18 ms·

I regularly hire women for 65% to 75% of what males make

• creativityhurts 15y ago
  But that's not a rule, it's because women don't negotiate well. This title can create a bit of unnecessary controversy, imho.
  • D_Drake 15y ago
    Controversial titles drive clickthroughs.
• Peroni 15y ago
  In the UK the pay difference between males & females under the age of 40 in Tech roles is nominal. There is a difference but it's not even remotely close to the disparity you would find 20 years ago. That being said, over the past twelve months, female candidates consisted of approximately 5% of the people I represented. There are very few women in the industry and I've rarely come across any who are afraid to argue their worth. On the contrary in fact. Occasionally I have come across one or two women who were demanding a salary that was simply far beyond their worth and I imparted the same advice to them as I would to a male candidate and both women were incredibly offended by my feedback and refused to budge whereas almost every single male that I challenged actually listened to my advice and adjusted their rate to suit. The idea of negotiating salary offers still appears to be a relatively unknown phenomenon here in the UK. You'd be surprised how few candidates stand their ground and push for more than 5% of the original offer regardless of gender.
  • chrislomax 15y ago
    Interviewing recently (in the UK) I find the same to be true. Although we only had 1 woman in the interviews, she was double the asking price of the other candidates we were getting in that are male. I can't say for certain why this is, maybe it was the role we were hiring for? The male candidates were more or less happy to move to us for the same price they are currently being paid where the woman actually asked for double what we were willing to pay for much less experience than the males.
    • v21 15y ago
      Likely enough to be random variation as to have some real underlying cause.
  • ticks 15y ago
    The concept of salary negotiation is alien to me. Given how difficult it is to find developer jobs in my part of the UK and given that employers are expecting to pay lower and lower amounts these days, I would consider a salary negotiation too risky. There's just too many people applying for too few positions. That's why I like recruitment agents, when you apply for a job, you already know the salary (or at least the salary range). Obviously, there's disadvantages, like having no idea who you are applying for but that can be fixed with a bit of research.
    • Peroni 15y ago
      Obviously, there's disadvantages, like having no idea who you are applying for but that can be fixed with a bit of research. It's a legal requirement in the UK for a recruiter to have your explicit permission to submit your CV to a company. The law is black & white but unfortunately most recruiters tend to be ignorant of it and those whe aren't simply ignore it as they know most candidates aren't aware of the fact. Never ever let an agent submit your CV to a company before they tell you who the company are. Salary negotiations are incredibly simple. When you are offered a salary, simply push back and say you would be comfortable with 10% more. The worst that can happen is they will simply say that the budget won't allow it. The offer is still on the table and you've lost nothing.
    • danssig 15y ago
      It's attitudes like yours that are pushing the prices down. Your view is also wrong. There are lots of jobs and lots of workers to fill them. You could also just go abroad. There are lots of nice places to work and with English you can work in pretty much any big city in western Europe.
      • Peroni 15y ago
        Your view is also wrong. He voiced his opinion and it was a valid one. There are lots of jobs and lots of workers to fill them. In certain parts of the UK and moreso throughout Europe jobs are in fact quite scarce regardless of your development ability.
    • vidarh 15y ago
• ramblerman 15y ago
  if you read the actual text it ends with the one person who got the most out of us was a highly aggressive, very smart, very confident woman I guess they wanted to point out women, in general, aren't as aggressive in demanding higher salaries. Which whilst being an interesting observation seems kind of a non issue, there is no discrimination here.
  • marquis 15y ago
    The poster was clearly not discriminating. Reading this from a female perspective he was just telling facts, and I don't see this as HR's problem either. We women need to learn to negotiate, and learn how to do this while maintaining the need for social inclusion. There are still a lot more men in the tech business which does affect the manner in which you discuss money and it's hard even for me to negotiate (and I've been in business for years). It's a matter of telling your social-brain to shut up and put your personal-survival-brain first, maybe. I don't see this as a gender issue so much as a personality-type issue, it's secondary that many women happen to have the personality-type where social concerns come first. When clients ask me for a discount we'll almost always give it, but I'll be much happier to work with a client who approaches the matter in a sociable way rather than a direct request for a discount (I find it tasteless, even though the money-brain side of me completely understands what is happening). Just a side note: I have male employees who also suck at asking for raises.
  • rmc 15y ago
    I read that as being "Look women! You are not shackled by your sex! C'mon, you can do it! Haggle more!"
