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Comment by brad0 | Hacker News Reader

One of the women suing complained that a man was hired a level above her with the same years of experience. They both had four years experience.

I joined one of the big 4 eight years into my career. Similar to her I was placed at an entry level position. When I started I saw that I had the same ability as people higher than me. I made sure that I displayed that ability to my peers and manager. And what do you know, I got promoted into a more suitable position.

Hiring is broken, we all know this. Sometimes we might not get what we deserve. If we want more then you need to work for it. Plain and simple.

Google can't win with its current culture. This is what happens when a company or group is too left leaning. You always get attacked by the very people you're trying to help.

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Everyone who worked at Google or a company like Google knows that 90% of people do a job well below their skills. That's how it is in those places.

To sue them because you have back-end skills, but you were doing front end is laughable. There are so many PhDs in ML there writing SQL queries, or PhDs in CS changing the color of some text for an A/B test. That's how it works in the best companies in the world. You get the money and the prestige, but the job is bad.

there is probably some kind of sweet spot where you get to do whatever really cool stuff you can think of and your company is just pretty good

Probably in R&D departments of tech companies.

I think many people complain about this too. I remember a very famous HR person of a famous IT services firm in India once told in a public event that software was one of those areas where every one expects to be treated special and expects to be given a job where they feel they are generating tremendous value, by the virtue of which deserve a very high salary.

While only a handful such jobs exist in any company.

The standard response for these things used to be 'Go find a different job which you think works for you'. But these days its either 'do as I say' or 'prepared to get sued'.

This is actually very helpful to know, thank you.

this is very true.

My guess is that this is true of a lot of finance and law jobs as well. Actually, I once talked to a dermatologist who said he wished he got to use his mind more often (he said this on hearing that I was a programmer! I guess he thought it was a lot of deep thinking and logic or something? Seriously made me realize that my impressions of other fields is probably just as flawed).

Of course, there are jobs in all these fields that are fascinating, and people with boring jobs often have had a project here and there that was interesting, so that's what you hear about and how your impressions are formed when you aren't part of another field. After all, people at parties don't like to talk about how boring they are.

> Sometimes we might not get what we deserve.

Sometimes we deserve less than others. Gender/etc aside, some people are less talented/effective. Society seems to be afraid to say this, but not everyone is created equal upstairs.

> They both had four years experience.

Obviously, on the job years is almost entirely unrelated to pre-work experience, so this is just silly. I hope there's more to it.

I'm curious how their resumes/accomplishments compare for those four years.

Thanks for making these points explicit.

Years experience is not an indicator of seniority. I have two friends that graduated at different years.

One has more than 10 years experience. The other has three years.

10 year guy has been working with jquery and HTML the whole time. He avoids any other problems or domains.

Three year guy wants to work in every area possible. He actively pursues internships and work that provides a wide range of experiences and technical variety.

Now who do you think is more valuable as an employee?

> Now who do you think is more valuable as an employee?

For which job? For some breadth of experience would be better but for a job working with html+jquery all day every day the depth of experience in that area would be preferred. Sadly the industry seems to be too focused on "full-stack" interchangeable components lately.

> And what do you know, I got promoted into a more suitable position.

This is a bit of a ridiculous statement. You seem to be claiming that everybody who shows off their skills rises to their correct level. I don't see it that way. I see that there are way more people capable of doing a senior position, but only a few positions are available.

As far as I understand the larger companies have a clear trajectory for promotion in software engineering. There's no limited places. Prove you have skills a, b and c and you get promoted.

Where I work, the level is determined by how well the did on the interview, regardless of years of experience.

It might be that the plaintiff didn't do as well on the interview as her colleague. Just because both have have 4 years experience doesn't mean that both did equally as well on the interview.

> One of the women suing complained that a man was hired a level above her with the same years of experience. They both had four years experience.

It's impossible to say without more information but it could just be a case of the old 4 * 1 year experience for her and 1 * 4 years experience for him. Comparing people on years of experience is the sort of irrelevant laziness I'd expect from a recruiter, not a developer.

> Google can't win with its current culture. This is what happens when a company or group is too left leaning. You always get attacked by the very people you're trying to help.

Yah, this sums it all up, Google makes this assumption that everyone they hire has the same mindset, and this is not true.

> Hiring is broken, we all know this.

Then what is your problem with them suing ? They go a different way than yours, but if it's broken in the first place why not ?

Well, the suit only has merit if hiring is broken in a way that unfairly disadvantages a protected class. (In this case, women.)

I think the poster's point was that hiring is broken equally for everyone, which is inefficient but not illegal.

> complained that a man was hired a level above her with the same years of experience.

> You always get attacked by the very people you're trying to help.

helping how?

Google puts lots of effort into hiring and promoting women, and attracting them into tech.

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