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Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

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Re: Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

#131
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?

I recommend looking up the company and job title on an h1b jobs database. There are several sites online that pull from public data. You get both start date and title information. It only shows base salary but the nice thing is that it is an accurate number.

Re: Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

#132

What is interesting is the breakdown of motivations between men and women. It seems readily apparent that women on the whole prefer flexible work arrangements because of child raising obligations. This is exactly the same argument lobbed across the wage gap discussion for years now. Proponents of the wage-gap point that women have an unfair obligation to child-raising duties, which puts them at a disadvantage when co…

I would prefer flexible work arrangements for the very simple reason that there are lots of things I want to do with my life in addition to my job. Nobody ever offers this, somehow. It would be a better world if flexible work hours were a normal thing, not something you have to justify based on traditional gender roles. I feel a little bitter when people go on about the importance of "negotiation" over job offers, be…

What exactly are you asking for? At ININ, we have core hours of 10-4, and you can fill out the rest however you want. Seems a decent compromise for a salary employee gig.

If you want real flexible hours you can always do contract work or start a business.

Re: Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

#133
post #26
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…

> 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…

In some Nordic countries it's becoming the norm that mom takes breast-feeding time and dad takes toddler-time...

...for the simple biological reason that fathers can generally run faster and thus chase down the kid... ok, that's just trolling :P

Re: Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

#134
Nursing is a field dominated by women. And there are very large salary gaps between nurses with 0-10 years of experience and nurses with 10-20 years of experience. I'd also bet that there are much more women with 10-20 years of experience than men. So if you broke it down in the same way as the tech industry and did not control for job title or years of experience, you'd find a reverse gender gap in the same way you see in the tech industry. Controlled for job title and experience, you'd probably find it equal just like this study shows. I don't think there is any more discrimination in the tech industry when it comes to salaries than there is in nursing. I think both do not suffer from gender discrimination.

Re: Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

#135
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

My solution may not be optimal, but the status quo is "male go-getter with supportive female companion" as standard model of coupling. If we have to deal with declining birthrates while we figure out a more fair and sane arrangement, that doesn't pit family building against professional success, I'm down.

> male go-getter with supportive female companion

Do you have any objective reasons why this is suboptimal? Maybe we should go the other way; for example in the Netherlands, many women (with children) choose to work part-time (because they can). So maybe the "status quo" is by choice.

Re: Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

#136
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The framing does make a difference, as it sets the perception of which gender is being "wronged". I think the GP is arguing that one could replace "care for family members... is more often foisted upon women" with "the burden of providing financially... is more often foisted upon men", and thereby shift the focus from injustice against women to injustice against men, while being an equally valid interpretation of the…

Both are true and both need to be fixed. Yes, men are often pressured to be the breadwinner of the family. That is a problem too, and it should be less stigmatized for the women to be an equal breadwinner.

You are implicitly assuming that there are no differences between male and female preferences (on average). It seems plausible that biologically-originated gender differences may extend beyond genitalia. Is there any reason to believe men and women have the same priorities, abilities, and preferences, and that we should expect them to attain the same outcomes?

Re: Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

#137
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Swedish way is to have 480 days of parental leave per child, which can be split between either parent. "For 390 of the days, parents are entitled to nearly 80 per cent of their normal pay up to a maximum monthly income of 37,000 kroner ($4,500)." - http://www.thelocal.se/20151229/one-in-four-swedish-fathers-... . Also, "From January 1st 2016, the number of use-it-or-lose-it 'pappamånad' or 'daddy months' will inc…

> which can be split between either parent That's the issue right there. Not surprised "One in four Swedish dads take no baby leave". I know things are tricky to roll out, there's tons of quirks here and there. User chongli is on like three leaves of the discussion trying to take the idea down based on implementation details. That comes later. The whole point is that right now it's a "woman's issue". Forcing men to d…

"That's the issue right there"

I ... don't think you understood my response. Three months of it can only be taken by the father. The "split between either parent" has limits.

What's wrong with the non-mandatory Swedish system? It's most assuredly called "parental leave here", and isn't a "woman's issue" but a feminist issue. As a male feminist, I agree with that.

Edit regarding "it is you who is not getting me".

You are right. But I fail to understand why I should get you as you haven't made any statement about what "mandatory" means. Do you mean one week of mandatory leave, or one month, or one year? Will it be paid leave, and structured similar to what it is in Sweden (percentage of salary, with cap)? What is the penalty for not complying? If I am an unpaid board member of a Fortune 100, am I prohibited from attending meetings? What about going to shareholder meetings? Going to professional society meetings?

You complain that these questions are "trying to take the idea down based on implementation details", but they are not. They are aspects of trying to understand what you mean by mandatory parental leave, and do a cost/benefit analysis

If Sweden were to require on week of mandatory parental leave, for each parent, how would that improve things?

Re: Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

#138
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beat me to it. The episode is basically an interview with Claudia Goldin who is about as qualified a person as you could hope for to speak on this matter. [1] tl;dr women start out with equal pay, but trade pure monetary compensation for flexibility and/or fewer hours when they have kids because society still sucks at gender equality when it comes to enabling parents to equally contribute to certain aspects of parent…

It's not just society, it's also biology. Even if "parenting" roles were completely equal, "childbirth" role would fall only on women, so they would still take more time off for children (and hence get lower pay).

Indeed, the crusade against biology is one I watch with great amusement.

Don Quixote would be proud of those who hoist their flags in battle against evolution, biology and the laws of the universe itself.

Keep up the good fight, dear gender abolitionists, for you truly are against a formidable foe.

Re: Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

#139
post #89
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It's actually in the name. You are a resource for a purchasing department. I can't understand how people come to assume HR is on their side: it's not a union.

Yeah I (wrongly) figured that HR would do scans of salaries based on gender, race, disability etc to make sure there were no statistically significant differences that could lead to ammo in a lawsuit situation.

Re: Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

#140
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…

Not in one big tech company I worked in for the same role there was a marked difference in male and female mainly due to the problems with PRP
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