Having been a male engineer for a couple of years now, it is very disquieting to learn that there is any population of people anywhere who are getting ROFLstomped by male engineers in negotiating savvy. A potted plant could handle a salary negotiation better than many people (myself included at one point) -- at least the potted plant wouldn't divulge a salary history when asked.
As a woman engineer, who's a really bad negotiator, I'm not surprised. I know "how" to be better, but I do wilt and get scared when I've gotten an offer - I think only once or twice I've ever made any sort of counter.
I don't know why I don't act in my own best interest though. It wouldn't surprise me if there was some societal element to it, but it really seems strange/weak/victim-ish to blame something external for what really does feel like a personal shortcoming - after all my own sister doesn't seem to have the same sort of "conditioning".
Are there tips out there to help getting over the fear of negotiating? Not really thinking about looking for something else at the moment, but there always seems to be a "next job" out there somewhere.
I'm not sure what maleness has to do with this. The issue is there is a class of people who are, relatively speaking, much better at something than other classes.
I'm tempted to say that the author is not suggesting that there is a proactive push on his company's part to take advantage of this disparity. You could argue that they are by lowballing everyone, but some fraction of the people end up taking the job so it must not be a totally bad deal for those who take the job and fail to push the lowball offer higher
My question is, what do you feel is to be done about situations like this? In particular, at what level should society act to 'right' the situation?
Edit : by disparity, I mean the gender disparity : There is not a proactive effort to get women to accept lower salaries.
Crap, i didn't know you could choose _not_ to divulge salary history! I'm horrible at salary negotiations, any links/advice for getting a better salary deal?
In the UK the pay difference between males & females under the age of 40 in Tech roles is nominal. There is a difference but it's not even remotely close to the disparity you would find 20 years ago.
That being said, over the past twelve months, female candidates consisted of approximately 5% of the people I represented. There are very few women in the industry and I've rarely come across any who are afraid to argue their worth. On the contrary in fact. Occasionally I have come across one or two women who were demanding a salary that was simply far beyond their worth and I imparted the same advice to them as I would to a male candidate and both women were incredibly offended by my feedback and refused to budge whereas almost every single male that I challenged actually listened to my advice and adjusted their rate to suit.
The idea of negotiating salary offers still appears to be a relatively unknown phenomenon here in the UK. You'd be surprised how few candidates stand their ground and push for more than 5% of the original offer regardless of gender.
Interviewing recently (in the UK) I find the same to be true. Although we only had 1 woman in the interviews, she was double the asking price of the other candidates we were getting in that are male.
I can't say for certain why this is, maybe it was the role we were hiring for? The male candidates were more or less happy to move to us for the same price they are currently being paid where the woman actually asked for double what we were willing to pay for much less experience than the males.
The concept of salary negotiation is alien to me. Given how difficult it is to find developer jobs in my part of the UK and given that employers are expecting to pay lower and lower amounts these days, I would consider a salary negotiation too risky. There's just too many people applying for too few positions.
That's why I like recruitment agents, when you apply for a job, you already know the salary (or at least the salary range). Obviously, there's disadvantages, like having no idea who you are applying for but that can be fixed with a bit of research.
I've hired a lot of people recently, so maybe my opinion here will be interesting.
With one notable exception, all the women flagged "negotiate me down" signals harder and more often than the men. I asked, "So your salary ask is $X monthly?" And instantly returned, "Yeah, but we can talk about it..."
That just screams "negotiate me down."
I don't do it, because I want to pay my people top of market, have them think of themselves as the best, and build a culture of inspired performance. I actually negotiated that woman's pay up 25% of her ask (which was too low), but even with cultural considerations in mind in a high-margin high-dollar industry, it was still painful for me not to negotiate down.
To be very blunt and crass about it, hopefully for helpful illustrative purposes, it's like the guy who has a, "Please don't kick me" sign on his ass. You can restrain yourself not to, but it's painful.
If you're going to be their manager, it's in your interest to have their salary outcome have parity with other people doing similar work. Later on, if the employee gets unhappy with their comparative situation, it's much harder to fix a disparity with annual raises than it would have been to do the fair thing to begin with.
If their pay is too low, you have made yourself a persistent problem that will be hard to fix.
