- Feature Articles
- CodeSOD
- Error'd
-
Forums
-
Other Articles
- Random Article
- Alex's Soapbox
- Announcements
- Best of…
- Best of Email
- Best of the Sidebar
- Bring Your Own Code
- Coded Smorgasbord
- Mandatory Fun Day
- Off Topic
- Representative Line
- News Roundup
- Editor's Soapbox
- Software on the Rocks
- Souvenir Potpourri
- Sponsor Post
- Tales from the Interview
- The Daily WTF: Live
- Virtudyne
Admin
While I agree with the sentiment of the article, I feel compelled to point out that the statistics often quoted about the relative compensation of females vs. males is based on a census bureau numbers which does NOT attempt to compare equal work for equal pay, rather the differences stem more from hours worked, type of job, life choices, etc., etc....
Admin
Just curious: what do you think is a fair salary?
Let's take UPS drivers, for instance. After 78 years they make about $80k (before overtime) and have great benefits. they require no higher education and you can learn their job in a week. Literally. Is that fair? I think it isn't. $80K plus benefits for doing a grown-up version of a paper route?
Admin
As was linked up-thread, even when you control for those factors, there's still a (smaller) pay-gap. The pay-gap does exist. I mean, if we're just throwing out confounding factors, how about this one: so much of the IT industry is actively hostile to women that the only women who go into it aren't operating to their full potential, and hence get less salary.
The link in the article about one woman's experience at DefCon drives that home: because of her gender, she was excluded from networking opportunities that could have landed her a better job.
Admin
My place of employment just got through union negotiations. That's good. I got a raise. That's good.
I had heard rumors about renegotiating the salary range. It turned out to be true. So my new salary post-raise was less than the low bound of the new salary. So they bumped me up to the low bound. That's good.
But what this now means is that, with 6 years as a network engineer, 3 as a senior, I'm getting paid the same amount as if they hired in a brand new senior engineer. And that's presuming the new hire doesn't negotiate a higher salary.
WTF??
Admin
The paygap is often statistical misiterpreted.
To argue that woman make less in the same jobs based on the statistics or cited report seems wrong!
Often statistics are quoted for showing that women make less in the same jobs. What they show in reality is that women tend to go for cheaper/less payed jobs and also have more often half jobs which pay less per hour. None of these statistics I am aware of shows that women make less in the same jobs!
Admin
My career path is a great study in choices to not make and, I hope, how to recover from them. I won't deny I've worked for some crappy companies, but even where I'm at now, which is a great place (I don't know the HR repercussions and I'm not keen to find out), the stigma is there. In fact, we were just bought, and the new company handed out a round of pay raises, and from the way they were handled, it's pretty clear that inquiries into your coworkers pay are not appreciated.
Okay- I may have overstated things. I do that on occasion. But going around asking for salary information from your coworkers is going to cause tension more often than not. Which will ultimately do more damage to your job more often than not, which will do more damage to your career more often than not. I've had some pretty good success doing the research on what I can expect with my skillset and experience in my area, and negotiating from there.
Admin
"... and then wonder why that person only stays long enough to find a higher paying job."
While the vast majority of this comment is spot on, the last bit is off. The truth is, they know exactly why you left. They simply don't care. They will just replace you with the next person who will allow themselves to be run over. Managers get kudos for saving money, not for hiring the best IT person in the world.
Admin
"In fact, it turns out that employers that shaft you on pay also shaft you on other things."
I don't think that's always true. I get the impression that the salaries here aren't great. But I get far more days off than most people I know, and I can basically arrange to take them whenever I like. I get free lunch. My company pays for my fuel, even though there is no driving in my job.
Admin
Admin
They did exactly this in science, and found that gender discrimination is real there: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/09/14/1211286109#aff-1
From the abstract: "(They) rated the male applicant as significantly more competent and hireable than the (identical) female applicant. (They) also selected a higher starting salary and offered more career mentoring to the male applicant."
Admin
This female pay discrepancy has been thoroughly debunked. Employers in this country aren't paying women less. The average pay for women is less in large part due to the fact that women often take the middle portion of their careers off to raise kids (thank God for the women who do that) and as such their career average salary is lower and also because women in general aren't as motivated to advance to tech-lead and such. There are differences between men and women (vive la differnce). This one women might not be getting her fair share, but there is no systemic problem.
