Google, Department of Labor settlement resolves alleged pay, discrimination | Hacker News Reader

Google, Department of Labor settlement resolves alleged pay, discrimination

dol.gov

72 pointsraleighm45 comments

Apparently you can avoid this entirely just by letting low level managers negotiate compensation instead of having a general rule across the board like Google. Also apparently it helps to say that paying workers as little as possible (including paying women as little as possible) is a key aspect of your business.

> Oracle is budget conscience and seeks to make money, but there is no evidence that this is driven by discriminatory intent or that Oracle intentionally discriminates in order to save money.

> Lower-level managers are the primary decision makers in compensation outcomes and the potential mechanisms of discrimination that are available to Oracle's higher-level executives and HR personnel (budgeting, instructions, approvals) are not likely means for the sort of discrimination alleged.

https://www.hrdive.com/news/judge-shuts-down-labor-departmen...

Even better, farm the job out to a recruitment agency and let them do all that unpleasant and illegal discrimination for you.

I swear if I got a nickel for every time a recruiter cold calls me, asks nine hundred questions, gets me to commit to a slot for interview, and then calls me back to say they need my full date of birth and social security number to submit, I’d already have two nickels last week.

You should include the previous line on that second quote

>there is no plausible mechanism for systemic discrimination by the alleged wrongdoers. Lower-level managers...

If the suit is about systematic bias, this seems to be a pretty good line of reasoning. Complete chaos in compensation outcomes == no bias, or at least if there is, it's probably not coming from the top down

Right, you can protect yourself against charges by just delegating all discrimination to low level managers. You don't have to tell them to discriminate, they do that all on their own!

But seriously, if you can't pin that kind of discrimination on upper managers you will never be able to root it out.

There are plenty of Silicon Valley companies where South Asian upper management near exclusively hires South Asian engineers

I think it's a language thing, were they are indeed more productive if they use their native languages at work. It's a tough situation because there's already regulation against enforcing a language in the workplace.

What? My company conducts business in English by policy.

>if you can't pin <> on upper managers you will never be able to root it out.

that how mafia works :) An that is how Uber broke local governments medalion control.

Oh totally, this is a perfect example of the dissolution of responsibility that corporations are known for. It's obviously more difficult to attack the 5,000 headed low-level hydra, so that's where the "controversial" decisions get made. Genius!

No.

"Systemic" means a problem throughout the system, regardless of design. For example, systemic infection.

"Systematic" means creating a plan or system to do it.

"Disparate impact" is a legal theory for proving systemic discrimination.

They underpaid by only $500? $1,353,052/2,565 = $527 per person. When Google engineers are being paid $200-500k a year, That's... lower than expected.

This is interesting, because Google was underpaying male employees just 2 years ago: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/04/technology/google-gender-...

That is likely the settlement amount, not the actual amount of backpay that they claimed they were owed.

The link clearly says its backpay:

> namely $1,353,052 in back pay and interest to 2,565 female employees in engineering positions subject to pay discrimination

It's the settlement for back pay. Not the claimed shortchange amount.

I find it ironic that many "diversity and inclusion" pundits claim that Asians are overrepresented in companies like Google and actively advocate for hiring policies that disfavor Asians but in fact the DoL has found here that they were discriminated _against_.

Probably because of the very same policies in the first place, just unofficially instead.

That's because diversity initiatives are just racism packaged up in a way that's acceptable to society. Just like "separate but equal" was back in the segregation era.

Please don't take HN threads into race flamewar or any flamewar. It's not what this site is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

It's the exact same situation seen in the University of California system. I think we're going to reach the point where Asian women in tech will no longer be counted as URM sometime this decade, just as we saw happen in the UC system.

Not necessarily what happened here, but it's possible to both overrepresent in hiring and also systematically underpay: Hiring a lot of workers you want to underpay is a very cheap way to do business.

It's also known as "outsourcing" if you don't mind your Indian workers still being in India. ;)

The "diversity and inclusion" pundits seem to be aware of the fact that Asians are on the outs with the grievance crowd. We can't even be sure who they're talking about here, are the Asians in question able to legally show up for work in California? It seems silly to have to ask, but that is how silly things are right now - the DoJ is currently going after SpaceX because a guy complained that he wasn't hired due to the fact that he isn't a lawful permanent resident.

> I find it ironic that many "diversity and inclusion" pundits claim that Asians are overrepresented in companies like Google and actively advocate for hiring policies that disfavor Asians but in fact the DoL has found here that they were discriminated _against_.

This is the consequence of heeding calls to Do Something based on uncontrolled aggregate statistics.

If 50% of the qualified applicants are Asian (despite being ~7% of the US population) and then your company ends up being 50% Asian, people who don't understand what's happening start yelling at you because 50% >> 7%.

If your response is to Do Something and that causes your company to be 40% Asian, the Something was plausibly some kind of proscribed discrimination, even though Asians are still quite overrepresented relative to the general population.

And so on for all of the other cases and demographics where people are caused to be angry based on misleading numbers and then the same thing happens.

