Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries • Hacker News Board

Re: Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

#181

Post by hnal943 » Thu, Mar 03, 2016, 8:58 PM UTC

stvswn wrote: post #81

ahoy wrote: post #15

This is fairly consistent with other studies. The "77%" number is arrived at by comparing the median wage of full-time male & female employees. It doesn't account for differences in industry, job title, experience, etc. It's super broad. That doesn't mean we should ignore it, but it means we need more granularity. Coming out of uni/grad school, male and female salaries are equal in comparable fields. They depart a fe…

What if it's the case that preferences are different among men and women? Why do we assume that the women surveyed would prefer to have the higher paying but more demanding career paths? My wife is very smart and capable of making a high salary. She chose a flexible job path and took several years off to be with our children in their younger years. We could certainly afford otherwise; our family would have more money…

Absolutely! I reject the base assumption of this whole discussion that your salary is a measure of your worth as a person.

Re: Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

#182

Post by DominikR » Thu, Mar 03, 2016, 9:01 PM UTC

RodericDay wrote: post #42

ahoy wrote: post #15

This is fairly consistent with other studies. The "77%" number is arrived at by comparing the median wage of full-time male & female employees. It doesn't account for differences in industry, job title, experience, etc. It's super broad. That doesn't mean we should ignore it, but it means we need more granularity. Coming out of uni/grad school, male and female salaries are equal in comparable fields. They depart a fe…

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…

How about letting people make their own choice on how they want to spend their life?

Who are YOU to believe you can make that decision for me and everyone else?

Re: Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

#183

Post by vacri » Thu, Mar 03, 2016, 9:02 PM UTC

Lawtonfogle wrote: post #44

RodericDay wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elsewhere, on a different topic, you posted something along the same lines: > Which gender gets killed most often at work because of a social pressure that your value is determined by having a job, so if the only job options are dangerous, you best take one anyways? Do you like gender roles or not? You've already posted like 5 times in this thread, and I'm not sure if your perspective is "let's do away with gender ro…

The very last line of the post you just responded to. >I think the deeper problem is why are women forced in the child care role and men into the bread winning roles and how to fix that (which you do mention). I would hope that makes my position on the matter clear enough. But in case it doesn't. Wage disparity is caused by gender roles, not by discrimination. But gender roles are still a problem, especially for the…

I find it weird that you don't think that contradicting yourself invalidates anything.

Re: Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

#184

Post by gedrap » Thu, Mar 03, 2016, 9:05 PM UTC

the_af wrote: post #110

Lawtonfogle wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best way to fix this is to create a social pressure to be open about salaries. Some want to fix this by teaching better negotiation skills to those who are poor at it, but as long as the social pressure is to hide this data, it is going to keep being a problem regardless if the cause is racism, sexism, classism, or just difference in negotiation skills.

Fully agreed. In some countries there is a taboo about openly discussing salaries, but keeping them secret only helps employers and hurts the negotiating power of employees.

>>> keeping them secret only helps employers and hurts the negotiating power of employees

And saves from a lot of unnecessary drama. This is one of the things that seems great when assuming that everyone's acting rationally but that's not how the world works.

It's not rational but a lot of people are very sensitive to what they make in relation to others. For example, Joe thinks he's as good as Josh but Josh makes 25% more (be it that one's better at negotiating, false perception, not being aware of something and tons of other reasons). This scenario is extremely typical. As the result, it would provide enough distraction and hurt egos and all so that can have serious long term damage.

It can work if it's done from day 1 (e.g. at Buffer) but it might have disastrous consequences otherwise.

I'm not saying that sharing salary with a few colleagues is bad, it's pretty natural to share with some trusted ones and totally fine. But not doing it company wide once the company is in business for a few years.

Re: Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

#185

Post by panglott » Thu, Mar 03, 2016, 9:06 PM UTC

ahoy wrote: post #15

This is fairly consistent with other studies. The "77%" number is arrived at by comparing the median wage of full-time male & female employees. It doesn't account for differences in industry, job title, experience, etc. It's super broad. That doesn't mean we should ignore it, but it means we need more granularity. Coming out of uni/grad school, male and female salaries are equal in comparable fields. They depart a fe…

Most studies about the gender gap in pay find that most of the 77% figure is attibutable to differences in career choices/training/&c., but there remains a rough 5% difference in pay that is not attributable to those things. Ask most men if they would take a roughly 5% pay cut, and they would not say that it insignificant or something that can be ignored.

Maybe the tech industry is just immune to this, but this article is basically a press release with no information about data or methodology.

Re: Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

#186

Post by walshemj » Thu, Mar 03, 2016, 9:07 PM UTC

nqzero wrote: post #80

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

And even out side of that big companies participate in closed access salary surveys that are not disclosed publicly.

Re: Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

#187

Post by vacri » Thu, Mar 03, 2016, 9:07 PM UTC

mrrrgn wrote: post #70

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…

We already suffer from declining birthrates in the west. Your solution would make not having a child the best choice for "go-getters."

> We already suffer from declining birthrates in the west.

Which is fantastic! There are too many people on this earth for the resources available, and population growth in wealthy countries can be fuelled by immigration.

That's what's happening here in Australia - low birthrate (~1.8) has been aided by immigration, and we've had a 25% increase in population in the last 17 years. Having kiddliwinks is not the only solution to growth in the west.

Re: Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

#188

Post by losteric » Thu, Mar 03, 2016, 9:10 PM UTC

ahoy wrote: post #15

This is fairly consistent with other studies. The "77%" number is arrived at by comparing the median wage of full-time male & female employees. It doesn't account for differences in industry, job title, experience, etc. It's super broad. That doesn't mean we should ignore it, but it means we need more granularity. Coming out of uni/grad school, male and female salaries are equal in comparable fields. They depart a fe…

I fully agree with everything here, especially getting rid of stereotypes around nurturing roles.

My question is, what happens if many women and men aren't funneled towards those roles? What if it's a natural preference given our evolutionary history? I'm not saying that's the case, and my parents had no problems reversing nurturing roles over 20 years ago... but given our hyper-"PC" society, I am curious how far society's responsibilities extend.

What happens when a particular group innately prefers a certain type of work that the market values lowly? Are they irrational agents suffering by their own hands? Should society subsidize their job? Do we try to re-educate the group into following economically valued jobs? What about other people that have the same job for different reasons?

Re: Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

#189

Post by chongli » Thu, Mar 03, 2016, 9:12 PM UTC

theseatoms wrote: post #160

chongli wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but that penalty is deeply ingrained into our capitalist society. You can't solve it with just a quick bandaid fix.

Can it be fixed? In the end, pay is linked to productivity. The only fix I see is increased use of paternity leave.

Productivity on paternity leave is zero, since you're not working, so why expect pay to be anything but zero?

"Paternity leave" is an attempt to create a non-capitalist bubble inside of a capitalist world. It's like building a colony on Mars; not something you can do trivially.

Re: Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

#190

Post by robbyking » Thu, Mar 03, 2016, 9:12 PM UTC

That's not the issue; the issue is the hiring gap in tech jobs and reasons behind it.

The film "Code: Debugging the Gender Gap" does an excellent job of documenting the phenomenon. Nationally, young women taking high school placement tests score as well or better than their male classmates, but are placed in advanced math and science classes at a much, much lower rate. Because of this, the number of female high school graduates who meet academic requirements for university STEM programs is much lower, and so on though graduate school until the number of qualified female candidates for jobs in STEM fields has dwindled to nearly nothing.