Admin
A few years ago, I worked for a company that made an unfortunate change to its policies. In California, companies are required to pay overtime, but only to employees who make less than a certain amount. Those above that level are called "exempt". There had been some lawsuits in the past from laid off employees who were demanding that they be compensated for all their unpaid overtime, so the company decided that it would require all non-exempt employees to track all of their hours, and only allow overtime if justified in advance by a manager. Unfortunately, the salary limit for exempt employees -- which was a well-known exact figure -- was right around the middle-range of the market rate for software engineers. It was immediately obvious who in the department was exempt and who wasn't, based on who was being forced to take state-mandated breaks and constantly logging hours in the time tracking software.
They changed their policy a few months later and fired the HR bigwig who spearheaded it, because of all the conflict it caused among non-exempt employees demanding to be paid as much as their exempt peers.
Admin
Ha! Ha! 78 years?!? what a douche. Seriously, don't know where that 8 came from. It's supposed to be 7 years.
Admin
So, did the exempt peers not have to work overtime? I'd expect that they'd be victimized by this policy and have to pull the extra hours that the non-exempts weren't allowed to pull.
Admin
Admin
A great no-bullshit source for career women is Susannah Breslin. For example, why Equal Pay Day is stupid.
1. It Tells Women to Aim for Equality.
From what I gather, the idea of Equal Pay Day is that women should earn as much as men. This is what women are supposed to aspire to: equality.
This is wrong. Women should not aspire to earn as much as men. Women should aspire to make more money than men.
You can't deny she's got a point there, and as obvious as it sounds, I haven't seen anyone else make it. Can't find it, but another point she makes in other columns: a big reason women don't get paid as much is they don't ask for as much pay.
Think through the implications of that, not for all of Sisterhood, but for you as an individual and what you ought to do.
Admin
I know this sounds weird, but oddly enough I feel that I'm probably paid too much...
To explain, like our friend Snoofle, I work in a moron heavy environment where the traditional (non-technology) "professionals" have historically brought in the bug bucks despite mediocre performance (or in some cases sheer incompetence) just so long as the firm is profitable. For whatever reason, similar remuneration structures tends to be made available to technology professionals in such industries.
As a result of an uncharacteristically (for this place anyway) long tenure of 3 years and the ability to successfully deliver on a few projects, I've found myself on quite a bit above industry standard rates.
Whilst this sounds great, it does occur to me that if the economy (or even just our firm, which remember is run by morons) takes a turn for the worse, I would be more likely to face retrenchment. But then again, i don't know what my co-workers are making.
Not that i particularly like this job, after all the only reason I've been here for a few years is that their response to a resignation letter is a salary adjustment.
I've always found that if you're appropriately skilled usually you end up being appropriately remunerated, and if you're not, look for another job. When you quit, you might be pleasantly surprised by the counter-offer from your current firm.
My advice as someone who took that counter-offer... Don't take it. If they refused to acknowledge your value until you tender your resignation, they're not worth working for. But yeah, you live and learn.
Admin
Fucking goddamned sites using their own made up fucking tags are TRWTF.
Admin
This is simply wrong. As Remy says, the problem getting better, but it still exists. And as others have already pointed out in this very thread, studies have been done showing that simply having a female name on a resume results in a perception that an applicant is less qualified. A resume! That has nothing to do with being "less motivated" or leaving to raise kids or anything like that and entirely with the unconscious (I hope) biases of recruiters.
Admin
No, BH. Do not 'settle' because you have 'enough'. If you're getting paid 75% of what your peers are paid because you have a vagina, that is not cool. Ever.
Some ways to find out your market rate:
Admin
Never settle for enough- demand what you're worth.
Admin
Care to back that up with some studies? Because even if you control for women who have no children, women are still getting screwed on salary.
Admin
Admin
Yes there is a gap, and no there isn't. Lies, damned lies, and statistics.
I've been in IT for nigh on 15 years now, and made everything from a few bucks less than my co-workers to quite a few bucks more than my co-workers. It's all relative. And depending on the job market in your area, you could job hop once or twice and make that difference up, if you really thought you were being lowballed.
There is more to the job than the compensation, though. And there's more to compensation than what you put on the tax form at the end of the year. Not only benefits (insurance and retirement matching, etc.) but also things that aren't as easy to quantify, like job satisfaction and personal growth. Are you getting to take company-paid classes or go to company-paid conferences in your field? Are you putting yourself in a better position to be hired after this job ends? Because jobs do end, for all sorts of reasons.
