Accused of underpaying women, Google says it's too expensive to get wage data
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Obviously the real reason is that Google doesn't want to hand over the data. But you should never just hand data over to the government. Government lawyers can get pretty creative with spreadsheets of numbers.
This isn't just Google, it's important for all businesses to remember that the lawyers focus on the law, and done usually have access to the bigger picture. And even if they do, it's not their job to deal with it, they focus on winning in the legal arena.
I know one international telecoms company deliberately dragged out a legal case about pensions for well over a decade - of course many potential beneficiary's died during the case
All of that said, Google is not coming out looking like the good guy by fighting this case so hard. Their compensation analysts ought to be running these sorts of reports themselves. If they truly aren't, then that in itself is evidence (in my opinion) that Google is willfully neglecting its responsibility not to underpay its female employees.
>White males are certainly paid too much! They should make half of what minority employees do!
It certainly feels like this won't stop until that's the case.
>Its about bringing women and minorities to the same level.
I'm not sure I understand the difference? And I'm not sure other people do either. You're measuring from the average, so moving either moves the average which you're measuring from.
From my understanding, you cannot tell the difference, therefore:
"bringing down white males" == "bringing women and minorities to the same level"
>The comment is in poor taste
Personal perception. Nobody is telling anybody what to like or dislike. I had to read it twice to understand it, I think a little more obvious would have been better. But again, personal perception.
The legal team's ethics are not in question. They are upholding their fiduciary duty to be proactive, energetic representatives of what they consider -- or have been instructed -- is in Google's best interests.
Google is also perfectly capable of instructing its lawyers to drop this argument.
They have clearly chosen not to do so. It does them no credit.
The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs asked the technology giant to submit information in September 2015 about its equal opportunity program and to provide supporting documents as part of a scheduled compliance review. As a federal contractor, Google must agree to permit the federal government to inspect and copy records and information relevant to its compliance with the equal employment laws administered by OFCCP.
Google employees would be none the wiser about the fairness of their wages.
Source: US DoL website, https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/ofccp/ofccp20170104
Total Cost = Cost to acquire data ($200,000) + Back pay to employees ($20,000,000)
I predict that the Golden years of FB and Google are right now, they will slowly head into a plateau
As for Facebook, I think anyone who ever had a positive opinion of them should be evaluated by a psychiatrist.
The terms "Googley" and "Googler" quickly became the equivalent of nails on a chalkboard to me thanks to these people.
You clearly don't understand what a manager does if you believe what they do isn't work.
But then again, managers are very skilled at power games, and the ultimate sign of power is taking credit for what your subordinates produced.
IMO both of them are already on a plateau. Google keeps abandoning products, Facebook keeps buying promising startups and quietly shuts them down (Google does it too). In Google this mostly happens due to some weird geekdom culture / peer pressure thing (coding hipster-ism?), and in Facebook it's more like "we want to conquer the world".
Both companies' strategies are not sustainable. The world is already catching up and I suspect that now it's time for suing the hell out of everybody who isn't sharing their vision while being even slightly competitive to them (opinion, not a fact, no evidence for that, don't kill me).
One only needs to follow recent HN for news about decentralization efforts and slightly increased amount of articles about self-hosting to understand that a good part of the tech world is getting fed up with Google and Facebook.
I would. Where do I sign up?
A contract based on lies is fraud.
The information asymytry here is huge. It's worse than a sleazy car salesman showing a customer a doctored blue-book to inflate the price of an old junker.
Please tell me that your focus on "contracts" doesn't mean you are a sincere, "omg the right to contracts" libertarian?
Can we please focus on rational arguments instead of insults and ad hominems? This country needs much more rational discussion (like the previous comments) and much less name-calling.
On the meta-discourse level: is it appropriate to make fun of a belief that one honestly believes is Bad if I don't say that person X holds that belief and hence is bad?
Still, people should be less sensitive on the internet.
[2] Most educated adults, including me, are not lawyers and so do not know precisely when a contract is or is not enforceable, because the legal system is complex and arcane. This is distasteful to many because anyone who takes himself as an authority on what is just/unjust/moral/immoral is naturally liable to feel they should therefore be an authority on what is legal/illegal (since legality is intended to codify justice and morality or something like that). I suspect that many contracts-uber-alles-like sentiments (some of which I have entertained myself from time to time) stem from this unconscious yearning to know a priori what is legal or enforceable.
