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Comment by deadmik3 | Hacker News Reader

Was stringing together a couple dozen tweets really the best format to share a story like this?

There is a lot that's left out. Once she vaguely mentions that another employee who was "involved" was still getting all of his peer bonuses (which may or may not have been PB's for his "involvement", we don't know), the whole thing just crumbled into a victim story for me. OF COURSE the MALE coworker can do WHATEVER HE WANTS, as long as we don't actually have any details about it.

Also, generally shit will hit the fan if you tell anyone to fuck off, especially if they're your manager. Again, we don't know that she told her manager to fuck off for being racist (??) because this is a terrible story told in a shitty format. But it's implied. Just like everything else in this "article".

tl;dr she got exactly what you would expect when you're intentionally stirring shit up at any company. I'm not sure what she expected.

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> tl;dr she got exactly what you would expect when you're intentionally stirring shit up at any company. I'm not sure what she expected.

What? Sharing salary information is a protected employee activity, and retaliation is illegal.. so maybe she expected there wouldn't be retaliation?

The fact that she's a woman is neither here nor there... on the surface where it can be seen. Behind the scenes however, you have politics. When you piss people off that are in power, they find ways to make your life uncomfortable - that goes whether you're male or female.

To expect there will be no retaliation for pissing off higher ups would be incredibly naive. Even if what you are doing (strictly speaking) is legal and retaliation is illegal. You can't expect to not suffer any repercussions for pissing off those that ultimately are in charge of your pay cheque. That's just not how people operate - even if that's how the law (and society, on the surface) says they should.

It takes a long time for ideas and beliefs to become embedded in your culture - look at racism, look at sexism, look at the LBGT community. Gradually society is becoming more tolerant, more accepting and less judgmental, but we've still got a long road ahead of us before equality for all is anything more than a surface ideal that the younger generations long for.

Many like the status quo, they are truly uncomfortable with what change represents to themselves personally. Getting these people to accept that future generations ideals and beliefs are not their own, and are becoming the norm is a hard pill for them to swallow.

When a tiger is cornered and they perceive they have no place left to run, the only thing they will do is lash out and hurt you.

> To expect there will be no retaliation for pissing off higher ups would be incredibly naive. Even if what you are doing (strictly speaking) is legal and retaliation is illegal. You can't expect to not suffer any repercussions for pissing off those that ultimately are in charge of your pay cheque. That's just not how people operate - even if that's how the law (and society, on the surface) says they should.

The whole point is that this is illegal and wrong. We discuss it in order to, hopefully, fix a bad thing rather than throw up our hands and say, "oh well, she had it coming!"

I don't disagree at all with what you're saying. What I'm saying is that human nature and politics are an incredibly complex game. Look at the dirty politics involved in presidential campaigns (see, this behaviour is even in evidence at the very top of the food chain!) as an example. Until you fix the mentality of the people at the top, shit will continue to roll downhill. This goes for corporate environments, political environments, society as a whole.

What exactly is the point of having a law if you don't expect it to be upheld? If these managers illegally retaliated for sharing salary information, then nail them to the fucking wall. Who the hell cares if they're "uncomfortable" that things are changing?

Yeah, maybe a tiger attacks people when it feels threatened. You still put it down.

There's a huge issue of laws built around the intention of an action. That is, the action itself is not illegal unless also backed by a given intention. These cases are nearly impossible to prove in court. How do you prove that someone did something with a certain intention? Especially when they have 5th amendment protection? Unless they come out and say it voluntarily, or unless you have solid evidence such as emails, you're not going to get very far.

Laws where intent is a necessary component of violation are not nearly impossible to prove in court (given how common this is with criminal law, and the higher standard of proof there than in civil cases, yours rarely see criminal convictions in cases that went to trial were intent nearly impossible to prove in court.)

Intent can be inferred from circumstances and other actions alongside the prohibited action; and this is particularly true in civil cases where the standard is a mere preponderance of the evidence rather than proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

Upholding a law is more tricky that being obtuse about how the world is going to unfold before The Judgement Day (TM). Look at Aaron Swartz. There is a way to have things done - if the world is becoming a better place it is because a lot of people are doing a lot of things behind the smokescreen.

You're absolutely right that these sorts of things are all too common but that isn't really a reason to shrug off her story.

So, are we all now just blaming it on the victim, “she should have known better, what else did she expect”?

Why is that okay in a Employee / Corporation setting? Is that also okay in a rape victim / rapist setting? Where do we draw the line now?

