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Oracle pays women less and got caught: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jan/18/oracle-wo...

Microsoft also got “caught”— CEO Satya Nadella made a poorly worded comment that resulted in many women getting raises (so clearly at least some had hard evidence they were getting underpaid): https://www.forbes.com/sites/amitchowdhry/2014/10/10/microso...

I know of at least 4 cases were female colleagues of mine were getting held to the bottom of the band (or in one case the band was lowered).

Nadella's 2014 comment is horrifying to read just now, considering the long-time backstabbing reputation of the company (at the time; currently improving, at least in PR). Quoting:

> It's not about asking for the raise, but knowing and having faith that the system will actually give you the right raises as you go along... And that, I think might be one of the additional superpowers that quite frankly women who don't ask for a raise have. Because that's good karma. It'll come back because somebody's going to know 'that's the kind of person that I want to trust. That's the kind of person I want to really give more responsibility to.' And in the long term efficiency, things catch up. And I wonder… And I’m not saying that’s the only approach.

> I wonder whether taking the long-term helps solve for what might be perceived as this uncomfortable thing of ‘hey, am I getting paid right? Am I getting rewarded right?’ Because reality is your best work is not followed with your best rewards. Your best work then has impact, people recognize it and then you get the rewards so you have to somehow think that through, I think.

Had I seen this in 2014, not knowing Nadella, I'm sure it would've sounded to me like a horribly disingenuous attempt by an executive to suppress wages.

Also possibly tone-deaf, and not only due to the venue and the context of ongoing exploitation/marginalization of women, but also due to non-gender-specific abusive industry behaviors, including one exposed shortly before then: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

What he describes is basically how things work in big corporations in IT, sans gender talk. You don't progress fast, but build momentum relatively slowly, this gets recognized and as you build your capital you ask for raises and promotions. Or raises are decided completely independently on a whim of manager high enough, like in my place. Not ideal, but big corporations are anything but ideal in many aspects.

My wife was taken aside by her HR rep (she's a senior SWE at a company that is not a FAANG but is very well known in our industry and routinely featured in articles that make the HN front page) and told, more or less, "We did some analysis on employee pay rates and found that you were being underpaid, we've adjusted your pay rate accordingly." It wasn't _only_ females, a few of her male colleagues went through the same process. Of course, what isn't known is experience levels, years of experience, title, and the amount they were all being underpaid. My wife isn't a pushover and when she accepted this position ~4 years ago she was compensated around market average, yet the pay bump they gave her was significant. It's left us with a lot of questions.

> Women leaving tech are doing so probably because they can afford to.

I am considering leaving tech because selective biases play a larger role in hiring and advancement than they used to despite all efforts to the contrary. After talking with other people I am not alone in thinking this. I am willing to leave tech even though I cannot afford to because the hit to my finances is temporary but the barriers to my career from remaining in tech are permanent.

Let me discuss selective bias in a bit more detail. When I first started programming candidate qualification was centered around the needs to the business. For example, did a candidate understand the minimum criteria of working in a given technology plus the advanced criteria that harmed user interaction, slowed execution speed, or some other measurable concern. Those days are long gone, at least in high level languages.

Now the name of the game is programming fashion. Specifically, does the candidate write code according to a current trend a given team or interviewer wants without regard for any performance or measurable quantum.

That change is disruptive but not in a healthy way. In the old days the desirable and rewarded developers were those who performed well, such as writing the best code in the least time. The people on the right side of a bell curve. Replacing that with fashionable and non-measurable factors limits candidate selection to the center of the bell curve, which are people who do not perform as well but are better rewarded for it.

If I am willing to abandon a long time tech career even though it will hurt and have found others that share my frustration I can only imagine that perhaps this might be some small factor in why some women might want to leave in general.

I suspect this problem has increased despite all efforts to the contrary because all efforts to eliminate hiring/reward bias were typically limited to identity factors that carried provable legal consequences.

The reliance on measurable outputs from days of yore was probably not the result of some high minded meritocracy which is now gone, but from building things that needed performance - a need which has now diminished greatly for a large proportion of work. This reduction is simultaneously a result of higher level abstractions, as you say, but also a result of simply more tech in more places that doesn’t really need it.

There are still plenty of places that must incentivize quality as a matter of survival, just your friends in the Bay Area won’t “oooh” and “ahhhh” when you tell them you work there.

Execution performance is one measurable factor among many that I happened to use as an example.

