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.

Comments

Yes but that isn't how they feel

[Shaitan]

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.

Re:Does it matter?

[Darinbob]

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.

Supply and Demand?

[brian.stinar]

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?

Re:Supply and Demand?

[grasshoppa]

Equality of outcomes is crazy, equality of opportunity is where energy should be focused...if needed. If you look at the feminist utopias of Iceland or Finland, you find a greater degree of gendered separation of work. Almost as if, when given the choice, men and women choose different professions.

Of course, that kind of talk got Damour fired, so what do I know.