I remember my first conference, it was a Healthcare Informatics conference in California, when I was working for a hospital in South Carolina. I went by myself, and during one of the breaks a couple of the guys at my table asked me how I was enjoying the conference. I said "It's ok, but I really wish the presenters wouldn't waste our time with the OSI layers at the start of each talk. A - we're professionals in IT and should know this already, B - it's just a model, and C - it's very obviously filler because the speaker can't fill their 10 minute time slot with what they're talking about." I got a few chuckles, and a few blank stares, and one of the guys in that group presented next, and skipped over his OSI layer slides, as did most of the presenters after him.
I still get talked down to by vendors and people who don't know me, because I'm female, and because some of the vendors I work with think they're the end-all be-all of their product. I deal with it and make sure the vendor knows that their behavior isn't appropriate, but the people I work with every day have respect for me (or else I'd have found something else to do).
I don't have PMS, I don't plan on having children, and I don't put up with potential employers like GF. If you look disappointed because I showed up and am female, I don't want to work for you.
A co-worker long ago gave me the best/worst compliment and most complete description of why I still work in this industry. He was whining that he couldn't meet girls, and I pointed out that I was female. He said, "You're not a girl, you're a sysadmin."
Computers don't care what my gender is. There's no different shell prompt showing I'm female. My ls isn't colored pink and purple because I'm a girl. My sql queries don't run slower because a woman typed them. And sudo doesn't ask me "Are you sure you want to be root, little lady?". Online stores don't ask me if I'm sure I want to buy this hardware because it's not compatible with my not being a dude.
I make what I make, which is a fair wage for what I do in this area, and I'm happy with what I'm doing. More importantly, I'm in an environment where I can grow the skills I want to grow, and my work environment is awesome. Not as awesome as google (no slides, no corporate-sponsored lunch room, no nap room), but awesome enough in the corporate world that I'm not looking to go somewhere else.
Admin
Admin
Your wasting your time, Alex...no female comes here after the abuse they've endured in the forums over the years.
Admin
Seriously? They'll FIRE you for asking about it? I mean, our HR drones very strongly advise against it, and doing so isn't exactly common though it does happen. But to fire someone for that is quite possibly among the most absurd practices I've ever heard of. Glad I haven't worked for any of those companies. To me that sounds like 'we don't want you talking about the fact that we're not paying you enough.'
Admin
Your most complete description of why you work in IT is that you sometimes work with man-children?
I see your point, but this isn't always because you're female. Most people in IT don't know what they are doing very well. The industry is plagued with incompetent people, especially software development.
That's reasonable. But if I look disappointed causeless you don't know what you're talking about, it's not "because you're a girl". It's because you don't know. Not saying this is the case, just pointing out that marginalized groups tend to over-experience the marginalization. As things get better, more people seem to complain about them. Then there's the point where we could show evidence that demonstrates women are now making (this is hypothetical) 15% more than men, but any instance of "you really suck at [x]" becomes an attack against a woman. There isn't a clearly defined protocol for "okay, we have equality, so now we're allowed to criticize you for realsies."
Admin
Addendum (2012-10-02 11:31): ignore the 78 years part. And the numbers was reference to the salary numbers.
Admin
And some employment contracts will outright forbid disclosing your level of remuneration to your colleagues - I know mine does.
Personally though, I think the question to ask in these situations is not "is my salary the same as that of the guy sitting next to me" but "is my salary fair for my skill-levels in the current marketplace" - and if not, start looking for another position. regardless of your gender. Recognising male/female pay-gaps are important when looking at the industry as a whole, but at the level of an individual office I'm not sure it's the best way of looking at a situation.
Admin
Anarchy has room for neither jail nor martyr.
Admin
These blanket statements REALLLLY annoy me. Yes, some unions are bad. On the other hand, my mother led the unionizing drive for the hospital where she works as a nurse when I was a child. Within a year, suddenly:
She was no longer coming home with constant back aches. Prior to unionizing, if the equipment to move overweight/obese patients between beds wasn't available, the nurses were told 'just do it or you're fired'. The results of a 120lb woman trying to move a 300lb patient on her own aren't great.
Great reduction in verbal abuse and sexual harassment. Prior to unionizing, if a nurse complained about any of this, she risked losing her job. After unionizing, when doctors start screaming obscenities at a nurse or starts sexually harassing one they pull out their cell phone cameras and say 'speak up, I want to make sure I get all this'.
