Google found it was underpaying more men than women for similar jobs

[Gael1]

Want to hear a really funny one?

Amazon trained an AI to predict which resumes led to high performing workers (specifically, workers that went on to get a lot of promotions etc). So they fed it all their historical resume, hiring and performance data. They had to scrap the thing when they realised that the strongest predictor it found was gender.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-a...-idUSKCN1MK08G

They tried to stop the AI from selecting on gender lines, so it went with the next highest predictors: which were all proxies for gender. Eg, which college did they attend (downrank anyone who went to all-girls' colleges), or what kind of language patterns they use (it searched for language patterns favoured by women).

Basically the AI proved that the dataset they trained the AI on (ie, their company's history of hires and promotions) was riddled with systemic gender bias.

Did they though ? I mean from your story there can be two conclusions : either they are biased and promoting undeserving men for no reason, or men tend to be more interested in promotions and thus work harder and actively look for opportunities.

No idea which one it is but it's weird to directly assume that it has to be bias. Of course it reflects very poorly on Amazon either way so it's logical they had to abandon ship.

[Sunseeker]

There are some issues here. "Underpaying more men than women", don't they also employ more men than women? So men would stand a statistically higher chance of being underpaid? IE: If I employ 90 men and 10 women, and I underpay 50 men and 10 women, then I'm underpaying more men than women but I'm still underpaying all the women I employ, even if there are less of them.

Similarly speaking, were they underpaid in comparison to each other or to the average of the position they're employed in, or some other bar? Further, was the reason fewer women were being underpaid is because people have been shining a spotlight on women being underpaid, so Google has made more consistent efforts to ensure women are properly paid?

I'm not here to argue the wage gap is or isn't real, only that this doesn't really say anything either way. Google found it was underpaying some folks. That's literally all it says, oh and that one group of men was underpaid compared to another group of women (not all women, just this female peer group).

[Wyrt]

Did they though ? I mean from your story there can be two conclusions : either they are biased and promoting undeserving men for no reason, or men tend to be more interested in promotions and thus work harder and actively look for opportunities.

No idea which one it is but it's weird to directly assume that it has to be bias. Of course it reflects very poorly on Amazon either way so it's logical they had to abandon ship.

It was because there's just more men in the tech fields. So most of the resumes they fed to the AI were from men so it started sorting for men.

[cparle87]

Wasn't the "Women make 77c to mens $1" debunked many times at that? With it not only being overly large of a gap that no one could recreate, but also failing to take into account things such as mens tendency to take on more extra tasks and over time?

And the fact if a man and a woman both work for say 30 years and the woman takes 5 years off to birth and raise her children, that she'll end being paid less than the man was on average across those 30 years because she took that time off. But of course that doesn't suit the narrative.

[Doctor Amadeus]

They were also found guilty of systemic pay discrepancies by TRUMP'S JUSTICE DEPARTMENT in 2017.

https://www.theatlantic.com/business...nation/522411/

And I think there was a class action at the same time?

It was pretty hilarious that while the far right's little manifesto stunt was going on, back in the real world Google was in hot water over actual gender discrimination... the other way.

QFT pretty much this. Gender pay discrimination is always bad regardless to who it is.

[urasim]

They were also found guilty of systemic pay discrepancies by TRUMP'S JUSTICE DEPARTMENT in 2017.

https://www.theatlantic.com/business...nation/522411/

And I think there was a class action at the same time?

It was pretty hilarious that while the far right's little manifesto stunt was going on, back in the real world Google was in hot water over actual gender discrimination... the other way.

Yeah, but WHAT ABOUT ORANGE MAN BAD?!?!??! Whataboutisms sure are fun stuff man!

[vilememory]

Good, Google should underpay the men. Make up for the decades of underpaying women, I see this as a good thing and hope it continues into the future. Women deserves better than what they have now, and men need to pay for their past and current trangressions.

[Zaktar]

Wasn't the "Women make 77c to mens $1" debunked many times at that? With it not only being overly large of a gap that no one could recreate, but also failing to take into account things such as mens tendency to take on more extra tasks and over time?

