161–170 of 626 posts
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Calling it "apples to oranges" is overlooking how some fields are broadly underpaid, which often (though not always) overlaps with gender disparity. For example, primary and secondary school teaching is a 'traditionally female' field that gets massively underpaid compared to tertiary education, despite if anything being much more important to society.
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Why?
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand
Nope, not that, either: the supply of doctors, for instance, is deliberately restricted by the American Medical Association; whereas the supply of elementary teachers is not restricted by the CAEP. Supply and demand are still second-order effects here.
One word: Union. Unionize and wage equity magically disappears.
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Can I ask why you might think that you were not at the same level? Why is Google a special software snowflake and none of your external experience is transferable?
To use a sports analogy: Two people could each have 5 years of experience playing baseball, but one is in a AAA league and the other plays for an MLB team. Years of experience doesn't necessarily say anything about actual skill.
That's why we need salary transparency to really address this. There are a lot underpaid men and a lot of overpaid women. Making this into a male vs. female issue does nothing to address the fact that people are underpaid.
Salary transparency is not possible and would be highly misleading because jobs are not standardized. A "senior Java developer" can be anything. Then you would have to provide a job description in a comparable format for every salary which is not trivial, if feasible at all. Salary transparency without job descriptions would be akin to showing house prices without describing house details - location, square footage,…
Reminiscent of Simpson's Paradox, the most famous example being a gender discrimination lawsuit alleging UC Berkeley discriminated against women in admissions (57% men vs. 43% women). It turned out there WAS bias - in favor of the women! "The lawsuit triggered a study. The study results showed that not only were women not discriminated against, but that women had a statistically significant advantage! Here’s what hap…
To me the key takeaway is that google systematically underpays both men and women.
> In early 2005, as demand for Silicon Valley engineers began booming, Apple's Steve Jobs sealed a secret and illegal pact with Google's Eric Schmidt to artificially push their workers wages lower by agreeing not to recruit each other's employees, sharing wage scale information, and punishing violators.
https://pando.com/2014/01/23/the-techtopus-how-silicon-valle...
That's why we need salary transparency to really address this. There are a lot underpaid men and a lot of overpaid women. Making this into a male vs. female issue does nothing to address the fact that people are underpaid.
As a fun thought exercise, imagine that you were the head of a multi-national conglomerate (or working in the interests of a multinational conglomerate) who stood to gain from paying people as little as possible. Would it be in your best interest to: a) standardize pay fairly or b) convince some people that they were being mistreated to the benefit of some other people and watch them fight each other while you laughed from your corner office, puffing cigars lit off of $100 bills?
High school, college, any STEM fields are all overwhelmingly biased in terms of favoring women. 57% of college graduates are women. Men are not only getting the short end of the stick but are being told by every voice that they are privileged, it’s their fault, they are bad whereas women have sooooo many extra programs and positive reinforcement to succeed. No one with a straight face can tell me women in entry level…
.... and yet, how many workplaces have an engineering team which are 50% female? 25% female? 10% female? 5% female?
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What is the reference for underpaying? Supply and demand of willing free-will workers? Profitability of the company? Something else? Or what a Wall Street hedge fund can pay?
In the context of video game companies, it's the comparison to other software companies and positions requiring about the same level of experience and prestige. Game producers are well-known at this point for recruiting naive grads and paying them peanuts compared to what they could get even just making CRUD web apps.
Political campaigns have the same property in a lot of cases.
So long as people want to express their preferences in where they work based on the content of the work, the mission of the organization, the laptops they issue, or any other set of criteria, I think it's fair game that those choices tip the supply/demand relationship in or away from their favor.