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by ocdtrekkie 1963 days ago
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.

1 comments

> 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.