6 ms·

Do Women Avoid Salary Negotiations? [pdf]

34 points by Uchikoma 14y ago

mherdeg 14y ago
I often find that when people discuss studies they rarely get beyond the abstract (and sometimes not even past the title!) Just to get you started and maybe entice you to read the paper, the abstract says: "We observe interesting data patterns. For example, we find that when there is no explicit statement that wages are negotiable, men are more likely to negotiate than women. However, when we explicitly mention the possibility that wages are negotiable, this difference disappears, and even tends to reverse. In terms of sorting, we find that men in contrast to women prefer job environments where the ‘rules of wage determination’ are ambiguous. This leads to the gender gap being much more pronounced in jobs that leave negotiation of wage ambiguous." One interesting result that's not in the abstract: even when the wage was explicitly negotiable, only about 25% of people bothered to negotiate! (This is for an "administrative assistant" style job.)
- Nursie 14y ago
  That's weird. Saying explicitly that it's negotiable means to me that there's more available and I only have to say a few words or pretend not to be interested in order to get that money. I also learned early on in my career that when taking a job it's better to push for a higher salary at the beginning, because raises always seem to be based on what you're getting now, and targeted at just enough to stop you going elsewhere. --edit-- male, for the record.
  - rprospero 14y ago
    See, I would have had the opposite interpretation. Declaring the salary negotiable means to me that they're willing to hire a less qualified candidate (e.g. no degree) for a lower salary. By opening negotiations, I'm never going to get more than the original salary and they're going to start working at finding an excuse to pay me less.
    - Nursie 14y ago
      Pessimist! Declaring it negotiable means to me that they may be willing to pay more to a better candidate, me! I guess it depends on the stage. In a job ad $Negotiable means I won't bother applying because I don't know what ballpark we're looking at. A negotiable amount in an ad (for example $100k, negotiable) could mean they'll try to low-ball you later, or it could mean you can argue them higher. At that point it depends who you're dealing with. But if you've been through the interview process and there's an offer made, but someone drops the n-word that's when you know somebody has a little more money to play with and it's your job to try and tease it out of them.
  - xiaoma 14y ago
    My feelings is that everything is a negotiation... but there's always a price.
    - Surio 14y ago
      My > feelings < is that.... Uncanny. That's exactly the same kind of gnawing feeling that I have many a time as well. And that sometimes makes me bite my tongue and leave an offer/negotiation the way it is. Oh well!
    - mratzloff 14y ago
      There's usually a price for not negotiating as well, and it's not just monetary. By negotiating you are presenting yourself as someone who stands up for himself, and more of an equal to your potential boss. That sets the stage for greater responsibility (if you want it). No reasonable person ever begrudges someone being a hard negotiator on salary and benefits.
      - xiaoma 14y ago
        >No reasonable person ever begrudges someone being a hard negotiator on salary and benefits. Not true at all. Both Felix Denis and Donald Trump have written about the perils of hiring overly mercenary employees. So did one of my former mentors. Being a hard negotiator on salary and benefits is a hallmark sign of optimizing for a short-term relationship.
HelloMcFly 14y ago
If you want more information on this topic you can start by looking up articles by Alice Stuhlmacher, a professor and researcher at DePaul University.
michaelochurch 14y ago
I don't think it's just a problem for women. Most of us enter adulthood with terrible negotiation skills, especially in engineering. I certainly did. The percentage of people who are decent negotiators is small and, empirically, most of them seem to be men. Successful people negotiate everything: job title, compensation, authority in hierarchical companies, project allocation. If turned down for a raise, they get a better project or a "meaningless" title that improves the CV. They're resilient against rejection (an inevitable outcome of negotiation) but they keep trying and working to improve. The rest, who don't, get mediocre results-- male or female. In software, there are a lot of people who don't know how to negotiate-- at all. In school, we live in an artificial environment where everyone is assessed on similar projects and grades are fairly objective. So negotiating for a better result-- a B rather than a C-- is seen as dishonorable and weak. You should have studied harder. This no-negotiation zone is reasonable in a world where grades are (in comparison to workplace performance reviews) exceedingly fair and 90-95% get passing grades. If you're on the threshold (a 'D' student) it means you were a weak performer who managed to squeak by. But in the real world, for promotions and favors and work autonomy and VC funding, pass rates are << 50% and if you don't have it in you to negotiate for a better outcome, you're screwed.
- theorique 14y ago
  In software, there are a lot of people who don't know how to negotiate-- at all. Excellent points. Many "computer people" are really good at what they do because they leveraged their introversion into uncommonly high levels of programming skill. In such an environment, the interpreter is "fair", the compiler is "fair" (although often uncompromising and unforgiving). Once you get the "right" answer, it stays right and doesn't change unless external circumstances change (e.g. new compiler, new hardware, something breaks). On the other hand, the human world is not always "fair", and it's often possible to push back against a judgment, using only high confidence and a loose but passionate argument. Belief that the human world operates with the same exact logic and precision as the computer world is a source of many misunderstandings.
  - nradov 14y ago
    I don't know about that. What I've learned is that compilers and interpreters are often ridden with defects, and you have to negotiate hard with suppliers to get them fixed.
christopherslee 14y ago
i didn't read this, but i always wondered if women's salaries are lower on average because of a reluctance to negotiate. (thus citing that women's salaries are lower than men's has nothing to do with gender bias?) I'm not trying to say that discrimination is ok, I'm just saying that the typical system requires you to ask for money, you're not just given it out of the kindness of your employers heart.
- sses 14y ago
  Maybe that typical system has a gender bias then :) Perhaps if women are implicitly required to negotiate, and choose not to, then they will be recruited by another organization who is willing to pay them more without negotiation. You've just lost out on a good engineer - the employer has done themselves a disservice.
  - christopherslee 14y ago
    i think both men and women are implicitly required to negotiate. i guess like other people are saying, i'm not sure if people look at two equal candidates and discriminate based on sex/age/other.
- juridatenshi 14y ago
  It might be a contributing factor, but I doubt it's the only thing going on. There was an interesting study recently showing a gender bias in academic science [1]. http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/09/14/1211286109.abstract http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/09/14/1211286109.abst...
- crazygringo 14y ago
  I recall (can't find them now) there are studies which basically explain away the entire wage-gap between men and women as two factors: 1) women negotiate less 2) women take more time off for children, thus advance more slowly Basically showing that there is no inherent gender discrimination on wages in the US, in the aggregate -- that it's entirely due to choices made by women, not any kind of discrimination whatsoever. On the other hand, there are also blind studies testing resumes in certain areas, which show that employers perceive resumes with male names to be stronger than identical resumes with female names. And on the other other hand, I feel like every engineering place I've worked would always hire an equally-qualified woman over a man, since there are so few of them to begin with. So, who knows...
Tycho 14y ago
Salary negotiations - they should probably teach this at school. My company has a 'comp day' where you head into a room with a couple of managers and they tell you what you're getting. But I've got no idea what the protocol is for disagreeing. Presumably it's their for negotiating otherwise they would you send you a letter and skip the meeting. A lot of people, when they don't know the protocol of a situation, will just nod and be swept along.

