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How the “what’s your current salary?” question hurts the gender pay gap

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Re: How the “what’s your current salary?” question hurts the gender pay gap

#81

Post by brianmcconnell »

I think where a lot of technical people get fleeced in compensation discussions is they let themselves get into a 1:1 personal discussion where they feel compelled to agree on the spot. Most business deals are worked out at a distance once the in person meetings are out of the way.

Treat this the same way you might go over a lease for office space. Let them make the initial offer (they have much better data about market rate and what they are willing to pay, you don't and may box yourself into a lowball position). Then take some time to figure out if it works, and take the comp discussion offline.

Keep the negotiation about compensation in writing. There are a million ways for an experienced negotiator to manipulate you in a live conversation. Break things down (salary, PTO, equity, 401k match, telework, other hard benefits), and figure out where they'll budge. And remember, it's not about being greedy, you'll be locking in your pay for 1-2 years, and you're doing your job of negotiating a good deal for you and your family. If someone doesn't respect that, that's a big red flag right there.

Re: How the “what’s your current salary?” question hurts the gender pay gap

#82

Post by whatok »

bobwaycott wrote: post #80
whatok wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Be proud you've eliminated any chance that your team members could even entertain the notion you weren't valuing them equally and fairly. Are all team members contributing equally and fairly?

C'mon. You assume they are/will when you hire them. When/if you discover they are not, you don't cut their pay, you fire them. It seems you're trying to angle for some defense of Peter earning more than Paul because the former contributed "more". Contributing to a team isn't a metric that should be set by an overachiever. Everyone—especially every overachiever (including myself)—should disabuse themselves of the noti…

I'm arguing that talented people move to greener pastures when they feel that they are undervalued or not treated equally. If for every overachiever you have x number of people who go "well I'm going to get paid the same as long as I put in my 40", you will no longer have a successful company. If you doubt the existence of this, you will have proven that you have never worked for the government.

> A better approach is offer the over-achievers a promotion. New position, new responsibilities perhaps, and a new salary. Attainable equally by anyone else who wants it.

I don't see how this is any different from offering pay raises. What if there is no room for advancement in the company? How do you measure whether people qualify for this? You can always offer more pay, you aren't necessarily able to create new job responsibilities and titles out of thing air.

Re: How the “what’s your current salary?” question hurts the gender pay gap

#83

Post by thiht »

nsxwolf wrote: post #3
patrickmay wrote: post #2

> Cornell professors Francine Blau and Lawrence Kahn found that women were paid 79 cents for each dollar a man was paid. Even after adjusting for type of job, industry, experience, location and education, the gap remained 92 cents for each dollar. This is not supported by the evidence. See, for example, this article by Christina Hoff Sommers ( http://time.com/3222543/5-feminist-myths-that-will-not-die/ ): "No matter…

Doesn't matter. They've won this point by repetition. I suspect most of them even know it is wrong. There's no defense against the rhetorical punch of "77 cents on the dollar".

The usual "So why don't companies hire more women if they're cheaper?" always work. It's also fallacious but at least it shuts some mouths.

Re: How the “what’s your current salary?” question hurts the gender pay gap

#84

Post by qiqing »

mrgoldenbrown wrote: post #35
patrickmay wrote: post #2

> Cornell professors Francine Blau and Lawrence Kahn found that women were paid 79 cents for each dollar a man was paid. Even after adjusting for type of job, industry, experience, location and education, the gap remained 92 cents for each dollar. This is not supported by the evidence. See, for example, this article by Christina Hoff Sommers ( http://time.com/3222543/5-feminist-myths-that-will-not-die/ ): "No matter…

If you are going to account for position, how do you account for the fact that women are often in a lower ranked position, because they are less likely to be promoted? You can't claim there's no pay gap just because it's being obfuscated by bias in job titles.

If you look at the trendlines for what certain types of jobs or fields paid (e.g., doctor, nurse, programmer, marketer), you'd see that when women enter a particular field en masse, the pay drops. And when the gender balance in that field goes from majority female to majority male, the pay increases.

Some well-intentioned parent is probably telling their daughter right now, "Look at field X, which is male-dominated and pays really well! You should study that." And by the time they've grown up to be of working age, the field is at 60F/40M, and the pay has gone way down.

Re: How the “what’s your current salary?” question hurts the gender pay gap

#85

Post by tomp »

nwah1 wrote: post #59
electrograv wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They [women] are less likely to be promoted because they are less likely to want a promotion. I don't think anyone could ask for a better example of systemic entrenched sexist bias than this quote. "It's okay, don't worry about it; they just don't want to be promoted as much as us men." This is not that much different from the old "women enjoy being in their husband's kitchen and tending to the house, so it's okay…

Hmm more like "those awful males are so competitive in pursuing career advancement. Maybe testosterone has some sort of effect."

