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Google Businesses The Almighty Buck Technology

Google Found it Paid Men Less Than Women For the Same Job (techcrunch.com) 297

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
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.
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Google Found it Paid Men Less Than Women For the Same Job More

Google Found it Paid Men Less Than Women For the Same Job

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  • Does it matter? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by war4peace ( 1628283 )

    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.

    • Re:Does it matter? (Score:4)

      by Registered Coward v2 ( 447531 ) on Monday March 04, 2019 @04:34PM (#58215164)

      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..

      • Re:Does it matter? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Darinbob ( 1142669 ) on Monday March 04, 2019 @05:00PM (#58215334)

        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.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dryeo ( 100693 )

          And how do you decide who is the most productive? Most lines of code? Most bug fixes? Most hours spent at work?

          • How effective they are at actually getting stuff done? Not even using metrics or such, it's easy to see someone who is not actually getting work done on time versus someone who is very effective and contributing. Ie, low productivity person is not closing ticket issues assigned, difficulty in adding simple features or doing basic debugging; versus someone who implements lots of features and quickly resolves bug issues that are filed. Boiling down to "is the company getting its money's worth from this per

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by dasunt ( 249686 )

              How effective they are at actually getting stuff done? Not even using metrics or such, it's easy to see someone who is not actually getting work done on time versus someone who is very effective and contributing. Ie, low productivity person is not closing ticket issues assigned, difficulty in adding simple features or doing basic debugging; versus someone who implements lots of features and quickly resolves bug issues that are filed. Boiling down to "is the company getting its money's worth from this person

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          That's just blaming "market forces" for your own poor behaviour. If you were desperate enough to hire someone you were willing to offer more money, you should also offer your current employees that much so they don't leave.

          "This person negotiated better" isn't a valid excuse either, unless the job is salary negotiation.

      • You can be working as a Level 4 Software Engineer for a year or for 10 years. Surely there's a difference. I am a Level 3 grade in what I do, have been for over 8 years. Should I be a level 4? Yes, by all accounts. Why am I not? Politics at work. I lack some "soft skills" (namely being able to aptly asskiss). Nothing technical preventing me from acceding to the next level. So I am paid in the upper margin of Level 3 band. There is someone at Level 4 who is less technical than me but customers love her becau

        • You can be working as a Level 4 Software Engineer for a year or for 10 years. Surely there's a difference.

          I would expect when doing salary comparisons time of service would be a consideration; although in some cases new hires start at a higher salary due to market cases. In such cases, companies often give across the board raises to keep staff happy.

          And there's one more thing you're overlooking when saying: "for many large companies pay withing a level is pretty much withing a defined band" - you forgot to add "and within the same state/country". Having me as an example, my 3rd world country salary for a level 3 in a global corp is about 1/8th of the salary for the same level in the USA. So what should I do? Demand equal payment? Because we ARE doing the same thing, with arguably the same success.

          Companies pay what local markets demand, not what the highest does. Often, that's why the work is there because it is cheaper.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tomhath ( 637240 )

      It isn't about individual differences, it's about systemic discrimination.

      It's also in the company's interest to ensure employees feel they're treated fairly, otherwise they'll exercise their capitalist prerogative to leave and find another job.

      • Actually, that is probably why women are paid more - they're scarcer and equal opportunity employers want them to meet diversity quotas. The job I'm at now has several hundred white male IT contractors (and 2 female, both India natives) so they can show their diversity in employees (which are far more balanced in gender and color ).

        • Actually, that is probably why women are paid more - they're scarcer and equal opportunity employers want them to meet diversity quotas. The job I'm at now has several hundred white male IT contractors (and 2 female, both India natives) so they can show their diversity in employees (which are far more balanced in gender and color ).

          Yeah, but... shouldn't that money come from the advertising budget?

      • You are right. I will demand to be paid the same amount as my USA-based colleagues. OR ELSE! :)

    • It could be that women are less likely to seek promotion, causing them to end up with a disproportionally large number of high performing level 4s. I don't know how it is at Google, but here "level 4" is pretty much entry level. So, without looking at performance, and the pay distribution in the other levels it's hard to draw conclusions

      • I expect Google trying to change its culture, worked to hire more women, new employees tend to get paid more as they are negotiation on a different Supply/Demand level then when the older employee got hired. Being right now Unemployment is low meaning for these high demand jobs there are short supply. Crating higher costs for new employees.
        Being Google has adjusted salaries to everyone, probably means just that has happened.