• officemonkey 15y ago
  I think this goes beyond just salary negotiations. My wife typically comes to me when she has "business politics questions" (despite that she's been working longer and more successfully than me.) Most of things we talk about involve how to get something (usually work or money) from a client without seeming like they're bothering them. I'm definitely in the "just matter-of-factly send them an email." She's more in the "I don't want them to get irritated by me contacting them" camp. This isn't universal though. I've had two experiences where it's been reversed. One male I recently hired accepted a position when he knew money would be a problem and didn't bring it up even though it's a bit of a hardship for him right now. A female I'm in discussions to hire has told me flat out what her salary requirements are. I actually appreciate this kind of discussion.
  • AutoCorrect 15y ago
    nah, that's just consensus building - another trait of the female of the species. I've seen it plenty of times before: it takes me 10 minutes to make a decision, and I call no one. It takes my wife two days, as she goes through her address book, calling friends and talking it out with them.
• bravura 15y ago
  This phenomenon was studied in a book called Women Don't Ask. http://www.womendontask.com/ http://www.womendontask.com/ 'When Linda Babcock asked why so many male graduate students were teaching their own courses and most female students were assigned as assistants, her dean said: "More men ask. The women just don't ask."' Incidentally, for a while, the authors would give a free copy of this book to women who would ask for one.
  • thomasgerbe 15y ago
    "More men ask. The women just don't ask." I wonder why women do not ask more. Especially with something like dating. It happens but far less regularly than the other way around. I wonder if that leap of faith contributes to men being more comfortable to negotiate/ask for higher income.
    • suivix 15y ago
      Testosterone, maybe? (I'm not trying to be snarky)
      • bh42222 15y ago
        Could be. But as an evolutionary psychology fan myself this is one area where I would expect social conditioning to play a very large role.
        • HedgeMage 15y ago
          It's definitely a function of social conditioning -- how else would it vary so much based on the community in which one is raised? When it comes to salary negotiations, most lower-SEC (socio-economic class) country women I know will counter their first offer. Getting more than the initial offer makes them feel respected; they want to see that the employer wants them enough to make a concession. Most higher-SEC urban and suburban women I know won't ask -- they'll take or turn down the initial offer, but they tell me that asking for more money would make them look whiny and high-maintenance. Growing up in the country, being able to haggle was a badge of honor. One haggles (or at least asks about discounts/freebies) everywhere from garage sales to car dealerships to the local fabric store. I cannot tell you how many times as a child I heard my mother, grandmother, and aunts say "it never hurts to ask". It's considered mostly a woman thing there -- I get funny looks from the men for teaching my 8yo son to haggle, but my male friends ask me to come shopping with them to handle negotiations. The women I know from the techie world (all from higher-SEC and more urban backgrounds than I) may look for advertised sales, but haggling or asking for discounts not offered is seen as showing weakness/looking poor. When I go ahead and haggle around them, they say things like "I cannot believe you just said that!" or "You are embarrassing me, we don't need a discount that badly, we can afford this." As adults, we seem to translate that consumer experience to how we approach salary negotiations. Both groups pursue the strategy that they were raised to believe shows confidence and strength. My advice: if you want your daughter (or son) to negotiate a higher salary as an adult, teach her (or him) to haggle young. That garage sale where she/he asks "If I buy all twelve of these books [marked 50 cents each], would you sell the lot for five dollars?" will eventually become "Would you consider 70k/year?" (in response to an offer for 55).
• iwwr 15y ago
  Strictly on economic terms, how much of a discount would you get on a developer if he/she is likely to take 1-2 year off at some point? During that time, you have to hire another person, train them and then tell them to leave.
  • vidarh 15y ago
    Which is an interesting question, but it is irrelevant in terms of the linked post, which specifically points out that the person in question is hiring women at lower salaries because they don't ask and he's following policy, not because he's adverse to giving them higher salaries if they do ask (and he has the flexibility to at least narrow the gap).
    • dexen 15y ago
      It may well be relevant -- if the women in question considered their negotiating posision weaker because of possible future maternity leave.
  • nupark2 15y ago
    You're being downvoted, but this is quite honestly something I've witnessed C-levels worrying about -- "does she seem like she might get pregnant immediately?". I have to disagree with the concern. There's a cost to hiring humans. People get sick, have babies, attend weddings and funerals and take vacations. Men take paternity leave, women take maternity leave. These are the costs of hiring humans. In my mind, our company exists to turn a profit, but it also exists to employ human beings. Treating them like human beings is money well spent, not money wasted.