The problem with bias is that it’s self-serving and lingers well past a first impression, like a compounding problem. Any bias exists to cognitively qualify a subjective decision in the absence of stronger criteria. The self-serving nature of bias is that it typically exists as a form of insulation filtering whereby things less like the person, or their proximity of comfort, are discarded for perceptions of compatibility.

Compatibility sounds important when building a team, however that factor is unmeasurable and often poorly defined in any existential capacity. Instead this is often an unspoken means of eliminating competition, diversity, and insecurity from a person(s) tasked to make a personnel decision without the soft skills to warrant such.

In my experience in the military you don’t need interpersonal compatibility, either real or perceived, to build an excellent team that cares for each other and achieves high performance.

Since the problems resulting from bias linger past a first impression the consequences of such are continuous. If, for example, bias is heavily present on a team a candidate who survives selection there will face frustrations moving forward when confronting or challenging the perceptions of the bias present. That person will be limited in career mobility internal to that organization.

> There are still plenty of places that must incentivize quality

That depends on who defines quality and how. At just about every place I have ever worked developers define quality in a way that is utterly foreign to business concerns or product quality at the end user. Without some highly specific written definition of quality I find it’s an excuse to reinforce like-minded opinions.

That’s a great, thoughtful response. I don’t disagree with anything here but thought I’d add one “Yes, and” note regarding your military experience. What I’ve found working in a place with virtually no top-down authority is that interpersonal compatibility matters quite a lot to achieve business outcomes. I figure most organizations land somewhere between a military and my workplace in the top-down authority dimension, so they probably also rely a bit more heavily on interpersonal compatibility than your experience with the military would indicate is actually necessary.

I strongly agree that this is a liability, however, due to its potential for maintaining and entrenching biases of various types.

>>>I do have less sympathy for women who have an opportunity to work in tech than for women working as waitresses, or as social workers, or maid.s Women leaving tech are doing so probably because they can afford to. But most women out there aren’t that lucky. What I’d like to see is the government doing more to make it possible for all working women with families to better balance their lives

Why is that a Gendered issue? Are there no men working in menial jobs that have no work life balance? Or should we just not give a shit about them?

> I wonder if they leave because of a perceived wage disparity/lack of advancement opportunity. [...] This report suggest that there isn’t much of a disparity

Keep in mind that the results of this report will be somewhat self selecting. There won't be much wage disparity shown if the people on the wrong side have already left. It is stated that wage disparity is a major reason that double the number of woman have left the industry by mid-career.

> What I’d like to see is the government doing more to make it possible for all working women with families to better balance their lives.

Or, you know, the dads could pitch in with running the household.

As if they don't? Do you live in the 1950s?

I’m not, but GP seems to be.

edit: alright, it was a bit snarky, but he’s basically advocating government intervention so can get more time off from work to run the household

Study after study after study shows that women in relationships with men are responsible for disproportionate share of household and childcare related tasks in the present not just in the distant past and anyone who says otherwise is sticking their heads in the sand.

>>Study after study after study shows that women in relationships with men are responsible for disproportionate

Actually they do not, please show me the studies, and actual data that does because the studies have seen say [1]

1. Women with FT jobs on Avg work 7.7 hours per day, and put in 2.6 hour per day on household chores or 10.3 hrs total per day

2. Men with FT jobs on Avg work 8.3 hrs, and put in 2.1 hours per week on household chores or 10.4 hrs per total per day

there is some data to show that heterosexual households Women primary work in the home (cleaning, cooking etc) and men primary work outside or on the home (lawn work, garbage, home maintenance, etc)

So unless you are going to cherry pick which "household and childcare related tasks" to specifically exclude the "household and childcare related tasks" men generally do there is no way to conclude that "women in relationships with men are responsible for disproportionate share of household and childcare related tasks"

[1]https://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.nr0.htm

> Actually they do not, please show me the studies, and actual data that does because the studies have seen say [1]

You can't use overall statistics to talk about specific cases of cross-sections. Yes, men work longer hours than women. But even in households where the woman is the primary earner, she takes on the majority of household chores, on average [1].

And this has been seen in multiple studies. See the "Work and Leisure for Dual-Income and Single-Income Couples" table here[2]. In single income families, a women earner spends 23 hours on household chores, compared to her (unemployed) parter, who spends ~29 hours on household chores. He gets around twice as much leisure time as she does.

Reverse the genders, and an employed man spends 14 hours on housework, while the unemployed woman will spend 45 hours on housework.

