Yahoo ex-employee sues, alleging performance review manipulation, gender bias
latimes.com
latimes.com
In many courts, similar cases like this have been laughed off. In today's world, in many established companies the gender bias (female given priority) is a real form of discrimination. At my University (a top 10), the average female graduates where picked off by Google, MS and the likes - the extremely hard working, talented and passionate grads (male) couldn't even get interviews at big G half the time.
It's an interesting world we live in, where discrimination is now being fought with discrimination.
I've also heard of review manipulation to "rebalance" the buckets if the numbers appear to demonstrate bias.
Anyway, Marissa is certifiably idiotic for adopting the GE/Microsoft stack rank system.
I have a feeling this lawsuit will actually go somewhere.
and allowing only women to appeal sounds like an automatic win on sex discrimination grounds.
Sounds like HR had a quota to fill and took the easy route and screwed up.
Its incompetence in Yahoos HR function
That doesn't mean he was competent.
Obviously he was competent enough to get a promotion by whatever metric they were using.
I'm not saying this was the case, but don't assume just because he was promoted or because they gave him a leave of absence (!!) that it must mean he was great.
I suppose it would explain some other things about how Yahoo's been doing recently.
For every individual, every probability is always 50/50 - either something happens, or not. If an individual, a man, is affected negatively by a pro-women policy, he won't forget it for a lifetime. Because he is not a statistic, he is a person that has only one life to live.
Personally, if I were affected by this, or a colleague were, I'd find another job immediately, and watch the ship sinking from a safe distance.
> Not judging the merit of the complaints, but...
And neither of us would be talking about this one specific company and one specific employee at that company who had one specific problem, and has chosen to accuse the company of discrimination.
This is how “linkbait” works: People are already heavily biased to believe something-or-other, and they charge in and read the post through the lens of whatever they want to believe, and to argue whatever they wanted to argue.
If we don’t actually judge this case and this post by the specific merits of a specific claim by a specific person about a specific circumstance in a specific company, we might as well just spin a wheel every morning, read off whatever hot-button topic comes up, and just start commenting.
also I took the above quote to mean that epxs wasn't implying that those assertions were to be applied in this case. Nothing in the post implies epxs was referring to this specific example.
My past experience grounded in using HN since it was founded is that with certain hot-button topics (racism, sexism, IQ tests, codes of conduct, &c.) devolve very quickly into threads that are indistinguishable from one another, with people staking out entrenched positions and virtually cutting and pasting their comments from one discussion into another.
The only way to keep a high signal-to-noise ratio is to either kill all posts that touch on hot-button topics, or to be disciplined about staying on-topic about the post being discussed.
The degree to which my, yours, or anybody else’s knee-jerk reactions are based in reality or fantasy is orthogonal to the problem of hot-button topics producing “generic" discussions.
Summary: My opinion is that it’s bad for HN if discussions about posts devolve into generic discussions that are indistinguishable from each other.
A better way to keep a high signal-to-noise ratio is chasing off poor arguments - banning certain topics or tangents from the OP is clumsy moderation.
> The degree to which my, yours, or anybody else’s knee-jerk reactions
exp's post is "a knee jerk reaction", but you aren't judging it invalid? It certainly sounds like you are...
Consider a firm which operates at equilibrium (where peak profit is achieved), with a ratio of 80% male, 20% female. Artificially capping the number of males allowed in the corporation, or artificially increasing the number of females pushes the corporation out of equilibrium thus reducing profits in the long term.
On the flip side of the coin, if the firm discriminates (equilibrium 50% male, 50% female but it chooses 80/20) - the economy punishes the firm by reducing its potential profits.
Companies should be hiring on skill, and culture fit. Not to fill a quota or someone's agenda.
It's true that there is a gap within genders in tech - but the answer isn't reducing another equally skilled person's chances of getting the job - this is bad for everyone (except the person who got the job). Instead, we need to look at the root cause and try to learn why the gap is so obvious. Fix the issue at the source, rather than using affirmative action as a bandaid. Maybe it even turns out not to be an issue. Who knows.
As opposed as I am to discrimination (including "reverse" discrimination), i have to point out that you're missing part of the picture.