    • iwwr 15y ago
      As an employer, I would do my utmost to attend to these human problems, especially it's a valuable employee. However, the costs, opportunity-wise, still exist and we pay them, willingly or not.
  • nknight 15y ago
    In the US, a year of family leave is, to say the least, unlikely, and legally required nowhere. But even if it were, most companies that last long enough to have somebody come back from a 1+ year leave most likely are, or have become, large enough that there's no reason to lay off the "replacement". Developers in particular are rarely terminated individually for economic reasons. There's always something for them to do, some way to extract value from them. Companies don't usually start dropping good people until they're dropping a bunch of them at once, and usually deadweight layoffs have preceded.
• budley 15y ago
  I also hire people for as little money as I can.
  • thetrumanshow 15y ago
    Yes, but consider, they may very well alter their effort-level to suit the salary you pay them, thereby saving energy for things that matter more to them.
    • marquis 15y ago
      When we've had budget issues and need to hire someone I try to find a balance between what we can afford and the effort we're looking for. A good way to do this for us is to hire less than 40 hours a week. A savvy employee enjoys this, as it leaves them time to work on their own projects (which we fully support) while having a base income. We've had this system now for a few years that has worked wonderfully, and even though we've lost some great people to their own startups I'm really proud of them and we keep goodwill that allows us to call them back in a contract basis if needed.
      • lurker17 15y ago
        We need more like you.
        • marquis 15y ago
          Oh, that made me blush, thanks.
• MarkMc 15y ago
  Sheryl Sandberg (COO at Facebook) gives an excellent talk about different attitudes that women have in careers: http://www.ted.com/talks/sheryl_sandberg_why_we_have_too_few_women_leaders.html http://www.ted.com/talks/sheryl_sandberg_why_we_have_too_few...
• patio11 15y ago
  Having been a male engineer for a couple of years now, it is very disquieting to learn that there is any population of people anywhere who are getting ROFLstomped by male engineers in negotiating savvy. A potted plant could handle a salary negotiation better than many people (myself included at one point) -- at least the potted plant wouldn't divulge a salary history when asked.
  • c4urself 15y ago
    Crap, i didn't know you could choose _not_ to divulge salary history! I'm horrible at salary negotiations, any links/advice for getting a better salary deal?
    • copper 15y ago
      patio11 is indeed the right person to ask that particular question :) If it helps any, here's my absolute favourite justification that HR gave when I asked why they needed my salary history: it was, apparently, needed to figure out where I would fit in the org chart (you'd think that that was what interviews are supposed to determine, but apparently not.)
      • Woost 15y ago
        Reminds me of my current job. They asked for a potential hire's salary history to determine how much to offer them. They previously made, say, 40k, so an offer was made for 45k. Why? Not because their skills were worth 45k, but because they previously made 40k. They were willing to go up to, say, 65k for the position. Also, the people in charge thought they should probably offer more, but didn't want to...because of the previous salary. Dysfunctional, but it happens.
        • rmc 15y ago
          I presume that's the real reason most places ask for salary history
    • patio11 15y ago
• joshfraser 15y ago
  I've coached several of my female friends in how to ask for a raise. Often they'll complain that they're not making enough but are scared to ask for more. I'll tell them "your boss might say no, but they're not going to fire you". Of course, if your boss does say "no", it's a good opportunity to ask what progress you need to make to get the raise you want. You then have a concrete roadmap for getting where you want to be. For the guys on here, encourage the women in your life to speak up. Often they just need someone to tell them it's okay and that they're worth it.
  • danssig 15y ago
    I don't like this advice personally. If you want more money you need to change jobs. Asking what progress you need to make to get the raise you want is normally just going to get you strung along doing extra work for nothing.
    • nknight 15y ago
      Uh, while I realize the most common method for getting a raise in Silicon Valley is to switch jobs, the idea that it's the only mechanism or the most desirable one is very bizarre. It also seems to imply that wanting more money is somehow mutually exclusive with wanting to continue working in your current job and/or for your current company. You're also demonstrating another classic weakness in engineers, failure to recognize social capital. In asking for that information, you put management in the position of articulating their expectations, and when you meet or exceed them, it pressures them further to agree to a raise. Management isn't just running some simple equation to determine your salary, they're exercising their own judgement as to what you're worth to them and what will keep you working there productively. That judgement can be altered through psychological means.
      • wyclif 15y ago
        The point is that, all other factors being equal, switching jobs as an engineer is the easiest way to get a raise. People tend to take the path of least resistance.