No matter who is employed, the mother always spends more time on housework than on leisure time, and the father always spends more time on leisure than on housework. That's true whether the family is dual income, the mother is the sole earner, the father is the sole earner, or neither parent works. In all cases, the mother spends more time on housework than leisure, and the father spends more time on leisure than housework.

[1]: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2782401?seq=1

[2]: https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/03/14/chapter-6-time-in...

>>>You can't use overall statistics to talk about specific cases of cross-sections.

It seems when the overall statistics show a favorable / Advantaged result toward men over all statistics are just fine to use, but if they who an equality in the genders they become problematic and are no longer valid, odd how that works

as to the data on Stay at-home dads, I question the sample size on that, it is such a rare status that and I am sure there is a HUGE sample size problem when they compare stay at home mom households (which make up the vast majority of the Single Income House holds) to Stay at home Dad homes which are the rarest or rare.

> as to the data on Stay at-home dads, I question the sample size on that, it is such a rare status that and I am sure there is a HUGE sample size problem

The pew social trends survey mentions that the number of stay at home dads is ~1/5 the number of moms. Smaller, but not so small as to make the conclusions invalid. You asked for studies and statistics and I provided. Please don't continue to move the goalposts.

> It seems when the overall statistics show a favorable / Advantaged result toward men over all statistics are just fine to use, but if they who an equality in the genders they become problematic and are no longer valid, odd how that works

Such as? I didn't see anyone doing that here. I saw you misunderstanding and attacking a claim, and then being unwilling to admit you were wrong when confronted with the evidence you requested. It's not easy to try and discuss these topics with you.

Speaking from personal experience, women often want things "just so" and men tend not to give a shit. So either the woman does it, or nags the man to do it, or gives up on it being done. None of those options is great, but the woman doing the work she desires done herself is the most fair and least damaging to the relationship.

Even the data you decided to pick for this conversation supports the opposite of your conclusion:

Household chores:

    --On an average day, 84 percent of women and 69 percent of men
     spent some time doing household activities, such as housework,
     cooking, lawn care, or household management. (See table 1.)

   --On the days they did household activities, women spent an average
     of 2.6 hours on these activities, while men spent 2.0 hours. (See
     table 1.)

Women: 156 min * .86 = 134 min / day

Men: 120 min * .69 = 83 min / day

Women dating men, on average have a share of household tasks is 161% of their partner’s.

Childcare:

    --On an average day, among adults living in households with
     children under age 6, women spent 1.1 hours providing physical
     care (such as bathing or feeding a child) to household children;
     by contrast, men spent 26 minutes providing physical care.
     (See table 9.)

Women: 66 min / day

Men: 26 min / day

Women dating men, on average have a share of childcare tasks is 253% of their partner’s.

This is without even needing to dig into the crosstabs, on the data source you picked. Which supports the both widely accepted and studied conclusion that household and especially childcare tasks among heterosexual couples are absolutely not evenly distributed.

As for more studies, feel free to, I dunno... pick any of them?

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=hous...

I really shouldn’t have to do the math for you on this. Your point is about as well supported by the data as climate denial and at some point you lose the right to ask other people to prove this to you and just need to go read basically anything on this subject.

Your claim was not "women do more housework" your claim was "women do disproportionate amount" of housework

That to me would be Income Producing work + Housework.

So based on this response you believe that Housework should be a 50/50 Split even if Income-producing work is not? Meaning in a Single Income household the person making the income should put in an equal amount of household work to the person not bringing in income to support the household?

It sounds like you missed the context of the discussion. The starting point was "women cannot take on more income producing work because they are all tied up in housework."

Ah. I see the disconnect. You managed to misinterpret both the point of this conversation and my specific claim.

The original poster I replied to suggested that if men pulled their weight in relationships wrt household tasks and childcare more often, women might have more time to devote to work.

You have decided to argue that women of course should spend more time in those areas, because they don’t spend as much time at work.

My claim was merely that women are in fact “responsible for disproportionate share of household and childcare related tasks” which is fully supported by all the data cited in this conversation.

You seem to be arguing that this is a perfectly fine thing. This completely ignores the possibility and frankly likely conclusion that the expectation that women do more of these tasks might have something to do with the fact that so many women aren’t in fact able to spend as much time focusing on their careers as they might otherwise.

