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"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 be

by 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 ago
Data 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 ago
  There 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.

by natrius 13y ago

phillmv 13y ago

Data 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 ago
There 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.