Since when has this thread been about the gender pay gap? In my experience, threads on HN tend to be about whatever the people commenting in the thread choose to comment on.
Personally, I only care about the gender pay gap insofar as it signals that some people are being underpaid, which I think is unfair. If there is a chain of causality leading from "X is a woman" to "X is a bad negotiator" to "X is underpaid", then the ones that deserve help are underpaid people first and foremost.
They can be helped by attacking any mechanism of causality (including those that are not mentioned above): preventing bad negotiators from being underpaid (e.g by helping bad negotiators become good negotiators) and preventing women from becoming bad negotiators (e.g. by specifically mentoring them). But the farther removed the factor you are targeting is, the less efficient your efforts become. I think it is shortsighted to limit a program to women when it could just as well be applied to other people (unless something about Google's negotiation training is explicitly gender-specific).
> And further, please don't advocate against policies that help millions of women because they don't help everyone.
I'm certainly not advocating that women shouldn't get help with negotiating if they need it, but I am advocating that other people should also receive that help.
> Since when has this thread been about the gender pay gap?
We're discussing Stretch, which is a Google program designed to narrow the gender pay gap by teaching women negotiating skills. You're the one who initially brought it up:
> For example, Google apparently has a program called Stretch to help women become better negotiators.
> Personally, I only care about the gender pay gap insofar as it signals that some people are being underpaid, which I think is unfair. If there is a chain of causality leading from "X is a woman" to "X is a bad negotiator" to "X is underpaid", then the ones that deserve help are underpaid people first and foremost.
Sure, OK. This whole thread is (I thought clearly) about gender issues. If you have thoughts about how to address the pay gap between various different groups of White men, feel free to advocate for them. But don't derail a conversation about gender inequality like this; this is not a zero sum issue. We can have programs that address this issue for women and programs that address this issue for other groups too, or programs designed to address this issue for all groups. But this thread is about gender, so let's not stray too far OT.
Personally, I only care about the gender pay gap insofar as it signals that some people are being underpaid, which I think is unfair. If there is a chain of causality leading from "X is a woman" to "X is a bad negotiator" to "X is underpaid", then the ones that deserve help are underpaid people first and foremost.
They can be helped by attacking any mechanism of causality (including those that are not mentioned above): preventing bad negotiators from being underpaid (e.g by helping bad negotiators become good negotiators) and preventing women from becoming bad negotiators (e.g. by specifically mentoring them). But the farther removed the factor you are targeting is, the less efficient your efforts become. I think it is shortsighted to limit a program to women when it could just as well be applied to other people (unless something about Google's negotiation training is explicitly gender-specific).
> And further, please don't advocate against policies that help millions of women because they don't help everyone.
I'm certainly not advocating that women shouldn't get help with negotiating if they need it, but I am advocating that other people should also receive that help.