To chose a concrete reason from too many relationships for too many women, if they don’t pick up the kid, then no one bloody will. So they don’t get to spend time to focus on work at the end of the day because they suddenly have to leave the workplace at a fixed time no matter what is happening or what thing they might want to spend a bit more time to nail down, because they are responsible for a disproportionate amount of childcare. Which then results in them being less able to be engaged and succeed in their careers, which can result in them opting for more flexible or reduced schedules, which then results in less take home pay, which then results in dudes on the Internet arguing that this is fully fair and there’s no mismatch whatsoever in response to a comment that merely points out that women perform a higher share of household and childcare tasks in an average relationship with a man.

What a mess.

There was an excellent article posted about this subject a few days ago:

"Is it really just sexism? An alternative argument for why women leave STEM" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22077603)

> Women leaving tech are doing so probably because they can afford to.

On the contrary: world-wide, poor countries tend to have a larger proportion women in tech (and medicine, and ...). Not because they want to, but because they cannot afford anything but the most high-paying jobs!

I really don't understand how wage disparity can be given as a reason in the current market, assuming that you're a software engineer. If you don't like how much you make, go find a new employer. I know it's not that simple, but it's doable. Just quitting your career altogether doesn't make any sense, unless you never enjoyed it to begin with.

>If we had good statistical evidence that women aren’t discriminated against when it comes to promotions and compensation, then more would likely stay.

I live in SF, and I "only" make $150k a year. All of my friends in the city make at least double what I do thanks to RSUs. Some make three times as much. Three of them are women (!!!!). I've accepted that I'm probably never going to get into a company that pays that well, and that's fine.

I still have a very comfortable life. I'll probably wash out if there's another downturn, but I'll have saved up enough money to comfortably start over and do something else.

The idea of quitting because I earn significantly less than other people with the same years of experience (or less) is insane. I can admit that they're better engineers than me. That's why they get the big bucks.

>I've accepted that I'm probably never going to get into a company that pays that well, and that's fine.

Why? Have you tried to get into such companies? What part of the interviews are you failing at? If you've given up before you've even tried, then sure, you'll never get in.

You don't have to be a ridiculously good engineer get in.

I guess I was being overly dramatic there. I did manage to make it to onsites for the first time this year after failing phone screens before, so we'll see. I just haven't spent enough time practicing. I find it hard to do so outside of work, and everyone can see my screen in the office.

> I live in SF, and I "only" make $150k a year. All of my friends in the city make at least double what I do thanks to RSUs. Some make three times as much. Three of them are women (!!!!). I've accepted that I'm probably never going to get into a company that pays that well, and that's fine.

This isn't statistical evidence, this is an anecdote about you and your friend circle.

You completely misinterpreted that part of my post. I'm not going to quit tech just because I know that I make significantly less than other people. It doesn't even make sense as a reason for me to quit.

I don't even understand how you could have seen that as an attempted refutation of statistical evidence, as opposed to my actual point, which is that I'm not going to quit tech because I know that I make way less than other people.

> The idea of quitting because I earn significantly less

> than other people with the same years of experience (or

> less) is insane. I can admit that they're better engineers

> than me. That's why they get the big bucks.

Sure, and that’s just fine and sensible. But you might feel differently if they were in fact worse engineers than you. Which is the position that women are in, unless you think that sexism and gender bias doesn’t exist.

In a sexist and gender biased system, the pay gap is not “someone is making more who is better than I am” it is “I am making less than everyone else outside my gender group whose experience / talent matches mine and some who aren’t even as good as I am.”

Can you see why that might be a little less fun and why you might feel frustration towards a field structured that way?

If they're actually better than their coworkers, why can't they just go to a better company where the pay gap no longer matters? Is your life really going to be that much different when you make $340k instead of $370k? I can understand being upset over that extra $30k and fighting for it, but quitting your career completely?

Do you understand that the only thing I'm calling out here is how drastic and irrational a complete exit is? That's my only problem with this. I wouldn't believe someone who cited a wage gap in tech as their primary reason for leaving, because it doesn't make sense!

It's one of the most comfortable and flexible middle-class careers you can have in the modern economy, and it's arguably the most lucrative when you account for barrier of entry.

It feels like you're framing my argument as "there is no sexism in tech" or "women shouldn't complain", when that isn't my stance at all.

I don’t think anyone exits the field entirely because of just the wage gap, it’s everything that’s around it as well. The total impact can be a lot more than you’ve likely ever had the experience to know and turns a field that can honestly be fun and challenging in a good way into a lonely place devoid of as many interesting problems because you constantly have to fight the mundane ones. And then your pay is worse than others (sometimes by a lot more than 30k/yr) to deal with it?

I can see why some people just decide to be done. I came close a few years ago.