    • Not exactly. Some people are better **software engineers** than others. That's why they were promoted to Level 4. But the idea is, within a given level, the difference should be close enough that a big company doesn't have to negotiate salary with 10,000 different employees individually. Here's what "Level 4 Software Engineer" makes. If you want more, do better work to get promoted to Level 5 (or whatever is next up the chain).

      • You still negotiate individually. It just becomes a negotiation about which job category the employee is in next year.

        The good ones are ready to 'vote with their feet' at a moments notice. 'Strict corporate policies' mean _nothing_. 'Department raise budgets' mean _nothing_. Those are just management lies for chumps.

        Also: Once you've gone to the trouble of finding a better offer, NEVER accept the counter from the place that was trying to 'get away with it'. They haven't changed, they're just momentaria

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by epine ( 68316 )

          The good ones are ready to vote with their feet at a moments notice.

          If you can trust Laszlo Bock's book, Work Rules: Insights from Inside Google (2015), Google had a very aggressive policy of matching compensation to achievement so as to retrain their best employees.

          His comment on bands: if all the corporation in SV decide to trap people in bands, the best people will simply reprice themselves on the open market every two years. That said, the argument that you're exceptional probably doesn't make itself wi

      • Re:Does it matter? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by uncqual ( 836337 ) on Monday March 04, 2019 @05:37PM (#58215582)

        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.

        • But that's why I'd assume they added Levels so that they can still promote those - just call them "Rock Star" developers within the Software developer track up to level 80 and keep them at what they are good at and don't force them onto a management position to advance their career.

          • At some point, moving from one level to the next becomes a very lengthy process. Much like in sports, for example tennis. Imagine top 10 as the uppermost level, entering it could take years of work. At the same time, a lower level (e.g. top 901-1000) is much more dynamic. And it makes no sense to have 80 levels of skill. How do you fit an engineer in exactly level 74, but not 73 or 75?

            • I used Lvl80 as an example for some high level but I don't think there is an actual level cap. So I guess you get promoted through the levels as long as you learn new stuff and improve.

              • The problem is defining the levels. What defines level 10? What defines level 11? What defines level 2186?

                • What defines senior project lead? What defines project manager, senior system architect, division manager etc?

                  Simply, at current stage, promotion path means you lead 'line' position and must enter 'management' position at certain stage. The levels could map requirements for current promotion path 1:1, simply whenever you're up for a promotion, you just get to choose if you want to enter a management position, or a parallel 'line' position.

      • It's job level, country, and how close to the maximum that level is.
        If it's level 4 out of 10, then yes the difference between salaries (within the same geographical area) should be relatively small, maybe 10-15%. But at level 9 of 10, you might be sitting there for 10 years before becoming "a god of $skills", and the salary band should be much larger. You have to give small raises to a senior engineer, and if after 8 years of work as a senior engineer, they get a freshly-appointed senior engineer colleague

    • Then they get promoted to Level 5. I will guarantee based on my experience over a few decades, and what I know first hand as a manager, is that "better" does not matter very much. Starting alary is most definitely not based on performance. Your annual raise may be based on performance, but often only partially. If a bad worker starts with pay $25K higher than you, it will take you a very long time for your annual 3% raise to catch up because that worker is probably getting a 2% raise. Bonuses count for m

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Targon ( 17348 )

      There are probably different pay rates for the same "level", so level 4 would be a range, but on the flip side, if they hire men and women at different times and offer better pay to new hires, there will come a point where the people who have been there longer are actually making less money. This goes along with the situation where there are significantly more men working in technology positions, so companies look to hire more women. The women they hire get offered a better rate of pay(job should be an

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Hognoxious ( 631665 )

      For suitably "larger breasted" values of "better".

    • Pay adjustments like this isn't communism, it is making sure they are getting paid the market amount.