Companies are optimising for profit, and there are many things that influence it. Including, for example, the media - and unfortunately, in the current (pro-female, anti-male) media climate, it pays off to be seen as pro-women - such companies simply get a better media exposure and extra praise! In other words, if the whole country supports discrimination, it might be in the best interest of a company to go along with it.
In general, I don't think we, as a society, should expect companies to influence the culture (in a positive way) - it would have to be the other way around.
* = just in terms of making a choice, not a negative meaning.
(new account because I would like to remain employed)
Actually, my reasoning is coming from an entirely different point of view. My basic assumption is that people follow incentives. Markets (i.e. libertarianism) are very good at providing certain kinds of incentives (basically, they encourage competition and drive the world toward greater and greater efficiency), but there are also well-known examples of market failures: monopoly, duopoly, cartels; externalities (pollution, resource exhaustion); barriers to entry and wasteful competition (main example being infrastructure - do we really need 2 companies digging through the whole city to establish 2 sets of separate, but otherwise identical phone lines?); agency problem; tragedy of the commons and free-rider problem (i.e. who pays for the fire department). In this case, I believe that government regulation is required and welcome; it has to be carefully enacted and continuously evaluated to make sure it results in increase of competition in the markets (otherwise we get e.g. copyright, which significantly hurts competition). I don't think neoreaction is a good example here; I believe that parts of EU, allegedly Denmark in particular (with their "flexicurity" style labor markets) are particularly good examples.
These critiques (and more) are prominent in the neoreactionary literature on liberalism/libertarianism (but nowadays they have more important things to talk about). An interesting hypothesis of neoreaction is that liberal ideals, or even a libertarian world, will invariably lead to democratic socialism -- due to the power of the mob.
Personally, the foundation of my disillusionment with liberalism/libertarianism is the fact that people are so much more than economic units, and that collectivism trumps individualism. What's important is preservation of heritage, culture, tradition, creation of art in all its beautiful forms, and the maximization of humanity's potential.
I can't see liberalism/libertarianism getting us much further than working on advertising systems to push junk food, while NASA spends half its time making reports to get a few more handouts, and cultures worldwide are systemically destroyed in the name of economic growth.
but since I've been in CA, I've only ever saw the token black guy in every office.
The point is that A will very often perceive this as a negative outcome.
On the other hand, the creator of Dilbert just shrugged it off and started a new job each time his employer said they couldn't promote another white male.
A 50/50 m/f ratio is not a statistical "proof of equality".
Seriously though, 'often' is just a weasel word if you don't specify the context. This might qualify as a mechanism for dismissing valid complaints...
Often is most of the time. People perceive relative changes as terrible. That's why they arrested Parks instead of agreeing with her.
"A lot of civil rights activist" - which ones and why? Maybe their reasoning is sensitive to their particular interest.
I understand what 'often' means, I don't agree with it as a generality. Even 'People perceive relative changes as terrible' isn't always true.
Is your assertion that every other aspect of these women's employment is equal to or greater than the corresponding aspect for the men?
"Hey let's end slavery."
"No, I rather secede."
Civil war
Now name an instance where it was fixed by giving them much better treatment than everyone else.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_America...
Has this been systematically tested in some way, or is it simply assumed?
(I think I've seen this happen, so I'm not arguing it doesn't occur, but I am asking what the basis is for assuming it's a primary driver of systemic discrimination. The words "very often" seem like they cross a threshold to generality.)
(I understand, percentage wise, due to bias or whatever, it's likely a higher percent of things would be overturned for women, but it's not like the error rate for non-women was 0 anyway, so why not just make a process that nobody is going to complain about?)
Instead, the thing that seems "okay" on that point would be "let the men appeal too" (IE my parent is wrong no matter what!)
Management is not a monolith.
And if your a big company and take the piss in court you get the book thrown at you by the Triibuneral see Imarsat a few years ago.
(Let's ignore the obvious point - not everyone is malicious, some companies really do want to try to make sure people get correct ratings and get rid of discrimination, and aren't worried about the cost of lawsuits. These companies exist, i've worked at them)
Again, i think you missed the point (I guess i'll be more explicit when it's a touchy subject like this). If you read the allegation, women were allowed to appeal, men were not.