Far from blaming it on the victim, I'm pointing out that this mentality is endemic. I don't disagree with what she did in any way. I fully believe that what she did, she did for the good of all and I applaud her for doing so. What I am saying is that the suggestion that she thought there would be no retaliation is incredibly naive. That is all.

It is still fair to expect there will be no illegal retaliation in the "do no evil" megacorp.

And, naive or no, it is absolutely reasonable to act as though there would be none, knowing that you may receive it, so that you can draw attention to it if it happens, because it is illegal.

This is, at least nominally, a rule-of-law country, and that law's been on the books for a long, long time.

That is probably exactly what she expected. And if this were a small group politely sharing with each, there likely would not be retaliation. But once you make it "a thing", and are impacting the culture of an organization, then you have stepped into politics. The reactions at that point are going to be exaggerated, and not necessarily relevant to the original topic.

I don't like politics, and stories like this are exactly why - things that may be legal and should not be harmful end up turning into something ugly. You have to worry more about who you are pissing off that what you are doing, whether or not their anger is justified or reasonable.

Sadly, for all but very small companies, politics is the reality in the corporate world.

Again, another argument that "she should have known". No. If Google retaliated against her for sharing salary information, this is illegal, and they need to be punished. A bunch of hand waving about "politics" and "the way things are" is completely meaningless and irrelevant, and smacks of some sort of mild corporate Stockholm syndrome.

> If Google retaliated against her for sharing salary information, this is illegal, and they need to be punished.

Absolutely. Which is why I don't understand why everyone is discussing this. Erica Joy apparently doesn't consider it illegal retaliation (and what we know is definitely not enough to warrant such a cunclusion), otherwise she would file a suit. Are we totally sure we didn't just misunderstand her?

I've worked for all manner of companies from the smallest 2 person shops to the largest multi-billion dollar oil magnates and one thing is common across all of them, politics. Even at the Whitehouse one rule is common - keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Its all about who owes who what favours and what you can do to further their agenda. If they don't owe you a favour or you can't further their agenda, you're meaningless (and thus worthless) to them. If you can provide them with software that increases their margins by half a billion dollars a year or give them a leg up the ladder of their career, they'll pay you pretty much whatever that's worth to them.

Politics might appear less evident in smaller companies, because you're more likely intimately familiar with the people at the top. In a larger corporate environment where you really don't know everyone intimately, your perspective of the politics are compounded because you're not necessarily part of the inner circle. The road to the top is all politics though. If you want to get there, you have to know how to play your hand and visibly provide what those at the top need to further their own political agenda.

If you don't think there are politics at small orgs you must not have worked for one.

There are politics in every group of humans larger than one. Some just handle it better than others.

>then you have stepped into politics

You can ignore politics but politics will not ignore you; politics is why tech worker salaries were kept artificially lowered and why Google and others had an anti-poaching arrangement.

She should have prepared a bit better but this was the safe move for her; it's out of her hands and the salary information has appeared on sites like GlassDoor. If she's fired everyone will know it's because of this ugly politics and people will want to avoid working for Google since it's no longer a tech company but a company dominated by managerial power players and sharks. Who wants to work at a place where you have ugly politics like this after all?

Unfortunately, legislation like this don't really have any teeth.

Companies can still retaliate against salary sharing in any way they want because it's next to impossible for you to prove in court that they acted in retaliation.

Good luck proving retaliation in a jurisdiction with at-will employment.

Fuck, I just realized this piece of trash wrote his own version of "she was asking for it."

And, according to what I've read, she was spoken to about the salary sharing (whether by her manager, HR or both), but neither reprimanded nor fired because of it.

This is like telling me that water is wet. Water is wet. Assholes are assholes. Companies stretching or breaking the law with respect to retaliation are companies stretching or breaking the law with respect to retaliation. Smug HN commentators are smug HN commentators.

None of this actually says anything about whether she acted correctly, or incorrectly, or whether the company behaved with propriety, or whether information wants to be free, or anything else that--to borrow a phrase from the original HN guidelines--“piques one’s intellectual curiosity."

Here’s my contribution to “she got exactly what she should expect:” Americans got exactly what they should expect when they refused to pay taxes to the King.

What happened next? Why did things turn out that way. What might have happened instead? What could have been done to prevent it from happening? What could have been done to make it happen with less bloodshed?

Those are the interesting questions to ponder.

