of the extra "productivity" that men produce is due to them being willing to give up any non-work life while they are younger -- with industry responding by discriminating against older workers who start to have families and realize that a life that is filled only with work isn't so fulfilling as they get older?
My wife took a couple years off when my daughter was born. We could (barely) afford that because more than half of our income was from me. While she was taking time off, I found a new job that almost doubled my pay, in a city four hours away. For double the pay, we moved. Now I make four times as much as my wife.
The next time we consider a move, suppose we can go to city A and increase my wife's income by 25% ($7,000 increase) or we can move to city B and increase my income by by 25% ($30,000 increase). Which will we do? Obviously we'd take the $30,000, increasing my income. And she would start over with a new employer. If our daughter got sick and one of us had to stay home with her for six months, should my wife quit her job (costing us $14,000) or should I quit for six months (costing us $60,000)? Right now we can afford to send one of us to school. The same sort of calculation applies - me getting my masters degree will increase our income by $30,000/year or so.
Every decision we make about whose career takes priority logically prioritizes the career that provides most of our income. Because she makes less, and therefore has less of an impact our budget, it'll always be logical prioritize my career, compounding the difference. It's a self-perpetuating cycle. The more one parrner makes relative to the other, the more important it becomes to protect and enhance the higher income. That's perfectly okay with my wife and I - it helps OUR budget to increase OUR income.
Logically, we temper that and make sure she has some marketable skills only in case something happens to me. If I die or have a major head injury she'll need to be able to earn an income in a couple years, after the insurance runs out. So our plan is that if I should die, she'll finish school while living off the insurance money.
Seriously, this will be REALLY fun to watch. Google, who has clearly been actively trying to 'fix the wage gap' whether for good reasons or just as virtue signaling is being taken to task by the DoL. I REALLY hope this goes to court or something as Google's analytics team should have a FIELD day with the data they have. If this gets enough attention AND assuming Google doesn't just cave in to the SJW bullshit, this could potentially lead to some kind of logical discussion...I doubt it though. What will likely happen is the media will be all over Google during the 'accusation phase', but as their arguments and analysis come out (they will have to eventually release the data I'm sure) likely demonstrating that any 'purported wage gap' is due to all the natural choices people make that will be swept under the rug/ignored by the media.
Following specific tenets or not is a choice.
So, you're saying a difference in outcome when sliced by a factor is not de facto evidence of discrimination based on that factor?
This has always been willful blindness. Many SJWs know plenty about stats and logical inferences, because you can cite similarly constructed scenarios that violate their preferred policy preferences (e.g. crime stats in high gun ownership areas, charter school outcomes, etc) and they will immediately explain to you that there are other factors at play and the difference in outcome doesn't say anything about the factor being causal. But because they like the implication that Victim Group 27 is being screwed over, they flip the situation me ask you to prove this isn't discrimination.
All the hoops Google is jumping through are designed by their HR legal team to avoid the liability arising from the fundamental logic error that difference in outcome is de facto evidence of discrimination unless you can prove otherwise. Nobody wants to have that burden of proof, so they design this HR gymnastics course so they have deniability. All it really does is prove the uselessness of the "evidence" in the first place.
... to take time off for family.
My ex-wife and I planned for divorce, and surprise surprise we got divorced. My wife and I plan for "the two shall become one, till death do you part, for better or worse" and indeed we've worked through tough times and come out stronger.
Partly that's related to having our daughter - a decision that we feel like going our separate ways is no longer possible (we'll always be connected, like it or not), and to the extent it's possible, it's not right - I have no right to take away my daughter's father or mother just because I feel like boning some other chick. I've made a COMMITMENT to my family.
That works for us largely because we look at everything in our marriage, including all conflicts, from the perspective of *we*. If your arm is causing pain, you don't get mad at your arm, you figure out how to heal it. If my foot is giving me trouble, I don't yell at my foot (or cut it off), I care for it. If my wife is giving me trouble, I don't yell at my wife, or divorce my wife, I care for my wife. Probably sometimes you're not sure what to do - perhaps you want to eat cake, but you also want to lose weight. You want to buy a new toy, but you also want to save for a house. You think about these things, basically "discuss them with yourself." We are the same way - sometimes we want this and we want that. We think, discuss, and we decide. We (my wife and I) don't fight and get angry when we have two different viewpoints, anymore that you fight with yourself when you have two perspectives on something.
That's worked for us all the way to even when we've been attracted to someone else. We have a problem, we've been having inappropriate conversations with someone we find attractive. That's dangerous to us, our family. So how do we address this to protect ourselves from our family being torn apart? If she cheated on me, it wouldn't hurt *me*, it would hurt *her*, our daughter, AND me - it would hurt *us*. So we treat inappropriate conversations as a danger that could hurt us.
Having said all that, we are aware that divorce happens, and she's going to finish her degree - after she's more clear about what kind of degree she wants. During the roughest part of our marriage, during a mental health crisis, there was a risk that the person going through the mental health issues might do something crazy, and we took some precautions during that time in case we had to seperate. But generally, you tend to get what you plan for, so we don't plan on divorce.
I'm sorry, I assumed anyone discussing gender and pay would be informed on the relevant science. Two supporting links from the last two years since you don't seem to be up on the conversation; you can find dozens if not hundreds on the same subject.