• berntb 15y ago
  Is it really smart for a company to press down salaries so far that they underpay? My experience is that if someone is underpaid, they won't be around for long. It is expensive with high churn rates.
  • tobtoh 15y ago
    As a manager, I thought this initially too. But here's the kicker - the employees sit there and take it. Sure they may complain about being underpaid, but few will move to another job. I remember in my previous job, I had a senior sysadmin who had been with the company for 10 years and earning $70k ... we were hiring new sysadmins off the street for $100k. He complained about it and I tried everything I could to get him a payrise because he was a good performer - but company policy was that pay rises could not be more than 10% without exec approval. So the best I could offer him was $77k - in my justification for more, I compared market rates, how much it would cost the company if we had to replace him ($100k in salary alone let alone recruitment costs) etc - but the reply back from HR was 'we bet he won't leave'. And sure enough he didn't. It really saddened me - the fact is he could get a job elsewhere that paid way more, but he was too 'comfortable' in his position. In my experience, people tell themselves all sort of stories why they don't leave - I'm still learning lots, I like the people I work with, I need a little more experience etc - all of this may be true to a degree, but going by the number that complain about being overworked/underpaid, a lot of them simply are excuses. Companies know and understand this - and hence people often may get underpaid.
    • Woost 15y ago
      This is something I'm going to have to deal with soon. I'm not looking forward to it, but I know that I'm getting significantly underpaid compared to new hires. I'm also better than those new hires. I'll probably leave and find a new job if it comes down to it, but I'd really rather not. That said, if I do leave, there's nothing they can do to bring me back: Saying "oh, you're leaving? here's an extra 50k to make you stay" tells me that they think I was worth the new number in the first place. A place trying to get away with underpaying until their hand is forced is not a place I want to work.
    • 15y ago
• mootothemax 15y ago
  When I was offered my current job, I replied that I thought the pay was on the low side, and asked if they could improve their offer. Two hours later, I received an email with a 15% improvement! I'm really not very good at negotiation, but getting a 15% raise just by asking? I'll be doing that again :)
• dan00 15y ago
  I'm just sick of stuff like this. An employer is expecting that an employee is loyal, but nevertheless he's trying to noble the potential employee from the beginning. But you would be dumb doing it the other way, right? Sorry, but this kind of smartness harms the whole society. So all the humble and self-doubting people are getting less than the loud and playing ones. Sure, the loud ones are the better, more loyal employees, right? But you have to learn to be louder! No I don't have to and I don't want, because I like it the way I am.
  • thomasgerbe 15y ago
    It has nothing to do with loudness. It has everything to do with having a spine and it being a business. It really is not that hard to negotiate and I am an introvert. Yet a lot of women I know do not even try.
• Duff 15y ago
  Sounds like one of the upsides of working at a place where I work now, where there is a salary scale. Places that play these kinds of games with salary really annoy me. For my first post-college job, as a DBA, I was offered $29,000/year (this was in 2000). I knew they had just lost key people and had a bad reputation for compensation, so I laughed and walked out of the room. In the parking lot, we agreed to $65k + stock. Most of my colleagues didn't bother, and got stuck with lousy pay for a couple of years.
  • polshaw 15y ago
    Thats quite a nice improvement you got there. Care to elaborate on what happened (who said what, etc) between walking out and getting the offer?
    • Duff 15y ago
      The interviewer followed me, and asked in the stairwell what it would take to get me hired. I said that I had multiple opportunities in the Boston area north of $80k, but wanted to stay local. He countered with "I'll get you $35k, and review your compensation in 3 months". I kept walking. In the parking lot, we reached an agreement. IMO, it was the first time someone had walked out on him, and he got flustered. I worked in a busy sales job when I was in college, so I was used to dealing with his style. Once they start following you, you've won the negotiation. Basically, his strategy for any purchase was to dramatically low-ball and act very important. It worked enough that he was very proud of it -- he would extract huge concessions from unwary vendors.
      • migpwr 15y ago
        I am not trying to offend you, and am only commenting because I believe stories like these hurt less experienced people who are trying to learn how to handle salary negotiations. I personally do not believe this actually happened. Nobody will ever follow you out of an interview to beg you to take a job, or casually double a salary offer in a stairwell. There is no "hard ball" negotiating like this where you walk out and somehow bring a company to its knees. It's just never that dramatic. IF you receive a concrete job offer then you accept, decline, or counter. You should know the pay range by the time a company puts an actual offer on paper.