The hospital now actually has enough nurses on staff at all times to handle the workload
Suddenly we could afford braces for my brother
Suddenly we could afford glasses and contacts for myself and my brother
My dad was able to get some long overdue dental care and surgery
My parents were able to pay full tuition for me and my brother for four years of college, along with a masters degree for my mother
My parents no longer have a dime of debt
Oh, and my mom enjoys her job a hell of a lot more now. Better pay, better conditions, more security. Of course, unionizing wasn't easy. I was on the picket line with her when I was about five years old. I remember my mother being afraid to let my brother or I out of the house because the hospital had hired a private detective to watch our house for days. The reason she was the one leading the effort, by the way, was because she was part time (less to lose) and my father is an attorney (less likely the hospital would try anything illegal)...she was lucky to still have her job after that started.
Admin
Admin
Admin
Admin
If they thought I was worth that much, why weren't they paying me that all along? (maybe there was a legitimate reason (e.g.: your salary stagnated once you got here through no fault of your own), or maybe there wasn't)
Is that what they think I'm worth, or are they just matching the offer to keep me here until they find a replacement, so they can let me go (for wanting to leave in the first place)? - it's always better to leave on YOUR terms, when you have something else lined up!
More money is always nice (your expenses will always expand to meet your income). However, consider: now that they are willing to pay me more money, is the problem that motivated me to look elsewhere gone or still there? If it wasn't money in the first place, you will acclimate to the additional money very quickly, and whatever was bugging you will again take center stage
Admin
Yes and now I the patient have to pay more for my medical bills. Luckily my company has good health insurance. Which they will past along the costs to their customers (which likely will include you). Now imagine all your patients and their companies now have to charge more to cover your increased costs? In the end you are now paying more to cover my increase in costs to pay for you, and the cycle then repeats. When will this vicious cycle end?
Why must people be so greedy to demand such things as being treated like a human being? What has our world come to.
Admin
If there was a true gap...wouldn't most companies only hire women? Most companies are in business to make money-loyalty to people who have the same genitalia would be irrelevant because they would rather make more money.
And currently, young single women make MORE than young single men in most large cities.
I've been in IT for almost 15 years. I have only once feel I was discriminated against-and even then I don't know why. I was supposed to cover for someone for 4 days while he went on bereavement leave. I was tech-ed (with questions that seemed unrelated to what I was there for) and then told I would not be a good fit.
Was it because I was a woman? Was it because I looked very young? Was it because I didn't match the ethnic make-up of the guy I was going to cover for? Was it because they didn't like my suit? Whatever the reason, my company stopped doing business for them, and the president apologized to me.
I have also found women to be more sexist than men. Many women expect you to take their side for something because you share genitalia-I have not noticed that with men.
Admin
My anarchy could kick your anarchy's ass. Assuming it could be bothered to stop kicking its own citizens' asses long enough to try.
All 3 points excellent advice. Particularly number 3 since salary is only a single facet of employment.
Admin
The real problem in IT is just that women don't enter the industry. It's a sad state of affairs, and is mainly a cultural thing. I honestly believe that if we taught programming to children when they are very young, as a part of compulsory IT education, more women would see it as a path.
I was recently on an internship where one of my fellow interns had never programmed before (but was a maths student). She picked it up extremely quickly, and told me that she'd never considered programming before. This seems to be true for most women unless they are bought up in a 'geeky' environment.
Unfortunately, as it is, it's just seen as something women don't do. I was leafleting at fresher's fair for our University's Computing Society, and whenever I tried to leaflet any girl, they looked at me like I was insane, that suggesting they got involved with computing was crazy. Guys just generally were or were not interested. It's such a strong culture, and I've found it's mainly women that impose it on themselves - most guys I know bemoan the male dominated culture. As someone who went to a male-only secondary school, I can honestly say a mixed environment is far nicer to work in.
Admin
Admin
Funny that you mention that - we're a SQL heavy shop, and one of our basic filters is to ask what the difference between an inner and outer join is. Every female interviewee, including one who had been a housewife for years, nailed the SQL questions; over half the guys flub that badly. We ended up hiring one of the female developers (and yes, the salary she was offered is comparable to that of the male developers).
Admin
CAPTCHA: pecus - the guys hosting those designer shows really like the pecus of another man.
Admin
And I'm thinking most of the residents of New Jersey are alcoholics with no life...wait, maybe that's one thing cable TV got right.
Admin
I remember going in to ask for a pay raise and being able to say "employee ABC is getting $X more than me, and I believe that I contribute at least as much to the company as he does". The manager looked aghast and actually said "you guys talk to each other about salary ?". I got a decent pay raise as a result. You have to be ready, of course, to accept a response that justifies why, in their eyes, the discrepancy is justified. In that case you either live with it or start job-hunting.
It is just a question of improving your negotiating position.
