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Ask HN: How to address female coworkers getting paid less

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Re: Ask HN: How to address female coworkers getting paid less

#41

Post by Igglyboo »

sirwolfgang wrote: post #10

This is fundamentally one of the biggest cultural changes we have to make. You have to be ok with talking about your personal earning. In a lot of places talking about earnings is more taboo then talking about sex, and sex is generally taboo. Company culture of not talking about earnings only helps the company. It allows them to pay lowest market value for anyone, under the (often true) hopes that they don't know the…

A lot of people are just plain uncomfortable talking about it because in a lot of places your projected image is tied to how much you make. [$25/hr, software developer, 6 months until graduation, midwest]

Re: Ask HN: How to address female coworkers getting paid less

#43

Post by sqrt17 »

joshyeager wrote: post #18
sirwolfgang wrote: post #10

This is fundamentally one of the biggest cultural changes we have to make. You have to be ok with talking about your personal earning. In a lot of places talking about earnings is more taboo then talking about sex, and sex is generally taboo. Company culture of not talking about earnings only helps the company. It allows them to pay lowest market value for anyone, under the (often true) hopes that they don't know the…

The big reason for the taboo against talking about income is jealousy. Almost every job feels harder than it looks, and almost everyone feels more skilled at their work than they look. So if you tell someone your salary, your job probably feels more difficult to you than it looks to them, and you probably feel more productive than they think you are. If you make the same or more than they do, there is a very high ris…

From the other side of the curtain, most companies have "salary bands" that they apply semi-uniformly, i.e., as a "junior developer" you can make from X1-10% to X1+10%, as a "senior developer" you can make from X2-10% to X2+10%, and as a "project manager" you can make from X3-10% to X3+10%.

The invisible hand of the market will lead prople to companies with the highest value for X2, which are usually also those where the productivity (i.e. contribution to company revenue) per person is highest.

Re: Ask HN: How to address female coworkers getting paid less

#44

Post by Regnad »

Bahamut wrote: post #21
sirwolfgang wrote: post #10

This is fundamentally one of the biggest cultural changes we have to make. You have to be ok with talking about your personal earning. In a lot of places talking about earnings is more taboo then talking about sex, and sex is generally taboo. Company culture of not talking about earnings only helps the company. It allows them to pay lowest market value for anyone, under the (often true) hopes that they don't know the…

People need to be ok with talking about it, but at the same time, it still should ultimately be each person's choice to talk about it. [$67/hr, 2 years of experience, senior frontend engineer, Palo Alto]

Not to pry, but is this typical on the West Coast or are you contracting/including bonus in your hourly? I think I do pretty well for my age but you're killing it.

[$46/hr, 5 years of experience, Software Engineer, Boston]

Re: Ask HN: How to address female coworkers getting paid less

#45

Post by sirwolfgang »

Regnad wrote: post #44
Bahamut wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People need to be ok with talking about it, but at the same time, it still should ultimately be each person's choice to talk about it. [$67/hr, 2 years of experience, senior frontend engineer, Palo Alto]

Not to pry, but is this typical on the West Coast or are you contracting/including bonus in your hourly? I think I do pretty well for my age but you're killing it. [$46/hr, 5 years of experience, Software Engineer, Boston]

You have to adjust for cost of living. There is a lot of cost of living over there then compared to around Boston.

Re: Ask HN: How to address female coworkers getting paid less

#46

Post by Amezarak »

joshyeager wrote: post #18
sirwolfgang wrote: post #10

This is fundamentally one of the biggest cultural changes we have to make. You have to be ok with talking about your personal earning. In a lot of places talking about earnings is more taboo then talking about sex, and sex is generally taboo. Company culture of not talking about earnings only helps the company. It allows them to pay lowest market value for anyone, under the (often true) hopes that they don't know the…

The big reason for the taboo against talking about income is jealousy. Almost every job feels harder than it looks, and almost everyone feels more skilled at their work than they look. So if you tell someone your salary, your job probably feels more difficult to you than it looks to them, and you probably feel more productive than they think you are. If you make the same or more than they do, there is a very high ris…

> This is obviously a risk to the company, which is why most companies (at least in the US) have a policy against it.

What's amazing to me is that every company I've ever known of has a policy along those lines, yet it is illegal to sanction employees for talking about their pay with coworkers under the National Labor Relations Act and has been for a long, long time.

I also wonder to what extent the jealousy argument applies in the real world. It makes sense, and I'm sympathetic to it, but I've worked at two jobs where it was pretty well known what everyone made. There were huge disparities in what people made for doing the same work in both cases. It didn't cause any resentment issues I know of - but I suspect it did make people more likely to ask for a raise when they knew what was possible, which I think is the problem that management really has with it, because it becomes much harder for them to justify to the employee why they can't or won't pay them more, even though there may be valid reasons for it.

Re: Ask HN: How to address female coworkers getting paid less

#48

Post by furyg3 »

If the company claims that salaries are truly algorithmic and based on experience level, they should have no problem publicizing the salaries of each employee on an internal wiki.

I see a lot of HR departments put a huge effort into making salaries seem fair. They standardize job titles. They link job titles to salary scales (A,B,C,D) and then have sub scales (1-15) for 'experience' (years at the company) or performance (positive performance reviews). The problem is there are always huge loopholes:

"Ok, the experience scale can also count time at similar positions at other companies" Well, that sounds reasonable... "Also if you have a lot of industry connections we'll count that as experience" Um, okay... "also if management is impressed by a junior hire's capabilities we can apply that towards the experience scale" wait... and "Well Jane, you performed really well but management only allows us to give out so many exemplary performance reviews per year" what?

The result is that you have a beautiful salary scale in your employee handbook and a nice basis for hand-waving (your job puts you in scale B, and you've been here three years, so that's why you're at B3!), but everyone is just paid whatever they can negotiate. It's been shown time and time again that this disadvantages women, immigrants, minorities (and probably also more introverted types).

Re: Ask HN: How to address female coworkers getting paid less

#49

Post by jonifico »

Look, just take it easy. Just the way you are telling us right now, tell your superiors. I doesn't have to end up in an argument about sexism, just tell them you found out and you were wondering if it's intentional or not. If they do turn out to be jackasses, tell the girl and let hell break loose.

Re: Ask HN: How to address female coworkers getting paid less

#50

Post by laurenbee »

agilebyte wrote: post #26
sirwolfgang wrote: post #10

This is fundamentally one of the biggest cultural changes we have to make. You have to be ok with talking about your personal earning. In a lot of places talking about earnings is more taboo then talking about sex, and sex is generally taboo. Company culture of not talking about earnings only helps the company. It allows them to pay lowest market value for anyone, under the (often true) hopes that they don't know the…

Company culture of not talking about earnings helps me not feeling bad if I were to find out that my colleague who does the same job is paid more, or be on the reverse end. I'd rather not know. On the other hand, differences between different companies I can explain/comprehend/think are useful.

But what if knowing lets you make moves that improve your salary (if you are on the lower end) or encourage your coworkers to ask for a raise (if you are on the higher end)?

I started out making 10% more than what I was initially offered since I knew what coworkers with similar experience made and asked for that amount. And I know what coworkers with much more experience (10+ years to my 2 years) make, so I can gauge whether I am on the right track.

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