4 ms·
You're missing out entirely on the point of the article. The notion is that "women's work" is devalued, and there are all these social reasons women find thems
by phillmv 13y ago
You're missing out entirely on the point of the article.
The notion is that "women's work" is devalued, and there are all these social reasons women find themselves being underpaid or not paid at all for above and beyond "supply and demand".
It's ultimately shitty that everyone in the company but the designer got to fail upwards and land in cushy jobs while she got $10k and a pat on the head. Did she not put in long hours? Did she not sacrifice her personal life, etc, in a way commensurate with the developers?
You need one designer for every 3 or 4 programmers, but that doesn't mean you still don't need good designers or that their individual contribution is automatically less valuable.
- natrius 13y ago"The notion is that "women's work" is devalued, and there are all these social reasons women find themselves being underpaid or not paid at all for above and beyond "supply and demand"." It's an interesting hypothesis, but I haven't seen any data to back it up. The common sense explanation seems like it fits. Work that can be done by lots of people gets lower (or zero) wages. If the problem were women getting underpaid, we'd see the same problem among female developers. Do we? Designers are worth less in an acquihire. As a result, designers should demand wages that are closer to the market rate than developers do when they work for startups.
- phillmv 13y agoData is tricky in these situations. I doubt anyone collects statistics on acquihires let alone "girlfriends or wives who help out in startups but don't get paid for it", or "HR people who got shafted with useless stock options". (Female developers being somewhat underpaid is a common enough trope, though) So, we're left with anecdotes. "Unpaid female work" is an common theme. You've got the MVC article linked above or say this one here http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/ceo-archetypes-7-joan-of-arc http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/ceo-archetypes-7-joan-of-... and I'm reminded of Scott Weiss' post on the disruption his personal life suffered due to this startup ( http://scott.a16z.com/2014/01/17/success-at-work-failure-at-home/ http://scott.a16z.com/2014/01/17/success-at-work-failure-at-... ) and tucked away in there is a bit where his Harvard MBA wife had to stay at home to look after the kids.
- chaostheory 13y agoThere are plenty of designers who can't code, who are both male and female. Really way too many. Consequently, unless you're beyond extraordinary, demand is low as are the salaries. However, if you're a designer who can code i.e. a front end engineer, you can get a king's ransom regardless of gender. I've known plenty of designers who aspire to code "one day" but they never do for whatever reason. I don't doubt that there is gender discrimination and ageism in the industry. However I don't feel that this is a case of one.
- ef4 13y ago>Did she not put in long hours? Did she not sacrifice her personal life, etc, in a way commensurate with the developers? So why do the developers get paid more than other (white male) workers who work longer hours doing harder work? Because "long hours" and "sacrifice" have absolutely nothing to do with what anyone gets paid. Your pay is not a function of just yourself. It's a function of every other person who could have done your job instead. The more of them there are, and the worse their other alternatives, the lower your wages will be.
- phillmv 13y agoI would just counsel that there are more angles in our relationship to work above and beyond pure supply and demand. You have (employment) market liquidity, you have long standing cultural practices, you have collective action problems, etc. We happen to work in a rapidly growing industry, which is why times are rosy.