I think a lot of it has to do with sexual competition. Men know that women are (in general) attracted to power, so they spend effort on earning money and becoming more powerful. Conversely, women know that men are attracted to beauty and youth, so they spend time and money on trying to look younger and prettier.

Re: How the “what’s your current salary?” question hurts the gender pay gap

#86

Post by nwah1 »

tomp wrote: post #85
nwah1 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm more like "those awful males are so competitive in pursuing career advancement. Maybe testosterone has some sort of effect."

I think a lot of it has to do with sexual competition. Men know that women are (in general) attracted to power, so they spend effort on earning money and becoming more powerful. Conversely, women know that men are attracted to beauty and youth, so they spend time and money on trying to look younger and prettier.

Another very valid point. Different preferences naturally lead to different outcomes.

Invoking discrimination as the first explanation for any discrepancies is a way to debase the concept of discrimination.

Proper studies of this sort try to isolate variables by, for instance, submitting identical resumes except for the gender.

Re: How the “what’s your current salary?” question hurts the gender pay gap

#87

Post by morgante »

lukeschlather wrote: post #51
morgante wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sympathetic to the notion that discrimination can include subtler factors of pushing women into lower pay positions. However, the problem with the 77 cent figure is that it's frequently stated like this: "women get paid only 77% of what men do for the same jobs." Which is entirely false. Yet, if you asked most people about the 77 cents figure they'd think it actually meant women got paid much less to do the same…

All the information we have is hourly wage, income, and job title. We can't know if a woman with the lower-paid job title of "Programmer Analyst" is doing the same work as a man with a job title of "Senior Software Engineer." The "same job" is a subjective distinction, so you can't say it's entirely false; it's really a matter of opinion.

> The "same job" is a subjective distinction, so you can't say it's entirely false; it's really a matter of opinion.

No, it's not. Certainly there are some distinctions at the margins, as you note.

There are, however, some very clear distinctions. Women dominate elementary education, which I hope we can all agree is a very different job than programming (for example).

To reiterate, I don't know whether these preferences are innate or learned. In fact, I suspect it's the latter. But we shouldn't ignore them_if women were in fact paid less for doing the exact same jobs, solution would actually be a lot easier.

Re: How the “what’s your current salary?” question hurts the gender pay gap

#88

Post by Balgair »

adrr wrote: post #45
tomphoolery wrote: post #17

Inflate your current salary by $20,000 if this question is asked.

Lying during interview process is very dangerous for your career. If you don't want to answer, don't answer.

First part: why?

Re: How the “what’s your current salary?” question hurts the gender pay gap

#89

Post by geofft »

chrisfosterelli wrote: post #43
mrgoldenbrown wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are going to account for position, how do you account for the fact that women are often in a lower ranked position, because they are less likely to be promoted? You can't claim there's no pay gap just because it's being obfuscated by bias in job titles.

I'm not going to argue that this accounts for it entirely, but I do think it's worth pointing out that women typically are less interested in higher ranked positions than men tend to be [0]. They are less likely to be promoted because they are less likely to want a promotion. [0] http://www.pnas.org/content/112/40/12354.abstract

How do you reliably distinguish someone intrinsically not wanting a promotion from someone not wanting to deal with the crap that comes with trying to get a promotion?

From the abstract: "In studies 5–7, when faced with the possibility of receiving a promotion at their current place of employment or obtaining a high-power position after graduating from college, women and men anticipated similar levels of positive outcomes (e.g., prestige and money), but women anticipated more negative outcomes (e.g., conflict and tradeoffs)."

Re: How the “what’s your current salary?” question hurts the gender pay gap

#90

Post by antisthenes »

Lawtonfogle wrote: post #75
geofft wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, that's not surprising, if you do that poll once . There's a 50% chance of that. If you do that poll repeatedly , over many groups and many industries and many times and many subsets, and in every case the men are paid more (whether 5% or 23%), there is either an actual statistical difference, or Maxwell's social justice demon is out to get you. And if there is an actual statistical difference, the question is…

>Are men more valuable to the market? And if so, why? Maybe men and women work equally hard, all else being equal, but in a society where a man's income is used to determine his worth as a person to a greater extent that a woman's income is used to determine her worth, a man will spend more time focusing on improving his income, and thus work in ways that provide more value by sacrificing quality of life (while a wom…

People should really stop labeling some double standards towards men and women sexism.

The sexes are NOT the same and should not be treated the same. In fact it is quite ironic how the libertarian leaning HN crowd manages to fit the conflicting facts of just markets and wage discrimination in their collective heads.

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