In such cases, the sentiment is not rational, nor is it a tactic for the pursuit of self interest.In my public schooling, I had two year-long classes about the structure and function of the United States government. One was in middle school and one was in high school; I was not required to take any course on the subject as part of undergrad. Neither course taught me much more about courts than that the Supreme Court is the highest court of appeal and interprets the Constitutionality of laws.
Courts are complicated and laws and regulations are different from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but there are some fundamental, low-level principles that apply to proceedings across most (possibly all?) courts in the US. An educated citizenry in the US would, ideally, have at least some exposure to these fundamentals; these basic principles (which would include at least a little on contracts) are too important for the vast majority of the population (i.e. almost all non-lawyers) to not understand.
I told a lawyer friend about this idea and she strongly agreed. She said that her sister had taken an undergrad class which roughly fit my description-- "pre-pre-law" was how she described it. Her sister's evaluation of the course was that it's description of legal principles and their operation in courts helped explain a lot of the mechanics of how government, private institutions, and society function.
No .. I just understand that's how most Western legal jurisdictions work.
Hadn't considered the compensation claim aspect but surely it could be argued it's just an emergent pattern - not as a result of any policy decision?
Would be a very interesting test-case ...
If/when the government does that, I think 2 things happen:
1. the government announces some punitive action against Google; things they must do, things they must pay, etc;
2. the probability of every Jane, Jill, and Hillary who worked for Google winning a wage discrimination case skyrockets, at least some workers file such cases or enter negotiations to settle such discrimination.
The Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 means (pardon my rough summarization) that a worker can sue over discriminatory pay even if the discrimination / 'lost' wages occurred a while ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilly_Ledbetter_Fair_Pay_Act_o...
But I was given to thinking property law and contract law were the fundaments of US law too?
Took a shower!
I think Google is being disrespectful to the citizens of this country. They are relying on leveraging this social movement of keeping the government out of their private lives. As if some old greasy fart, is sitting in some underground secluded vault reading your emails, texts, and whatever just for fun. But you have Google, Facebook, Apple, Uber, Microsoft, Twitter and so on writing complex algorithms to monetize where you have been, where you are, where you are going, what you read, how you shop, what you buy, using your phone to listen in on what commercials you are watching, where you are in the mall, who you are with, when you sleep and how you sleep or maybe even who you are sleeping with, what toys you buy, your phone number, extracting data from your emails and on and on. And these companies throw these pages of EULA agreements at you, and they know you don’t read them. They have an algorithm for that. Then some of these companies have the audacity to state that the “MAY SHARE” the data with third parties. Really? So just what part of your life do you consider PRIVATE? And more importantly, just what do you consider PRIVATE? And what do these companies tell you what their objective is in collecting all this data? “We are enhancing the consumers experience!”. If they really wanted to “enhance the consumer’s experience” allow the consumer the “OPT IN” and not throw a bunch of convoluted Setting screens to with obtuse worded options to “OPT OUT”. That is a lot of data that they extract, analyze and monetize. And Google says the Department of Labor’s request is more that they can handle and too costly to extract. How the heck do they even send out employee’s W-2s?
Would they actually be able to do that? Google has offices in many cities in many states, and in many countries. Different offices could be subject to different rules and regulations and reporting requirements when it comes to handling payroll. This could require that they keep different information in their system depending on where the employee works.
I'd guess that it might be cleaner and more robust to have separate systems in each office or region that keep this data for the relevant employers, rather than having one central system that is designed to store the union of everything anyplace Google might open an office requires.
It seems plausible to me that all they have in some central system is broad aggregate information, such as the total payroll for each office or region, with all the interesting details distributed.
That being said, and considering that a part of my job is to help gather data from 50+ différents sources with diferent data models, I can agree with google on one point. Gathering data from one point going forward is easy, gathering historical data from a system not designed with logging in mind is a huge pain.
