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> she learned that Niantic was paying a male colleague more money even though she had a higher job title and more responsibilities than he did. I've been in th

by arp242 3y ago

> she learned that Niantic was paying a male colleague more money even though she had a higher job title and more responsibilities than he did. I've been in this situation too, as a guy. Actually, it's been like this for much of my career. I just suck at negotiating these things I guess – having grown up working class and fairly poor (by European standards) I generally feel lucky to get paid over median wage at all, and not all that confident negotiating for more. It's something I've worked on, and perhaps need to work on some more. I guess what I dislike about stories like this is the implicit assumption that it has to be about sexism. Of course I can't really say anything meaningful about Niantic specifically; maybe it is a horribly sexist company, or ... maybe not and just your run of the mill "pay as little as we can get away with" type of company, which seems to be more common than not. Maybe we should be talking about fair compensation for everyone, so that being very assertive and highly confident is no longer a requirement, no matter if you're a guy or gal. And IMHO companies will benefit too; do you think my efforts increased or decreased after learning that the guy who literally cannot program a single line of code got paid 50% more than me? Or that I stuck around for a long time after the umpteenth attempt to get my salary up-to-standard after 3 years and having proved myself to be one of the more productive people in the company? And I don't even care about the salary all that much; I'm easily satisfied on that front. I think lots of people don't really care about the number as such, but it's the "I'm doing loads more than this guy who is getting paid a ton more" that gets people riled up.

TheChaplain 3y ago
I know a guy from a small city in Morocco who is paid considerably more than his colleagues simply because he is efficient, delivers and he'll be hard to replace if he would move on. All those points are powerful when negotiating. So I don't think it has to do anything with class but attitude and knowing your worth.
- arp242 3y ago
  Different people are different, in spite of having similar backgrounds. I don't really know my own workings just as most people don't, all I know is that I'm horribly insecure about these sort of things and generally consider being paid above median (>~€40k) to be "lucky", whereas I see many others complain about their significantly higher salaries shrug.
lyu07282 3y ago
> what I dislike about stories like this is the implicit assumption that it has to be about sexism There is nothing implicit about this, she is expressing very clearly that this is about systemic discrimination across gender lines. Aren't you making the implicit assumption that the reason why women are paid less at Niantic, is because women are just "naturally" bad at negotiating? This is an argument used by misogynists to dismiss the pay gap, that it always must be something else because there is no such thing as sexism. So no, sexism is actually real, it exists, it is a real thing that is a problem that we should solve. > "A former Niantic employee filed a lawsuit [..] alleging that it devalued the work of female employees and women of color, denied equal pay to women employees and women of color."
- arp242 3y ago
  > Aren't you making the implicit assumption that the reason why women are paid less at Niantic, is because women are just "naturally" bad at negotiating? Well, I explicitly and clearly stated "I can't really say anything meaningful about Niantic specifically; maybe it is a horribly sexist company". All we have is a single case of a single person being underpaid. That doesn't really prove much of anything, much less "systemic sexism". Either way, giving women all sorts of tools and methods to address wage inequality and giving men none and telling them "sucks to be you", based on the average that women get paid less (and averages say NOTHING about individual cases), doesn't strike me as a good path forward.

by arp242 3y ago

TheChaplain 3y ago

I know a guy from a small city in Morocco who is paid considerably more than his colleagues simply because he is efficient, delivers and he'll be hard to replace if he would move on. All those points are powerful when negotiating. So I don't think it has to do anything with class but attitude and knowing your worth.

arp242 3y ago
Different people are different, in spite of having similar backgrounds. I don't really know my own workings just as most people don't, all I know is that I'm horribly insecure about these sort of things and generally consider being paid above median (>~€40k) to be "lucky", whereas I see many others complain about their significantly higher salaries shrug.

lyu07282 3y ago

> what I dislike about stories like this is the implicit assumption that it has to be about sexism There is nothing implicit about this, she is expressing very clearly that this is about systemic discrimination across gender lines. Aren't you making the implicit assumption that the reason why women are paid less at Niantic, is because women are just "naturally" bad at negotiating? This is an argument used by misogynists to dismiss the pay gap, that it always must be something else because there is no such thing as sexism. So no, sexism is actually real, it exists, it is a real thing that is a problem that we should solve. > "A former Niantic employee filed a lawsuit [..] alleging that it devalued the work of female employees and women of color, denied equal pay to women employees and women of color."

arp242 3y ago
> Aren't you making the implicit assumption that the reason why women are paid less at Niantic, is because women are just "naturally" bad at negotiating? Well, I explicitly and clearly stated "I can't really say anything meaningful about Niantic specifically; maybe it is a horribly sexist company". All we have is a single case of a single person being underpaid. That doesn't really prove much of anything, much less "systemic sexism". Either way, giving women all sorts of tools and methods to address wage inequality and giving men none and telling them "sucks to be you", based on the average that women get paid less (and averages say NOTHING about individual cases), doesn't strike me as a good path forward.