Yes, and random pay discrimination (or discrimination on job-irrelevant traits like “salary negotiation ability”) are, on their own, legal.

However, if that is systematic by sex/gender its illegal discrimination, including if it is an indirect result of facially-sex/gender-neutral discrimination that has an unequal impact by sex and insufficient tie to legitimate business necessity (that’s “disparate impact” discrimination.)

> The internship program has a focus of providing development opportunities to students from groups historically underrepresented in tech, through technical training and professional development.

At least they're openly admitting to it. Blizzard is also bragging about how 43% of their new interns are women, which way more than the number of women cs grads. This isn't whataboutism because you can't complain about pay disparity if the groups don't start on a level playing field.

https://activisionblizzard.com/newsroom/2021/06/press-a-for-...

I suspect you are not being truthful here. This:

"Each engineer's pay is the product of their skill level, how they negotiated as well as competing offers they had."

Is an assertion. Or at least, it's an assertion if you make the implicit "and nothing else", explicit.

Regardless on where you or I personally come down on the truth value of that statement, it isn't hard to understand why it is controversial.

In this case some would add gender to your list, and it's not immediately obvious or empirically proven that they are wrong (or right).

The fact of the matter is: you have to have some negotiation skills if you want to get paid the best you possibly can, regardless of your gender.

I think that is still a pretty big issue on it's own. This feels pretty shitty when we bring neurodiversity into view. Coworkers with Autism will have a very hard time negotiating for that pay raise to the same efficiency of others.

You mean, the thing that repeatedly happens under the existing system, despite negotiation?

For example, https://www.cnet.com/news/google-adobe-apple-intel-settle-wa...

This is, of course, statistically impossible to be true for everyone who believes it.

Unless you're overwhelming overpaid irrespective of your actual ability, no employee would suffer any downsides from pay transparency. If you (not you specifically, but any reader) disagree feel free to present a scenario.

I lie to every employer about competing wages.

One time I took a suitcase to my office and told my manager I was away for some interviews. Subsequently told him I didn't feel like I was earning my market rate - this was after my performance reviewed raise+bonus. Gained another 15% that way.

Considering we all know hiring is an imperfect measure of skill, I would expect that pay diverges over tenure conditioned on identical qualification at hire.

What I do not want is for equally performant people to be paid differently on non-job-characteristics: so if, for instance, two people are roughly in the same bucket of performance, paying the woman less/more is unacceptable. Obviously individuals will see individual variation, but if across a number of employees, n, you see x% lower/higher pay for women than for men something is strange for sufficiently large x and n.

That is, either your hiring practices for women and men are not congruent, or they are and for some reason you're seeing poorer/better performances from women/men, then you have to identify the cause. The null hypothesis is that gender does not affect ability.

Without pay transparency you wouldn't know regardless so I'm not sure what your point is.

Your question was:

> why wouldn't you want to be paid the same as equally qualified members with the same title on the same team?

My answer is "because performance is more important than qualifications and once you're in I could give a flying fuck about your qualifications". That's the point.

Pay transparency is a different discussion. I am fully capable of transmitting and receiving pay information without forced pay transparency.

Furthermore even if there are discrepancies in pay and performance without transparency you wouldn't know anyway. My question was in the context of the other post - in the context of your post it's the same question except with respect to performance.

So, are you against pay transparency, or not? You say you're capable of receiving and transmitting, but ultimately you aren't receiving the truth, only what is told to you - which may or may not be the same.

Against. Not because of the ideal but because sufficient numbers of capable engineers I'd like to work with are simultaneously poor evaluators of whether others are capable. i.e. lack of pay transparency permits us both to turn the situation into a low stakes situation if we do not highly estimate each others' ability to evaluate others.

> You say you're capable of receiving and transmitting, but ultimately you aren't receiving the truth, only what is told to you - which may or may not be the same.

I am capable of having trusted relationships where I do not need third-party enforcement of truth. Just like I'd believe a friend who says she's going to the store without having to check her location on Google Maps, I am capable of believing my trusted co-workers when they express things like this as truth. I do not lie to them and I am capable of forming relationships where I believe they do not lie to me.

Negotiating comes in a few flavors. One is in the form of a competing offer, which you could just as easily ask the same question: "What does a competing offer contribute to an engineering team that it should affect compensation to the same extent as skill". Of course, the answer is that competing offers don't contribute to engineering teams at all! But, if a company ignores all competing offers, it will not hire anyone who manages to get one. I'd guess competing offers correlate highly with being a successful engineer, so that sounds like a terrible strategy to me. They also serve as another form of vetting (like VCs piling on after but only after the first bite).

I think this question fundamentally misunderstands labor markets. They are, in fact, markets! Employees are not paid by the amount of value they generate (potentially over a million per person at FAANG), but according to supply and demand for the position.

Let’s also not discount the fact that negotiation is a skill itself, and you were learning from your stepsister who sounds like a skilled negotiator. If you had to negotiate another raise in-person I would bet you could think back to the cards and knock it out.

> (D) A bona fide factor other than sex, such as education, training, or experience. This factor shall apply only if the employer demonstrates that the factor is not based on or derived from a sex-based differential in compensation, is job related with respect to the position in question, and is consistent with a business necessity. For purposes of this subparagraph, “business necessity” means an overriding legitimate business purpose such that the factor relied upon effectively fulfills the business purpose it is supposed to serve. This defense shall not apply if the employee demonstrates that an alternative business practice exists that would serve the same business purpose without producing the wage differential.

In particular, prior salary is explicitly not a valid defense.

By this standard, if there is a pay gap in California, the burden is on the employer to demonstrate they are not discriminating

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...

This is so incredibly defeatist. What is your reasoning behind equal pay for equal skill not being better for everyone?

That's why compensation exists in bands, which is aimed to reflect that skill levels exist in bands (not all L4s are equal, etc).

I understand your point, even if I think it's a little narrow, but the original comment seemed to apply that there was no point in even trying to achieve equal pay. That just totally baffles me.

equally qualified != equally performant

People who were given "You're #1" ribbons and awards for participating regardless of their performance.

Nah, it's finer grained than that. Negotiating skills are the cherry on top, but they are dependent on performance.

You can't negotiate if you don't have offer a level of performance that justifies the negotiation.

You won't even get the interview (and therefore opportunity to negotiate) without the "performance" i.e. actual work related skills.

Participating in interview *: 0 or 1

Participating in negotiation for a higher income: 0 or 1

* Note: An interview is only obtained based on past performance (that is, a person previously performed work at a certain level).