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Google Found it Paid Men Less Than Women For the Same Job (techcrunch.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: The story we're used to hearing is that women get paid less than men. In Google's case, according to its own internal pay audit, it turned out male-identified Level 4 Software Engineers received less money than women in that same role. That led to Google paying $9.7 million to adjust pay for 10,677 employees. It's not clear how many of the employees who received pay adjustments were men but Google does cite the underpaying of men as a reason for why the company paid more in adjustments for 2018 than in 2017. But The New York Times reports men received a disproportionately higher percentage of the money.
The ladies feel like they are being paid less and how dare Google suggest their feelings aren't valid?!!! I expect they'll correct this correction within a couple weeks.
Paying everyone the same amount for the same job reeks of communism. One person could be a better "Level 4 Software Engineer" than another. I've seen this time and again.
While that is a nice idea, for many large companies pay withing a level is pretty much withing a defined band; bonuses and promotions are often the way to recognize higher perfromance. It may be that Google discovered a wide enough gap on individual compensation within the band to decide to close the gap; i.e. for simialr years of service or ratings some clustered near the top and i\otehr near the bottom. It's quite possible that the difference is do to workers being in different departments and thus having bosses that are more or less generous with salary bumps..
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Women are more likely to get a college degree (in the US anyway) and that has had a knock-on effect in job opportunities and futures for a huge number of US men.
It's not really a surprise that women are starting to get paid more in some jobs. They can't get men into those jobs to begin with because more and more of them aren't getting the education they need to get there. So there's fewer people overall to compete for those jobs.
Oh sure now that the ladies are making more.
Hilarious. Called the Women Are Wonderful effect.
Both men and women treat women better across cultures as a result. So when women say they are being paid less, well women don't lie, so it must be true. When women are being paid more, who cares!
Now we get to watch people who claim to be feminists in that they believe in treating women and men equally will not in any way whatsoever fight against women being paid more than men.
It's very often that people doing the exact same job will be in different pay grades. That's based upon your years of experience often, or how well you negotiated after the interview, or just based on whim (were they more desparate to fill that slot this year than they were in the past). It's only after the person is hired and has been working awhile that you learn that the high paid worker is actually less productive than the lower paid one, at which point it is very difficult to fix the situation.
The writer wanted the reader to wrongfully conclude that women were once again somehow slighted. Carefully chosen words to make it sound biased for click-bait purposes, I suppose.
Google is actively trying to increase the diversity of their workforce. That means they are discriminating for under represented groups. Differences in pay are the easiest way things are subsidized / discriminated for.
In the supply of Level 4 Software Engineers, I'd actually think that Google would have to pay females significantly more than males to attract them, since they are almost certainly represented in the pool of Level 4 Software Engineers much less than men. Rare attributes are more expensive than common attributes.
It's not possible to treat people equally, and try to increase the diversity of a workforce that draws from an uneven pool of people. If 9/10 CS graduates are men, then why would companies be expected to have anything other than a 9/10 distribution in their workforce? When the expectations are different, then there has to be some sort of discrimination / subsidy in effect.
Isn't this basic economics, combined with basic statistics?
Unfortunately, job descriptions rarely map cleanly to individuals, particularly those with exceptional skills in a few areas.
I've known Software Engineers that had zero interest in being "leaders" or "architects" - perhaps because they eschewed conflict, were somewhat antisocial, didn't like being responsible for other peoples' work, or just didn't like doing that sort of work. However they were absolutely awesome at some particular aspect of their job such as having an unparalleled ability to track down and eradicate concurrency related heisenbugs which occur extremely rarely and leave core files that are quite inscrutable. These bugs can hold up releases by months, piss off Fortune 50 customers who have spent big bucks on your product, and harm the reputation of the company. Noticing and resolving them quickly (hopefully before Alpha) is generally far more important than any new feature in a release.
There, unfortunately, often isn't a proper standard job description for such people but they can be the most valuable employee on your staff and almost impossible to replace and worth twice as much salary as the typical "conformant" Level X (who is striving to get to Level Y). They are not likely to be promoted because that puts them in a situation they would find untenable - for example, having to engage in conflict over designs - and be doing less of the more valuable work they love to do and are excellent at. These people tend to be stuck at Level X, get great bonuses every year, and end up at the top of their pay grade -- yet they are way underpaid compared to their actual contributions.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
No. The BBC was forced to reveal the salary of everybody earning above a certain amount, which revealed that the highest paid TV presenters were all men.
The women complained, so a pay review was initiated. Top salaries got cut and people being underpaid got pay rises.
More men than women got pay rises. For the record, 52% of the BBC appearing on TV are female and there's absolutely no fucking shortage of women wanting to get a job on TV.
So it's not necessarily market supply/demand at all. It's far more likely to be anti-male bias, which is sadly increasingly apparent in all walks of life.