34 points by Uchikoma 14y ago

I often find that when people discuss studies they rarely get beyond the abstract (and sometimes not even past the title!) Just to get you started and maybe entice you to read the paper, the abstract says: "We observe interesting data patterns. For example, we find that when there is no explicit statement that wages are negotiable, men are more likely to negotiate than women. However, when we explicitly mention the possibility that wages are negotiable, this difference disappears, and even tends to reverse. In terms of sorting, we find that men in contrast to women prefer job environments where the ‘rules of wage determination’ are ambiguous. This leads to the gender gap being much more pronounced in jobs that leave negotiation of wage ambiguous." One interesting result that's not in the abstract: even when the wage was explicitly negotiable, only about 25% of people bothered to negotiate! (This is for an "administrative assistant" style job.)

Nursie 14y ago
That's weird. Saying explicitly that it's negotiable means to me that there's more available and I only have to say a few words or pretend not to be interested in order to get that money. I also learned early on in my career that when taking a job it's better to push for a higher salary at the beginning, because raises always seem to be based on what you're getting now, and targeted at just enough to stop you going elsewhere. --edit-- male, for the record.
- rprospero 14y ago
  See, I would have had the opposite interpretation. Declaring the salary negotiable means to me that they're willing to hire a less qualified candidate (e.g. no degree) for a lower salary. By opening negotiations, I'm never going to get more than the original salary and they're going to start working at finding an excuse to pay me less.
  - Nursie 14y ago
    Pessimist! Declaring it negotiable means to me that they may be willing to pay more to a better candidate, me! I guess it depends on the stage. In a job ad $Negotiable means I won't bother applying because I don't know what ballpark we're looking at. A negotiable amount in an ad (for example $100k, negotiable) could mean they'll try to low-ball you later, or it could mean you can argue them higher. At that point it depends who you're dealing with. But if you've been through the interview process and there's an offer made, but someone drops the n-word that's when you know somebody has a little more money to play with and it's your job to try and tease it out of them.
- xiaoma 14y ago
  My feelings is that everything is a negotiation... but there's always a price.
  - Surio 14y ago
    My > feelings < is that.... Uncanny. That's exactly the same kind of gnawing feeling that I have many a time as well. And that sometimes makes me bite my tongue and leave an offer/negotiation the way it is. Oh well!
  - mratzloff 14y ago
    There's usually a price for not negotiating as well, and it's not just monetary. By negotiating you are presenting yourself as someone who stands up for himself, and more of an equal to your potential boss. That sets the stage for greater responsibility (if you want it). No reasonable person ever begrudges someone being a hard negotiator on salary and benefits.
    - xiaoma 14y ago
      >No reasonable person ever begrudges someone being a hard negotiator on salary and benefits. Not true at all. Both Felix Denis and Donald Trump have written about the perils of hiring overly mercenary employees. So did one of my former mentors. Being a hard negotiator on salary and benefits is a hallmark sign of optimizing for a short-term relationship.