Deleted comment

Are you suggesting that I am blaming the Google employee in this story? Nothing could be further from the truth. I’m claiming that “She should have expected this” is weak sauce.

It’s factually true, but could just as easily be said that entrepreneurs who try but fail could have expected it, or protestors who get beaten and then jailed could have expected it, or people who ask someone out on a date but are turned down could have expected it.

All very true, but saying nothing of interest one way or the other.

For the record, I misunderstood your point, too.

Me three. Sometimes I wonder if obtuseness is intentional, to give one the opportunity to bitch no matter what the response. It's like one of those managers who helicopter in while you're doing something else with: "something minor; it'll take you literally no time, we need some data in that one format for tomorrow's meeting, <mumble, mumble>". After one gets burned, one will start sending confirmation emails.

Something, something about "English being twice as hard to read as it is to write, therefore anything written to be clever is guaranteed to be misunderstood."

Including this follow-up. Thanks for the feedback!

They didn't retaliate, they just didn't give her the bonuses.

Perhaps you could clarify what you think:

> exactly what you would expect when you're intentionally stirring shit up at any company

is?

From this reply, it appears that you think Google did nothing wrong - regardless of whether she was 'stirring shit up' or not.

I don't think they did do anything wrong against her. She didn't get her peer bonuses for starting this spreadsheet?

So what you expect for 'stirring shit up' is that nothing bad happens to you? If you think that, then the top post of this thread was weirdly inflammatory.

You don't think they retaliated, or you don't think that it would be wrong for them to retaliate?

I personally don't believe that not rewarding an action counts as "retaliation" for said action. I also believe, based on Xooglers commenting, that there might have been very good reasons to reject the peer bonuses (no, that was not the only case, in which peer bonuses got rejected, it's not that unheard of...).

(And I personally think, peer bonuses should be rejected in such cases Because otherwise it becomes a pure popularity-contest. But that's just, like, my opinion :) )

"retaliation is illegal"

I'm not sure what world you think we inhabit. Are we humanoid automatons? The whole welter of human emotion more or less always outweighs a programmatic injunction like "retaliation is illegal."

Companies are still people working together. They'll probably never be anything but people working together. It does not matter how protected the activity allegedly is; a giant embarrassment campaign run against your company, especially if in pursuit of a particularly feeble branch on the tree of political correctness, means you're out. Or, at least, things won't be pleasant for you. Because your coworkers, above and below, don't like what you've done to their company. One can't write a law preventing that.

The culture has to change from within. There is no reason why that information can't be shared among employees. As the user above you said, retaliatory action to that activity is in fact illegal. Just because the culture of where she works says it is not does not mean she is at all in the wrong for doing it, or that the retaliatory bullshit that was experienced was warranted - even if it was 'expected' as you say.

I for one side with the person who threw together the spreadsheet, not with Google who is trying to sneak by with not paying everyone equally.

Your assertion that the poster above you lives in a fantasy world for thinking that sharing salary information is a protected activity is frankly a nauseating attitude. One that I hope we all in tech can fix.

It seems rather clear from the article that many coworkers liked sharing salaries, so I am unsure where your "Because your coworkers, above and below, don't like what you've done to their company" came from.

I think it said 5% shared the spreadsheet. We know nothing of the other 95%

Oh, one can write a law preventing that, but what happens when you write laws to curb human emotion? Very little. Human nature takes generations to alter their behaviour - even with laws making that behaviour illegal. It sucks that we can't be less judgmental, more accepting and more adaptable to the wants of others, but that's the way we are: Flawed. Until we can be more tolerant and accepting of one anothers needs and less bound by our own egos, we will be doomed to repeat this behaviour until we destroy ourselves.

what happens when you write laws to curb human emotion

We call this "civilisation".

Now if only we were as civilized as we'd like to be. It takes many years for these values to become the norm. We make great steps every year and will continue to do so.

The law is not intended to curb emotion, it is intended to curb behavior.

Living in a community with other people often requires not impulsively indulging every emotional urge.

>I'm not sure what world you think we inhabit. Are we humanoid automatons? The whole welter of human emotion more or less always outweighs a programmatic injunction like "retaliation is illegal."

The only reason this argument makes sense to you is that you relate to retaliating against employees who exercise their rights in opposition to the employers goals. There isn't a crime that this argument couldn't be cited as a defence of, from double-parking to serial killing.

I'm not taking Google's position, but couldn't Erica have a hidden agenda on this initiative? Is it only about transparency?

