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Accused of Underpaying Women, Google Says It's Too Expensive To Get Wage Data (theguardian.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Google argued that it was too financially burdensome and logistically challenging to compile and hand over salary records that the government has requested, sparking a strong rebuke from the U.S. Department of Labor (DoL), which has accused the Silicon Valley firm of underpaying women. Google officials testified in federal court on Friday that it would have to spend up to 500 hours of work and $100,000 to comply with investigators' ongoing demands for wage data that the DoL believes will help explain why the technology corporation appears to be systematically discriminating against women. Noting Google's nearly $28 billion annual income as one of the most profitable companies in the U.S., DoL attorney Ian Eliasoph scoffed at the company's defense, saying, "Google would be able to absorb the cost as easy as a dry kitchen sponge could absorb a single drop of water."

16 of 431 comments (clear)

  1. If women are paid so much less by night_flyer · · Score: 4, Insightful

    why isn't their entire workforce made of women, wouldn't it be cheaper that way?

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  2. If only there was a computer to aggregate the data by Vermonter · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...some sort of search engine, perhaps.

  3. Really Google? by Avantare · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Why are you afraid of honoring the request? That amount is a pittance to you and the WORLD knows it. The only thing I can think of is that you have been underpaying women since the very first one that was hired and by giving this information to the US government you'll have to come clean and pay a pittance of a fine. Boo hoo... Companies are making record profit from what I see on the Internet and they are not paying their help as they should. Then these companies complain they are unable to hire replacements. It's because the companies don't want to pay the potential employees what they are worth. It takes money to make money and companies that don't want to pay their potential employees are only shooting themselves in the foot. Avantare

  4. Google Knows by RotateLeftByte · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Google Knows everything about everyone. Where you go, what you spend money on and everything else.
    To say that it can't find out wage data is a pile of crock.

    Google could if it wanted tell the FBI how much each Agent spent in expenses for the past 5 years.

    --
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  5. Re:Not Googles Job by Baron_Yam · · Score: 4, Insightful

    >how are you going to accurately get the numbers for job type, productivity, experience and skill level ?

    Traditionally... by ignoring productivity and experience, and using seniority as a stand-in for skill level.

    In other words, there is no practical way to do it since you need to individually perform a detailed historical analysis of each person's output, including adjusting for where others have helped or hindered. It'd be faster just to do the work over again.

  6. Re:Not Googles Job by geekmux · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Its not Googles job to do the governments bidding. Furthermore, Google has no incentive to comply because even if the data shows that they are entirely innocent, such facts wont matter to the SJW's.

    If Google wants to continue to do business with the government, then it is their fucking job to comply. That effort is either worth it, or it's not. Don't want to comply? Then step away from all government contracts. Plain and simple.

  7. Re:Not Googles Job by religionofpeas · · Score: 3, Insightful

    In other words, there is no practical way to do it since you need to individually perform a detailed historical analysis of each person's output, including adjusting for where others have helped or hindered

    Which makes the whole debate pointless.

  8. Simple reasoning by petes_PoV · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Let's assume that Google will take the path of least cost.
    So it's cheaper to send a lawyer to explain the data is too hard to collate
    So it's cheaper to pay the fine or lose the contract

    That must tell you something about the cost of "doing the right thing". Not that the cost of obtaining the information is too high, but the cost of fixing whatever the data tells the government is too high.

    So we can infer that there IS an issue here. It is also reasonable that Google knows this, or it wouldn't be baulking at providing the data (and exploiting the P.R. benefits of showing "there! we do pay people fairly").

    The question is whether Google would consider the odds of getting found out and having to pay people more, AND paying a fine for obstructing some dam' law or other, is worth the effort they are going to, to behave in such a manner.

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  9. Degrees: gender studies != engineering by walterbyrd · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Although feminists will tell you otherwise.

  10. Re:Do women negotiate? by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You can't just say "We paid the men more because they asked for more."

    Can you just say, "we paid the people more who asked for more"? That's how salaries work in the US culture, for better or for worse. Malfeasance not required.

    One sub-group that gets really screwed: aspies. Don't tell a class-action lawyer that's epigenetic, though.

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  11. Re:Not Googles Job by religionofpeas · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm no SJW but it seems to me that the difference between what men and women are paid to do identical work

    You're assuming that they do identical work, with identical performance. Before you go any further, you'll need to provide proof that this is true.

  12. Can't the government use tax data? by PrimaryConsult · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The government already knows how much everyone makes and whether they are female. They should get it from the IRS and mine it themselves.

  13. Re:Not Googles Job by religionofpeas · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Can you prove his assumption, that a man gets paid more for the same job, isn't true?

    Hey moron, the poster is making the assumption, so he or she needs to provide the proof, moron.

  14. Re:Not Googles Job by religionofpeas · · Score: 2, Insightful

    because a systematic bias will show anyway if there is one,

    If you don't compensate for job performance, the bias is meaningless. You need to learn a lot more about statistics.

  15. Re:Fucking Feminists by Cederic · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And yet.. nobody can find evidence of wage gaps within an employer.

    The internet should be full of examples. There should be dozens or hundreds just from the Fortune 500 companies alone.

    Yet.. there isn't. There are isolated individual cases. There is bullshit about total career earnings, or comparisons between contact centre staff and board members.

    Fuck this shit. I'm bored with it. I get paid less than my peers and I'm doing something about it: I'm quitting and getting another job. I'm not bitching about the fact that one of them is a different skin colour or that another is female, I'm doing something constructive about the situation.

  16. Re:Not Googles Job by serviscope_minor · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You don't have to be anti-anything to see that a major part of the issue is that some of the more 'enthusiastic' feminists are quite happy to lie about statistics, even when they're easily disproved:

    So? Some of the most enthusiastic anti-feminists and MGTOWs are also prepared to lie about statistics and completely make shit up. If you only focus on the nuttiest people you can find, then you will find that everyone you look at is incredibly nutty.

    If members of a movement make false statements,

    You can dismiss literally any movement, no matter how sensible, with that. Anything large enough to be a movement is large enough to attract at least one total nutcase. Even if the proportion is low in terms of raw numbers any large movement will have a lot of nutcases.

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