• ahoyhere 15y ago
  I'm so tired of the double standard. If men are raised and "socialized" that they are the rightful leader of the family, and it's not only okay but right to hit their wives, we hold them personally responsible for their actions. If women are raised and "socialized" not to negotiate, we blame society. Because… women aren't smart enough, or whole humans enough, to do anything but what they're told? Ladies, take control of your own destiny, or be a victim of your own making. It's your choice.
  • Skalman 15y ago
    There are a couple of differences that make your reasoning invalid: - Women having a lower salary isn't as visible or as visibly wrong as men hitting their wives - Hitting one's wife is an action, while not negotiating salary (well) is a non-action Both things are wrong, and we need to try to inhibit both on the society level (by trying to raise responsible men, and women to negotiate salaries). Though, I'm very certain that I, as a man, also need lessons in negotiating salaries - I'm quite gullible/trusting.
    • ahoyhere 15y ago
      The comparison doesn't matter. The fact remains: if men do what "society" has "conditioned" them to do, we hold them personally responsible. If women do, we rush to take care of them and save them from themselves. The moral of the story: women are delicate flowers who cannot decide for themselves, and must be protected.
      • king_jester 15y ago
        Negotiating salary and hitting someone are not the same thing. One is a violent act of assault and the other is a conversation to decide your rate of pay. Furthermore, some people do make excuses for men who commit violent acts on the basis of their social situation and upbringing, even though it is flawed to do so. Also, I have personally seen and continue to see news stories, editorials, and blog posts about social conditions for men, esp. in regards to men taking part in "traditional" female roles, such as child care, certain types of labor, and even certain kinds of hobbies. It is deliberately misleading to say that social conditioning and social issues treat one gender one way and another gender the other way, not too mention that such a position completely erases and doesn't acknowledge the existence of those who are not cisgendered and have a different experience in regard to their social experience.
• stfu 15y ago
  I think the same statement could be made about introverts. Not quite sure if this is a gender issue or just a personality/mentality issue.
• vaksel 15y ago
  I think a large part of the problem is that there is no way to figure out how much each person is actually worth. Sure we have sites like indeed and salary.com that can give you estimates for the position and you also have glass door that gives you some salaries in your area...but they aren't solid numbers.software developer" makes, is pointless since there are so many alternatives, a VB developer is going to be making less than a Python developer. Same goes for glassdoor...sure the numbers help, but you don't know if the number you are looking at is current...or if it was added 10 years ago when the site launched. So here is a startup idea...create a site like salary.com but one designed solely for programmers/developers. Then create an interface, where someone can build out a job description/location to get a good feel of what a fair salary would be for that specific position.
  • pbhjpbhj 15y ago
    >no way to figure out how much each person is actually worth // You're not buying a person though. In employer terms you're usually buying the completion of a particularly series of actions. These actions can be analysed and given a money value.
    • vaksel 15y ago
      yes, but employers don't have an incentive to give a fair value for this.
      • esrauch 15y ago
        Neither employers nor employees have incentive to give a fair value in one of the directions. I'm sure there are plenty of overpayed employees that aren't exactly falling over themselves to get a pay cut, nor companies falling over themselves to give employees a pay raise.
  • rmc 15y ago
    I think a large part of the problem is that there is no way to figure out how much each person is actually worth. The Labour Theory of Value is not correct. 'Worth' is not based on how much you put in, but also on what the company is doing, and what their other options are. etc. Things are worth what people will pay for them.
• michaeldhopkins 15y ago
  This article is behind the times. By the time most professional women have learned to ask for raises like some men do in 2011, those men will have moved on to a more advanced strategy to make more. It's similar to how an expensive university degree is becoming less useful just as women are earning more than 50% of them. My point is that these men are competitive and they have momentum and the current salary-negotiation-education strategy won't result in parity. I don't see any reason it has to be that way, of course.
  • michaeldhopkins 15y ago
    I expected this to be downvoted because it's so awkward. It's hard to think about what will be the winning strategy five, ten, twenty years from now, a lot harder than complaining, but it's important for a group to do if they want to catch up with another group.
  • dan00 15y ago
    "... those men will have moved on to a more advanced strategy to make more." Yes, I think it will go this way. A perfect fit is also the article about the neuroenhancers on hacker news. If you don't want to get behind, you will have to take them. But what kind of life is this, or will it be in a even more competitive future? If your self-worth is mostly based on making money or your career, than you will have to go this way. But is this really the best possible life, the best spend life time?