      The problem a lot of companies have is when they hire new employees they offer them a competitive salary, however this competitive salary, can be more then it was for the person who got hired for the same job last year. Meaning the person who got hired last year, may leave that job and get a new one who will be paying the higher rate that is demanded. The company realizing the Supply and Demand of that job

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jrumney ( 197329 )
      If they are a better Level 4 Software Engineer, then they should be promoted to Level 5 more quickly. Paying people the same for the same job doesn't prevent merit based career advancement.

      • What if there isn't a level 5? Or what if Level 5 is the highest? It could take years to gain enough experience and skill to reach level 5.

        • What if you only have 10 levels, and you're level 10 ? Where do you go from there ? Nowhere.

          That's why these jobs go to level 11.

        • Oh, then you're screwed. Because the laws of physics prevent the existence of level 5. If the management ever introduced level 5, because there are employees at level 4 who deserve a promotion, that would make the universe to collapse!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Z80a ( 971949 )

      And this is generally compensated by giving the better one a better title.

    • But it's the only way to combat bias.

      Well, either that or making everyone's salary available on a public list. It's the knowledge imbalance that generally drives the pay disparities.

    • Wouldn't he be Level 5 then?

    • Paying everyone the same amount for the same job reeks of communism. One person could be a better "Level 4 Software Engineer" than another.

      Absolutely. But that's what performance ratings are for. People with higher performance ratings get larger bonuses, more equity and bigger raises (and, eventually, promotions). But if Google HR decided that a base pay adjustment was needed, then that must mean that women were getting higher pay after accounting for performance rating history.

      Two people with the same job category and the same performance history should make the same amount of money, and this should be true regardless of their gender. If

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by labnet ( 457441 )

      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.

      Yep. Equality of outcome (women 50%) is stupid, because why draw the line there; what about black women, what about transgender black women what about mexicans, you can slice and dice it forever. Why IT, what about concreters or nursing?
      The Scandinavians have already shown, that when you try your hardest to have equality of the sexes, the LESS women do STEM, not because they don't have the brains, but because they would rather have social jobs rather than 'things' jobs.

    • In that case, they should be a "Level 5 Software Engineer", surely?

      > Paying everyone the same amount for the same job reeks of communism

      Only if you're one of those weirdly brainwashed Americans who equate publicly funded public utilities like health and education with socialism.

    • A better solution would be to have job titles (and thus pay levels) reflect skill, and then have tight salary bands for the job level. Transparency is good for everyone. The employee knows what their boss thinks of them and can have frank discussions about how to improve (or why their boss is missing their contributions). Coworkers know how much credence to give comments from each other, at least how skilled the person making them is. And also how much to expect to ask of each other. The boss benefits

    • Oh look, the "capitalist" assumes that people are paid according to how better they are and not according to how much leverage they have over management (a combination of several factors, being "better" is just one of them)

  • Sexism (Score:3)

    by Suren Enfiajyan ( 4600031 ) on Monday March 04, 2019 @04:29PM (#58215124)
    There is still sexism in this world, I told you!

  • Yes but that isn't how they feel (Score:5, Funny)

    by Shaitan ( 22585 ) on Monday March 04, 2019 @04:32PM (#58215150)

    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.

  • Uh (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    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 point of an adjustment is to adjust the lower paid party disproportionately to the higher paid party. So what is the problem here? Oh, just looking for something to bitch about? Carry on then.

  • Reality is.... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 04, 2019 @04:35PM (#58215170)

    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.

    • Re:Reality is.... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by geekmux ( 1040042 ) on Monday March 04, 2019 @04:49PM (#58215272)

      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.

      Are women (or men for that matter) also more likely to obtain an actual useful degree?

      Even a 100% college graduate rate isn't worth a shit if the end result is a nation full of social justice warriors who majored in transgender studies.

    • Re: Reality is.... (Score:4, Informative)

      by c6gunner ( 950153 ) on Monday March 04, 2019 @04:53PM (#58215290) Homepage

      That's hilarious. I guess you haven't bothered looking at the degree distribution in computer science and STEM more broadly.

    • 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.

      True.

      It's not really a surprise that women are starting to get paid more in some jobs.

      This doesn't follow. I think you're bad at stats. If 95% of people getting a degree gating to the highest paid jobs are women, we would expect women to make more overall. We wouldn't expect those people in the same job to have a pay differential.