She does seem like a SJW and, if any discrepancies in compensation were found between gender/race/... , Google would be ultimately screwed.

Plus, with such large dataset, one could fallaciously assume differences without considering different countries,positions,...

Equal pay is still regarded as a sinister "hidden agenda"? It's 2015, guys.

If you're intellectually honest, yes, still is a hidden agenda.

What does this even mean in this context? Being interested in whether you're illegally discriminated against is intellectual dishonesty?

Intelectually honestly: No. Agenda, yes. Hidden? No? It's a very unhidden, open, public agenda, when you lobby for transparency of pay.

"The sjw's are out to get me!!"

That wasn't really my point here.

Explicitly exposing facts is the attitude I'd expect from this community, instead of ridiculing and wrongly correlating it with ideologies.

The term "Social Justice Warrior" is often used to dismiss people who argue against discrimination in various arenas. If you want to be taken seriously in discussions about discrimination, then perhaps avoid it.

Putting that aside, I share pjc50's bemusement that arguing for equal pay qualifies as a "hidden agenda". I also don't find speculation the same as "explicitly exposing facts".

Using the term SJW is revealing an ideology, as surely as using M$ in a thread about Microsoft. You might not subscribe to it but most people are going to jump to that conclusion.

> the whole thing just crumbled into a victim story for me

Are you sure you're not being an Angry Jack[0] and using that as an easy excuse to reject the story firsthand?

> Also, generally shit will hit the fan if you tell anyone to fuck off, especially if they're your manager. Again, we don't know that she told her manager to fuck off for being racist

Were do you see her telling her manager to fuck off at all? She's the one who didn't try to blame her manager, it's that white male co-worker who wanted to do that, and she declined. You are literally accusing her of doing the opposite of what she did.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfPAoz9GnWM&t=236

I'm pretty sure the "telling her manager to fuck off" comment was a reference to refusing to be illegally intimidated over salary information sharing.

Assuming that's an accurate reading of GP's comment, I think it's quite telling that, again, an employee's refusal to be illegally intimidated should be constructed as "telling her manager to fuck off". The sympathies and attitudes thus revealed make me very glad that I don't have to depend on the good feeling of random Silicon Valley magnates and would-be magnates to work in my industry.

Leaving gender out of this (which is a massive hand-wave on my part), HN skews very heavily towards people who bifurcate the world into two kinds: Entrepreneurs and little people (I am referencing Bladerunner, not persons short in physical stature).

Had this story been rewritten to describe the situation as Google (and other BigCos like Apple) erecting arcane and anti-competitive mechanisms to manipulate a market for talent, and the protagonist quitting to found a web-based startup to disrupt their 19th century attitude to business, we might be toasting her as starting the next Uber for people.

How dare those fat cats do dirty deals to prevent the ordinary person from sharing a spreadsheet! SecretSalary to the rescue!

My understanding from reading the vague tweets was the "fuck off" statement was referring to some other occurance of racism that she mentions, unrelated to the salary spreadsheet.

It's a fuck off comment because the manager asked an open-ended question and tweeter bluntly retorted that retaliation is illegal. The manager could be ascertaining the awareness and intent behind stirring up this substantial turmoil. It would be polite to give the manager the benefit of doubt until threats are actually made.

It would be polite for the manager not to allude to threats which would be unlawful to make outright. Where else do you see something like "Don't you know what could happen?" going in a situation like that?

And let's be clear here. There is absolutely no downside to the sharing of salary information from the employee's perspective, and absolutely no upside to same from the perspective of management. So when it comes to hauling the employee into a private meeting with higher-ups, who are already outright declaring their displeasure with the situation, I think the "benefit of the doubt" boat has sailed.

I can imagine a number of downsides to publishing pay rates. Not every workplace is a beacon of maturity and comfortable upper-middle-class wages. Some offices have politics, gossip, and troublemakers.

Immediately employees would be calling meetings with their manager to hear the justifications for pay rates they felt were unfair. This could repeat with each new hire, promotion, raise, bonus, and change in responsibilities. This generates wasted time and increased turnover. My wife's design company would virtually grind to a halt for a few days. Even after everybody is placated with their pay rate, each doling out project assignments would be a new opportunity for friction over who deserves to do what. Then let's consider accusations of sexism, racism, ageism. The number of discrimination lawsuits would likely be non-zero. There are also social introverts who don't want to turn half of their co-worker interactions into awkward conversations.