Someone tried to say that this was okay, because gender bias affects women more.
But it's not okay. It makes no sense. Either you believe some people are getting terminated wrongly, in which case both women and men should be able to appeal, or you don't, in which case nobody should get to appeal :)
If this is true, then there's a huge problem, but I'm willing to believe (pending more information) that the policy isn't this blatantly sexist, and that the truth is somewhat more nuanced.
Given Yahoo's track record it is much easier to believe this whole mess was due to ineptitude by management/hr, yet sexual discrimination is a much 'sexier' headline so they went with that.. and oh look all the "super smart" people on hacker news still "circle jerk" over it. It's almost like were not a superior community and are quite comparable to the rest of the internet..
I kind of understand it, it's easier to motivate people to work hard if they believe they're at war (as Joseph Goebbels once astutely pointed out), but my god, what a shitty way to build products.
That's actually hilarious. Our defense is... our ineptitude!
Even if they did nothing to get low scores.
It sort of avoids discrimination lawsuits if they can document that the employee got low scores.
But this is fishy because he was given low scores while on leave.
Something like that happened to me while I was on short-term disability and in a hospital and at home. They had employees sign papers that I was doing all sorts of things to give me low scores. The dates when they claimed I was at work doing those things, I was in a hospital or at home and not at work. When I returned from short-term disability I was put on probation and then fired. They tried to use the stuff against me to block unemployment benefits but the state saw the complaints were on the same dates that I missed work and sided with me considering the complaints were made up. I could have sued for discrimination but it was the best law firm in town, and they could have proven an undue hardship defense because they hired a software consultant for $100/hr to do my job because none of my coworkers could do it.
So I would like to see the manipulation of the low performance ratings to be investigated. You see the years prior I had gotten high scores and pay raises, then as soon as I got sick, low scores and complaints.
In hindsight I should have sued but I let 180 days go by.
I do think that "hire/fire at will" is acceptable - but we should have decent lives and a great social safety net at the same time. After all, we live in a time where incredible wealth is being created (it just seems to be hoarded by the 1%)
Yes, it's a worthy goal, but don't pursue it for the sake of a better work environment for yourself. Be prepared to lose a lot of good things in life. It's only when you're willing to sacrifice your own living standard for the sake of a better environment for most people, you can sincerely tell yourself, you're different to the 0.01%. It's the mindset "We can make our lives better by taking things from some other people not related to us" that's dangerous.
Where's the joy in having material wealth if I have to step over the homeless while going about my daily business? Or require additional security measures to feel safe?
I very much advocate a more equitable society for very selfish reasons. I want to be left alone.
The math and logic of reciprocal altruism directly challenges the zealotry of Freedom Markets(tm). But it's just a different kind of selfishness.
Per tax data from 1979-2005, out of the top professions in the 1%, computer/math/technical/engineering (non-finance) are the #5 group by population, representing 5% to 6% of the total (lawyers are #4 at around 8%). It's fair to say there are likely in fact lots of software engineers in the top 1%.
There are also likely to be far more software engineers in a summed five to ten year measurement, than in any given year. The top 1% has a fairly high turn-over rate, in which a large percentage of the top 1% do not stay in that category year after year after year. Good software engineers have far more stable earning power over time than many of the people that make up the high earners (CEOs that get one-off bonus pay or options; sales workers with a big year, such as in real-estate; one-off dividends from owning part of a business; gains from a business sale). If you measured a high earning software engineer across five years, they'd come out a lot higher than any given year would otherwise indicate.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics[1], an income of $149,000 would put you in the top 10% of the software engineering profession. The medium annual wage for software engineers at all levels is around $100k. That's definitely better than many professions, but it doesn't even begin to approach the level of inequality we're talking about when we talk about the 1%.
[1]: http://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/s...
EDIT: This doesn't even take into account the fact that other related titles like Computer Programmer (which, despite being a less fashionable job description of late, is often the same as what a "software engineer" would be doing) have significantly lower medians and are broken out separately.