It has more to do with the fact that men tend to work more hours over their lifetime, and until Junior becomes a documentary I'm not sure how that changes. More mandatory paid time off for new parents of either gender seems like a good way to work toward parity; people like to blame husbands for not taking more time off to be with their children but our society, at least in the US, is not really comfortable with that. I'm not sure forced parity is that great of an idea, I mean if a person takes a year off of work for any reason whatsoever, they are set back in terms of pay. How do you fix something like that?

Also I believe men do make slightly more than women do on average for equal credentials for equal jobs, and that seems to have to do with the negotiation skills which people mention. Or possibly blatant sexism.

Good, Google should underpay the men. Make up for the decades of underpaying women, I see this as a good thing and hope it continues into the future. Women deserves better than what they have now, and men need to pay for their past and current trangressions.

I need to pay because of what some other dick with a dick had and did? So the sins of the father pass down to the son and all? Okay your holiness.

[cparle87]

I would assume they're talking about a higher percentage of men than women. I can't find their wording in their study but the wording used in the article is pretty poor.

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That's also not how a study would be done because it's idiotic.

I was under the impression that's where the illusory "wage gap" came from, because a woman would take a couple years off over the course of her career to raise a family while a man would not need to quit work, or at least nearly as long, and therefore get paid more on average over their working years.

[Joti]

Good, Google should underpay the men. Make up for the decades of underpaying women, I see this as a good thing and hope it continues into the future. Women deserves better than what they have now, and men need to pay for their past and current trangressions.

If you're going to troll you should at least attempt to be subtle. This will only bait the frothing at the mouth types, and they don't really need motivation to flip out on the forums, they typically do that all by themselves.

[Azadina]

Sick bait.

I fully expect certain usual suspects to fully bite that one.

[Cathululock]

So, when people got overwhelmed by equality treatment that you suddenly forget that the scale is tipping too much to the other side?

Why not just pay people depending on education, level of experience and years of experience? There, flatline, nothing else to be added on the list...

Because that's literally what they were doing. Libtards believe equal opportunity will mean exact equal outcome, and if it doesn't then there must be muh institutionalized isms present.

[Celista]

So, they went looking for wage inequality, found it, and then fixed it?

Seems like it. Sounds like a good thing to me all around

[cparle87]

Not quite. The 77 cents on the dollar figure is often misquoted to include "for the same job". In reality, it's just the average pay of women vs the average pay of men. It doesn't take occupation into account. So it is misleading and pretty useless for the most part. The only real issue it reveals is that there may be an occupational barrier for women. They're less likely to go into higher paying STEM fields because of social issues in many cases. The real wage gap, when taking into account occupations, experience and plethora of other factors is around 7%.

https://www.aauw.org/files/2013/02/g...graduation.pdf

Ah. I thought it was like Man A and Woman A have the same job. They have the same hourly wage, both work full time, both have worked for the same number of years before retiring. Woman A took off 4 years to raise her child. Man A's employment was not disrupted. Man A earned on the course of the years more than Woman A. Therefore sexism. /s

[Ivanstone]

You seem to not know what means and standard deviations are.

I know what they are. The people who wrote the article might not. Do you have other information that the article writers don't have access to?

[Linkedblade]

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/04/goog...ge-equity.html

That's because the conventional femenist approach to determining the gender pay gap is comparing all male workers' pay to all female workers' pay, without accounting for things like maternity leave or seniority, etc

[Lochton]

Nothing in your post indicated entry salary.

'flatline' was the word I used, sorry.

[Grimbold21]

Good, Google should underpay the men. Make up for the decades of underpaying women, I see this as a good thing and hope it continues into the future. Women deserves better than what they have now, and men need to pay for their past and current trangressions.

Friend of Mall Security?

[Mormolyce]

Yeah, but WHAT ABOUT ORANGE MAN BAD?!?!??! Whataboutisms sure are fun stuff man!

???

What are you talking about? I mentioned that it was Trump's Justice Department investigating Google because of the irony. Did you even read what I wrote?

It seems like you're the one just thoughtlessly repeating ORANGE MAN BAD.

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That's kind of funny and sad at the same time.

They completely ignored when it was wage inequality against women, but when it's against men it's an outrage.

Kind of like how the right spent decades pooh-poohing affirmative action, but now women are outperforming men in schools they're clamouring for it lol.