4 ms·

> My paycheck is 18% less than my less qualified male colleagues. I stopped reading here.

jhgaylor 10y ago
Why? The pay gap is real and was nearly an aside in the article. This article is about a woman being mistreated by men in tech. This comment seems to be as well.
- dudul 10y ago
  Mistreated by men? Did you miss the part where she writes that almost everybody in HR was a woman?
  - huckyaus 10y ago
    Did you miss literally every other part of the article? She wouldn't have needed to approach HR in the first place if not for the systemic abuse from males within the company.
  - Arizhel 10y ago
    It really seems to me that if you want to find the most evil women you possibly can, you just need to go talk to women who work in HR. There's no way I'd ever date a women who worked in HR. Once, many years ago, I met a woman on an online dating site who worked in HR for some big retailer. She made a comment (in the messaging app, we never met) disparaging the people who interviewed to work there. I commented that maybe if they paid better, they'd get better applicants. Never heard back from her after that. (No, she didn't work for CostCo; they're famous for paying well for those types of positions, and having very loyal and hard-working employees as a result.) It seems like HR people are really the worst kind of people: they're just rank-and-file employees usually (except the HR Director), but they'll happily defend the very worse corporate treatment of employees.
- legostormtroopr 10y ago
  Because if true and provable, this is a federal case that she can sue over and win. In reality the wage gap is rarely as cut and dry as "women get paid less than men for the same jobs".
  - foldr 10y ago
    Not everyone is champing at the bit to sue people whenever the opportunity arises.
- ryhamz 10y ago
  Why is this aside in the article? It's a separate point that isn't going to get her much sympathy in many circles, because that pay gap could be less real than you think. 18% less could be a result of negotiating skills or any other confounding factor. How has she quantified her qualifications vs all other male employees? No need to add this unsubstantiated drivel to an otherwise potentially useful insight.
djsumdog 10y ago
I have a hypothesis that if we could evaluate confidence levels, we'd find that both men and women who had lower confidence would be paid less than engineers with higher confidence, regardless of gender. There's a great article published by Salon called "The Confidence Gap" which talks about this issue. Women do seem to have less confidence than men in western societies, but that's a greater social issue. If you are a female engineer who finds out you are underpaid, go find a new job and ask for the salaries you discovered your male counterparts made. You'll most likely get it. ..and in general, you should switch jobs at the 2 year mark if you're young and fresh out of school. That way you don't get stuck as a Java/.NET/Ruby/limited-language developer, you expand you skills and you know to ask for larger increases with each job and get the current market rate. If you get stuck with the standard 2%~5% cost of living increase each year, you'll be under market value very quickly. The wage gap is mostly a myth. When there is a gap, it has less to do with gender and more to do with the larger socialite taboo of knowing other peoples' incomes. If income/wages were transparent at every company, we'd see much less income inequality.

Why? The pay gap is real and was nearly an aside in the article. This article is about a woman being mistreated by men in tech. This comment seems to be as well.

dudul 10y ago
Mistreated by men? Did you miss the part where she writes that almost everybody in HR was a woman?
- huckyaus 10y ago
  Did you miss literally every other part of the article? She wouldn't have needed to approach HR in the first place if not for the systemic abuse from males within the company.
- Arizhel 10y ago
  It really seems to me that if you want to find the most evil women you possibly can, you just need to go talk to women who work in HR. There's no way I'd ever date a women who worked in HR. Once, many years ago, I met a woman on an online dating site who worked in HR for some big retailer. She made a comment (in the messaging app, we never met) disparaging the people who interviewed to work there. I commented that maybe if they paid better, they'd get better applicants. Never heard back from her after that. (No, she didn't work for CostCo; they're famous for paying well for those types of positions, and having very loyal and hard-working employees as a result.) It seems like HR people are really the worst kind of people: they're just rank-and-file employees usually (except the HR Director), but they'll happily defend the very worse corporate treatment of employees.
legostormtroopr 10y ago
Because if true and provable, this is a federal case that she can sue over and win. In reality the wage gap is rarely as cut and dry as "women get paid less than men for the same jobs".
- foldr 10y ago
  Not everyone is champing at the bit to sue people whenever the opportunity arises.
ryhamz 10y ago
Why is this aside in the article? It's a separate point that isn't going to get her much sympathy in many circles, because that pay gap could be less real than you think. 18% less could be a result of negotiating skills or any other confounding factor. How has she quantified her qualifications vs all other male employees? No need to add this unsubstantiated drivel to an otherwise potentially useful insight.

djsumdog 10y ago

I have a hypothesis that if we could evaluate confidence levels, we'd find that both men and women who had lower confidence would be paid less than engineers with higher confidence, regardless of gender. There's a great article published by Salon called "The Confidence Gap" which talks about this issue. Women do seem to have less confidence than men in western societies, but that's a greater social issue. If you are a female engineer who finds out you are underpaid, go find a new job and ask for the salaries you discovered your male counterparts made. You'll most likely get it. ..and in general, you should switch jobs at the 2 year mark if you're young and fresh out of school. That way you don't get stuck as a Java/.NET/Ruby/limited-language developer, you expand you skills and you know to ask for larger increases with each job and get the current market rate. If you get stuck with the standard 2%~5% cost of living increase each year, you'll be under market value very quickly. The wage gap is mostly a myth. When there is a gap, it has less to do with gender and more to do with the larger socialite taboo of knowing other peoples' incomes. If income/wages were transparent at every company, we'd see much less income inequality.