Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

insights.dice.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 562 posts

Re: Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

#71

Post by xyzzyz »

abraca wrote: post #43

I'm surprised. In a technical PM role a few years ago I found out that I earned 20-40% less than other PM's at the company. There were more than a dozen PM's and I was the only woman who was mid-level seniority. My male direct report made almost the same as me, while my female direct reports made a lot less. In my case it was not due to lack of initial negotiation, but that at each promotion I didn't get a sufficient…

> It's strange to me that HR never seems to pick up on things like this!!

I don't think it is strange at all -- after all, it is in the company best interest to pay the employees as little as necessary. Engineers benefit company by building products. HR benefit company by (among other things) figuring out how to save money on salaries.

Re: Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

#72

Post by dragonwriter »

sbov wrote: post #67
paganel wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We need to upend the idea that family care is solely the domain of women (normalizing parental leave for fathers with newborns is a good Don't have a kid, but I would think that an infant is better off having his mother close to him in his early months of life compared to having his father, for the simple biological reason that the mother can breast-feed, while a father can't. From what I remember reading kids who…

My wife couldn't produce milk. My wife's niece wouldn't latch. There are a lot of people in these situations where, even if true, your reasoning does not apply.

So? As long as there are substantial number to whom it does apply, it will remain a real on-average sex difference.

Re: Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

#73

Post by eli »

rqebmm wrote: post #47
kough wrote: post #22

Does anyone have a link to reliable breakdowns of different professions by race and gender? Tech gets slammed particularly hard for being "white male cishet scum" and I'd love to see how it compares to other fields. I can't imagine fields like law or nursing or mining or teaching or policing are much more equal.

I was able to do a quick analysis of US government data about a year ago when the 77% thing was at it's height, and the industries with the largest raw discrepancy were Business and legal services. Tech was ~94% if I recall. I'll see if I can dig it up again. edit: Here's an updated version for 2015: http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat39.htm edit2: And here's a curated google doc where I calculated the gender gap for each…

You're talking about whether men and women in the same field get roughly paid the same. That's a separate issue from the ratio of men to women in the field.

Re: Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

#74

Post by ahoy »

Lawtonfogle wrote: post #58
RodericDay wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the idea of "mandatory paternity leave", to make up for the biological asymmetry. Even if you have a stereotypical breadwinner/housewife relationship, you are legally mandated to take time off, even if you don't want to. That way you avoid the "you're allowed to take paternal leave, but real go-getters don't!" game altogether. edit: The way I see it, the responses just prove my point. "This would just make peo…

That would go a long way to correct for differences resulting from maternal leave, but there would still be issues such as single people, and especially single men, being favored (since it is rare for them to have a child who they must then take mandatory leave to care for).

No doubt you're correct. It's not a simple issue to fully resolve, but there is some seemingly low-hanging fruit to grab for.

Re: Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

#75

Post by shostack »

abraca wrote: post #43

I'm surprised. In a technical PM role a few years ago I found out that I earned 20-40% less than other PM's at the company. There were more than a dozen PM's and I was the only woman who was mid-level seniority. My male direct report made almost the same as me, while my female direct reports made a lot less. In my case it was not due to lack of initial negotiation, but that at each promotion I didn't get a sufficient…

So outside of a few large companies and a few types of jobs with fairly consistent job titles/responsibilities, Glassdoor is fairly poor for employees conducting their own salary research.

Have you found any services or tools that are more accurate that you'd recommend?

Re: Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

#77

Post by maxerickson »

obrit wrote: post #51
untog wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I remember reading kids who are breast-fed tend to do better in life in terms of health or being better from a psylogical point of view. The former (health) is absolutely true, but it's nothing that couldn't also be solved by the mother pumping her breast milk and the father doing the actual feeding by bottle. "bottle vs breast" is about the actual milk being fed, not the delivery method.

I'm not so sure this is true. Here's a good article you can read: http://www.thestranger.com/features/feature/2015/08/26/22755... I'm not sold on the validity of it all, but it's something to think about. Here's the important bit: "According to Hinde, when a baby suckles at its mother's breast, a vacuum is created. Within that vacuum, the infant's saliva is sucked back into the mother's nipple, where receptors in her…

An interesting reply (from someone who interacted with Hinde before writing it):

http://www.skepticalob.com/2015/09/mothers-and-babies-commun...

It would certainly be interesting to see how often the mother was producing antibodies for things that the father wasn't (more mundane infection vectors are one of the ideas presented at my link, if baby, mother and father are all sick, you don't have much evidence of the saliva being important).

Re: Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

#78

Post by _jmar777 »

> they’re getting equal pay for equal equal positions, education, and experience

While those are certainly relevant control factors, I would presume that any conclusions are premature without demonstrating a lack of bias in the actual positions men vs. women are promoted to, relative to their experience and education.

I.e., large disparities in salary by gender for "Software Engineer III" within the same organization are a bit hard to overlook, whereas there are often much fuzzier criteria involved in who has that title in the first place.

Not looking to necessarily refute the article, but the control factors themselves are still rather variable.

Re: Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

#79

Post by Lawtonfogle »

brongondwana wrote: post #65
Lawtonfogle wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would go a long way to correct for differences resulting from maternal leave, but there would still be issues such as single people, and especially single men, being favored (since it is rare for them to have a child who they must then take mandatory leave to care for).

It would definitely favour gay men, though they could still adopt and take paternity leave.

I remember reading that gay men suffer a penalty to straight men while gay women have a boost compared to straight women. I wonder if that is related child care expectations when they do adopt children.

Re: Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

#80

Post by nqzero »

abraca wrote: post #43

I'm surprised. In a technical PM role a few years ago I found out that I earned 20-40% less than other PM's at the company. There were more than a dozen PM's and I was the only woman who was mid-level seniority. My male direct report made almost the same as me, while my female direct reports made a lot less. In my case it was not due to lack of initial negotiation, but that at each promotion I didn't get a sufficient…

very good advice and applies to guys too. the goal for both management and HR is to pay as little as possible (to the point that we see the outright collusion of the apple/adobe/google price fixing). so get competing offers and then play hardball
Post reply on HN