James Damore, the Google Heretic, was cast out for saying that intelligent people who identify as “women” did not enjoy staring at a screen and typing out pages of boring C and Java code (while simultaneously wearing headphones and rubbing elbows with other nerds?).
Damore suggested that the programming job be reconfigured so that it would be more appealing to people identifying as women. Instead of doing that, Google fired him for his thoughtcrime.
If Damore were correct, Econ 101 would predict that women at Google would be getting paid more than men for doing the same job. Otherwise, why would they be there doing something that was distasteful to them?
“Google Finds It’s Underpaying Many Men as It Addresses Wage Equity” (nytimes):
When Google conducted a study recently to determine whether the company was underpaying women and members of minority groups, it found, to the surprise of just about everyone, that men were paid less money than women for doing similar work.
Doesn’t this tend to show that both Damore and Econ 101 are correct?
Related:
- “The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM” (Atlantic)
- California family law (a straightforward way to collect a substantial fraction of a Google programmer’s after-tax spending power without ever working at Google; no marriage required)
It is not just IT, in the law business women have been equally represented at the law schools for many decades but few become law firm partners — because most leave by the early 30s and the few that remain typically, though not always, have a screw a loose — since who who has the choice would want to be standing at a photocopy machine at 2am or sitting in a conference room with a bunch of blowhards on a Saturday morning pretending you care about someone else’s ridiculous problem — when you could be drinking white wine at noon with your friends after a hard morning of dividing up Popsicles.
jack, why aren’t men leaving at the same rate as women? Your comment seems to suggest that women have a choice to leave (so they do), and men don’t have that choice (else they would), but you don’t explicitly lay out any reasons for it.
This finding would not surprise any Silicon Valley hiring manager, where talented women in engineering have commanded a substantial premium for years as everyone struggles to meet 50% representation targets from a subgroup of 25% of the labor pool.
This manifests in a lower bar for hiring and promotion, greater tolerance of time off, and so on. It is not surprising that this has produced higher salaries for that subgroup.
I’m sure the male employees at these firms will never notice the disparate treatment, but even if they do, they’ll no doubt correctly assess that their female coworkers were given a leg up and will neither be bitter about the unequal promotions and benefits, nor incorrectly generalize an observation “lower average competence” from their biased coworker pool onto all women.
Gender relations solved! /s
A study like that is going to be comparing people manely in PR & marketing rather than programming. In that case, women in PR probably do make more than men. They’re certainly easier on the eyes than male booth babes.
Typing out pages of boring C would be a lot better than the reality of git merging, code reviews, & kanban boards. How does one get these boring C programming jobs?
Don’t forget the bug tracker.
> Doesn’t this tend to show that both Damore and Econ 101 are correct?
Yes. So what? It’s a religious question, logic and evidence do not apply. Trying to use them here is like bringing a pocket calculator to a gun fight.
F*ck Google
You act as if correct has to do with anything.
@Colby unless you were being facetious:
Anecdotal evidence from affluent suburb of DC. Many SAHMs dubbed themselves recovering attorneys to remind everyone of their vaunted JD degree. Reality was they had married up, so the husband was the higher earner (often partner at law firm whereas younger (typically) wife was associate), and opportunity cost of wife leaving workforce to be full-time parent was lower. (Exception was a few SAHDs whose wives were greater earners, but rare enough that male stood out at playground daily at 4 pm.) Wife did return to the law by time kids were in elementary school sometimes, but other times became near full time school volunteer, or took gig as fitness instructor, etc. These women tended to be more intellectual and smarter than average SAHM, so in theory there is some benefit to their full-time presence for their progeny, i.e., beyond Popsicle divvying. Minimal drinking as per your post — significant Uber driver role to various kids’ extra-curriculars