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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

#61

Post by mc32 »

joeax wrote: post #55
intopieces wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

But this guy has now set a precedent with a published article claiming he will actively discriminate against male candidates. So as soon as his company scales past 15, a male candidate that was rejected could sue, using that article as evidence.

Hmm, maybe. I think someone would have to prove they were discriminated against with more evidence in addition to a published article. It has to be proven that it affected the hiring team. I mean, his article would be used as part of evidence but there needs to be more than some self-claim, I would think.

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

#62

Post by mc32 »

inmygarage wrote: post #35

Generally as a startup, many applicants come through current employees, friends, investors, etc. This generally encourages the cycle of the same people getting the same jobs. Don't rely on your website to widen the diversity of your funnel, even if your jobs list is current...most startups I know are not great about keeping this current anyway. A few (relatively easy) ideas: 1. Join a few "______ in tech" email lists…

>Generally as a startup, many applicants come through current employees, friends, investors, etc. This generally encourages the cycle of the same people getting the same jobs.

Is that a bad thing? I say this from the perspective of small businesses who typically hire family then friends, etc. In theory it may be bad as they may eventually run out of vigor and ideas... but is it bad in other ways? I have known many businesses started by immigrants where lots of the employees were family, same ethnic group, etc. but I had not though of it as "wrong" in a moral sense maybe wrong in a business sense (as I think it limited their potential, but I saw that as "their" problem, not a social problem.

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

#63

Post by htns »

lsiq wrote: post #30
DelaneyM wrote: post #20

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…

As far as I can tell the data does not adjust for usual hours worked or overtime beyond restricting to only full time data points. Men working more hours than women is a consistent trend across pretty much the whole world.

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

#64

Post by ewjordan »

cleandreams wrote: post #40

I thought this was an interesting article and then I read the comments. Oh dear, a bunch of white guys kvetching and clutching their...pearls. Your deprivation moves me. Really. Anyway I had a point to make, as a software engineer for 30 years and a woman. (The proportion of women in the field has fallen by half since I started my career.) For my last job I went with a high end recruiting agency and the recruiter got…

Your point is spot on: people should always know what they're worth when they negotiate salary at a job, asking for what you can get is the most crucial thing when taking a job.

Both men and women are uncomfortable negotiating up (I've heard that women are much more hesitant about this, but I don't know the research that well and never sat on the hiring side of salary negotiations), and low asks are probably the biggest mistake anyone can make: $10-20k doesn't mean shit to the manager that wants to get you on their team if you negotiate it at hiring time, but if you try to get that bump during annual raise period, that's almost impossible to achieve at any large-ish company (it means either nixing raises for other people on the team or calling in VP-level favors, which most managers don't have the ability to do).

In tech nobody is ever going to tell you to piss off for asking for $10k more than they can offer, they're just going to negotiate you down (if even that - most of the time they'll just say "yes" or split the difference). Now, if you're $50k+ out of line, that could be another matter, but that's why you do some research and don't go crazy with your ask.

The rule for contracting is more brutal, but also a bit simpler: you should always be losing a lot of business because of how high your rate is, somewhere between 25% and 50% is my rule of thumb. If clients are saying "yes" without negotiating or at least complaining, you're definitely charging too little.

Protip: you can look up top salaries at most non-profits online, they have to report them for I think the 15 highest paid employees. Pick a smallish one in your area, look at the engineers there, and you've got an anchor for senior engineering rates. Non profits might not be 100% competitive with for-profit companies, but the better ones have to be somewhat close as far as base salary (they don't offer stock or other perks, usually) if they want good people.

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

#65

Post by stale2002 »

romanhn wrote: post #54
stale2002 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"How about actually making the workplace attractive to woman applicants?" Yeah, and do you know what the best and easiest way to make a workplace more attractive to women is? It is to have other women in the workplace! I know many women who are unwilling to even apply to a company if they know they would be the first or only woman on the team. It is a chicken and egg problem. Until his company is able to get SOME wom…

Agree with you up until the very last sentence. It does not make business sense to break the law (and gender discrimination is a real thing a company can get sued over). No matter how tempting, you can't magically wish the problem away and say "I'll hire 5 women, then 10 people of color, then a couple of LGBT folks, then I won't have any diversity problems". It doesn't work that way. Yes, it is a chicken and egg prob…

Ehh, there are effectively equivalent ways of ensuring that you hire X more women without discriminating against men in the interview process.

If you have X people interviewing at your company, you should hire the best person who interviews, no matter the gender.

The REAL way to go about this is to discriminate at the referral/reachout stage.

If you go to your all male engineering team and announce "We are hiring! Refer all your friends!". What you are effectively doing is discriminating against women, because you are going to receive 20 male referrals and 1 women referral. But THIS isn't illegal.

I am suggesting that you do this same but biased towards women referrals, instead of biasing it toward male referrals. You make specific, targeted efforts to get as many women as possible to apply, while not bothering with referral/reachout processes that are likely to receive male heavy applications, and THEN accept the best person who applies to the job, which will almost certainly be a woman, since instead of having a 20male-1female application ratio, you now have a 1male-20female ratio.

One way of ensuring that you get women referrals is to reach out to all of your female engineering friends, and ask THEM for referrals. Or when you are making your job postings, forward it along to the mailing list of all the women in tech meetups, facebook groups, email lists, ect.

I mean, thats what the tech industry is doing right now, but targeted at men, and they never get in trouble for it, even if it is "accidental" that the job postings only get sent to tech groups/meetups that have a 20-1 male to female ratio.

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

#66

Post by [deleted] »

taneq wrote: post #42
DelaneyM wrote: post #20

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.

[deleted]

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

#67

Post by taneq »

DelaneyM wrote: post #47
taneq wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Your first post:

> An alternative interpretation is that women are behaving entirely logically with the knowledge that their employability is maximized if they set their desired salaries lower than men with equivalent experience.

Me: Then why are companies not saving themselves $30k/year per senior dev by exclusively hiring women?

Your second post:

> Because they can't.

Which is it? If you can choose to hire a man over a woman who's just as good, you can choose to hire a woman over a man who's just as good and much more expensive.

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

#68

Post by DelaneyM »

taneq wrote: post #67
DelaneyM wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Your first post: > An alternative interpretation is that women are behaving entirely logically with the knowledge that their employability is maximized if they set their desired salaries lower than men with equivalent experience. Me: Then why are companies not saving themselves $30k/year per senior dev by exclusively hiring women? Your second post: > Because they can't. Which is it? If you can choose to hire a man ov…

These aren't mutually exclusive, it's a perfectly logical situation in a game theoretic sense.

But I'm not arguing either, I'm pointing out that the data does not lead to the conclusion.

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

#69

Post by easuter »

adamnemecek wrote: post #17

> implying being born in Slovakia is winning some sort of lottery

Yeah, unfortunately a lot of these blog posts are very US-centric. There are still plenty of people in Europe living in poverty and their white privilege somehow didn't save them.

It's interesting how these racist ideas get tossed about proudly here and in the US media.

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

#70

Post by forthefuture »

jacalata wrote: post #56
joeax wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this guy has now set a precedent with a published article claiming he will actively discriminate against male candidates. So as soon as his company scales past 15, a male candidate that was rejected could sue, using that article as evidence.

Huh, would it apply retroactively? That seems weird.

It's not necessarily retroactively. If he has 10 people (8m, 2f) and wants parity (8m, 8f) then hes guaranteeing that the 16th person he hires will be a woman.
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