'When Linda Babcock asked why so many male graduate students were teaching their own courses and most female students were assigned as assistants, her dean said: "More men ask. The women just don't ask."'
Incidentally, for a while, the authors would give a free copy of this book to women who would ask for one.
A professor of mine one asked the class: "How would you like to live your life 10% better?" Everyone was like "yeah, of course"
The professor's friend would always ask for discounts, everywhere he went. He would normally get a discount of about 10%. This was simply because he asked. His theory was that if he could get a discount, why not ask? It doesn't hurt anyone and you just have to get past the social stigma of "haggling."
So the professor's challenge for us until next class was to ask for a discount, or more simply "is that your best price?"
Some of the results:
A friend of mine got a free appetizer at a restaurant he frequents
At least 3 people found out that Taco Bell has a student discount program
One person used this in his salary negotiation (literally "is that your best offer?") and instantly got a 5K bump. He was going to take the job anyway, but got $5k more without any hassle.
I wonder why women do not ask more. Especially with something like dating. It happens but far less regularly than the other way around. I wonder if that leap of faith contributes to men being more comfortable to negotiate/ask for higher income.
Sounds like one of the upsides of working at a place where I work now, where there is a salary scale.
Places that play these kinds of games with salary really annoy me. For my first post-college job, as a DBA, I was offered $29,000/year (this was in 2000). I knew they had just lost key people and had a bad reputation for compensation, so I laughed and walked out of the room.
In the parking lot, we agreed to $65k + stock. Most of my colleagues didn't bother, and got stuck with lousy pay for a couple of years.
If this practice is generally true, it suggests an obvious gender arbitrage strategy:
1. Hire women instead of men.
2. ???
3. Profit.
Unlike the usual case, here ??? actually has a value:
??? = Save massively on labor costs vs. your competitors.
As other companies discover the same strategy, demand increases for a fixed supply, thereby bidding up the equilibrium wage and hence dramatically improving the negotiating position of women. (Nothing improves the results of your negotiation faster than a better negotiating position.) In a competitive market for labor, the equilibrium is for everyone to be paid based on their productivity and their risk profile. Whether the latter factor favors women or men isn't a priori obvious; for example, men are more likely to die in a fight or a car accident, whereas women are more likely to take time off to have kids (and so on).
Unfortunately, market interventions typically have the opposite of their intended effect. Rules that punish companies for paying women less than men increase the risk of hiring women; rules that punish companies for not hiring enough women increase the risk of interviewing women; rules that punish not interviewing enough women increase the risk of recruiting women. All of these factors, ceteris paribus, lower the wages of women. (Those who depend on the gender rage industry, on the other hand, make off like bandits.)
I've coached several of my female friends in how to ask for a raise. Often they'll complain that they're not making enough but are scared to ask for more. I'll tell them "your boss might say no, but they're not going to fire you". Of course, if your boss does say "no", it's a good opportunity to ask what progress you need to make to get the raise you want. You then have a concrete roadmap for getting where you want to be. For the guys on here, encourage the women in your life to speak up. Often they just need someone to tell them it's okay and that they're worth it.
I don't like this advice personally. If you want more money you need to change jobs. Asking what progress you need to make to get the raise you want is normally just going to get you strung along doing extra work for nothing.
Most of my friends I've given this advice to are not engineers and aren't in a highly competitive position where they can easily "just change jobs". For engineers, changing jobs often works to increase your salary, but there's something to being said for staying at one company long enough to build something great. There's more to life than just money.
"They're not going to fire you" isn't always true. I have known one person who has been fired for asking for a raise. The exec involved only needed to do this once, because it was talked about among employees for years and probably dissuaded a hundred others from asking for raises.
1. Testosterone promotes risk taking (http://goo.gl/s2gf4)
2. Men have more testosterone.
3. Salary negotiation is a risk game.
Now for the important part: this doesn't mean it's right. That would be the naturalistic fallacy, i.e. that because something is natural it must be o.k.
So, yes, absolutely combat this. Learn techniques to overcome the disparity. But do not, in a forum full of smart people, wonder WHY this is happening. The answer is obvious to anyone who doesn't mind unpleasant truth.
