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The gender wage gap in Silicon Valley – based on AngelList data

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Re: The gender wage gap in Silicon Valley – based on AngelList data

#41

> At that point I made a decision to change this by enforcing a new hiring rule. Next couple of new employees are going to be women up until we balance our team I stopped reading after this part!

Then you really don't understand hiring women. Most women don't want to work at a place where they're the only woman. Or the workplace is ridiculously imbalanced in one direction. Even in large companies such as Amazon, women cluster into teams. Not having women on your team usually points to a culture issue, and who wants to have a terrible work environment? It's another area where avoiding false positives is probab…

I think I'm on the same side as you, but the right approach to establishing a diverse balance isn't to have litmus tests for individual jobs.

If you want to shift the balance.

1. Start by mixing up your recruitment marketing and messaging to make them more appealing to your target demographic.

2. Then, consider any necessary policy changes to the workplace and culture that would turn away candidates who get a closer look.

3. Lastly, consider using your diversity preference as a tie-breaker among otherwise comparable candidates.

No illegal litmus tests necessary.

Re: The gender wage gap in Silicon Valley – based on AngelList data

#42

Data collection: A+ Analysis: needs improvement. From the article: > Based on the data, women are definitely undervaluing themselves in comparison to men. The gap starts around $10k/year for the first year and grows to a staggering $30k/year after 10 years of working epxeriences. [sic] An alternative interpretation is that women are behaving entirely logically with the knowledge that their employability is maximized…

If efficient markets are a thing, then why are companies not saving themselves $30k/year per senior dev by exclusively hiring women?

Everyone's always happy to wave their "misogyny" and "discrimination" flags around but, to me, the argument falls down the moment it implies that businesses hate women more than they love money.

Re: The gender wage gap in Silicon Valley – based on AngelList data

#43
post #30

Data collection: A+ Analysis: needs improvement. From the article: > Based on the data, women are definitely undervaluing themselves in comparison to men. The gap starts around $10k/year for the first year and grows to a staggering $30k/year after 10 years of working epxeriences. [sic] An alternative interpretation is that women are behaving entirely logically with the knowledge that their employability is maximized…

The gap is large enough that the efficient market argument doesn't hold very much water. A 5k difference should be enough to favor one candidate over another all else equals. If firms are efficient they wouldn't be paying 20k extra for males. I do think wages are really very much a bottom up thing in that people can collectively raise their wages by simply not accepting lower pay. Putting a (reasonably) high price on…

Says who?

No, really, you're begging the question here. "Gender bias isn't a big problem among senior developers, so it can't be such a big problem."

Re: The gender wage gap in Silicon Valley – based on AngelList data

#44
post #13

> Born white and male in today’s world I won the lottery without having a clue. Here we go. (actually I stopped reading).

There's a couple comments to this effect. Why? It comes across as being unwilling to consider ideas at all.

Probably because Germans have won the "German lottery", Japanese have won the Japanese lottery, People from Syria "lost" the lottery. Many advanced nations in a kind of way "won" the lottery for their people. Many Americans believe Europeans won the lottery vis a vis the US because they think things are much better and more fair there. On the other hand, people from poor countries think America is a lottery and put great efforts at crossing the border...

It also has a "guilt" aspect to it.

Re: The gender wage gap in Silicon Valley – based on AngelList data

#45
post #23

>Education shrank the results to single digits for each occupation, gender and work experience, so I decided to remove it from the final dataset. First of all you could have used buckets. Secondly, it doesn't seem like you have enough data judging from your charts. Dice did a study and found that >when you control for education, level of experience and parallel job titles, says Dice, men and women earn the same amoun…

But you know they won't be, because good luck winning that case, and before that, good luck finding a lawyer to represent that case.

Also, apparently anti-discrimination laws dont kick in until you have 15 employees, so what this guy is doing is probably not illegal anyway.

Re: The gender wage gap in Silicon Valley – based on AngelList data

#46
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you know they won't be, because good luck winning that case, and before that, good luck finding a lawyer to represent that case.

Also, apparently anti-discrimination laws dont kick in until you have 15 employees, so what this guy is doing is probably not illegal anyway.

Depends on the state. In CA, the number is 5. [1]

1: http://www.workplacefairness.org/minimum

Re: The gender wage gap in Silicon Valley – based on AngelList data

#47
post #42

Data collection: A+ Analysis: needs improvement. From the article: > Based on the data, women are definitely undervaluing themselves in comparison to men. The gap starts around $10k/year for the first year and grows to a staggering $30k/year after 10 years of working epxeriences. [sic] An alternative interpretation is that women are behaving entirely logically with the knowledge that their employability is maximized…

If efficient markets are a thing, then why are companies not saving themselves $30k/year per senior dev by exclusively hiring women? Everyone's always happy to wave their "misogyny" and "discrimination" flags around but, to me, the argument falls down the moment it implies that businesses hate women more than they love money.

Because they can't.

Explicitly choosing to hire women and pay them less is not acceptable. Not hiring someone who happens to be a woman at the same rate as an equally qualified man is completely acceptable.

And I'm not alleging explicit widespread prejudice here; I'm giving a hypothesis to explain behavior caused by implicit biases.

Re: The gender wage gap in Silicon Valley – based on AngelList data

#49
post #14

Interesting data, BUT... "Next couple of new employees are going to be women up until we balance our team." - this is gender discrimination and it is illegal. How about actually making the workplace attractive to woman applicants? Things like ridding your careers page of implicit biases and bro culture, putting extra emphasis on personal as well as professional growth, attending/hosting various women-oriented events/…

>this is gender discrimination and it is illegal. Employment discrimination laws don't kick in until you have 15 employees. This guy has 10.

Federally, you're right. In CA, you're wrong. The number to hit is 5 there. http://www.workplacefairness.org/minimum

Re: The gender wage gap in Silicon Valley – based on AngelList data

#50
I realize you're going to get a lot of controversy on something like this but this is a great read. First and foremost, excellent work with the data gathering. Now I want to tinker with TensorFlow.

I think you drew the generally correct conclusion from this:

"But I hope that it will encourage at least some women to think more about their value for an employer and next time will negotiate a better deal for themselves."

My only problem with the conclusion is that statements like this make the assumption that women are not already thinking about their value. My family owns a business that employees almost entirely women with graduate degrees. All very sharp and want to do well in their careers but having diverse interpretations of what doing well actually means to them. Your data is probably better than any I've seen to point that out since it is based on DESIRED salaries.

Some want to advance their careers primarily and while others significantly value flexibility for sake of their families. Men tend to be more singular in focus. We want to advance our careers for sake of ourselves AND our families.

The goals naturally align with a desire to advance in large part to make it easier for our wives to take a pay cut to have more time for the kids. While there are plenty of stay at home dads and role reversals today, the norm is very much the opposite...and it's going to stay that way not because of social acceptance but because of biology...unless of course men start carrying babies for 9 months, going through childbirth, recovering from childbirth, breastfeeding and everything that involves (waking up and night, pumping, freezing milk) and the bond that naturally comes from all of that. Before repeating the process for additional children.

A lot of that stuff is hardwired. I see my wife doing all of that and realize there's only so much I can do to help...but I can try to make more money to make life a little easier.

There are a WHOLE lot of women who decide they want to stop having to work for a while after they've had kids, at least for the early years but then discover that they can't afford too. Between student loans, potentially going overboard on a mortgage from two incomes, etc NOT having a job with the new expense of a child becomes almost unimaginable to handle. There's even a book about it called The Two Income Trap.

All that's to say, don't make the mistake of thinking that people are undervaluing themselves because you don't agree with what they're asking for. You never know what they really want.

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