As is usually forbidden in most democracy to issue a law with retroactive effects, it's maybe not a good thing to expect that retroactive dataset should be mandatory. That more of a work for historians and social-science researchers.
Sure, it might not be as easy as "just a SQL query". But if they can make cars which drive themselves, they can figure this out.
Googles 100k assertion here is bullshit. They did a calculation that handing that data over, or even just collating it, would leave them in a worse position than fighting it.
And if your answer is: "They just pay them less."
1) Why? What is the purpose of them doing this?
2) Why don't they also just pay men less as well?
3) Wages trend, in a competitive market, towards marginal productivity of labor. What is preventing competitors in the market for engineers from poaching all of the underpaid yet equally talented women at below market costs, say half the gap Google is assumed to be creating? Surely this would be a clear path towards extra profits, no?
Women also feel satisfied with compensation at one moment and have no desire to increase their working hours/responsibilities for a meager (if any) improvement in their quality of life (that would appear with higher salary). Men on the other hand, seem to have more of those crazy individuals that waste enormous hours and overachieve despite the meager improvement in quality of life, if we ignore the bragging rights it gives them. Also statistics, and obviously biology.
Not to mention the fact that accomplished women most often have older and more accomplished men as partners, which also removes an incentive for them to make more money.
It is also the case that women do accept part-time work positions (which makes them earn less) more than men.
Is it the patriarchy? Is it Google?
I'm pretty sure it's just the way it is.
In general, Men have a higher diversity in IQ and Risk Taking.
The TL;DR is that Men will have a tendency to take higher risks than women, which is then rewarded more, if it succeeds, however, it is punished more severely when one fails. Punishment generally involved poverty and unemployment.
This doesn't mean women cannot take risks, just that they have a lesser inclination to.
Negotiation for a wage on your job is a form of risk taking, in case of failure you can certainly sour your work relationships which ruins your long-term income projection.
There will be exceptions but they're not the norm.
However - it's entirely possible for the inputs into the algorithm to be skewed based on gender, and that's where I think the systematic gap may appear. A person's salary history can be incredibly gendered - women are less likely to negotiate for their first job (even if it wasn't at Google), and that initial gap can follow them for their entire career. Women are more likely to take time out of the workforce to care for family/children, which can result in lower pay when they return. Other companies known for high counteroffers (for example, Uber) may be biased against women and be less likely to give them a good offer. There are any number of reasons why a woman might have less negotiating leverage against Google than a man, and as long as offers are based on these inputs and not strictly on level and performance, it is easy to see how a gender gap might arise.
I mean, what do you propose should be done to combat this? Should people who put more time into their career not be rewarded more?
Further, you don't even need women to take time out more often from the workforce for there to be a problem. The current Median Age at Marriage for the USA[0] shows that men marry women about ~2 years younger. Assuming that both partners take equal time to care for the family, and assuming both partners started their careers at the same time, the moment the average married couple gets a baby they will skew ~3 career years(~2 + pregnancy) towards the man, until they get close to retirement age. Even if they split the family effort equally, those 3 years on average will still be in favor of the man, accruing more career experience and thus better pay.
How do you propose to fight this issue?
[0] - http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2011/12/14/barely-half-of-u-s...
I've noticed that many of these complaints about gendered things are arguments for a particular social arrangement (eg, no consequence to a break in career) and not arguments against sexism, as such.
I don't think we shoukd be using equality laws as a bludgeon to effect changes in society outside of things like sexism or racism: that's what causes Trumpian backlashes. Most people are onboard woth fighting sexism; it becomes a mixed bag when talking about proposals like "taking years off should have no result on earnings".
But, if the end result is that a man and a woman doing the exact same job with the same perf ratings at Google are paid differently, because the woman happened to be paid less at her previous job - is that fair?
There is a reason that NYC just outlawed companies asking for salary history.
I just find it dishonest to frame the question as about men and women, as you did just now, if your concern is that people who negotiate a worse first salary are paid less. You're at best co-opting an unrelated issue.
I would say that in answer to your question, it's not fair, just as it wasn't when it happened to two men, but I'm not sure it's something we should change.
I'm also going to say that you should stop framing it as a gender equality issue when it's not -- it's a capitalism implementation issue.