Having said that, companies have managed to turn it into a taboo subject, and so it's difficult to bring it up. I did hear of a company where a group of employees booked a conference room for a day and agreed that during that during the morning everyone would go in and write their salary on the whiteboard, and in the afternoon everyone could go and read it before it was erased. Apparently that was extremely educational to everyone. There are obviously ways to do something similar electronically.
Even though I'm personally happy with what I'm being paid, I don't think I'd take a job where talking salary to my colleagues was prohibited. That sounds to me like an admission of guilt by the employer.
Admin
My workplace is unionized. Our facility is raking it in for the owners (75 workers; c. $30,000,000 profit per annum.) We earn 50-100% more than workers at similar, non-unionized workplaces in the same area.
There are people who have worked there since the early seventies. When I started five years ago there was one guy who had been there since 1969.
Our dues are two hours of pay per month. I get six weeks of paid holidays per year. We have an excellent defined benefits pension, to which the company is the sole contributor (to the tune of 12% of our earnings, over and above.) And 90% dental and orthodontal. The company also pays our BC Medicare premiums.
We are quite happy with this arrangement and haven't had a strike since the mid-seventies. Turnover is close to zero.
As opposed to your statement, in this case the ones who consistently profit from the existence of unions are the workers and the owners.
And yes, the leaders of our union profit from it as well. They're all regular workers who are selected by the membership and who volunteer as board members for two year terms while still working their regular jobs.
/anecdote
Unions are just the workers, united in their goal for a better deal. Labour strife and non-profitability for the owners has nothing in it for anyone.
/political statement
Admin
My workplace is unionized. Our facility is raking it in for the owners (75 workers; c. $30,000,000 profit per annum.) We earn 50-100% more than workers at similar, non-unionized workplaces in the same area.
There are people who have worked there since the early seventies. When I started five years ago there was one guy who had been there since 1969.
Our dues are two hours of pay per month. I get six weeks of paid holidays per year. We have an excellent defined benefits pension, to which the company is the sole contributor (to the tune of 12% of our earnings, over and above.) And 90% dental and orthodontal. The company also pays our BC Medicare premiums.
We are quite happy with this arrangement and haven't had a strike since the mid-seventies. Turnover is close to zero.
As opposed to your statement, in this case the ones who consistently profit from the existence of unions are the workers and the owners.
And yes, the leaders of our union profit from it as well. They're all regular workers who are selected by the membership and who volunteer as board members for two year terms while still working their regular jobs.
/anecdote
Unions are just the workers, united in their goal for a better deal. Labour strife and non-profitability for the owners has nothing in it for anyone.
/political statement
Admin
If they fire you for discussing salaries, get a lawyer because you're going to get a lot of money even after the lawyer does the walletectomy.
If your salary is lame, a signtificant amount has to do with you doing a bad job negotiating.
Are you maxing out your 401k and IRA? You won't be making this kind of money for the rest of your life, nor will you always be working at a place that offers a 401k. Between my 401k, IRA, catch-up contributions and the post-tax-contributions my 401k plan offers, I'm socking away about $35k this year for retirement. It is a nice amount (my brother is torqued off because it is more than his gross income), but I won't have this career forever, nor will I always be working in places where 401k plans are offered to lowly contractors.As for the "everything we invested in him/her", I have no clue what that means. I've been paying for my own continuing education out of my own pocket and am working towards another bachelors for an exit plan out of IT. The age discrimination is fierce and all the older programmers I know personally mention hitting brick walls getting hired after about 54-55 years old.
Admin
Equally educated and experienced does not mean equally productive. One can earn more than someone with the same or better education, the same experience, doing the same exact job as them - even in the same team - if one is more productive.
Education and experience get you the job, but if you aren't productive, don't expect to get the same as productive members of your team.
Admin
More relatedly to the original statement, it would no longer surprise me like it used to if there were some slight residual - presumably mostly-unconscious - sexism on the part of those responsible for hiring and salary decisions... but my girlfriend (who also works in IT) did also bring up an interesting hypothesis on this subject a couple weeks ago, that in this field, a person's salary depends a lot on how much -they- think they're worth, and more so, how forward they feel like they can be in telling their boss, or their boss's boss, that they deserve more. She feels the average guy is more likely to feel confident in asking for more and bigger raises than the average girl, which might well be true. I just don't have that confidence, even if I do think I'm pretty good at my job... she does, and makes a fair bit more than me.
On the other hand, she also works crazy overtime for no additional pay, and I go home after 40 hours a week every week. I don't think I'd trade with her. :p