HelloMcFly 14y ago

If you want more information on this topic you can start by looking up articles by Alice Stuhlmacher, a professor and researcher at DePaul University.

michaelochurch 14y ago

I don't think it's just a problem for women. Most of us enter adulthood with terrible negotiation skills, especially in engineering. I certainly did. The percentage of people who are decent negotiators is small and, empirically, most of them seem to be men. Successful people negotiate everything: job title, compensation, authority in hierarchical companies, project allocation. If turned down for a raise, they get a better project or a "meaningless" title that improves the CV. They're resilient against rejection (an inevitable outcome of negotiation) but they keep trying and working to improve. The rest, who don't, get mediocre results-- male or female. In software, there are a lot of people who don't know how to negotiate-- at all. In school, we live in an artificial environment where everyone is assessed on similar projects and grades are fairly objective. So negotiating for a better result-- a B rather than a C-- is seen as dishonorable and weak. You should have studied harder. This no-negotiation zone is reasonable in a world where grades are (in comparison to workplace performance reviews) exceedingly fair and 90-95% get passing grades. If you're on the threshold (a 'D' student) it means you were a weak performer who managed to squeak by. But in the real world, for promotions and favors and work autonomy and VC funding, pass rates are << 50% and if you don't have it in you to negotiate for a better outcome, you're screwed.

theorique 14y ago
In software, there are a lot of people who don't know how to negotiate-- at all. Excellent points. Many "computer people" are really good at what they do because they leveraged their introversion into uncommonly high levels of programming skill. In such an environment, the interpreter is "fair", the compiler is "fair" (although often uncompromising and unforgiving). Once you get the "right" answer, it stays right and doesn't change unless external circumstances change (e.g. new compiler, new hardware, something breaks). On the other hand, the human world is not always "fair", and it's often possible to push back against a judgment, using only high confidence and a loose but passionate argument. Belief that the human world operates with the same exact logic and precision as the computer world is a source of many misunderstandings.
- nradov 14y ago
  I don't know about that. What I've learned is that compilers and interpreters are often ridden with defects, and you have to negotiate hard with suppliers to get them fixed.

christopherslee 14y ago

i didn't read this, but i always wondered if women's salaries are lower on average because of a reluctance to negotiate. (thus citing that women's salaries are lower than men's has nothing to do with gender bias?) I'm not trying to say that discrimination is ok, I'm just saying that the typical system requires you to ask for money, you're not just given it out of the kindness of your employers heart.

sses 14y ago
Maybe that typical system has a gender bias then :) Perhaps if women are implicitly required to negotiate, and choose not to, then they will be recruited by another organization who is willing to pay them more without negotiation. You've just lost out on a good engineer - the employer has done themselves a disservice.
- christopherslee 14y ago
  i think both men and women are implicitly required to negotiate. i guess like other people are saying, i'm not sure if people look at two equal candidates and discriminate based on sex/age/other.
juridatenshi 14y ago
It might be a contributing factor, but I doubt it's the only thing going on. There was an interesting study recently showing a gender bias in academic science [1]. http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/09/14/1211286109.abstract http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/09/14/1211286109.abst...
crazygringo 14y ago
I recall (can't find them now) there are studies which basically explain away the entire wage-gap between men and women as two factors: 1) women negotiate less 2) women take more time off for children, thus advance more slowly Basically showing that there is no inherent gender discrimination on wages in the US, in the aggregate -- that it's entirely due to choices made by women, not any kind of discrimination whatsoever. On the other hand, there are also blind studies testing resumes in certain areas, which show that employers perceive resumes with male names to be stronger than identical resumes with female names. And on the other other hand, I feel like every engineering place I've worked would always hire an equally-qualified woman over a man, since there are so few of them to begin with. So, who knows...

Tycho 14y ago

Salary negotiations - they should probably teach this at school. My company has a 'comp day' where you head into a room with a couple of managers and they tell you what you're getting. But I've got no idea what the protocol is for disagreeing. Presumably it's their for negotiating otherwise they would you send you a letter and skip the meeting. A lot of people, when they don't know the protocol of a situation, will just nod and be swept along.