The settlement provides for one-time payments averaging <$500 for each wronged individual. Given the amounts of money the company throws into salaries already, it's hard to imagine this coming anywhere close to just remuneration for the people affected, much less an effective deterrent for Google's future behavior.

(For the sake of completeness: Google is also required to set aside a cash fund for salary fairness adjustments over the next 5 years, though it's tiny and there is no guarantee any of it will actually be paid out.)

Looks like that 500 is the backpay itself? Not a compensation from doing wrong.

I wonder how many people will see this headline and think the difference was much more drastic than a three-figure sum over 2+ years of employment. A quick look at levels makes it clear this is a completely insignificant amount. FAANG sign-on bonuses alone are five figures, and that's the smallest part of most compensation packages.

Has this just run its course, or has the change of administration played a role?

$3.8M for 5k+ employees at Google rates seems low.

About $700 per person sounds incredibly low for what is allegedly "back pay" across a three year period. Especially considering the back pay for people "not hired" should be close to "a Googler salary" and not "our last stimulus check".

Which is to say, this is barely a slap on the wrist, par for the course on government actions against Google. Sundar Pichai will still continue to act like a crook because it pays to do so, he can't be thrown in jail for it and the penalties are always a fraction of the profits.

I think the important takeaway is that https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-tn-google-discriminat... ("Google denies charges, says there is no gender pay gap") was a lie. And that https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/04/technology/google-gender-... ("Google Finds It’s Underpaying Many Men as It Addresses Wage Equity") was also certainly a lie.

And that there probably should be a lot of punitive damages here in addition to "back pay". At the very least, the taxpayers should be getting something back from all the years the DOL had to waste dealing with this case.

> I think the important takeaway is that https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-tn-google-discriminat... ("Google denies charges, says there is no gender pay gap") was a lie.

Huh? They tell you the amounts. By these back pay numbers, there definitely was no gender pay gap. And then...

> And that there probably should be a lot of punitive damages here in addition to "back pay".

Why? The putative victims suffered a barely measurable injury. Why would that indicate huge punitive damages?

"$1,232,000 in back pay and interest to 1,757 female and 1,219 Asian applicants for software engineering positions not hired."

How is "not hired" not a measurable injury? Google screwed their careers. And presumably these employees would be making six figure salaries... each. There's no way that the tiny amount of "back pay" here actually covers that or even close to it.

You have to compare the pay with what they got instead. Most of them almost surely got hired at equivalent companies if they managed to clear the Google interviews.

Yes, the press release seems proud to be getting underpaid employees their rightful $527 each. Not sure what they think that means. This is back pay with interest -- assuming it's two years worth of underpayment, it seems safe to say some women and Asians were being "underpaid" by less than 0.1%.

Plus they're "allocating a cash reserve [for] pay-equity adjustments for the next 5 years". Wouldn't the DoL prefer that Google stop systematically paying women 0.1% less than it pays men? Why is the solution "keep some petty cash on hand, in case we sue you again"? Why in the world does Google need to post a bond for $1.3 million? When has it had less than that amount freely available in its metaphorical pockets?

pretty sure "pay-equity cash reserve" means "setting aside money to increase pay of people who were underpaid relative to coworkers"

So the victims get a pay increase for the next 5 years, after which their pay will go down again?

> namely $1,353,052 in back pay and interest to 2,565 female employees in engineering positions subject to pay discrimination; and $1,232,000 in back pay and interest to 1,757 female and 1,219 Asian applicants for software engineering positions not hired.

So that's 2.585M / 5541 = $467 per employee. Assuming an average comp of $250K, that's a 0.2% difference. How can that be determined to be discrimination? Is that even a statistically significant difference?

It's very doubtful this settlement truly entails paying everyone their actual lost wages. The term "settlement" indicates some sort of agreed upon terms.

I'm not even sure what the point was when the amount is so low.

Preventing it from recurring.

Still seems cheap.

How does the Department of Labor even make this claim when the numbers are likely within the error bars?

Not that Google would care to fight this. For Google, $1.3M is like getting back a Canadian quarter in change.

That is the settlement amount. It's possible that the actual pay gap was much larger.

This may be silly question, but what is ' pay-equity adjustment' in the article? Quick search does not provide easy understanding.

$3.8 million for over 5000 employees affected by discrimination against female and asian software engineers? Where are the condemnation and marches against this systemic injustice against marginalized groups?

$3.8 million is just pocket lint to Google. The sum is so low, it's like someone walking by and ignoring a penny on the ground.

The fact that they only found discrimination worth 5 million means that they found no evidence that discrimination is a huge issue at Google.

I am no longer at Google so I guess I can say my opinion (after ~10 great years). I believe there to be close to zero discrimination from higher ups, except the random sexual harassment of course but I think that will always happen in a place with power imbalances like the American right to work states and 100k employees.

I did see a lot of discrimination/harassment (a lot still being very rare, but a lot more than I expected) at lower levels. It was usually dealt with swiftly by HR. Unless it was a "superstar" of course.

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