Strictly on economic terms, how much of a discount would you get on a developer if he/she is likely to take 1-2 year off at some point? During that time, you have to hire another person, train them and then tell them to leave.
You're being downvoted, but this is quite honestly something I've witnessed C-levels worrying about -- "does she seem like she might get pregnant immediately?".
I have to disagree with the concern.
There's a cost to hiring humans. People get sick, have babies, attend weddings and funerals and take vacations. Men take paternity leave, women take maternity leave. These are the costs of hiring humans.
In my mind, our company exists to turn a profit, but it also exists to employ human beings. Treating them like human beings is money well spent, not money wasted.
Which is an interesting question, but it is irrelevant in terms of the linked post, which specifically points out that the person in question is hiring women at lower salaries because they don't ask and he's following policy, not because he's adverse to giving them higher salaries if they do ask (and he has the flexibility to at least narrow the gap).
In the US, a year of family leave is, to say the least, unlikely, and legally required nowhere. But even if it were, most companies that last long enough to have somebody come back from a 1+ year leave most likely are, or have become, large enough that there's no reason to lay off the "replacement".
Developers in particular are rarely terminated individually for economic reasons. There's always something for them to do, some way to extract value from them. Companies don't usually start dropping good people until they're dropping a bunch of them at once, and usually deadweight layoffs have preceded.
I think this goes beyond just salary negotiations.
My wife typically comes to me when she has "business politics questions" (despite that she's been working longer and more successfully than me.)
Most of things we talk about involve how to get something (usually work or money) from a client without seeming like they're bothering them.
I'm definitely in the "just matter-of-factly send them an email." She's more in the "I don't want them to get irritated by me contacting them" camp.
This isn't universal though. I've had two experiences where it's been reversed. One male I recently hired accepted a position when he knew money would be a problem and didn't bring it up even though it's a bit of a hardship for him right now. A female I'm in discussions to hire has told me flat out what her salary requirements are. I actually appreciate this kind of discussion.
nah, that's just consensus building - another trait of the female of the species. I've seen it plenty of times before: it takes me 10 minutes to make a decision, and I call no one. It takes my wife two days, as she goes through her address book, calling friends and talking it out with them.
When I was offered my current job, I replied that I thought the pay was on the low side, and asked if they could improve their offer. Two hours later, I received an email with a 15% improvement!
I'm really not very good at negotiation, but getting a 15% raise just by asking? I'll be doing that again :)
I discovered this a few years ago, about a large number of women and some men.
My wife got a job and the employer glossed over salary negotiations with an "assumed sale" of minimum wage! I asked why she accepted that, and she said "There wasn't an opportunity to negotiate salary. They just gave me the 'standard rate'." She's not a meek woman. No one had ever told her that you could ask for more. With my help she got a 2x raise just by assertively asking for it.
She's bragged to her parents about it and I learn that her mother had never negotiated a salary or raise in her entire life. So I ask all my female friends: same thing, my mom: same thing, then my ardently feminist sister: same thing! It was a twilight zone moment for me.
The reasons why varied, but they could be generalized as an expectation of fairness combined with a small amount of irrational fear.
An employer is expecting that an employee is loyal,
but nevertheless he's trying to noble the potential
employee from the beginning.
But you would be dumb doing it the other way, right?
Sorry, but this kind of smartness harms the whole
society.
So all the humble and self-doubting people are getting
less than the loud and playing ones. Sure, the loud
ones are the better, more loyal employees, right?
But you have to learn to be louder! No I don't have to
and I don't want, because I like it the way I am.
It has nothing to do with loudness. It has everything to do with having a spine and it being a business. It really is not that hard to negotiate and I am an introvert. Yet a lot of women I know do not even try.
A long time ago, I hired a PhD from a highly prestigious Brazilian university. She passed the interview with flying colors, way beyond my expectations, and I was a bit ashamed to tell her the maximum budget I had - it was much less than someone with her experience was worth. She seemed more than happy to take my offer (which was as far as I could possibly go). Later I learned I was paying her more than 4 times what she earned as a researcher at the university. I don't know whether her male colleagues earned much more, but I was shocked by how little she made as a scientist.
