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Comment by pylua | Hacker News Reader

In theory it is not possible to report 100% accuracy here, as I do not have to reveal my gender or race to the company I work for, correct ? That is unless not specified is a category.

I personally feel like it is not the companies business to know this about me. Is there a legal requirement around this ?

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The data is entirely self and voluntarily reported by employees. There are no double checks for accuracy or typos or attempts to make it representative beyond, “If everyone fills this out, it will be helpful for everyone.”

It is useful as far as it goes, but one can only draw limited conclusions from what is there.

Business Insider doesn’t really caveat it’s reporting very well here. And it should.

This is very poor reporting indeed. BI claims this spreadsheet "gives us our best look yet at how much the tech giant is paying" despite the data being entirely self-reported by employees and completely unvetted. The odds that sample in the sheet is representative of the broader population are vanishingly small, even if the data were accurate.

Perfect example is the report that "The employee with the highest base salary reported being a level 7 software engineer with a base salary of $718,000 and a total compensation package of just under $800,000."

I suppose there might be some engineer making $720k in base and $80k in bonus/equity combined, but I've never heard of such a thing. There are obviously errors in the data. Yet BI doesn't question the data at all.

Disclosure: I work at Google. Opinions are my own and do not reflect those of my employer.

The people I see passing that sheet around are the same kind of people I see complaining about the company a lot. There must be a skew.

I believe the data is being collected to help prevent discrimination based on any of those characteristics.

I get that, but I am wondering if there is a legal right to privacy here.

Besides , is it anyone’s business as to what I identify as ? Is it ethical to force me to reveal this ?

Most forms I have seen asking for this information now include the option to not disclose it. “Prefer not to answer”

This is run entirely by employees with no company involvement.

The second sentence of the article says "voluntarily submitted". Nobody was forced to reveal anything.

I am questioning how anyone can decision anything based off any data regarding this topic accurately , including governments or courts. Seems like it is all good faith but no way to validate the results.

The company itself says it keeps thorough and detailed data about all this. So presumably the courts and government would use that version.

Reporting is entirely voluntary, so there are no concerns around that as far as the original collections go. No one is forced to report anything.

The person leaking it is acting unethically though. It has no whistleblower value of any kind, and betrays those who filled it out thinking it would be internal only.

Company wide things were being leaked at G within hours of announcement nearly a decade ago. :( Anyone who didn’t expect it just really wasn’t paying attention. Not that it excuses it, but c’mon.

Versions of this spreadsheet have existed for almost ten years maybe longer. Leaking it is a relatively new phenomenon.

I remember that it got leaked literally within months of creation, hah. Well over 7 years ago now?

Maybe not the exact same spreadsheet, but the first one. It would be surprising if it was different though.

Legally, the company can ask your gender and race, but you aren't required to answer. It's illegal to use either of those in the hiring process, so they avoid even asking until you're already hired. And imo they shouldn't ask period.

I can't access the article, even via the archive link (infinite captchas), so idk what what BI is reporting. But the original sheet is employee-created, so identity stats are probably not coming from the company's own database.

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