There is some profit opportunity for companies who take advantage of this, but it's not enough to erase the difference.
Consider, for example, how pervasive racial discrimination was (and still is) in business despite the fact that accepting minorities as customers and employees would be financially advantageous.
They'd either be doing a purely altruistic social good righting the injustice of sexist wage discrimination and/or making more money. That both avenues exist, implying enormous incentives, the discriminatory gap should disappear. Why isn't this happening? When Bezos said "Your margin is my opportunity"? Did he secretly imply an asterisk to that statement carving out the unspoken rule that he and his competitors certainly would not compete for the underpaid women labor?
You use the example of racial discrimination. So, is Silicon Valley filled to the brim with sexist hiring managers?
Are there no whistle blowers courageous enough to out their bosses that refused to pay equal rates when confronted with the discrepancies? The tech industry is one of the most progressive... are you telling me these progressive minded people are standing idly by at best or actively carrying out this travesty at worst?
But it doesn't. You can talk about "should" all you want but ultimately you need to look at the world.
I don't have answers to all of your questions. Certainly some companies are being hurt by this, and others take advantage. That doesn't eliminate the problem unless you believe in perfectly efficient markets with no friction, barriers to entry, etc.
Start with the data. See how men and women's pay stacks up. Once you know the outcome, then start asking questions about how it happens. (Note that I'm not saying what answer you'll find, only that you need to find the answer by looking at what happens, rather than making basic economic arguments.)
There are only two possibilities here. Either there is a wage gap, or there is not. If there is not, then you're being awfully strident about something where you could instead just point out "hey, this doesn't actually happen, here are the numbers." And if there is a gap, then your rhetorical questions don't eliminate it, so either the implication is wrong or there's something else going on.
I find arguments from economic efficiency and profit motive to be highly unconvincing. If stuff actually worked that way then you wouldn't have, for example, store brand products next to identical name brand products selling at a higher price, or a million other economically inefficient human behaviors we see.
http://www.payscale.com/data-packages/gender-pay-gap
What do we make of this statement, buried somewhat deep in the article (I would have made this the first line of the post):
"Nationally, when we control for job title, job level and other important influencers of wages (like years of work experience), women still only make 98 cents for every dollar earned by men."
I've seen similar from other studies, including a Harvard study that gets cited often.
I'm strident because I 100% think this is a political issue. It's gender politics. It's perhaps a lot of things. If the issue doesn't exist (certainly to the extent of "77% gap oh my!"), why do so many people get caught up in proclaiming the issue is a crisis?
I think it is a purposefully divisive issue who's propagation has serious consequences for women who are instilled with the idea they are being actively discriminated against, and who are lectured constantly that the only way they can be respected in modern society is by joining the workforce and being equally as career minded as the average ambitious man.
This social advocacy is perfectly fine. People can have a position on what they think the ideal role of women or men or whoever in society is. But be honest about it. And be tolerant of other viewpoints (namely, that perhaps many women would be happier at home, and those who otherwise would not be highly motivated to move up the corporate ladder shouldn't be shamed into having to do so.)
And damnit, be explicit about what you mean by "gap". Equal job, equal experience, equal "apples to apples" the gap is 2%.
If you don't see the obvious fact that people not explicitly stating the actual gap instead of disingenuously fooling people into believing it is 23%, then you won't understand why I'm strident about the issue. Those pushing it are without question strident about it, are they not?
I don't mind that you're strident about it, I mind that you're strident about pushing a bad argument.
1. Gender (man vs woman)
2. salary expectations (man wants 10% more than woman)
I could hire the woman and pay less because "sexism" or because it increases my profit (nobody knows for sure). My competitor will hire the man because the woman already has a job. Next time my competitor is faster and hires the woman and I'm left with the man and have to pay him 10% more.
We're (I assumed) talking about companies mandating lower wages for women. If the whole argument for some presumptive gender pay gap is that women demand less money, this would:
1) Be fixed by directing all of the ire and heat associated with this topic at the message:
"Women. Demand more money. If there's a gap, this explains it and therefore the power is in your hands." Is the "pay gap" politicized as a "Women aren't asking/expecting to get paid enough money in negotiations. They need to do this. We will work to get women to demand what they are worth."