To this day I am bittersweet about this. I am embarrassed I never paid her what she deserved - and I should have, for she is an outstanding professional - but I am also happy I helped her transition from an dead-end job at an academic institution to a fast-paced tech company and that this transition had a very positive impact on her career (last time I heard, she had a team of kick-ass programmers solving some devilishly hard computer-vision-related problem). I left a couple months after hiring her, but it's still a great story.
Well... There are better stories around here, sure, but this is still a good one.
I think a large part of the problem is that there is no way to figure out how much each person is actually worth.
Sure we have sites like indeed and salary.com that can give you estimates for the position and you also have glass door that gives you some salaries in your area...but they aren't solid numbers.software developer" makes, is pointless since there are so many alternatives, a VB developer is going to be making less than a Python developer.
Same goes for glassdoor...sure the numbers help, but you don't know if the number you are looking at is current...or if it was added 10 years ago when the site launched.
So here is a startup idea...create a site like salary.com but one designed solely for programmers/developers. Then create an interface, where someone can build out a job description/location to get a good feel of what a fair salary would be for that specific position.
>no way to figure out how much each person is actually worth //
You're not buying a person though. In employer terms you're usually buying the completion of a particularly series of actions. These actions can be analysed and given a money value.
I think a large part of the problem is that there is no way to figure out how much each person is actually worth.
The Labour Theory of Value is not correct. 'Worth' is not based on how much you put in, but also on what the company is doing, and what their other options are. etc.
I wonder what would happen if you tried to make the negotion process as transparent as possible; something along the lines of:
"Look, I've read all of the negotiation strategy books, and clearly you're an expert in your field, so let's agree on the value that I bring to your company and find the right compensation package."
Yes, but consider, they may very well alter their effort-level to suit the salary you pay them, thereby saving energy for things that matter more to them.
Another factor could be that earlier interviews weed out the forceful negotiators among the women, because that personality trait makes women less likable. On the other hand, a lack of aggressiveness makes men appear weak.
[+] [-] patio11|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bethling|14 years ago|reply
I don't know why I don't act in my own best interest though. It wouldn't surprise me if there was some societal element to it, but it really seems strange/weak/victim-ish to blame something external for what really does feel like a personal shortcoming - after all my own sister doesn't seem to have the same sort of "conditioning".
Are there tips out there to help getting over the fear of negotiating? Not really thinking about looking for something else at the moment, but there always seems to be a "next job" out there somewhere.
[+] [-] secretasiandan|14 years ago|reply
I'm tempted to say that the author is not suggesting that there is a proactive push on his company's part to take advantage of this disparity. You could argue that they are by lowballing everyone, but some fraction of the people end up taking the job so it must not be a totally bad deal for those who take the job and fail to push the lowball offer higher
My question is, what do you feel is to be done about situations like this? In particular, at what level should society act to 'right' the situation?
Edit : by disparity, I mean the gender disparity : There is not a proactive effort to get women to accept lower salaries.
[+] [-] c4urself|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bh42222|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Peroni|14 years ago|reply
That being said, over the past twelve months, female candidates consisted of approximately 5% of the people I represented. There are very few women in the industry and I've rarely come across any who are afraid to argue their worth. On the contrary in fact. Occasionally I have come across one or two women who were demanding a salary that was simply far beyond their worth and I imparted the same advice to them as I would to a male candidate and both women were incredibly offended by my feedback and refused to budge whereas almost every single male that I challenged actually listened to my advice and adjusted their rate to suit.
The idea of negotiating salary offers still appears to be a relatively unknown phenomenon here in the UK. You'd be surprised how few candidates stand their ground and push for more than 5% of the original offer regardless of gender.
[+] [-] chrislomax|14 years ago|reply
I can't say for certain why this is, maybe it was the role we were hiring for? The male candidates were more or less happy to move to us for the same price they are currently being paid where the woman actually asked for double what we were willing to pay for much less experience than the males.
[+] [-] ticks|14 years ago|reply
That's why I like recruitment agents, when you apply for a job, you already know the salary (or at least the salary range). Obviously, there's disadvantages, like having no idea who you are applying for but that can be fixed with a bit of research.