    • michaeldhopkins 15y ago
      Yes, it's acedic to measure the worth of oneself and peers by money alone. But given that men and women are both in it for money, competing for equality/inequality measured by sex, it's necessary for the runners up to aim for the leaders as moving targets.
• cq 15y ago
  This is bullshit: it is passing the buck. This is strictly blaming women for their problems, without acknowledging the structural sexism that exists in virtually all tech fields.
  • cq 15y ago
    Here's an example of what I'm talking about regarding this topic: http://acceptableparity.blogspot.com/2011/10/four-ways-men-stunt-womens-careers.html http://acceptableparity.blogspot.com/2011/10/four-ways-men-s...
    • dpritchett 15y ago
      That article is painting a fantasy where there's no information asymmetry or self-interested players in an organization. In reality no one's got the time or interest to follow along behind every employee (male or female) going over their work product with a microscope in hopes of identifying and elevating talent. The closest you see in the real world is fast-track programs where a few anointed employees are given challenging high-profile assignments and challenged to prove themselves before the next promotion. This approach doesn't scale, but it's better than nothing and so it's hard to resent companies for attempting it. As an employee outside of the fast track, it's up to you to change your situation. Often it's easier to get on someone else's fast track (i.e. at a new employer) rather than trying to catch a train you already missed at your current employer. Given the limited attention and political capital your managers can use to help your career growth, one simply must take it upon themselves to craft and drive their own vision for career growth.
  • jff 15y ago
    Plugging your ears and shouting "NAH NAH NAH IT'S ALL JUST STRUCTURAL SEXISM" won't change what has been clearly observed and commented on by numerous employers, employees, and researchers. You're just pulling the old "why are we sending probes to Mars when people are starving on Earth?" bullshit, as though it's not possible to work on two problems at once, or as if there couldn't be two causes for women being paid less.
• pedoh 15y ago
  I wonder what would happen if you tried to make the negotion process as transparent as possible; something along the lines of: "Look, I've read all of the negotiation strategy books, and clearly you're an expert in your field, so let's agree on the value that I bring to your company and find the right compensation package."
• danielrm26 15y ago
  Ok, I'll be that guy. 1. Testosterone promotes risk taking (http://goo.gl/s2gf4 http://goo.gl/s2gf4) 2. Men have more testosterone. 3. Salary negotiation is a risk game. Now for the important part: this doesn't mean it's right. That would be the naturalistic fallacy, i.e. that because something is natural it must be o.k. So, yes, absolutely combat this. Learn techniques to overcome the disparity. But do not, in a forum full of smart people, wonder WHY this is happening. The answer is obvious to anyone who doesn't mind unpleasant truth.
  • sethg 15y ago
    As others have pointed out in this thread, there is practically no risk to asking for more money.
    • mcantor 15y ago
      Yeah, but there's a perceived risk.
    • danielrm26 15y ago
      According to who? When in the position of counter-offering, it feels to most people like it's extremely risky. Risk in this context isn't about actual danger, it's about how much danger is perceived.
    • bethling 15y ago
      But that may not always be obvious to people - in my case, for some reason I worry about my future manager "seeing" me in a negative way. Or perhaps they will decide that I'm not a team player and revoke the offer. What makes it completely loony, is that I have been the manager, and I never looked at it that way. But yet, I assume everyone else has a very different view of things than I do.
      • sethg 15y ago
        If the testosterone hypothesis is true, then men who try t negotiate their salary also falsely perceive that they are risking their jobs, but they do it anyway. I find that hard to believe.
• deltaqueue 15y ago
  I'm a bit bewildered there's an entire discussion about this based on a reddit post. While the OP's circumstances may be true at his or her company, is it still universally accurate? I don't actually know the answer, but based on several articles released in the last year I would wager this discrepancy is no longer uniform for all industries: http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2011/02/she_makes_more_money_than_he_does_so.html http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2011/02/she_m... http://articles.businessinsider.com/2010-09-29/strategy/30074989_1_computer-science-men-tech-companies http://articles.businessinsider.com/2010-09-29/strategy/3007... http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/09/01/young-single-women-earn-more-than-men/ http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/09/01/young-single-women-ea... http://www.usatoday.com/money/workplace/2010-09-01-single-women_N.htm http://www.usatoday.com/money/workplace/2010-09-01-single-wo... There are still some statistics floating around that compare salaries without factoring in control variables (mostly based on generic census data), but these tend to be less accurate.