Or, is it framed as: "America business is sexist. Our modern economy is sexist. Women are ---getting paid--- less than men as a result, and we need to change this." ?
2) Not the responsibility, or "fault" of companies paying wages the market will bear... or if you think it is, you're banging your head against a wall thinking you're going to get economic actors to act against their self interest when the path of least resistance is to get the other side of the transaction to act in theirs.
But since it's a contradiction to think equally qualified, motivated women don't want more money, then we can assume women want to get paid what they can get.
So we're left with the company being the one pushing wages down only on women, but not men. Because they're all sexist. Even the people in this thread who oppose the pay gap.. when it comes time to take part in hiring decisions they put their sexist hat on and line up for the patriarchy.
I leave you with this:
http://www.payscale.com/data-packages/gender-pay-gap
^Here's a strongly sympathetic post in support of the issue of "gender pay gap". They are true believers. Yet, lets look a little closer shall we:
Note how far down the page this little gem is placed:
"Nationally, when we control for job title, job level and other important influencers of wages (like years of work experience), women still only make 98 cents for every dollar earned by men."
98, my friend. Did you realize this whole controversy is over a 2% gap?
The pay gap (as popularly understood) does not exist. The data shows this. It is a political issue, as well as a cultural one, taking a stand on what certain people believe women should do with their life. They should not have to bear the burden of child rearing, and should want to have professional career ambitions equivalent to that of the average man. This is the position taken and pushed by activists concerned with the gender pay gap. One can be open to the viewpoint, like I am, that women should absolutely be encouraged to have a professional career, if they think that is right for them, and be compensated commensurate with their value. I'm not in support of socially mandating that path as the only acceptable, respectable one. I'm certainly not supportive of politicizing the issue of gender differences as it relates to family, career, and relationships etc by fooling people into believing that since "the average per person salary for all women across all jobs across all levels is 77% of the avg for all men across all jobs across all levels" is some economic and social crisis we have to politicize and legislate away. Its a wedge issue to create division.
I'll mention two things: the first is that other studies find that the 2% is closer to 5 or 7%. Still not 23 or 25%, but more significant. The second is that even that 2% number, over a lifetime and with interest is very likely something like an extra year's worth of income. That means retiring a year earlier, which I'd say is very significant.
In a equilibrium model based on perfectly identical, perfectly rational agents, yes.
And in a model of horseracing based on perfect, identical spheres rolling down a perfectly smooth slope, all race results will trend towards the acceleration predicted by g. And yet we observe differences in reality and accept that observable reality, not the model, is correct.
Equilibrium models are useful, but once you add the ability for agents to have varying preferences according to which other agent they are interacting with, you get emergent behaviour that doesn't show up in the original models.
It also makes you wonder about their statements that they have no gender pay gap. If you can't get the data together, how do you "know"?
Yet this particular bit of information is too expensive to make accessible and useful. They have this giant correlation machine, and they don't use it to know as much as they can about their own company? How convenient.
I know, "one does not simply", but still: aren't you supposed to keep salary records anyway. Wouldn't you keep them even if you didn't have to, just in case? Wouldn't you run some statistics over them, just to see the trends?
Obviously, as rayiner says, Alphabet have other reason not to hand over the data.
[1]: https://www.google.com/intl/en/about/ (meta description tag)
It's a court case. The attorneys wouldn't be doing their job if they didn't use every legal means at their disposal.
And they may in fact have a point (to an extent). Government shouldn't be able to accuse a firm of something, then demand the firm spend money assembling data to prove the governments case. The fact Google "makes a bunch of money so no big deal" (which is what the .gov attorneys are apparently arguing) is irrelevant to that principal.
First of all: when you sue someone, you do get to demand exactly that. They also get to demand it of you! It's called "discovery", and it's a bog-standard basic normal everyday part of lawsuits.
Second of all: if you have a look through the reporting on this, Google was being audited for compliance with equal-pay laws and refused to supply records the government said were relevant to the audit. So the government is now suing to force Google to hand over the records. Auditors are allowed to do that, and being required to assemble and hand over information is pretty much the literal definition of an audit.