[+] [-] lionhearted|14 years ago|reply
With one notable exception, all the women flagged "negotiate me down" signals harder and more often than the men. I asked, "So your salary ask is $X monthly?" And instantly returned, "Yeah, but we can talk about it..."
That just screams "negotiate me down."
I don't do it, because I want to pay my people top of market, have them think of themselves as the best, and build a culture of inspired performance. I actually negotiated that woman's pay up 25% of her ask (which was too low), but even with cultural considerations in mind in a high-margin high-dollar industry, it was still painful for me not to negotiate down.
To be very blunt and crass about it, hopefully for helpful illustrative purposes, it's like the guy who has a, "Please don't kick me" sign on his ass. You can restrain yourself not to, but it's painful.
[+] [-] mturmon|14 years ago|reply
If you're going to be their manager, it's in your interest to have their salary outcome have parity with other people doing similar work. Later on, if the employee gets unhappy with their comparative situation, it's much harder to fix a disparity with annual raises than it would have been to do the fair thing to begin with.
If their pay is too low, you have made yourself a persistent problem that will be hard to fix.
[+] [-] bravura|14 years ago|reply
http://www.womendontask.com/
'When Linda Babcock asked why so many male graduate students were teaching their own courses and most female students were assigned as assistants, her dean said: "More men ask. The women just don't ask."'
Incidentally, for a while, the authors would give a free copy of this book to women who would ask for one.
[+] [-] caw|14 years ago|reply
The professor's friend would always ask for discounts, everywhere he went. He would normally get a discount of about 10%. This was simply because he asked. His theory was that if he could get a discount, why not ask? It doesn't hurt anyone and you just have to get past the social stigma of "haggling."
So the professor's challenge for us until next class was to ask for a discount, or more simply "is that your best price?"
Some of the results:
A friend of mine got a free appetizer at a restaurant he frequents
At least 3 people found out that Taco Bell has a student discount program
One person used this in his salary negotiation (literally "is that your best offer?") and instantly got a 5K bump. He was going to take the job anyway, but got $5k more without any hassle.
[+] [-] thomasgerbe|14 years ago|reply
I wonder why women do not ask more. Especially with something like dating. It happens but far less regularly than the other way around. I wonder if that leap of faith contributes to men being more comfortable to negotiate/ask for higher income.
[+] [-] Duff|14 years ago|reply
Places that play these kinds of games with salary really annoy me. For my first post-college job, as a DBA, I was offered $29,000/year (this was in 2000). I knew they had just lost key people and had a bad reputation for compensation, so I laughed and walked out of the room.
In the parking lot, we agreed to $65k + stock. Most of my colleagues didn't bother, and got stuck with lousy pay for a couple of years.
[+] [-] polshaw|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] afterburner|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mhartl|14 years ago|reply
Unfortunately, market interventions typically have the opposite of their intended effect. Rules that punish companies for paying women less than men increase the risk of hiring women; rules that punish companies for not hiring enough women increase the risk of interviewing women; rules that punish not interviewing enough women increase the risk of recruiting women. All of these factors, ceteris paribus, lower the wages of women. (Those who depend on the gender rage industry, on the other hand, make off like bandits.)
[+] [-] joshfraser|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danssig|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] afterburner|14 years ago|reply
... whose criteria for success can be easily gamed by the evaluator in order to string you along. Well, that's the pessimistic view at least.
[+] [-] joshfraser|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chrismealy|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] finnw|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danielrm26|14 years ago|reply
1. Testosterone promotes risk taking (http://goo.gl/s2gf4) 2. Men have more testosterone. 3. Salary negotiation is a risk game.
Now for the important part: this doesn't mean it's right. That would be the naturalistic fallacy, i.e. that because something is natural it must be o.k.
So, yes, absolutely combat this. Learn techniques to overcome the disparity. But do not, in a forum full of smart people, wonder WHY this is happening. The answer is obvious to anyone who doesn't mind unpleasant truth.
[+] [-] sethg|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iwwr|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nupark2|14 years ago|reply
I have to disagree with the concern.
There's a cost to hiring humans. People get sick, have babies, attend weddings and funerals and take vacations. Men take paternity leave, women take maternity leave. These are the costs of hiring humans.
