[dnlbyl]

The article really tries to make this about her gender when on the face of it it's about her role. "she had been paid a salary of $60,000, half what her male colleagues made" doesn't sound as bad when stated as "the designer had been paid a salary of $60,000, half what her engineering colleagues made".

I'm sure I'd feel pretty bad too if I was in her place. I hope she can get through it and learn and grow from the experience.

[mrxd]

The average salary for a UX designer in Mountain View is 7% less than an engineer.

http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=User+experience+designer&l1=...

[johnny99]

Depends tremendously on experience level, whether or not the designer can implement in code (ie, works in HTML/CSS rather than Photoshop), and other important factors.

Having recently hired both designers and engineers, I can say with confidence that the pay differential is a hell of a lot more than 7%. Double is absolutely plausible.

[mh_yam]

Could be any number of reasons for this. Salary is surprisingly rigid over time for many because people simply don't like negotiating. Women especially negotiate less than men. Maybe she had a $40k salary at her previous job and $60k looked like an amazing deal when in reality is is way below market. Who knows...

[steveklabnik]

There is a pretty high correlation between gender and roles at technology companies...

"You see, it's not that women get paid less than men... it's that women are designers, and men are programmers, and programmers make more than designers!"

It does sound as bad. The lack of appreciation for 'non-technical' employees labor is pretty sad. I am highly technical, and the designers on my team are the most valuable ones in my eyes... they can do something I can't.

All roles help build the company.

[theorique]

Those statistics and environment aren't something that companies individually create, though. They are just responding to supply and demand for those different roles. And while a web/graphic designer may indeed be valuable to a team, (1) there are probably a lot fewer of them than coders, and (2) their average compensation is probably lower than the average compensation of coders.

The issue really needs to be addressed earlier - at the high school, and college level, when girls start to drop out of technical course work.

[patmcc]

>>>All roles help build the company.

This is true, but rightly or wrongly roles are compensated very differently. A successful tech company probably needs programmers, designers, testers, customer support, managers, ops, etc. It would be an odd company (though not necessarily a bad one) that paid all those employees the same. Remember that the wage paid to a person is somewhere between 'what I must pay to hire a decent candidate' and 'how much value they actually add', and usually skews towards the former.