    • Another possibility is that women may stick around longer which would reflect in their pay

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It's more subtle than that. There are far more men with CS degrees, but sometimes they are not being paid as much at the start of their careers. Later in their careers they tend to do better than women. On average, caveat caveat caveat etc.

  • Stole from Peter to pay Paula (Score:3)

    by WillAffleckUW ( 858324 ) on Monday March 04, 2019 @04:54PM (#58215304) Homepage Journal

    The problem was that Google took from the total pool per job classification, robbing Peter to pay Paula, when Paula was underpaid relative to the total group, but this meant less left to pay Peter.

    They should have lifted Bill's pay package compensation as a senior exec to pay Paula, while not reducing the pool for Peter, under the Peter Piper Principle, which says to pay Peter Piper you take the compensation package away from the school principles.

  • Supply and Demand works! (Score:3)

    by PackMan97 ( 244419 ) on Monday March 04, 2019 @04:54PM (#58215306)
    1. Tech companies are craving a diverse workforce and seek to hire more female software developers 2. For decades, women have been avoiding computer science and technical degrees as well as avoiding jobs in the tech industry. Therefore The demand to hire female coders has significantly exceeded the supply of talent to fill those jobs. Therefore, in order to hire a female tech worker, companies are having to offer above market salaries. I do not understand the problem here. Isn't everything working as expected?

    • Do you post on DBR?

    • Re:Supply and Demand works! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Cederic ( 9623 ) on Monday March 04, 2019 @07:35PM (#58216382) Journal

      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.

  • I'm wondering how it was calculated? Was is just raw salary, salary + available benefits, or salary + used benefits? I suspect women use more of the benefits than men do. Women are more likely to stay home when kids can't go to school. Men are often more likely to have unused vacation. Also in term of health benefits, women tend to be the more expensive gender.

    • in term of health benefits, women tend to be the more expensive gender.

      Is that really true Do you have any stats to back that up? Because I thought that was solely due to the fact that women disproportionately use end-of-life care.

      Men are often more likely to have unused vacation.

      Well, that's a shame. We need to get away from the idea that unused vacation is acceptable.

  • The job of management is to get somebody to do something they don't want to do for less than they're willing to do it for.

  • Supply and Demand? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by brian.stinar ( 1104135 ) on Monday March 04, 2019 @05:30PM (#58215534) Homepage

    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?

    • It's not that all companies are really expected to have balance. Just the really well known companies with really great careers. The failed startups and mom and pops paying below market are OK to hire all men, which provides the 9/10 balance.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        It's difficult for smaller companies, and the feeling right now is that if the larger ones with hundreds or thousands of employees can make good progress it will filter down eventually.

    • That may work for promoting diversity at a single company. But it does nothing to promote diversity in the industry. If 25% of the people working in software are women, and Google hires 50% women, it doesn't change the fact that 25% of the people working in software are women. All it does is force the ratio to be skewed more towards men in the non-Google companies. The overall percentage for the industry remains 25% women.

      If you believe in diversity, it has to be promoted on the supply side. That mea

      • Re:Supply and Demand? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by grasshoppa ( 657393 ) on Monday March 04, 2019 @07:09PM (#58216230) Homepage

        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.

    • 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.

      I agree with this. Furthermore, I think this is fully justifiable based on value, not just rarity. Diversity of viewpoint has value in and of itself. If two people are exactly as good at designing and implementing software but one of them has a less-common background, that person is actually worth more to the team because they bring their "hard" skills and something else besides.

      But your economic argument is certainly correct... or it would be if Google were competing against other employers who all paid

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      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.

      If the company is a really great place to work they can often pay less, because people are willing to trade a bit of cash for a better work life. I'd take a bit less money if the work was interesting or the terms of employment were good (no sick day quota or booking time off for the doctor, flexible hours, autonomy etc.)

      When it comes to women and other underrepresented groups, paying a decent wage is important but so is stuff like having decent policies for parents with young kids or managers who encourage

  • Tab-users vs space-users (based on the user's real preference not project's coding guidelines) vim vs emacs? In the end everyone within the same position will have to have the same salary...
  • "The story we're used to hearing is that women get paid less than men" - the short version is most studies are exaggerated or falsified but the wage gap does exist but it is 100% due to women going to college for less high paying jobs in the first place.

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