So once profitable workplaces that kept everybody moderately polite and happy could face several obstacles. Handing out raises wouldn't solve all of these problems either. I'll admit some worker bees would probably get paid a little more.

As I said, no upside for management.

> absolutely no upside to same from the perspective of management

Are you asserting that 95%+ of companies in the US have, and sometimes enforce, a policy that actively hurts them? I know companies do stupid shit from time to time, but you are basically saying salary confidentiality policies are some sort of mass MBA psychosis. After all, if there is "absolutely no upside" to management, why do we need labor laws to prohibit these policies in the first place?

Edit: So, I totally mis-parsed that statement. I thought you were stating there was no upside to management prohibiting salary discussions.

Where on Earth did you get the idea that labor laws prohibit employees from discussing remuneration with one another?

Somehow I got thoroughly confused and thought the management comment referred to preventing, not permitting.

Re read the comment.

Aw crap, early morning parser failure.

You need to read parent again

theres a second page where she says it explicitly

In one of the last tweets she says "Shit will hit the fan when you tell someone to fuck off". Super dooper professional

This post isn't journalism by any stretch of the imagination. It's actually like a perfect caricature of whats wrong with digital publishing. Serious topic on a serious masthead with less than amateur treatment.

Someone sharing something on Twitter isn't supposed to be journalism. AFAIK the original author isn't a journalist, she's a technologist who got fed up.

Then why her writing is taken seriously by anyone? This piece at best is an opinion, mostly trash.

Hearsay, rumours, implication, this is professional gossiping. I don't deny the claims she makes, but the form in which she makes them really doesn't help her case, and the form clearly calls to create an online shitstorm.

We should shame publications who use "stories" like these. It's damaging for everyone involved and whatever the subject matter is. I refuse to take seriously what should not be.

I think you're confusing complaints about copying twitter posts verbatim and calling it a story with an attack on somebody making a public worker's rights and possible discrimination complaint.

The reason we listen to people is to learn things.

People's stories, especially people in disadvantaged communities, aren't "mostly trash," they're worth listening to. They're a way to know what's going on in those disadvantaged communities if you're not a part of them.

I believe the comment about improper journalism is about wired's take on the topic

We are not commenting on an HN submission that is a link to someone's tweet/tweets. We are commenting on a submission to Wired Magazine, a publication owned by Conde Nast. Wired's reporting added nothing to this story. (There is no reporting) They didn't interview the person, they didn't interview her employer, and they didn't offer any analysis whatsoever. The reporter didn't storify the tweets herself. Wired did insert advertisements and is getting page views for it though. It is Wired's job to do more than they have done here. You should expect more from them or anyone who purports to inform you.

Fair enough- and I do. I assumed you were commenting on the tweets, my mistake.

Yes. Heaven forfend staff should behave in a way potentially inimical to the interests of management, instead of the other way around.

Staff works for management. While it's nice to have times where the management "works for" their employees, the whole point is that management is supposed to be happy.

Staff being subordinate to management in an organizational sense is one thing. Staff members being forbidden even to approach anything, which might grow into a discussion of how and where management's interests are actively inimical to their own, is quite another.

You're making the best arguments for unionization I've heard in the tech industry for quite a long time.

> the whole point is that management is supposed to be happy

What? Workers sell their labor to a company for a price. The whole point of any transaction is to satisfy both parties. Sharing market information is something that both buyers and sellers do. Why do you think this should be unilateral?

Presumably he believes that managers are there to expropriate the surplus happiness of the workforce. It's not alienation of your labour until you're feeling properly alienated.

Don't conflate management with the company's owners, whose happiness is the actual goal. (Granted, sometimes these are the same people, wearing different hats.) As anyone who has worked in private industry can tell you, management often acts in its own interests, even when those interests conflict with those of both employees and owners.

No, staff and management work for the shareholders, essentially

>tl;dr she got exactly what you would expect when you're intentionally stirring shit up at any company. I'm not sure what she expected.

"tl;dr I support the establishment"

> OF COURSE the MALE coworker can do WHATEVER HE WANTS, as long as we don't actually have any details about it.

I read that differently. My reading:

* The fact that he was still getting them points how how arbitrary this was, and that she was being retaliated against.

* The whole story leaves me with the impression that she had ownership/credit for the spreadsheet, and that is why she was specifically being targeted with the rejected Peer Bonuses.

* He may have still be getting the Peer Bonuses because he was under a different manager/supervisor that was more forgiving.

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