[1] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2082385/We-1--You-ne...
In 2014, the 99th percentile of personal income was was $240k, and the 99th percentile of household income was $330k.
http://i.imgur.com/cCmRisG.png source http://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2014/09/what-is-yo...
$250k is a realistic number for the upper tier of software engineers to make in Silicon Valley. If you work for one of the big companies, your stock options will get you pretty close to that. If you're a manager, bonuses and incentive pay will also bridge the gap. If you're an independent consultant and you're not making at least this much, you're really missing the boat.
Are you a senior software engineer, or middle management or higher? Is you partner also? Then it's _highly_ likely that your household is a 1% household
More importantly, the IRS considers any group of people who live together to be a household. I know of many people here in SF who have two, three, four roommates, each making six figures in tech. Essentially all of those households are 1% households.
As an aside, I've pointed this out to several people I know. Without fail, they always have reasons why they don't count. "Oh cost of living is too high". "Oh, I have to pay back student loans, my disposable income isn't this". "Oh, sure I make this much but look at my taxes".
In reality, describing "the 1%" is not a useful description. For one, many of the 1% are people living middle class lives in high cost-of-living areas. On the one hand, it is true that in dollar terms these people are, literally, in the 1%. But they don't live the lifestyles that people think of when they say 1%. And if you think about it, that makes sense. By definition, one in every 100 Americans are in the 1%. That's three million people.
We don't have any chance of solving economic disparity problems when our intuitions are so wildly off base from our rhetoric and our actions. Wish more people would think these things through
Workers in the IT industry probably have the cushiest jobs in the world. You make way above minimum wage, you aren't risking your life, and your job can be done from the comfort of a heated or cooled office environment.
I'm not sure what rights you think you are giving away as an employee. Employee/Employer relationships are usually legally bound by a contract. You are free to change the contract or question it before you work there.
If you choose not to do this or don't want to take the time and effort into finding another job, it's no fault but your own.
I think what's missing is education. Most people are so complacent, they don't want to read anything they sign and then act surprised when it contains something undesirable.
I've crossed out and questioned plenty of employee contracts. Most businesses will work with you on this.
I also don't know what more laws you want. As a business, you have to be so careful as to not step on someone's toes or offend them or you will find yourself in a lawsuit.
Employees have nearly all the power in today's society (especially with hashtag warriors starting digital riots against companies that do any little thing they don't like), and somehow you think you need more? It just doesn't make any sense to me beyond pure greed and entitlement.
"After all, we live in a time where incredible wealth is being created (it just seems to be hoarded by the 1%)"
Worldwide, you are in the top 1% if you are making more than ~$30,000/year.
I know the current narrative is to punish the 1% for 'hoarding' money and somehow screwing you out of your earnings, but it's just not happening.
This isn't selfishly just about me, this is about what makes sense for our society.
"Employee/Employer relationships are usually legally bound by a contract"
There is a long history of contract terms being set by the more powerful party - and it is almost always workers who need the job and have less power.
"it's no fault but your own"
This completely ignores that opportunities are defined by our society - and the US has very low economic mobility.
"what's missing is education"
For over a decade education has not provided an improved salary in spite of much improved GDP. The perception of better salary has been shown to be lowered salary for the rest of society (excluding the 1% of course.)
"what more laws you want"
We could start by emulating other countries. Denmark workers join Unions which are funded through government. Flexcurity offsets "at will employment" with a great social safety net and free education. Corporatism creates "interest groups" which can be involved with decision-making for employers and industries. Some countries require employees on the board. Some countries only purchase from companies with transparent finances (no offshores). And these are just some techniques proven to work, there are many others which may be a good idea.
I've given two weeks notice at one job, only to arrive at $new_job and discover that their $parent_company requires you to fill out a digital contract, with no room for appending it. One was smart enough to even make it so that the signature box only accepted an exact match on your name.
The contract they wanted me to sign involved committing perjury on federal forms... but HR promised they would "make a note in my file" about my concern, and still expected me to digitally sign everything.