  • mikeryan 15y ago
    I think you have to look at this on a per industry basis. There are many industries which don't even have price negotiating. The government, unionized jobs, a lot of manual and blue collar positions just pay a certain rate for a particular job.
• highfreq 15y ago
  Another factor could be that earlier interviews weed out the forceful negotiators among the women, because that personality trait makes women less likable. On the other hand, a lack of aggressiveness makes men appear weak.
  • marquis 15y ago
    There are many ways to negotiate without appearing aggressive. I'm sure 50% of the population can alert you to some of these methods.
• baltcode 15y ago
  From a free market perspective, do the women then have a competitive advantage in being hired? (Since the company can get the job done for less). Also, why does the company simply hire at the lower end of the wage level since they can apparently get a lot of women and some men to work for that kind of pay?
  • wanorris 15y ago
    It's hard to fill technology jobs in the current competitive marketplace. So it's easier to take a mix of market rates and below-market rates and keep an average that is still below market rate than it is to exclude people who want market rate and still fill all the positions with qualified people. I can't really speak to other fields, though.
• lionhearted 15y ago
  I've hired a lot of people recently, so maybe my opinion here will be interesting. With one notable exception, all the women flagged "negotiate me down" signals harder and more often than the men. I asked, "So your salary ask is $X monthly?" And instantly returned, "Yeah, but we can talk about it..." That just screams "negotiate me down." I don't do it, because I want to pay my people top of market, have them think of themselves as the best, and build a culture of inspired performance. I actually negotiated that woman's pay up 25% of her ask (which was too low), but even with cultural considerations in mind in a high-margin high-dollar industry, it was still painful for me not to negotiate down. To be very blunt and crass about it, hopefully for helpful illustrative purposes, it's like the guy who has a, "Please don't kick me" sign on his ass. You can restrain yourself not to, but it's painful.
  • mturmon 15y ago
    Agree. Here's another way of looking at it. If you're going to be their manager, it's in your interest to have their salary outcome have parity with other people doing similar work. Later on, if the employee gets unhappy with their comparative situation, it's much harder to fix a disparity with annual raises than it would have been to do the fair thing to begin with. If their pay is too low, you have made yourself a persistent problem that will be hard to fix.
    • djb_hackernews 15y ago
      Thanks for this. I recently left a pretty damn good job except that I was extremely underpaid. They tried to point out they were trying to fix it with a generous annual raise, which was nice, but no where near enough. I've been struggling trying to explain the situation to myself but you nailed it.
      • mturmon 15y ago
        If you still like the original place, you can always go back after a few years, using your new rate as a negotiating tool. The other option (while still at the original place) is to get an offer from another company. Then, assuming you have your manager's support, take that to HR and ask for an out-of-cycle increase. Often by the time it gets this far, people are discontented enough to be at the point of walking away anyway.
• ericdykstra 15y ago
  If women will do the same work for less money, why don't we see companies that rely on high volume and low margins hire a lot of females (so that 90%+ of their employees are female)? A 30% cost savings on staff seems like it could be a huge competitive advantage. If such a company exists, I would love to have someone point it out.
  • codergirl 15y ago
    Because there aren't enough females in the field?
    • ericdykstra 15y ago
      I'd think that if the average female was making 70% of fair salary, a company could offer them 80% and get enough to fill a vast majority of their positions while still saving an incredible 20% on those employees, giving them a great competitive advantage.
• johngalt 15y ago
  I discovered this a few years ago, about a large number of women and some men. My wife got a job and the employer glossed over salary negotiations with an "assumed sale" of minimum wage! I asked why she accepted that, and she said "There wasn't an opportunity to negotiate salary. They just gave me the 'standard rate'." She's not a meek woman. No one had ever told her that you could ask for more. With my help she got a 2x raise just by assertively asking for it. She's bragged to her parents about it and I learn that her mother had never negotiated a salary or raise in her entire life. So I ask all my female friends: same thing, my mom: same thing, then my ardently feminist sister: same thing! It was a twilight zone moment for me. The reasons why varied, but they could be generalized as an expectation of fairness combined with a small amount of irrational fear.
• thenduks 15y ago
  I'm not sure I really see the problem, or even how gender is at all relevant. I generally don't bother negotiating salary either. Money isn't (even close to) the most important thing to me and I will take the first offer that puts me in a comfortable financial position -- assuming I actually want the job and I am excited to work for the company, of course. Clearly there are males who don't negotiate hard and females who do. It's not about their gender, it's about their negotiating tactics! Seems to me the correct title for this would be "I regularly hire people who don't bother negotiating higher salaries at 65% to 75% of people who do." (And that's ok!)