And fishing expeditions (at the firms cost) shouldn't be allowed. We'll see what the court decides.
1. Get out of business, or
2. There is no second option.
So until I do I'll have to answer "no" to your question.
Direct quote of you.
This is exactly what the government is allowed to do. This is exactly how an audit works when they think they've found something.
The government needs the information to determine whether the company is in compliance. The company has the information. How else would you solve this, besides the government having the power to compel production of the information?
This isn't how an "audit" works at all, an "audit" and an accusation are two different things entirely. Your bias has apparently led you into reading things that aren't there. A common fallacy so don't feel bad.
"The government needs information"
I'm not sure it really does to this extent, but assuming you are right, how much legal responsibility does Google have to provide it?
And this is exactly what we are going to find out from the courts. Back to the original point, the attorneys for Google have no duty, and in fact, every duty, to minimize the amount of information provided.
"Government shouldn't be able to accuse a firm of something, then demand the firm spend money assembling data to prove the governments case."
Try telling that to the IRS, or OSHA, or any one of a dozen other organizations tasked with certain aspect of US business oversight. If the IRS says "a preliminary investigation showed that you may be underpaying taxes, please show us business records for such-and-such" you absolutely have to do it. It has nothing to do with a lawsuit, even, although a lawsuit is certainly going to follow if you don't comply.
If OSHA says "there's a string of unusual injuries that we believe were easily preventable at your workplace, please turn over employee training records and we'd like to do a walkthrough of your work site" -- you can't just say "No"
In this case, Google, a federal contractor, is suspected by the Department of Labor for systematically underpaying women. They have EVERY RIGHT to request relevant US employee records. This isn't "asking Google to prove their case," this is a reasonable demand for data that they have the right to.
If they were honest enough, they would have found a way to comply. This is just their attempt at lawyering out of the situation.
From a job listing for the North America Payroll Core Operations Lead: https://www.glassdoor.com/job-listing/north-america-payroll-... "Advanced scripting and extensive UltiPro knowledge"
Aren't Asians "overpaid" in the US tech industry? Any investigations into this? Of course not. This stinks of hidden agenda.
I'm genuinely curious -- is there an official enumeration?
I ask because there's no limit to the number of ways you can slice and dice a human population, based on a million facets each person has. So I wonder, where did the legislators draw the line? And why? Why not somewhere else?
I'll try to descend into your links once I have more time, but a TL;DR discussion on "why we drew the line here, not there" would be great too.
Is it mainly a function of how vocal or powerful a subpopulation is? Something else? What other subdivisions will become privileged next? Where is this trend headed?
And that's what they'd have to do anyway -- salary data wouldn't tell you if they had a discriminatory wage gap.
https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2017/04/salesforce-equal-pay...
Shouldn’t all this data be in a single consistent database anyway? I mean, Google can manage all historic payments people do via their payment processor, but can’t manage all historic wage payments automatically?
Based on what I know I find it inconceivable that Google doesn't have this data in a spreadsheet that could be emailed in a few seconds to whoever needs to see it.
By forcing the company to first hire more women it follows that you have to find women who are not in the top. To pay them the same is then just downright naive.
tldr Should we not be solving this at the bottom rather than top down, by placing the burden unfairly on the companies?
Besides, I've read that there's a lot of job hopping going on in SV for better pay, and that includes googlers. It's hard to see how one could make systematically underpaying a group of people work.
I want to start with base compensation for every seniority and every job title. Then adjust according to both inflation, location, as well as guaranteed yearly growth of salary.
If you are hiring the best you need to offer the best pay across the board. Google does this already.
Also, this is a systemic issue: Stop paying women less.
No wonder people can't get ahead.
Maybe better in the long run to not be seen as an easy mark, even if it causes some short term pain.
We won't achieve parity in the workplace simply because there is no parity in STEM programs (and particularly in Computer Science).
So, if everything was done w/ IA, I would just force a 50/50 split for employees to encourage girls to take up coding classes (at the tiny expense of coding abilities).
Everything about this is so wrong. It all comes down to laundering money out of Google, thinly veiled with this false idea of "justice" from incorrectly used statistics.