Now that I'm a seasoned professional who can count on getting work elsewhere, and has some savings, I can just refuse and quit / let them fire me. As someone new coming in to the industry, though, my options were "go along with this" or "desperately hope I could line up a new job before I got evicted" (old job had already filled my position)
Still a hell of a lot better than working retail or call center, but it's definitely not always as simple as "just negotiate a better contract"
For most people, especially us privileged white collar technology workers, the ability exists to show up at work, punch a clock and get something done, then go home and do whatever we want.
This is the most believable line to me.
I have a non-scientific suspicion that performance reviews are going to become the next industry "thing" that prospective candidates evaluate before joining a company. On par with evaluation of benefits, comp structure, etc.
We're aiming to improve perf evaluation in my company, and I'll actively promote that with prospective candidates when we begin to see benefit. We want to identify and reward top performers, and provide support to the bottom to enable them to improve. (We're driving toward a culture that views under-achieving performance first as a failure of management.) We want this to be a strength, and something that our teams use throughout their time with us.
It's not already? The performance review system is something I evaluate very critically before deciding whether to join a company. Use Microsoft-style stack ranking? I'll pass.
So a lawsuit is one way of determining the "truth, according to the law". And on the other hand, there starts to be gender equality if both genders sue equally often for discrimination. It's ironic, but it's positive.
As society changes, there will be many apparent imbalances. To tell if something is wrong, we cannot just look at statistics. There must be a better test for 'inequality'.
I included your lecturing in my original comment, it's an humiliation that you could think I oversaw such aspects.
I honestly can't list out of my mind qualities which are generally attributed to men, apart from being sharks. Please upgrade my ego if you can list any ;)
Frankly, when someone tells me they work in a tech place where women are successful, I'm jealous. So if you want to point out that there is some hostile bias at work and not just the lack of hostile environments that drive women away from so many places, you need to prove that. Coming across as a woman-hating man does not accomplish this (Again, I don't know you, I'm only saying the impression you are giving).
I think the key there is "where women are successful *at mens expense" (feel free to swap the genders as well).
1. Nobody gets the promotion
2. Somebody outside the company gets the promotion
3. Somebody inside the company who isn't me gets the promotion
4. I get the promotion
Edit: Put a better way, it is zero sum because you and your coworkers cannot equally share in the benefits of a promotion.
While I agree that generally in SV there is some misogyny, that doesn't mean any injustice against males should be seen as a red herring.
I'm confident that the cause of this discrimination is companies' very rational fear of sex discrimination lawsuits (which only women can successfully wage), and the resulting public-relations shitstorm that results from that (but only when a woman has something to complain about). Anyone following the tech industry's news cycle over the past five years is familiar with this threat.
However, I object to your unease here at newspapers suggesting that there are differences between genders. There are obviously differences between genders -- biological and psychological.
The problem is that we have a culture that requires companies to take precautions (e.g. hiring less-abled women over better-abled men to meet lawyer-recommended quotas) to protect their interests; a culture that suppresses meaningful exploration of the differences between men and women (e.g. you're only allowed to mention possible advantages that women have) and how to handle that.
Our culture is mandating equality in all regards, at all costs, and its enforcers will stop at nothing until that's achieved. The reality is that, on average, certain demographics have innate advantages over others in a capitalist system. Gender can't go away, so the only way to achieve equality in the face of gender differences is to wage cultural-level discrimination against the advantaged.
Our culture needs to change; it's standing in the way of humanity reaching its greatest potential. I'm not sure how much further we can go while slitting our wrists at the altar of equality.
(new account because I would like to remain employed)
> To tell if something is wrong, we cannot just look at
> statistics.
They lower their heads and thank me for my time.
Yahoo's apparent inability to gather evidence is just another sign of a poorly run company. Who will miss them once they've gone for good?
I would expect exactly the same thing to happen here if the case ever goes to trial and Anderson's testimony in the courtroom doesn't support his initial claims as presented in the media.
It certainly increased after the court case began, but certainly some, uh, strong opinions from the start:
Though Pao did have a few things going against her. Husband wasn't a pillar of the community. The actual case, according to my employment lawyer friend, was weak.
So it's not exactly an apples to apples comparison.