• tycho77 15y ago
  Oh thank goodness! It's all the women's fault. I was afraid people would have to address the residual sexism left in the corporate world. Not to detract from the story, which by all anecdotal evidence in this thread appears to be valid, but this is a dangerous train to jump on - I would say akin to blaming racial disparity on 'cultural issues'.
• mhartl 15y ago
  If this practice is generally true, it suggests an obvious gender arbitrage strategy: 1. Hire women instead of men. 2. ??? 3. Profit. Unlike the usual case, here ??? actually has a value: ??? = Save massively on labor costs vs. your competitors. As other companies discover the same strategy, demand increases for a fixed supply, thereby bidding up the equilibrium wage and hence dramatically improving the negotiating position of women. (Nothing improves the results of your negotiation faster than a better negotiating position.) In a competitive market for labor, the equilibrium is for everyone to be paid based on their productivity and their risk profile. Whether the latter factor favors women or men isn't a priori obvious; for example, men are more likely to die in a fight or a car accident, whereas women are more likely to take time off to have kids (and so on). Unfortunately, market interventions typically have the opposite of their intended effect. Rules that punish companies for paying women less than men increase the risk of hiring women; rules that punish companies for not hiring enough women increase the risk of interviewing women; rules that punish not interviewing enough women increase the risk of recruiting women. All of these factors, ceteris paribus, lower the wages of women. (Those who depend on the gender rage industry, on the other hand, make off like bandits.)
• prophetjohn 15y ago
  So for those who think this is a societal problem or a symptom of structural sexism in the tech field or etc., a genuine question. The OP seems to state that he negotiates with all people in the same manner, but the women are less likely to fight for themselves. What kind of solution do you suggest to combat this symptom of structural sexism? Should HR managers negotiate easier with women? Offer a higher starting point for negotiation? It's a genuine question and interested in what people would see as a fair way to combat these kind of systematic biases toward women. I think there should be a way to combat these effects of society, but I certainly can't come up with a solution to this problem that seems fair to all parties involved.
• moonchrome 15y ago
  A very obvious question arises - why aren't they preferring to hire women - it sounds like they are ideal employees - lower pay expectation for the same work and rarely ask for a raise.
• ___o___ 15y ago
  Why does HN keep pushing these sexist posts to the main news area?
• hendrix 15y ago
  What is the big deal? This is a reddit post in the feminist subredditum.... IMO this is just fear-mongering and exploiting the sensitivities of the (mostly male & slightly nerdy) tech workforce. The point is that women are NOT being actively discriminated against. If women do not want to ask for more salary, that is their own fault. You could say the same for recent immigrants/visa-applicants who do not want to piss off their employer and will work for pennies so that they can remain in the country.
• rbanffy 15y ago
  A long time ago, I hired a PhD from a highly prestigious Brazilian university. She passed the interview with flying colors, way beyond my expectations, and I was a bit ashamed to tell her the maximum budget I had - it was much less than someone with her experience was worth. She seemed more than happy to take my offer (which was as far as I could possibly go). Later I learned I was paying her more than 4 times what she earned as a researcher at the university. I don't know whether her male colleagues earned much more, but I was shocked by how little she made as a scientist. To this day I am bittersweet about this. I am embarrassed I never paid her what she deserved - and I should have, for she is an outstanding professional - but I am also happy I helped her transition from an dead-end job at an academic institution to a fast-paced tech company and that this transition had a very positive impact on her career (last time I heard, she had a team of kick-ass programmers solving some devilishly hard computer-vision-related problem). I left a couple months after hiring her, but it's still a great story. Well... There are better stories around here, sure, but this is still a good one.
• codezero 15y ago
  Women aren't the only ones who suffer from this, and I don't even know if it is something that can be attributed to all or even most women. I remember when I worked at Red Hat, several years after being hired, I found out that there were people making half as much as me... it blew my mind. I asked for a lot when I got hired, more than I was worth, but I stuck to my guns and they gave me slightly less than I was asking. The people who made half as much only asked for half as much. What manager wouldn't hire them if they were willing to work for half the salary? These were great people, too, by the way, they worked hard and were very skilled, but they were interoverts and were happy to take the "prestige" of working for a company like Red Hat as a sort of currency. Fuck that. Word hard, but don't aim low, ever.