In my mind, our company exists to turn a profit, but it also exists to employ human beings. Treating them like human beings is money well spent, not money wasted.
[+] [-] vidarh|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nknight|14 years ago|reply
Developers in particular are rarely terminated individually for economic reasons. There's always something for them to do, some way to extract value from them. Companies don't usually start dropping good people until they're dropping a bunch of them at once, and usually deadweight layoffs have preceded.
[+] [-] officemonkey|14 years ago|reply
My wife typically comes to me when she has "business politics questions" (despite that she's been working longer and more successfully than me.)
Most of things we talk about involve how to get something (usually work or money) from a client without seeming like they're bothering them.
I'm definitely in the "just matter-of-factly send them an email." She's more in the "I don't want them to get irritated by me contacting them" camp.
This isn't universal though. I've had two experiences where it's been reversed. One male I recently hired accepted a position when he knew money would be a problem and didn't bring it up even though it's a bit of a hardship for him right now. A female I'm in discussions to hire has told me flat out what her salary requirements are. I actually appreciate this kind of discussion.
[+] [-] AutoCorrect|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mootothemax|14 years ago|reply
I'm really not very good at negotiation, but getting a 15% raise just by asking? I'll be doing that again :)
[+] [-] johngalt|14 years ago|reply
My wife got a job and the employer glossed over salary negotiations with an "assumed sale" of minimum wage! I asked why she accepted that, and she said "There wasn't an opportunity to negotiate salary. They just gave me the 'standard rate'." She's not a meek woman. No one had ever told her that you could ask for more. With my help she got a 2x raise just by assertively asking for it.
She's bragged to her parents about it and I learn that her mother had never negotiated a salary or raise in her entire life. So I ask all my female friends: same thing, my mom: same thing, then my ardently feminist sister: same thing! It was a twilight zone moment for me.
The reasons why varied, but they could be generalized as an expectation of fairness combined with a small amount of irrational fear.
[+] [-] dan00|14 years ago|reply
An employer is expecting that an employee is loyal, but nevertheless he's trying to noble the potential employee from the beginning.
But you would be dumb doing it the other way, right? Sorry, but this kind of smartness harms the whole society.
So all the humble and self-doubting people are getting less than the loud and playing ones. Sure, the loud ones are the better, more loyal employees, right?
But you have to learn to be louder! No I don't have to and I don't want, because I like it the way I am.
[+] [-] thomasgerbe|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rbanffy|14 years ago|reply
To this day I am bittersweet about this. I am embarrassed I never paid her what she deserved - and I should have, for she is an outstanding professional - but I am also happy I helped her transition from an dead-end job at an academic institution to a fast-paced tech company and that this transition had a very positive impact on her career (last time I heard, she had a team of kick-ass programmers solving some devilishly hard computer-vision-related problem). I left a couple months after hiring her, but it's still a great story.
Well... There are better stories around here, sure, but this is still a good one.
[+] [-] MarkMc|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stfu|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vaksel|14 years ago|reply
Sure we have sites like indeed and salary.com that can give you estimates for the position and you also have glass door that gives you some salaries in your area...but they aren't solid numbers.software developer" makes, is pointless since there are so many alternatives, a VB developer is going to be making less than a Python developer.
Same goes for glassdoor...sure the numbers help, but you don't know if the number you are looking at is current...or if it was added 10 years ago when the site launched.
So here is a startup idea...create a site like salary.com but one designed solely for programmers/developers. Then create an interface, where someone can build out a job description/location to get a good feel of what a fair salary would be for that specific position.
[+] [-] pbhjpbhj|14 years ago|reply
You're not buying a person though. In employer terms you're usually buying the completion of a particularly series of actions. These actions can be analysed and given a money value.
[+] [-] rmc|14 years ago|reply
The Labour Theory of Value is not correct. 'Worth' is not based on how much you put in, but also on what the company is doing, and what their other options are. etc.
Things are worth what people will pay for them.
[+] [-] pedoh|14 years ago|reply
"Look, I've read all of the negotiation strategy books, and clearly you're an expert in your field, so let's agree on the value that I bring to your company and find the right compensation package."
[+] [-] budley|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thetrumanshow|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] highfreq|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marquis|14 years ago|reply