Constrained by Emotion: Women, Leadership, and Expressing Emotion in the Workplace
"For instance, women incur social and economic penalties for expressing masculine-typed emotions because they violate proscriptions against dominance for women. At the same time, when women express female-typed emotions, they are judged as overly emotional and lacking emotional control, which ultimately undermines women’s competence and professional legitimacy."
The Price Women Leaders Pay for Assertiveness—and How to Minimize It
"To test this popular view, my colleague Larissa Tiedens, of Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, and I recently synthesized 71 studies testing reactions to people who behave assertively. We found that women, on average, were disparaged more than men for identical assertive behaviors. Women were particularly penalized for direct, explicit forms of assertiveness, such as negotiating for a higher salary or asking a neighbor to turn down the music. Dominance that took a verbal form seemed especially tricky for women, compared with men making identical requests."
Also, men tend to spend less time on household chores. Men often have female spouses to perform emotional labor for them, reducing stress and increasing health, and women generally don't have anywhere near as much support. So even if men and women are equally willing to burn themselves out in their youth, we expect men to be less burnt out on average.
That explains the gender differences in suicide rate, life expectancy and mental illness then.
Oh, wait..
Google can't be fool enough to think that not actually having a pay gap means they can get off, can they? Richilieu's maxim applies as well or better to statistics as it does to any other testimony; Google can bring its analysis into court showing no wage gap, the Department of Labor can bring theirs, and who is the DoLs own Administrative Law Judge going to believe?
It'd be sad, if Google didn't support this kind of thing as applied to everyone else.
True or not, this seems like a clever topic to drive a wedge between Google and liberal-minded people. Maybe DoL is being used to generate some pain for Google in retaliation for speaking out against Trump's immigration policy and other topics.
We can all debate until we're blue in the face whether the gender gap between an average woman and an average man is the product of perfectly reasonable individual choices or societal pressure.
What's really not debatable is that Google leadership has actively advocated for more oversight of business by the government, while simultaneously ignoring regulations when it comes to their own business.
Every other large government contractor has to file these reports. Every other large government contractor is judged by the labor department rules, not by their internal metrics.
This is why government oversight sucks. Sometimes they're looking at things that don't make sense, sometimes it's counterproductive. Sometimes it's necessary. If Google really thinks the Labor Department approach is wrong, they should have been working their very significant political connections to change the rules to the right policy. Instead, they created political cover for themselves, and were happy to have everyone else subject to rules they disagreed with.
The workers must be convinced of their oppression to create the environment for social change that will destroy capitalism?
Attack the protestant work ethic through religious hypocrisy and the human desire for sex
No? How about history? Read any history? This same game has been played before and right now you are a little pawn in a big marketing campaign. A tool pushing Marxist bullshit and are too ignorant to even realize it.
Corporation Bad. Corporation oppress women, gays, immigrants, minorities. Corporation exploit workers. Corporation want to kill you. Give me Socialism!!!
Wrong administration. This BS was launched under Obummer's admin.
Huh? Where did that come from.
The discussion is about the pay gender gap and the reasons for it, and whether Google pays men more than women without justification. The thread is about assertiveness being seen as more positive for men than women. GP provided a couple of cites, including that hotbed of radical Marxism, the Wall Street Journal. You're the one who brought in a parody of politics (I assume that was a parody).
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
2. I do not for one second believe the study about assertive women and find It speaks more to ones own bias than society at large. Would you not hire an assertive female real estate agent or lawyer to represent you? There is proven market demand for assertive women!
3.
that hotbed of radical Marxism, the Wall Street Journal
Not sure if you are trying to appeal to authority here but that just shows how deep this has permeated in our society. Im not surprised. This started before the cold war and is slowly moving to critical mass. Take Ford (and his foundation) who have always been very involved in driving socialism. You thought he was a capitalist huh. Did u know he built a socialist community in South America, was a very active and vocal supporter of Hitlers socialism? His foundation continues the same work today https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/10/11/pers-o11.html
4. Dont take my word for it. Look around. Ever try to obtain the data set or research the funding behind these studies? You should. Try anyway. Its a labyrinth of mystery money, anonymous donors and foundations that just so happen to hail from the same school of thought. Oh and the supporting data is never available, ever. Proprietary they say. You just get the excerpts and lead lines. In other words, the message the funder wants to convey.
5. For fucks sake, read up on some history. Else, we are doomed to repeat the same shit again.
Bro's before ho's bizznatches! GIT u sum!
Sigh. I've read plenty of history, enough to know that you're wrong. I also don't consider "It looks like something I oppose" from a pseudonymous slashdot poster a refutation.
Hitler wasn't a socialist. The Third Reich was capitalist and heavily favored the rich industrialists. The National Socialist German Workers' Party had both nationalist and socialist movements before the mid-30s, when Hitler terminated the Socialists with extreme prejudice. If you read "Mein Kampf", you'll find a passage somewhere (it's horribly disorganized) saying that you do not change your propaganda when your doctrines change. Ford was fond of Hitler as an anti-semite, a capitalist, and an authoritarian.
Study some history from a viewpoint that isn't locked to one political stance, and come back when you can avoid embarrassing yourself among historians.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes