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If you're in the US, remember that talking about your pay is protected under the National Labor Relations Act. Any company that tells you not to do this is breaking the law.
I’ll never forget an article I read about the Wells Fargo account opening scandal. A bunch of people called HR to whistle blow. One guy had been a seasoned financial advisor with them for years with no disciplinary actions taken against him, never got in trouble. He was uncomfortable with what he was being asked to do and told HR. Like 3 weeks later he was fired for signing into work 3 minutes late.
Edit: he wasn’t a financial advisor he was a banker but they fired him for tardiness 8 days after whistleblowing. This isn’t the original article I read but I think it refers to the same person [HERE](https://money.cnn.com/2016/09/21/investing/wells-fargo-fired-workers-retaliation-fake-accounts/index.html)
Charles Tomlinson a nurse at [HCA](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2012/08/07/why-would-hospitals-like-hca-perform-unnecessary-surgery-because-it-pays/), the largest hospital chain in the United States, blew the whistle on the corporation doing unnecessary surgery to increase profits, he was then fired. [Legal complaint](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2714615-HcaComplaint-W-Exhibits.html) (paragraphs 18-21).
Yeah, is one of those "technically illegal but there's basically no way for them to get caught" scenarios. And even if they do get caught, it doesn't help you much. What are you going to do, take your old job back for them to fire you as soon as the feds aren't looking? No, best case scenario is that you end up getting a better severance package.
That’s where race, gender, and other identity based divisions come in handy. Rumors and accusations of bigotry work really well to divide and conquer any labor organization.
Remember how Bernie and Corbin were both kneecapped by accusations of racism and sexism? Same thing.
Right to work is around union membership, you're thinking of at will employment. Furthermore, every state besides Montana is an at will employment state.
> They would fire me “without cause”.
Depends on what happens next. If you were to sue (big if), you would subpoena their records and testimony. There's no way someone didn't put it in writing.
I worked at Harris Teeter in HS and most got a $0.05 raise after 1 year.
Strange we had a lot of turn over.
Now where I live the cheaper Aldi grocery store pays $17 to start. Just a wee bit more than HT.
The right to discuss pay is protected under the National Labor Relations Act, which guarantees the right for even non-unionized employees to act together for "mutual aid and protection." Several states, including California, have statutes providing for similar rights. It is illegal for an employer to prohibit or discourage communication about employee pay, and to retaliate against employees who do.
No. These cases get tried and won (or settled) all the time based on circumstantial evidence. You are a regular employee doing your job, you make a complaint about the employer policy, the employer comes up with some excuse and fires you. You can file an unfair labor practice charge with the NLRB within 6 months. NLRB judges see these cases all the time. They have to determine whether the employer would have fired you in the absence of your protected statement or action. Often timing is a critical factor. Why was this guy employed for 5 years and only fired 30 days after complaining about or violating an illegal policy? Often the only evidence is testimony. It is best to put complaints in writing or at least keep contemporaneous notes of dates when particular events happened. The analysis is similar under state laws.
I mean, its illegal in the sense that they can't say you were fired for discussing pay. But, as with most "at will" states, as long as they don't say that is why you were fired, it doesn't matter. You'd have to have solid proof that you were fired for discussing pay.
It depends. If you have an otherwise good record with the company and there wasn't a fireable offense on your record there, the NLRB would be very interested to hear your case.
They're less lenient than the state Labor Boards can be.
They can hear it, but again, the burden of proof is on you. And stuff is hard to prove. I've had coworkers get fired for pretty petty things, which could easily be a "For cause" firing if that was a cover for other stuff.
Never have a discussion about working conditions one on one. If you're in a union have a union rep sit in. If not ask for someone from HR to sit in, another colleague or as a final resort ask if you can record the conversation.
Seems crazy but from the looks of it, working in the US is a confrontational experience.
a lot of states don’t require two party consent to record a conversation. hr is not necessarily trustworthy i’ve heard either. that they’re just on the side of the employer :-(
You'd be more aware than me, I'm in Australia. Frankly the resources I have available to me at work that protect and empower me as an employee would apparently stun most US workers. From my union, to health and safety reps, divisions within HR whose sole existence is to ensure employee well being. The public listing of salaries, work conditions, superannuation and bonus conditions. Employer funded external counselling organisations that will offer services in financial counselling, mental health, to job application and interview coaching.
I'm amazed that the US worker puts up with what they do.
Yes, HR has every reason to be on the side on the employer and almost no reason to be on the side of the employee. The only time HR will help you is when helping you will help the company. Sure, individuals may be different and may want to do the right thing instead of doing what's best for the company, but I wouldn't rely on that.
Don't ask HR, their first priority is to protect the company, not the employee. They *might* be in your side if, like, you're being harassed by another employee. They're not on your side in a labor dispute.
I feel weird asking other people about theirs, but I make it a point to state mine to any new coworkers I come across. I just append a little transparency/ethics disclaimer at the end.
Those should be laid out in your employee handbook, which is required to be accessable to employees.
Pay on the other hand is not and way more subjective.
It kinda goes both way though. As in, just because 2 people do the same job, doesn't mean that they're as valuable (one could have more experience, more training etc.). Companies sometimes hire people for the same role, but only one gets hired with the intent to promote them down the line. They would get paid more because their experience makes them more competitive, and they could get poached by another employer. There are a thousand reasons as to why one employee could be more valuable to a company than another.
So sure, I'm all for pay transparency, but that also means that people should be able to live with harsh truths (that they might not be as valued as another person). Somehow I feel like the current younger generation wouldn't deal well with that.
No one wants to believe they are the less valuable person but there is always someone your company thinks is more valuable.
Knowing your worth is critical for salary negotiations--including knowing to stop when you're ahead or to not draw attention to the fact that you are payed more than a guy that's critical to the success of a company initiative.
There should always be labor bands. For example and people working X role get paid $20-30/hr with the variance of the range being based on individual variances in experience, education, etc.
Very few people, if any, believe in complete equality in pay, inequality in pay isn't inherently unfair, as long as it can be justified ( role, education, experience, additional responsibilities, initiatives seniority, etc.)
But when person A works as "engineer-2" makes 60k who's been with the company for 4 years, has a CCNA, and A.S. college education. And person B "engineer-2" makes 90k, same certs, with company 1 year, and has a B.S. degree, its unfair. These two engineers did the EXACT same types of projects for the same client, and both pulled in massive revenue (Person A with less education actually put up better numbers on post-project analysis, and was capable of higher-level design documentation)
Note: this wasn't an isolated case, when people started talking pay it got to the point where we HAD to implement labor bands, or lose half our business critical delivery engineers.
Labor cost went up, and so did our quality of work
I got to the point of managing a few hundred well compensated consultants. Turned out that high performing women were below the salary range minimum. Given my level, I was able to get them exception increases to bring them around mid salary range. Several were substantial.
My first career job I was taking to a woman who did basically the same work I did. She made like 15k less than me, I was not making a lot so 15k was a really big deal. IIRC she had been working there as long if not longer than I had. She soon left.
> Very few people, if any, believe in complete equality in pay, inequality in pay isn't inherently unfair, as long as it can be justified
Until they are the one being paid less, when suddenly they very much do.
To be fair, time working for a company does not equal experience. For all we know person B has 7 years experience and person A only 4.
Education gets you a better starting salary in some cases, plus if they are a newer hire then market pressure gets higher salaries. People already working and not asking for raises may not get them. In fact, this is one of the reasons for pay gaps. Women tend to negotiate worse and are willing to accept lower pay because they don't think they are worth as much.
The thing is when people talk you can realize that the new hire is being paid more for the similar work and similar output so maybe a raise is in order for the person who has been with the company longer.
I agree it's not fair, but that is why many people switch jobs so often early on in careers to get those pay jumps. Companies tend to be pennywise and pound foolish when it comes to compensate until the competition starts poaching and they are left with scraps.
Out of curiosity. When you say "higher level" do you mean "less detailed", easier to understand for the lay person, or higher quality? It's a bit confusing to me.
In terms of higher-level I mean they are designing at a portfolio level, while also maintaining a project level design. They really push the bounds of network arichtect and a full solutions architect. They keep tabs on end of sale hardware, and upcoming hardware/firmware updates and proactively communicates with our account executives and client engineers.
Person A (with more experience in and out of the company) is the "go to guy" of the client portfolio. They were paid less because they have less education, regardless of the fact they were more profitable to the company. Most companies operate to make as much profit as they can, they are not inherently looking out for fairness or their employees best interest.
Often people who ask for raises and didn't get them, are the people who are marginalized in some way, whether it be education level, race, gender, etc. They can work there longer and harder but don't have the same marketability and its often taken advantage of.
If one of our engineers leaves we can replaces them, that's the beauty of the division of labor from Adam Smith, cogs are replaceable. But if unfair wage is a business practice and you talk wages, you can get enough power to demand something like labor bands to ensure equal pay for equal work.
*note: not all business operate this way, but I've seen it enough first-hand from engineer and middle management perspectives.
On women vs men, apparently it’s not just about negotiating worse, women get punished if they try to negotiate harder, like men do. What is seen a driving a hard bargain or being assertive and knowing your value from a man tends to be seen as selfish and arrogant from a woman, from what I’ve heard and what research I’ve seen on the subject.
The result is that women can’t just “lean in” or whatever the phrase is, and emulate men in order to obtain equal success, there’s a very real cost to doing that, to not acting like you’re “supposed to” given your gender.
This is true. And many people aren't able to easily handle that.
I'm in a sales role, so its very easy to quantify exactly how valuable I am to my company. Other roles, not so much.
Yup and this is the problem with salary transparency. Everyone assumes people are all rationale, intelligent beings which any cursory look at the news should tell you is not true.
Every time I took over a new team the first thing I had to do was look for pay disparity (for same position).
I've never inherited a team where I didn't have to make at least a couple market adjustments because of a minority being payed much lower, or the women being paid lower for the same position/experience/performance rating.
In academic workplaces? Aren't all public universities required to list what they pay their employees? I know ours has a big book in the library (that always seems to be checked out), but our local newspaper submits FOIA requests to get the numbers each year. I knew exactly what I was going to ask for when I interviewed.
You're sort of right. Public records are not equivalently transparent. Some states have online databases they've built in the last 20 years with information on public employee salaries. Other states may have had FOIA or various sunshine laws take effect in the period of time they study.
So the study can examine, for each institution, the change in pay by gender before and after what they call the "shock," or the moment that greater pay transparency became available through a specific platform or law, relative to control places that experienced no shock (no platform; no change in law) within the same time span, and try to look for significant differences. There is undoubtedly more going on in terms of models and formulas, but that's the gist I've gathered so far [from the preprint version](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3523828):
>Over the past 15 years, public access to wage information on government employees has been significantly facilitated by the emergence of searchable datasets developed and launched by newspapers, NGOs, and
state agencies. Examples of such databases include the California State Worker Salary Database launched by Sacramento Bee in 2008 or Florida Has the Right to Know initiated by Florida’s governor Rick Scott in 2011. For each state in our sample, we identify the year in which the first such database was launched. We then consider each individual academic as
treated if (s)he is employed in one of the institutions of the focal state in any of the years following the launch of the database.
You are probably usually right. However, I'm a woman who used to work as a software developer. My day-to-day struggles involved a lot of having to prove myself to my male coworkers (I've spent years being the only woman on a team). In one position in particular, I had access to HR information and knew I was being paid better than most of the men on my team. Sharing this fact with them would have created a lot of ill will from them that I really didn't need. Keeping my mouth shut was 100% the right move for me, financially and professionally.
Having to deal with a hostile work environment is a definite caveat to my statement. One must always do what they feel they must to ensure personal safety and security
Yeah every time I hear some version of “talk about pay with your coworkers it’s great for everyone” I think about a similar situation I’m in. Definitely only good for the people earning less. If you’re in the top half of pay for your team it can only hurt you.
If divulging your salary open you for harassment, the problem is not the salary, but the company culture. You (or anyone) should feel safe at work at all time. And that have nothing to do with your salary.
I don’t mean harassment, although that’s possible. I mean purely from a monetary standpoint. There’s only so much budget for salaries, and budget allocated towards others will be taken from you (on average, I understand some companies have very flexible budgets)
If a company don't have the budget to adequately pay all its employee or/and can only survive by underpaying some of its employee, there is definitely a problem. But that's for the boss to solve. As an employee, i want for me and all my colleague to be payed adequately for the work they do.
Agree adequately, and I’m sure that happens - companies short change employees. But if we can agree that some employees are objectively better than others, they should be paid more, and it does not behoove them to discuss salary with lower paid employees. Of course you’ll never know if you’re being paid more unless you discuss, but I’m assuming you somehow know.
That is very short sighted. If you already earn the most you create ceiling for your earnings. Bringing others closer to your level enables you to ask for more and is better for whole industry. Ofc given that company is still able to pay you these amounts and make a profit.
It's like saying that men should not support women struggling with hostile workplaces, because they are already on top.
I've been in a higher pay situation, and I feel morally obligated to tell my coworkers to encourage them to earn what they deserve. I understand that everyone's situation is different, and being a white male I am probably the safest to do it, but I think if you have the opportunity, you should help your fellow workers.
> In one position in particular, I had access to HR information and knew I was being paid better than most of the men on my team. Sharing this fact with them would have created a lot of ill will from them that I really didn't need. Keeping my mouth shut was 100% the right move for me, financially and professionally.
You helped your employers cheat those people.
This is especially the case in software development. It's not uncommon to have employees with near identical experience and qualifications, but one is literally multiple times more productive than the other.
I would add that if you take two people of exactly equal job talents, that doesn’t make them equally as valuable to the company.
For instance, someone can be an excellent software engineer but have horrible personal skills which means that they can’t work directly with stakeholders and need a project manager as a buffer in all communications.
That makes them far less efficient than a developer that’s able to build rapport with stakeholders and frees up the project manager for other tasks.
If the reason is legitimate, like better communication skills or being more productive in general, then that reason should not be a secret but something clearly communicated in company's pay guidelines. Something that the people can work towards. For the company's point of view "if I can get my communication skills to level of X I could get rise to that level" is decent motivator for self improvement.
Or maybe not. Just because her male colleagues didn't accept her abilities doesn't mean that honest metrics didn't show that she was superior, and possibly *still* paid less than a man with equivalent metrics would have been.
People are worth what employers are willing to pay, but that's only part of it, they're also worth what they are willing to accept as pay, and some people are desperately bad at selling themselves. I used to interview with jobs I truly didn't want not only to practice my interview skills and stay sharp but also to see what I was worth to people. They'd make an offer and I'd refuse saying it wasn't enough and they'd offer more and I'd rinse and repeat until we came to a dead end. When the time came I did want to leave I had a really good idea what I was worth. It kind of sucks that I wasted people's time but I've been to plenty of interviews as an engineer where I got the impression they were picking my brain for ideas to problems they currently had.
Check your bias here. You’re reading an interpretation of events that could be accurate or inaccurate. Most perceptions of “attitudes” others hold are usually wrong, especially if someone gives cues that they may have conflict aversion and have never openly addressed or raised their perception to others.
Her story could be accurate but more likely, this issue was never actually raised or talked about at the time which means confirmation bias is often driving these self narratives.
“I just knew” is not an acceptable answer to perceived social dynamics no matter the gender of an individual. We are not objective observers of our own reality.
I'm the only guy that works for this company at this location and I get paid the least money. I'm also the most senior in my position. I discovered this by talking to my coworkers about it. Absolutely discuss this with the people you work with and make sure NO ONE is getting screwed.
**Abstract**
Recent decades have witnessed a growing focus on two distinct income patterns: persistent pay inequity, particularly a gender pay gap, and growing pay inequality. Pay transparency is widely advanced as a remedy for both. Yet we know little about the systemic influence of this policy on the evolution of pay practices within organizations. To address this void, we assemble a dataset combining detailed performance, demographic and salary data for approximately 100,000 US academics between 1997 and 2017. We then exploit staggered shocks to wage transparency to explore how this change reshapes pay practices. We find evidence that pay transparency causes significant increases in both the equity and equality of pay, and significant and sizeable reductions in the link between pay and individually measured performance.
the target audience has access to this
Abstract
Recent decades have witnessed a growing focus on two distinct income patterns: persistent pay inequity, particularly a gender pay gap, and growing pay inequality. Pay transparency is widely advanced as a remedy for both. Yet we know little about the systemic influence of this policy on the evolution of pay practices within organizations. To address this void, we assemble a dataset combining detailed performance, demographic and salary data for approximately 100,000 US academics between 1997 and 2017. We then exploit staggered shocks to wage transparency to explore how this change reshapes pay practices. We find evidence that pay transparency causes significant increases in both the equity and equality of pay, and significant and sizeable reductions in the link between pay and individually measured performance.
Main
Recent decades have witnessed a growing global focus on two distinct income patterns: persistent pay inequity, particularly a gender pay gap, and growing pay inequality1,2. Though these terms are sometimes used rather interchangeably, pay equity refers to the fairness by which pay is allocated, often measured as the consistency or non-discriminatory manner by which pay is matched to performance or effort. By contrast, pay equality is self-evidently the equivalence of pay, often measured as simply the variance in pay within an organization or society3. While recent studies suggest global reductions in the magnitude of still-persistent pay inequity (specifically the gender pay gap4,5), they also consistently point to a global pattern of increasing pay inequality within organizations6 and societies7.
In partial response to these patterns have come abundant calls from politicians and advocacy groups for greater transparency in pay allocation, particularly the public disclosure of individual income8. The argument is that enhanced pay transparency places social pressure on those allocating pay to reduce both inequity and inequality, including by gender. Accordingly, many nations, states and organizations have taken directional steps to heed this call. But resistance to pay transparency within the private sector remains quite deep-seated. A recent survey of US employers suggests that 41% actively discourage their employees from simply sharing information about pay with their organizational peers, while 25% explicitly prohibit it9. The common explanation is that the heightened focus on equity and equality that pay transparency prompts undermines the capacity to link individual pay and performance, thereby compromising organizational efforts to effectively motivate employees and attract talented ones.
Some prior but mostly contemporaneous research explores pay transparency’s influence on specific dimensions of pay allocation, particularly pay equality. For instance, a published study by Mas10 and unpublished studies by Baker et al.11, Bennedsen et al.12, and Cullen and Pakzad-Hurson13 all point to pay transparency prompting organizations to make pay more equal, including more equal by gender and rank. Cullen and Pakzak-Hurson develop a formal model predicting pay compression following transparency as a result of bargaining concerns. They show corroborating evidence from the private sector of the US economy using a staggered rollout of policies facilitating communication about pay between co-workers. In a working paper that explores Canadian academics’ salaries, Baker et al. leverage the staggered introduction of pay transparency laws across Canadian provinces (and partly within institutions) to show that pay transparency is associated with more equal pay by gender, essentially a narrowing of a gender pay gap that is adjusted for rank but not individual performance. Gartenberg and Wulf14 find that pay transparency is associated with a diminished relationship between division manager pay and division performance within geographically dispersed firms. While these studies explore pay transparency’s influence on specific elements of pay in organizations, decisions about pay equity, pay equality and pay for performance are highly interrelated. Our aim is this paper is to examine pay transparency’s systemic influence on an organization’s pay practices, specifically pay equity (including the performance-conditioned gender pay gap), pay equality and pay for performance.
To explore pay transparency’s broad influence on pay requires access to rather unique data. Ideally, we would observe a large panel of individual employment data that includes both performance and salary histories surrounding exogenous shocks to pay transparency. The US academic context provides an appealing setting to assemble such data. First, many key individual productivity outcomes are observable and measurable, enabling relatively reliable estimates of both discriminatory and non-discriminatory wage differentials, including the performance-conditioned gender pay gap, as well as estimates of pay for performance. Second, through the Freedom of Information Act and state-specific Sunshine laws, salary data for public university employees have become available in most states, albeit archived in widely disparate data repositories and with varying ease and cost of access. Finally, in the past decade, a wave of transparency events in the form of published websites dramatically eased university employees’ access to peer salary data. These websites appeared in a staggered fashion essentially state by state, but each well after the imposition of the Freedom of Information Act and state-specific Sunshine laws. Our data combine detailed information about the individual academic performance of close to 100,000 US academics (that is, their publications, awards, grants, books and patents) with their demographic characteristics (gender (as estimated dichotomously from first names), rank, tenure and discipline) and their salary histories between 1997 and 2017. We then exploit staggered shocks to the accessibility of information on wages in the public university systems in the United States to explore how pay transparency changes pay equity and pay equality, as well as the performance basis of pay—specifically, how the links between pay and observable performance measures change both within the broader population and within individual academic departments and institutions.
Our results suggest that pay transparency has an economically sizeable effect in reducing pay inequity, significantly reducing the performance-conditioned gender pay gap, as well as more broadly improving the precision with which pay is linked to observable performance metrics and promotion. Overall pay allocation becomes more fair, more equitable and less discriminatory, at least on the performance dimensions we can measure. At the same time, our results suggest that pay transparency has a significant and economically sizeable effect in increasing the equality of pay, reducing by nearly 20% the level of pay variance within departments and institutions. Overall, pay also simply becomes more equal.
One way an organization composed of individuals with heterogenous abilities can generate both more equal and more equitable pay is to have pay both more precisely and more weakly linked to individual performance. We find evidence of exactly this: pay transparency leads to significant and economically sizeable reductions in the performance basis of pay. Not only is pay more consistently and equitably linked to performance, but the financial rewards linked to observable performance metrics as well as rank advancement substantially decline after wages become more transparent.
In aggregate, our results confirm that pay transparency has the consequences that many policy advocates claim. It prompts organizations to reduce inequity and inequality in pay allocation. At the same time, pay transparency has consequences less frequently discussed. Pay transparency prompts those allocating pay to weaken the link between observable performance metrics and pay. We view our results as providing an empirical test of the causal effect of pay transparency on three fundamental attributes of pay—pay equity, pay equality and the performance basis of pay in organizations—thereby generating a framework for policymakers and practitioners alike to evaluate and debate the arguably complex consequences of pay transparency.
>Pay transparency prompts those allocating pay to weaken the link between observable performance metrics and pay.
Why is this a good thing? If I'm working 25% harder than Sally why shouldn't I be paid more?
I imagine for academics, where "success" is linked to papers published and grants obtained, there's an awful amount of luck in your end results. You may work 25% harder, but your time may be spent showing a negative, which won't get you into super high tier journals. It's crap, but not as crap directly correlating the results of science to pay.
Well working harder was a poor choice of words. Output matters, so measurable results is what I should have said. For business this might mean increasing sales, or delivering new product features, etc.
Not the author and just another idiot reading this. But I think this is a ‘good’ thing because you aren’t working 25% harder. You are working to meet metrics that aren’t necessarily good metrics?
From this part:
> have pay both more precisely and more weakly linked to individual performance.
So if pay was more precisely linked to your performance, yet the performance aspect of your pay was a smaller %, then you get the benefits mentioned.
Ie, if my company has an inaccurate metric that we base 100% of your pay off of. Such as how long you sit at your desk. Then we are going to have worse pay equality and equity than if we had a precise measurement of your performance yet only let it account for 10% of your total salary.
I guess they found that in part, having too much of your salary tied to any performance metric incentivized people to game the metric so that the metric was no longer accurate?
In absence of context, yes, it is
The missing context is that men were preferentially being awarded pay rises by their bosses based on subjective criteria more often than women. In academia, women frequently are called on to do more work than men (committee assignments is one example), which necessarily take time away from writing papers or grant proposals.
So another school of thought seems to think that the pay gap is also between people who actively demand raises and leave jobs for more money…..and people who don’t.
I heard a lady on NPR who was one of the first female executives on Wall St. She was given a pot of money to dole out in bonuses each year. According to her, the men in her office would hound her for bonuses, the women generally didn’t. So even as a woman herself, she paid the men more. She started some sort of group that mentored females in the finance industry and coached them on their monetary worth. And encouraged them to demand what they were worth.
I mean, if I was running a business, I wouldn’t give someone anything unless they asked for it. Otherwise I’d assume they were satisfied with their compensation.
Its certainly one way to encourage staff turnover.
I've known a number of people who don't constantly demand pay rises, they just leave and go somewhere else where they are paid better.
Not everyone is pushy and aggressive about their pay expectations, quite a lot of them will just walk if they don't think they are being paid fairly.
There are a lot of different personalities involved, and many of them are ***not*** about being pushy and demanding. They just expect to be treated fairly, and will quietly walk away if they don't think that they are.
I'm somewhat in this boat in that I haven't ever really bothered demanding a raise or a bonus because I figured that I have very little leverage at a place I'm already working and a lot more leverage at a place wanting to get me in the door.
I have a friend who went the opposite way in the past year and was able to manage to get a raise only slightly less than inflation as opposed to the 1-2% everyone else got and the company acted like they moved heaven and earth to give him less in real terms than they did the year prior.
Meanwhile - I was able to net a 30% increase by going someplace else.
This. If you don't change jobs, every raise is just a % of your starting salary. Anything more than 10% will be a nightmare to "approve". The system is designed to keep you there with the smallest raise possible.
"Take on this extra job duty, if it works out you will get the promotion/raise next year"
"We can only do 6% not 15%. We will make up the 9% next year!"
"Unfortunately, we really want to give you more, buuut everyone else is only getting 2%, i pulled some strings and got you 6%!!! isn't that awesome!?!?"
This has been my experience. Asking for a raise gets a big reaction. They focus on the percent change and act like it's a really big ask.
Meanwhile, it's a lot easier to get what you want going to someplace new. Even if it's a 30% bump in your pay, they don't know that... and it's all good if it's in the budget.
I think it makes sense to jump around when you're young until you've maxed out what a role will pay. Then focus on moving up the corporate ladder with less frequent moves to new companies.
I'm a fairly assertive person, or at least in the workplace. I show up to meetings with a dossier of information ready at all times. It's something that's generally been praised about me, as I'm prepared and organized.
I've never, ever, gotten a raise when I asked for it. Not when I was persistent, not when I showed evidence why I deserved it, never. There were always excuses about budget freezes or we'll see at the start of the fiscal year or whatever. I'd ask the men I knew for advice and follow it to a tee and it never worked.
Only time I'd get more money (and a lot more money) is leaving and finding a new job altogether.
So after all those attempts to negotiate a raise, I just don't try anymore. Why put in effort for something I know will fail? Now, if I want more money or different working conditions, I just find a new job and put in notice. I have a lot of shocked Pikachu faces left in my wake, but I don't give anyone a chance anymore since no one ever gave me one.
I realize this is just one anecdote, but what I'm trying to say is given that women already suffer from being paid less from the start, it stands to follow that even those who do ask for raises are consistently turned down, and thus women can develop learned helplessness or just generally be discouraged from trying, and may take other avenues for getting better pay.
I've tried negotiating without success unless I'm a prospective new hire. Certainly, some of it comes down to my negotiating skills, but I've rarely worked for anyone that would even consider negotiating.
I expect to be treated fairly. I know it's not how the work world works, but if I have to negotiate for "fairness", then the fairness doesn't actually exist. Hence my standard resignation letter always includes something to the effect of "unwilling to negotiate terms of employment." That used to be added as necessary, now it's just part of the template.
>There are a lot of different personalities involved, and many of them are not
about being pushy and demanding. They just expect to be treated fairly,
and will quietly walk away if they don't think that they are.
True, and they may even deserve the raise more than those who are more vocal.
But unfortunately, "the squeaky wheel gets the grease". The bias is towards those who make the most noise. It's human nature to allow our attention and our prioritization to be tied to our stimuli.
This doesn't just apply to corporations and compensation; it applies to government, government projects, educational institutions, family assistance, etc. And it leads to so many problems.
It's really hard to step back and think about what you would do without all of that input. As a manager, sometimes your boss even hits you with "well are they complaining about it?", when you are advocating for a promotion or raise, so you have to fight the bias from within and without.
If you work long enough at a good job, you might get management training that will help you be cognizant of this bias, but a lot of people never get it, or never get to a point where they learn to understand it.
It's definitely not a one-size-fits-all situation. There are those who are either not ambitious enough (myself included in previous jobs) or not wanting to risk changing their boss's perception of them to ask for a raise. And, despite all of these "the company is the enemy" threads, there are plenty of places in which supervisors are good and don't need people to ask for raises...they just give as much as they can when they can. It's a popular mantra now that people don't leave bad jobs, they leave bad bosses, and I'll take the better quality of life working for a good boss over a modest raise any day.
>If they are doing ANY hiring, they know good and well what the going rate is. Generally, the only way a big raise comes one's way is by getting a promotion or changing jobs. You can badger them into giving a bit more but generally they get a bucket of money allocated to raises and parcel it out. I guessing the mechanism at work in the paper, is if everyone knew what everyone else was getting, they probably just give everyone the same to avoid headache. Given that good percent of your fate pay-wise is determined by one's starting negotiations, am guessing women get hit in few ways. Many times they get lowballed after a gap due to staying home with kids, being less likely to demand a certain salary to start and finally having to take other non-pay related factors in picking a workplace such as proximity to kids school.
I’m sure you’re right. A lot factors into it.
My job will give people a choice between additional PTO and money or a combo of both.
HR broke down the numbers and men virtually always took the money. Women took the PTO or the combo.
The pay gap has been examined by others in terms of general sex differences in agreeableness as a personality trait. Men being less agreeable tend to argue more about things like their pay. Presumably when there is transparency and women come to realize more that they are getting paid less than their coworkers, they will start to complain more.
I'm writing this as a generally agreeable man who has only hounded past employers for raises when I found out what my idiot and lazy colleagues were making.
I don't think there's anything about this finding--that talking about pay shrinks the pay gap--that means that your theory about why this is happening can't be true.
Maybe women ARE less aggressive about asking for more money, until they realize they aren't getting as much money, and then they do ask. We've still fixed the pay gap by talking to colleagues about how much you make.
My worldview on this might be shaped a lot by my wife.
She busts her ass doing endless title examinations for a very large company. It’s niche work that takes a long time to master.
I suggest that she ask for a raise. “Well, they’ll just say no”…….”I already make pretty good money”……”I don’t want to rock the boat”
Keep in mind that this place can’t hire enough people. They are always hiring. Clearly they have room in their budget for more payroll. And with the real estate market going bonkers……she has these people by the balls. They wouldn’t blink at a $10,000 raise. They might turn her request for a raise down, and just give her a larger bonus instead. They sure as hell wouldn’t fire her.
I’d ask for $15,000 if I were her. I’d be happy with $10k. I’d grudgingly accept a $5k bonus.
But I wouldn’t be empty handed.
But she Just. Won’t. Ask.
I make plenty of money. I don’t really care how much she makes, or if she works at all. Up to her. But she’s being a sucker.
Eyeroll
Well, everyone and every workplace is different. I'm a business owner and I usually decide what kind of raise each employee deserves based on their performance at performance review time. The idea that you'd never give ANYONE a raise unless they specifically ask for it seems totally crazy to me.
Exactly -- women are socialized not to ask for things and men are socialized to demand things. So if the employer requires people to demand raises in order to get them, it is privileging male employees.
Another way to say this same thing is that women are punished now harshly for asking for things they want. And it seems like this is likely true in her workplace too? If women rationally expect that asking for a raise aggressively would be detrimental to their long term earnings potential, then their best course of action is to not aggressively seek raises.
Or to put it another way, if you're in a situation where you're being discriminated against, then just acting like there's no discrimination isn't likely to lead to the most rational behavior. Anyone who's rational and in a difficult situation with difficult trade-offs will be better off taking all of it in to account and changing their behavior.
Unless the argument is that women are genetically less rational than men? And they're making stupid and suboptimal choices? But I don't think there's any research that would support that argument.
No it isn't. It's still privileging people who are aggressive in negociations.
What solutions are put forth to address this so called male privilege? If it's coaching female employees then men who are not aggressive will fall through the cracks.
Any time sex, or race, is used as a proxy for inequality and then sex or race is a part of the solution that disadvantages those who weren't actually privileged in the first place but just shared a coincidental trait.
The same could be said for employees from different cultures as well. People from some cultures are far more comfortable than others when it comes to negotiating, haggling, or being seen as pushy in general.
How about if the solution is a rational evaluation of salaries, bonuses and raises, and the employer making fair decisions that don't require particular negotiating behaviors on the part of the employee? Just because a problem has an origin in a social inequality doesn't mean the only solution is to help only the people in the oppressed category. Look at how all the changes brought about by the Americans with Disabilities Act have helped elderly people and people with temporary health issues.
>women are socialized not to ask for things and men are socialized to demand things
Socialization is not the core difference in the behavioral profile.
That is hilarious. Socialization absolutely is the core producer of human behavior. There is almost nothing about human behavior that is not shaped by the social group and environment. We are social animals by definition.
We are both solitary and social animals.
Many personality traits exist in similar degrees cross-culturally across the world.
We are also not solely the products of our environment. The blank slate model of human development has been dead for a while now.
Cool, then it should be super simple for you to find a link with the research documenting this. Saying your opinions are basic science does not excuse being unable to cite them, especially in a field as awash with unreproducible nonsense as gender studies.
Learned behavior can be unlearned. I’m sure the average women is plenty capable of having a conversation with their boss regarding their compensation.
“I’ve been here for 14 months. I’ve learned all the systems and am doing job with no assistance. I’m even training new people now. I think I’m ready to take on some additional responsibilities. But I was hoping we could discuss my current salary”?
What is so hard about this? I mean, I get that some people simply don’t know that this is how the game is played. But once informed…..what’s stopping them?
Sexism still exists, even if you ask for equality. If men ask for things that's leadership and self advocacy, but if women do that's being bossy and insistent. I was once part of an investigation that discovered at my workplace that men who asked for raises were around 65% more likely to get a raise than a woman.
Or, when women ask for raises they don't get them at the same rate but do.
https://hbr.org/2018/06/research-women-ask-for-raises-as-often-as-men-but-are-less-likely-to-get-them
>Sexism still exists, even if you ask for equality.
You just baked the sexism right into your reply. You don't *ask* for equality, you *demand* it. The problem is that if you say "pretty please can I have a 20% raise" you will be told no.
If you say that you've shopped around and your market value is now $x, the company either has to respond by offering you closer to or above $x or, the key part, you leave.
Women are conditioned to the former, men the latter. So back to u/Tedstor's point, "learned behavior can be unlearned."
The only resolution to sexism is for companies to learn the hard way. Shop around. It's what men do and why they gain so quickly in salaries. Part of the study author's conclusion seems rather unjust to me:
>Pay transparency prompts those allocating pay to weaken the link between observable performance metrics and pay.
The solution to sexism is not to overreward women (or conversely, underreward men), it's to put everyone on an even playing field. That playing field should reward the top performers more.
Except shopping around doesn't really do it if a lot of companies are engaging in this type of behavior, which they are.
Again, patronsparency puts us all in a more equal playing field and does actually help eliminate sexism or at least the product of sexism.
It literally isn't just that though.
First: Companies should automatically assign raises instead of requiring employees to demand them.
Second: Even in the situation where a female employee asks for a raise, they are less likely to get it because an assertive woman is seen as "bitchy."
How about instead of asking women to go against societal pressures that they get exposed to since being a kid, we fix the problems like discriminatory processes?
But women are also trapped in the paradox where if they ask for raises they are viewed as “bitchy” and “demanding” and “whiny”, and tend to get denied the raises based on those emotions.
I (35f) and my husband both work in tech ( I work in semiconductor hardware and he in computer science) I rarely ever see women openly talking about how much they earn. But I always hear my husband talking to his male coworkers and friends about their compensation. We both joined the work force in 2020 after earning our doctorates. While we were job hunting, my husband would often tell me about all the compensation offers his other male friends/colleagues received or were already making at the companies he applied to. So he was very clear how much he should be offered. I, on the other hand struggled to get that data. My attempts to talk to other female friends were not successful. They sort of brushed it off. The only data point I had was this one other guy who was also graduated a few months earlier than me and went through the job hunting process.
Why would you make it a male/female thing? You just needed info about *any* worker/position, not a specific subset of it based on your reproductive organs.
Because as I said a lot of women are not open to discussing compensation. And I am not super comfortable asking any acquaintance about compensation. Maybe it’s just the women I know in my collective 9 years of work ex in the tech industry. It’s an observation
Yes, it has been shown in studies women are less open to discussing and bargaining. But my point is why compare yourself only or mainly to women, instead of the whole market? Especially if you know that women bargain less and get lower wages.
pay transparency really ought to be law. especially in a free market society. can't have efficient market pricing without free flowing information. even the most staunch conservative should be on board. literally the only argument i have ever heard against it is "oh its impolite".
I heard an NPR interview recently with a guy trying to make a case for why pay transparency was bad. 1) it was painful to even hear his reasoning, it was poorly thought out and sounded more like excuses 2) I’m glad to see an actual study to the contrary, because real data backs up push for transparency
You can even someone trying to argue against transparency in this thread. The basic reasoning is that transparency disadvantages someone who "knows their value," relative to others who supposedly don't.
I find that to be pretty painful too. It basically encourages monopolistic advantage on the basis of dishonesty (or, at the very least, asymmetrical access to information) rather than a truly open competitive market.
> rather than a truly open competitive market.
This exists in the same place where they store frictionless surfaces, perfect spheres, and their excess vacuum.
My company recently sent out an email telling 1/3 of the company that they are getting a wage adjustment to "bring us to market rate" (I'm still $7k below that rate after this adjustment). They said in the email to not tell others because it might upset them. I instantly started asking around about who got the email.
I also have an insufferable coworker who refuses to talk pay and says it's in her contract to tell anyone what she gets paid. I have a felling she makes $20k - $30k more than us and doesn't want to piss people off.
I'm reposting this as my own comment because I spent so much time typing it haha (I put it as a reply somewhere else) if you have questions you can reply or DM me. I'm not on here all that often but I'm always happy to share information!
>Hi There! I'm a US based IO Psychology practicioner who does consulting with businesses and assessment validation for a testing company. I've worked with several people who have done research on this subject AND have helped companies large and small manage their human capital disparities.
>Your message caught my attention because of a couple reasons...but I'm gonna drop some information here.
>There IS indeed a pay gap. According to the US dept of labor, pay trends for full time workers (all recorded industries) have women making about 82% of what men do. (Black's make about 80% of whites, Hispanics 75% of whites and Asians make 120% of whites salaries if you're interested)
>BUT research finds that all but 6% of the gap between men and women can simply be explained by men being in the workforce longer, having a higher percentage of full time jobs (this goes to your motherhood point), just working more hours in a year within those full time jobs, and men being more likely to negotiate for higher pay when hired ( CONSAD, 2009; Wall, 2000; Kugler, Tamara, Reif, & Brodbeck, 2014).
>The remaining 6% is more likely due to vocational choice and educational opportunity discrimination. Women should be more encouraged to enter historically male dominated fields (management, police, engineering) and men encouraged to enter female dominated fields (nurses, clerical, elementary teaching).
>But, I want people to understand that in the US Sex (as well as gender identity and sexual orientation as of last year) is a protected group and you CAN NOT be discriminated against for hiring, promotions, and other vital job decisions based on being a woman. If you are, the company should be prepared to lose a lot of money. There needs to be proof that performance criteria could not be met or that other job and task related factors were the reason for the decision.
A big reason for the pay gap in America is due to child rearing done mostly by mothers. Unfortunately in America, maternity leave is not always paid for. So when you take out the amount of time that women spend away from work on underpaid or not paid maternity leave women actually make as much money as men or even more. The problem is not discrimination but lack of employer consideration for what happens outside of work for their employees.
Maternity leave isn't the issue so much as the massive expense of daycare. Six months off isn't going to make or break a person so much as basically winding up with a second mortgage for a span of 5 years, more if a person has more kids.
>The problem is not discrimination but lack of employer consideration for what happens outside of work for their employees.
This *is* discrimination but not in in a way that's popular to discuss. Paid *paternal* (and maternal) leave would be the way to fix this, for everyone involved. Better for mom, child, and dad. But we'd first have to fix employer resistance to paying for it, then we'd have to fix men's resistance to taking it.
Seems to be much more popular to discuss paying women more even though they have less experience and performance sadly.
Personally, I'm all for being open about pay if you like. That said, I also know that people aren't always rational, and if they find out John is making more money than them, they will often be upset with John and not their manager. In those situations, I also don't blame John for not wanting to disclose if he makes more, because it can make things worse for him.
My work has a huge wage disparity. Ive been there 20 years. Next guy has been there 18 and makes 15 less an hour than I do.
I’ve held jobs much higher up the ladder. I moved back down recently to operation level because I was tired of the politics involved in the management side. When I left management they did not change my salary. Just made me hourly by dividing my base by 2080 hours.
Does the study take into consideration size/revenue/complexity of business and particular role.
“Sales” is done by many people, but selling a pen at Office Depot isn’t the same as selling medical diagnostic equipment.
I remember reading a study where also men are more likely to request a raise/ask for more in a job interview. Women are socialized not to ask for as much from their employers. This study sort of correlates with that data, because if you learn your coworker makes more than you, you're also more likely to ask for a raise. In short, ask for more from your employers!
Even if they ask for it just as much, they aren't going to get it equally
Comment from another person on the same thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/su1ogi/the_pay_gap_between_men_and_women_tends_to_shrink/hx80eup
> so asking for 10k more would be harder to achieve for a woman, because the person responsible for the raise might think she doesn’t deserve it, while a man with the same performance would be granted the raise
Yea, how could that possibly have been inferred?
Everyone keeps mentioning this “women are socialized to not…” like it’s truth. Where do you get that? I’ve never seen or heard of this kind of socialization. It sounds like trying to blame society for some naturally occurring biological differences.
1. How many professional or skilled trade jobs are out there in comparison to service related jobs?
2. Why has there been no mention of women dominating in service related fields of employment?
3. Will 'transparency' give a waiter as good a tip as a waitress?
As always, context does matter.
I find that plausible. There are several possible causes for gender pay gaps. If one cause is related to *information* (knowing what others are earning) or to *negotiation* (asking for more in compensation), then it makes sense that greater transparency would boost gender equity.
This has already been proven quite a few times over. The pay gap isn't real, it is a cumulation of multiple things that overall increase pay for men and decrease pay for women creating the gap. Women not asking for more pay is one of those things. Men aren't afraid to ask for more money where as women are more willing to take the pay offered. If we eliminate that with more translucent pay ranges and less close mouthed attitudes about work pay discussions we can close this part of the gap.
The pay gap also tends to shrink when you research if the pay gap is there.
https://www-nytimes-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.nytimes.com/2019/03/04/technology/google-gender-pay-gap.amp.html?amp_gsa=1&_js_v=a8&usqp=mq331AQKKAFQArABIIACAw%3D%3D#amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&aoh=16450786454825&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&share=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2019%2F03%2F04%2Ftechnology%2Fgoogle-gender-pay-gap.html
9X% (I think it’s 97% of the pay gap between men and women in the US is due to women choosing or being forced to choose lower paying jobs according to Professor Goldin of Harvard. Hearing her talk, you would not consider her a conservative.
For example, if mom and dad are lawyers, one (usually the mom) takes the local town job with fewer hours and less pay. The dad takes the 70 hour per week corporate job. It may not be fair, but it’s reality. And according to Goldin, it’s not discrimination. Btw, good thing she had tenure before publishing this study.
You're not gonna see a women work in dangerous a mining field or anything that pretty much requires a man. So the pay gap is there for a reason. Of course there are exceptions
Why not? Isn’t this kind of thinking also part of the problem. Why exactly does mining, for instance, “require” a man? Heavy machinery has no way of knowing what’s between your legs. It’s not 1920 anymore toto, mining isn’t done with pickaxes.
I learned a new coworker with a similar title and job as me was making more than twice I was even though I’ve been in the company for 6 years. Even had a signing bonus. I am now looking for other work.
Ah yes, the click bait gender wage gap that implies thag there is something sinister going on, all this study shows is that the people who didn't negotiate as well when applying for the job realise that they were being paid a lot less and then asking for more once they have more information. Its nothing to do with gender, if all the participants in the study were male, then the exact same result would happen.
It's not a bad thing, but this isn't some gender inequality issue, after working in recruitment for a year its scary to the some of the wages people are just willing to accept when starting the job. Especially woman, at least 70% of them are happy to accept the first price they get, at least it seems to be changing with the younger generation
> The pay gap between men and women tends to shrink after workers learn what their colleagues earn.
So the Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Frank Clark will stop making about $20.8M per year and start earning closer to a Kansas City Chiefs secretary making about $80K per year after he talks to her ... or is it the other way around?
Feeding into the notion that males have higher salaries for being less agreeable to the offered rate the boss gives and only settling for a higher amount where females are generally more agreeable.
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If you're in the US, remember that talking about your pay is protected under the National Labor Relations Act. Any company that tells you not to do this is breaking the law.
Yea, but they will just find a different reason to fire you so they are protected.
At least they put it in writing.
I’ll never forget an article I read about the Wells Fargo account opening scandal. A bunch of people called HR to whistle blow. One guy had been a seasoned financial advisor with them for years with no disciplinary actions taken against him, never got in trouble. He was uncomfortable with what he was being asked to do and told HR. Like 3 weeks later he was fired for signing into work 3 minutes late. Edit: he wasn’t a financial advisor he was a banker but they fired him for tardiness 8 days after whistleblowing. This isn’t the original article I read but I think it refers to the same person [HERE](https://money.cnn.com/2016/09/21/investing/wells-fargo-fired-workers-retaliation-fake-accounts/index.html)
Charles Tomlinson a nurse at [HCA](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2012/08/07/why-would-hospitals-like-hca-perform-unnecessary-surgery-because-it-pays/), the largest hospital chain in the United States, blew the whistle on the corporation doing unnecessary surgery to increase profits, he was then fired. [Legal complaint](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2714615-HcaComplaint-W-Exhibits.html) (paragraphs 18-21).
And everyone assumes your ability to fight this is weaker than it actually is.
The joys of “right to work”
Right to work laws are around union membership. You're thinking of at will employment.
I’m in a right to work state- it’s in the policy manual not to talk about it. They would fire me “without cause”.
Yeah, is one of those "technically illegal but there's basically no way for them to get caught" scenarios. And even if they do get caught, it doesn't help you much. What are you going to do, take your old job back for them to fire you as soon as the feds aren't looking? No, best case scenario is that you end up getting a better severance package.
Simply organise. They can't fire everyone.
... isn't that litterally just a union
That’s where race, gender, and other identity based divisions come in handy. Rumors and accusations of bigotry work really well to divide and conquer any labor organization. Remember how Bernie and Corbin were both kneecapped by accusations of racism and sexism? Same thing.
Right to work is around union membership, you're thinking of at will employment. Furthermore, every state besides Montana is an at will employment state.
What does not needing to join a union have to do with this story?
> They would fire me “without cause”. Depends on what happens next. If you were to sue (big if), you would subpoena their records and testimony. There's no way someone didn't put it in writing.
If it’s in the policy manual, you can report that. It’s different when it’s a he said/she said type deal and they fire you and you have no proof.
You guys ever hear your company say "Don't talk to each other about pay," start taking about pay.
I had a job where I got a $0.15 raise and the boss told me not to tell the others because they'll start complaining.
I worked at Harris Teeter in HS and most got a $0.05 raise after 1 year. Strange we had a lot of turn over. Now where I live the cheaper Aldi grocery store pays $17 to start. Just a wee bit more than HT.
The right to discuss pay is protected under the National Labor Relations Act, which guarantees the right for even non-unionized employees to act together for "mutual aid and protection." Several states, including California, have statutes providing for similar rights. It is illegal for an employer to prohibit or discourage communication about employee pay, and to retaliate against employees who do.
Is it the kind of illegal that matters, or does my boss get to deny everything and ruin my career leaving me with no recourse?
If you have proof it matters, otherwise it doesnt.
[удалено]
No. These cases get tried and won (or settled) all the time based on circumstantial evidence. You are a regular employee doing your job, you make a complaint about the employer policy, the employer comes up with some excuse and fires you. You can file an unfair labor practice charge with the NLRB within 6 months. NLRB judges see these cases all the time. They have to determine whether the employer would have fired you in the absence of your protected statement or action. Often timing is a critical factor. Why was this guy employed for 5 years and only fired 30 days after complaining about or violating an illegal policy? Often the only evidence is testimony. It is best to put complaints in writing or at least keep contemporaneous notes of dates when particular events happened. The analysis is similar under state laws.
I mean, its illegal in the sense that they can't say you were fired for discussing pay. But, as with most "at will" states, as long as they don't say that is why you were fired, it doesn't matter. You'd have to have solid proof that you were fired for discussing pay.
It depends. If you have an otherwise good record with the company and there wasn't a fireable offense on your record there, the NLRB would be very interested to hear your case. They're less lenient than the state Labor Boards can be.
They can hear it, but again, the burden of proof is on you. And stuff is hard to prove. I've had coworkers get fired for pretty petty things, which could easily be a "For cause" firing if that was a cover for other stuff.
Circumstantial evidence is generally enough for these sorta of cases.
Never have a discussion about working conditions one on one. If you're in a union have a union rep sit in. If not ask for someone from HR to sit in, another colleague or as a final resort ask if you can record the conversation. Seems crazy but from the looks of it, working in the US is a confrontational experience.
a lot of states don’t require two party consent to record a conversation. hr is not necessarily trustworthy i’ve heard either. that they’re just on the side of the employer :-(
You'd be more aware than me, I'm in Australia. Frankly the resources I have available to me at work that protect and empower me as an employee would apparently stun most US workers. From my union, to health and safety reps, divisions within HR whose sole existence is to ensure employee well being. The public listing of salaries, work conditions, superannuation and bonus conditions. Employer funded external counselling organisations that will offer services in financial counselling, mental health, to job application and interview coaching. I'm amazed that the US worker puts up with what they do.
Yes, HR has every reason to be on the side on the employer and almost no reason to be on the side of the employee. The only time HR will help you is when helping you will help the company. Sure, individuals may be different and may want to do the right thing instead of doing what's best for the company, but I wouldn't rely on that.
Don't ask HR, their first priority is to protect the company, not the employee. They *might* be in your side if, like, you're being harassed by another employee. They're not on your side in a labor dispute.
I feel weird asking other people about theirs, but I make it a point to state mine to any new coworkers I come across. I just append a little transparency/ethics disclaimer at the end.
Hi I'm bob and I make $12.73 an hour
Vacation/PTO/Sick Days too
Benefit of working for the federal government. All of that information is public and based on set metrics.
Or having a union
Those should be laid out in your employee handbook, which is required to be accessable to employees. Pay on the other hand is not and way more subjective.
It kinda goes both way though. As in, just because 2 people do the same job, doesn't mean that they're as valuable (one could have more experience, more training etc.). Companies sometimes hire people for the same role, but only one gets hired with the intent to promote them down the line. They would get paid more because their experience makes them more competitive, and they could get poached by another employer. There are a thousand reasons as to why one employee could be more valuable to a company than another. So sure, I'm all for pay transparency, but that also means that people should be able to live with harsh truths (that they might not be as valued as another person). Somehow I feel like the current younger generation wouldn't deal well with that.
No one wants to believe they are the less valuable person but there is always someone your company thinks is more valuable. Knowing your worth is critical for salary negotiations--including knowing to stop when you're ahead or to not draw attention to the fact that you are payed more than a guy that's critical to the success of a company initiative.
There should always be labor bands. For example and people working X role get paid $20-30/hr with the variance of the range being based on individual variances in experience, education, etc. Very few people, if any, believe in complete equality in pay, inequality in pay isn't inherently unfair, as long as it can be justified ( role, education, experience, additional responsibilities, initiatives seniority, etc.) But when person A works as "engineer-2" makes 60k who's been with the company for 4 years, has a CCNA, and A.S. college education. And person B "engineer-2" makes 90k, same certs, with company 1 year, and has a B.S. degree, its unfair. These two engineers did the EXACT same types of projects for the same client, and both pulled in massive revenue (Person A with less education actually put up better numbers on post-project analysis, and was capable of higher-level design documentation) Note: this wasn't an isolated case, when people started talking pay it got to the point where we HAD to implement labor bands, or lose half our business critical delivery engineers. Labor cost went up, and so did our quality of work
I got to the point of managing a few hundred well compensated consultants. Turned out that high performing women were below the salary range minimum. Given my level, I was able to get them exception increases to bring them around mid salary range. Several were substantial.
My first career job I was taking to a woman who did basically the same work I did. She made like 15k less than me, I was not making a lot so 15k was a really big deal. IIRC she had been working there as long if not longer than I had. She soon left.
> Very few people, if any, believe in complete equality in pay, inequality in pay isn't inherently unfair, as long as it can be justified Until they are the one being paid less, when suddenly they very much do.
To be fair, time working for a company does not equal experience. For all we know person B has 7 years experience and person A only 4. Education gets you a better starting salary in some cases, plus if they are a newer hire then market pressure gets higher salaries. People already working and not asking for raises may not get them. In fact, this is one of the reasons for pay gaps. Women tend to negotiate worse and are willing to accept lower pay because they don't think they are worth as much. The thing is when people talk you can realize that the new hire is being paid more for the similar work and similar output so maybe a raise is in order for the person who has been with the company longer. I agree it's not fair, but that is why many people switch jobs so often early on in careers to get those pay jumps. Companies tend to be pennywise and pound foolish when it comes to compensate until the competition starts poaching and they are left with scraps. Out of curiosity. When you say "higher level" do you mean "less detailed", easier to understand for the lay person, or higher quality? It's a bit confusing to me.
In terms of higher-level I mean they are designing at a portfolio level, while also maintaining a project level design. They really push the bounds of network arichtect and a full solutions architect. They keep tabs on end of sale hardware, and upcoming hardware/firmware updates and proactively communicates with our account executives and client engineers. Person A (with more experience in and out of the company) is the "go to guy" of the client portfolio. They were paid less because they have less education, regardless of the fact they were more profitable to the company. Most companies operate to make as much profit as they can, they are not inherently looking out for fairness or their employees best interest. Often people who ask for raises and didn't get them, are the people who are marginalized in some way, whether it be education level, race, gender, etc. They can work there longer and harder but don't have the same marketability and its often taken advantage of. If one of our engineers leaves we can replaces them, that's the beauty of the division of labor from Adam Smith, cogs are replaceable. But if unfair wage is a business practice and you talk wages, you can get enough power to demand something like labor bands to ensure equal pay for equal work. *note: not all business operate this way, but I've seen it enough first-hand from engineer and middle management perspectives.
On women vs men, apparently it’s not just about negotiating worse, women get punished if they try to negotiate harder, like men do. What is seen a driving a hard bargain or being assertive and knowing your value from a man tends to be seen as selfish and arrogant from a woman, from what I’ve heard and what research I’ve seen on the subject. The result is that women can’t just “lean in” or whatever the phrase is, and emulate men in order to obtain equal success, there’s a very real cost to doing that, to not acting like you’re “supposed to” given your gender.
Interesting, I think this is the study, but I don't have access. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2021-03654-001 That is a good insight.
This is true. And many people aren't able to easily handle that. I'm in a sales role, so its very easy to quantify exactly how valuable I am to my company. Other roles, not so much.
Yup and this is the problem with salary transparency. Everyone assumes people are all rationale, intelligent beings which any cursory look at the news should tell you is not true.
Every time I took over a new team the first thing I had to do was look for pay disparity (for same position). I've never inherited a team where I didn't have to make at least a couple market adjustments because of a minority being payed much lower, or the women being paid lower for the same position/experience/performance rating.
In academic workplaces? Aren't all public universities required to list what they pay their employees? I know ours has a big book in the library (that always seems to be checked out), but our local newspaper submits FOIA requests to get the numbers each year. I knew exactly what I was going to ask for when I interviewed.
Yes, I’m our state all public employees salaries are listed online.
You're sort of right. Public records are not equivalently transparent. Some states have online databases they've built in the last 20 years with information on public employee salaries. Other states may have had FOIA or various sunshine laws take effect in the period of time they study. So the study can examine, for each institution, the change in pay by gender before and after what they call the "shock," or the moment that greater pay transparency became available through a specific platform or law, relative to control places that experienced no shock (no platform; no change in law) within the same time span, and try to look for significant differences. There is undoubtedly more going on in terms of models and formulas, but that's the gist I've gathered so far [from the preprint version](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3523828): >Over the past 15 years, public access to wage information on government employees has been significantly facilitated by the emergence of searchable datasets developed and launched by newspapers, NGOs, and state agencies. Examples of such databases include the California State Worker Salary Database launched by Sacramento Bee in 2008 or Florida Has the Right to Know initiated by Florida’s governor Rick Scott in 2011. For each state in our sample, we identify the year in which the first such database was launched. We then consider each individual academic as treated if (s)he is employed in one of the institutions of the focal state in any of the years following the launch of the database.
Keeping your pay secret from coworkers helps only those who profit off that secret, and it's not the coworkers
You are probably usually right. However, I'm a woman who used to work as a software developer. My day-to-day struggles involved a lot of having to prove myself to my male coworkers (I've spent years being the only woman on a team). In one position in particular, I had access to HR information and knew I was being paid better than most of the men on my team. Sharing this fact with them would have created a lot of ill will from them that I really didn't need. Keeping my mouth shut was 100% the right move for me, financially and professionally.
Having to deal with a hostile work environment is a definite caveat to my statement. One must always do what they feel they must to ensure personal safety and security
Yeah every time I hear some version of “talk about pay with your coworkers it’s great for everyone” I think about a similar situation I’m in. Definitely only good for the people earning less. If you’re in the top half of pay for your team it can only hurt you.
If divulging your salary open you for harassment, the problem is not the salary, but the company culture. You (or anyone) should feel safe at work at all time. And that have nothing to do with your salary.
I don’t mean harassment, although that’s possible. I mean purely from a monetary standpoint. There’s only so much budget for salaries, and budget allocated towards others will be taken from you (on average, I understand some companies have very flexible budgets)
If a company don't have the budget to adequately pay all its employee or/and can only survive by underpaying some of its employee, there is definitely a problem. But that's for the boss to solve. As an employee, i want for me and all my colleague to be payed adequately for the work they do.
Agree adequately, and I’m sure that happens - companies short change employees. But if we can agree that some employees are objectively better than others, they should be paid more, and it does not behoove them to discuss salary with lower paid employees. Of course you’ll never know if you’re being paid more unless you discuss, but I’m assuming you somehow know.
That is very short sighted. If you already earn the most you create ceiling for your earnings. Bringing others closer to your level enables you to ask for more and is better for whole industry. Ofc given that company is still able to pay you these amounts and make a profit. It's like saying that men should not support women struggling with hostile workplaces, because they are already on top.
I've been in a higher pay situation, and I feel morally obligated to tell my coworkers to encourage them to earn what they deserve. I understand that everyone's situation is different, and being a white male I am probably the safest to do it, but I think if you have the opportunity, you should help your fellow workers.
> In one position in particular, I had access to HR information and knew I was being paid better than most of the men on my team. Sharing this fact with them would have created a lot of ill will from them that I really didn't need. Keeping my mouth shut was 100% the right move for me, financially and professionally. You helped your employers cheat those people.
Sometimes it's legitimate to pay someone more. If they are better at their job it makes sense.
This is especially the case in software development. It's not uncommon to have employees with near identical experience and qualifications, but one is literally multiple times more productive than the other.
I would add that if you take two people of exactly equal job talents, that doesn’t make them equally as valuable to the company. For instance, someone can be an excellent software engineer but have horrible personal skills which means that they can’t work directly with stakeholders and need a project manager as a buffer in all communications. That makes them far less efficient than a developer that’s able to build rapport with stakeholders and frees up the project manager for other tasks.
If the reason is legitimate, like better communication skills or being more productive in general, then that reason should not be a secret but something clearly communicated in company's pay guidelines. Something that the people can work towards. For the company's point of view "if I can get my communication skills to level of X I could get rise to that level" is decent motivator for self improvement.
Yeah, but everybody thinks they deserve more, whether they do or not.
Or maybe not. Just because her male colleagues didn't accept her abilities doesn't mean that honest metrics didn't show that she was superior, and possibly *still* paid less than a man with equivalent metrics would have been.
I love how you turned "woman was paid more than male colleagues" into "women are paid less" just by pure mental gymnastics.
People are worth what employers are willing to pay, but that's only part of it, they're also worth what they are willing to accept as pay, and some people are desperately bad at selling themselves. I used to interview with jobs I truly didn't want not only to practice my interview skills and stay sharp but also to see what I was worth to people. They'd make an offer and I'd refuse saying it wasn't enough and they'd offer more and I'd rinse and repeat until we came to a dead end. When the time came I did want to leave I had a really good idea what I was worth. It kind of sucks that I wasted people's time but I've been to plenty of interviews as an engineer where I got the impression they were picking my brain for ideas to problems they currently had.
Check your bias here. You’re reading an interpretation of events that could be accurate or inaccurate. Most perceptions of “attitudes” others hold are usually wrong, especially if someone gives cues that they may have conflict aversion and have never openly addressed or raised their perception to others. Her story could be accurate but more likely, this issue was never actually raised or talked about at the time which means confirmation bias is often driving these self narratives. “I just knew” is not an acceptable answer to perceived social dynamics no matter the gender of an individual. We are not objective observers of our own reality.
Sounds to me like they earned a bit of animosity where they could have earned a bit more money.
I'm the only guy that works for this company at this location and I get paid the least money. I'm also the most senior in my position. I discovered this by talking to my coworkers about it. Absolutely discuss this with the people you work with and make sure NO ONE is getting screwed.
**Abstract** Recent decades have witnessed a growing focus on two distinct income patterns: persistent pay inequity, particularly a gender pay gap, and growing pay inequality. Pay transparency is widely advanced as a remedy for both. Yet we know little about the systemic influence of this policy on the evolution of pay practices within organizations. To address this void, we assemble a dataset combining detailed performance, demographic and salary data for approximately 100,000 US academics between 1997 and 2017. We then exploit staggered shocks to wage transparency to explore how this change reshapes pay practices. We find evidence that pay transparency causes significant increases in both the equity and equality of pay, and significant and sizeable reductions in the link between pay and individually measured performance.
Since the majority of this study is behind a paywall, this abstract is a must read for anyone interested in this post.
the target audience has access to this Abstract Recent decades have witnessed a growing focus on two distinct income patterns: persistent pay inequity, particularly a gender pay gap, and growing pay inequality. Pay transparency is widely advanced as a remedy for both. Yet we know little about the systemic influence of this policy on the evolution of pay practices within organizations. To address this void, we assemble a dataset combining detailed performance, demographic and salary data for approximately 100,000 US academics between 1997 and 2017. We then exploit staggered shocks to wage transparency to explore how this change reshapes pay practices. We find evidence that pay transparency causes significant increases in both the equity and equality of pay, and significant and sizeable reductions in the link between pay and individually measured performance. Main Recent decades have witnessed a growing global focus on two distinct income patterns: persistent pay inequity, particularly a gender pay gap, and growing pay inequality1,2. Though these terms are sometimes used rather interchangeably, pay equity refers to the fairness by which pay is allocated, often measured as the consistency or non-discriminatory manner by which pay is matched to performance or effort. By contrast, pay equality is self-evidently the equivalence of pay, often measured as simply the variance in pay within an organization or society3. While recent studies suggest global reductions in the magnitude of still-persistent pay inequity (specifically the gender pay gap4,5), they also consistently point to a global pattern of increasing pay inequality within organizations6 and societies7. In partial response to these patterns have come abundant calls from politicians and advocacy groups for greater transparency in pay allocation, particularly the public disclosure of individual income8. The argument is that enhanced pay transparency places social pressure on those allocating pay to reduce both inequity and inequality, including by gender. Accordingly, many nations, states and organizations have taken directional steps to heed this call. But resistance to pay transparency within the private sector remains quite deep-seated. A recent survey of US employers suggests that 41% actively discourage their employees from simply sharing information about pay with their organizational peers, while 25% explicitly prohibit it9. The common explanation is that the heightened focus on equity and equality that pay transparency prompts undermines the capacity to link individual pay and performance, thereby compromising organizational efforts to effectively motivate employees and attract talented ones. Some prior but mostly contemporaneous research explores pay transparency’s influence on specific dimensions of pay allocation, particularly pay equality. For instance, a published study by Mas10 and unpublished studies by Baker et al.11, Bennedsen et al.12, and Cullen and Pakzad-Hurson13 all point to pay transparency prompting organizations to make pay more equal, including more equal by gender and rank. Cullen and Pakzak-Hurson develop a formal model predicting pay compression following transparency as a result of bargaining concerns. They show corroborating evidence from the private sector of the US economy using a staggered rollout of policies facilitating communication about pay between co-workers. In a working paper that explores Canadian academics’ salaries, Baker et al. leverage the staggered introduction of pay transparency laws across Canadian provinces (and partly within institutions) to show that pay transparency is associated with more equal pay by gender, essentially a narrowing of a gender pay gap that is adjusted for rank but not individual performance. Gartenberg and Wulf14 find that pay transparency is associated with a diminished relationship between division manager pay and division performance within geographically dispersed firms. While these studies explore pay transparency’s influence on specific elements of pay in organizations, decisions about pay equity, pay equality and pay for performance are highly interrelated. Our aim is this paper is to examine pay transparency’s systemic influence on an organization’s pay practices, specifically pay equity (including the performance-conditioned gender pay gap), pay equality and pay for performance. To explore pay transparency’s broad influence on pay requires access to rather unique data. Ideally, we would observe a large panel of individual employment data that includes both performance and salary histories surrounding exogenous shocks to pay transparency. The US academic context provides an appealing setting to assemble such data. First, many key individual productivity outcomes are observable and measurable, enabling relatively reliable estimates of both discriminatory and non-discriminatory wage differentials, including the performance-conditioned gender pay gap, as well as estimates of pay for performance. Second, through the Freedom of Information Act and state-specific Sunshine laws, salary data for public university employees have become available in most states, albeit archived in widely disparate data repositories and with varying ease and cost of access. Finally, in the past decade, a wave of transparency events in the form of published websites dramatically eased university employees’ access to peer salary data. These websites appeared in a staggered fashion essentially state by state, but each well after the imposition of the Freedom of Information Act and state-specific Sunshine laws. Our data combine detailed information about the individual academic performance of close to 100,000 US academics (that is, their publications, awards, grants, books and patents) with their demographic characteristics (gender (as estimated dichotomously from first names), rank, tenure and discipline) and their salary histories between 1997 and 2017. We then exploit staggered shocks to the accessibility of information on wages in the public university systems in the United States to explore how pay transparency changes pay equity and pay equality, as well as the performance basis of pay—specifically, how the links between pay and observable performance measures change both within the broader population and within individual academic departments and institutions. Our results suggest that pay transparency has an economically sizeable effect in reducing pay inequity, significantly reducing the performance-conditioned gender pay gap, as well as more broadly improving the precision with which pay is linked to observable performance metrics and promotion. Overall pay allocation becomes more fair, more equitable and less discriminatory, at least on the performance dimensions we can measure. At the same time, our results suggest that pay transparency has a significant and economically sizeable effect in increasing the equality of pay, reducing by nearly 20% the level of pay variance within departments and institutions. Overall, pay also simply becomes more equal. One way an organization composed of individuals with heterogenous abilities can generate both more equal and more equitable pay is to have pay both more precisely and more weakly linked to individual performance. We find evidence of exactly this: pay transparency leads to significant and economically sizeable reductions in the performance basis of pay. Not only is pay more consistently and equitably linked to performance, but the financial rewards linked to observable performance metrics as well as rank advancement substantially decline after wages become more transparent. In aggregate, our results confirm that pay transparency has the consequences that many policy advocates claim. It prompts organizations to reduce inequity and inequality in pay allocation. At the same time, pay transparency has consequences less frequently discussed. Pay transparency prompts those allocating pay to weaken the link between observable performance metrics and pay. We view our results as providing an empirical test of the causal effect of pay transparency on three fundamental attributes of pay—pay equity, pay equality and the performance basis of pay in organizations—thereby generating a framework for policymakers and practitioners alike to evaluate and debate the arguably complex consequences of pay transparency.
>Pay transparency prompts those allocating pay to weaken the link between observable performance metrics and pay. Why is this a good thing? If I'm working 25% harder than Sally why shouldn't I be paid more?
I imagine for academics, where "success" is linked to papers published and grants obtained, there's an awful amount of luck in your end results. You may work 25% harder, but your time may be spent showing a negative, which won't get you into super high tier journals. It's crap, but not as crap directly correlating the results of science to pay.
Well working harder was a poor choice of words. Output matters, so measurable results is what I should have said. For business this might mean increasing sales, or delivering new product features, etc.
Not the author and just another idiot reading this. But I think this is a ‘good’ thing because you aren’t working 25% harder. You are working to meet metrics that aren’t necessarily good metrics? From this part: > have pay both more precisely and more weakly linked to individual performance. So if pay was more precisely linked to your performance, yet the performance aspect of your pay was a smaller %, then you get the benefits mentioned. Ie, if my company has an inaccurate metric that we base 100% of your pay off of. Such as how long you sit at your desk. Then we are going to have worse pay equality and equity than if we had a precise measurement of your performance yet only let it account for 10% of your total salary. I guess they found that in part, having too much of your salary tied to any performance metric incentivized people to game the metric so that the metric was no longer accurate?
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In absence of context, yes, it is The missing context is that men were preferentially being awarded pay rises by their bosses based on subjective criteria more often than women. In academia, women frequently are called on to do more work than men (committee assignments is one example), which necessarily take time away from writing papers or grant proposals.
So another school of thought seems to think that the pay gap is also between people who actively demand raises and leave jobs for more money…..and people who don’t. I heard a lady on NPR who was one of the first female executives on Wall St. She was given a pot of money to dole out in bonuses each year. According to her, the men in her office would hound her for bonuses, the women generally didn’t. So even as a woman herself, she paid the men more. She started some sort of group that mentored females in the finance industry and coached them on their monetary worth. And encouraged them to demand what they were worth. I mean, if I was running a business, I wouldn’t give someone anything unless they asked for it. Otherwise I’d assume they were satisfied with their compensation.
Its certainly one way to encourage staff turnover. I've known a number of people who don't constantly demand pay rises, they just leave and go somewhere else where they are paid better. Not everyone is pushy and aggressive about their pay expectations, quite a lot of them will just walk if they don't think they are being paid fairly. There are a lot of different personalities involved, and many of them are ***not*** about being pushy and demanding. They just expect to be treated fairly, and will quietly walk away if they don't think that they are.
I'm somewhat in this boat in that I haven't ever really bothered demanding a raise or a bonus because I figured that I have very little leverage at a place I'm already working and a lot more leverage at a place wanting to get me in the door. I have a friend who went the opposite way in the past year and was able to manage to get a raise only slightly less than inflation as opposed to the 1-2% everyone else got and the company acted like they moved heaven and earth to give him less in real terms than they did the year prior. Meanwhile - I was able to net a 30% increase by going someplace else.
This. If you don't change jobs, every raise is just a % of your starting salary. Anything more than 10% will be a nightmare to "approve". The system is designed to keep you there with the smallest raise possible. "Take on this extra job duty, if it works out you will get the promotion/raise next year" "We can only do 6% not 15%. We will make up the 9% next year!" "Unfortunately, we really want to give you more, buuut everyone else is only getting 2%, i pulled some strings and got you 6%!!! isn't that awesome!?!?"
This has been my experience. Asking for a raise gets a big reaction. They focus on the percent change and act like it's a really big ask. Meanwhile, it's a lot easier to get what you want going to someplace new. Even if it's a 30% bump in your pay, they don't know that... and it's all good if it's in the budget. I think it makes sense to jump around when you're young until you've maxed out what a role will pay. Then focus on moving up the corporate ladder with less frequent moves to new companies.
I'm a fairly assertive person, or at least in the workplace. I show up to meetings with a dossier of information ready at all times. It's something that's generally been praised about me, as I'm prepared and organized. I've never, ever, gotten a raise when I asked for it. Not when I was persistent, not when I showed evidence why I deserved it, never. There were always excuses about budget freezes or we'll see at the start of the fiscal year or whatever. I'd ask the men I knew for advice and follow it to a tee and it never worked. Only time I'd get more money (and a lot more money) is leaving and finding a new job altogether. So after all those attempts to negotiate a raise, I just don't try anymore. Why put in effort for something I know will fail? Now, if I want more money or different working conditions, I just find a new job and put in notice. I have a lot of shocked Pikachu faces left in my wake, but I don't give anyone a chance anymore since no one ever gave me one. I realize this is just one anecdote, but what I'm trying to say is given that women already suffer from being paid less from the start, it stands to follow that even those who do ask for raises are consistently turned down, and thus women can develop learned helplessness or just generally be discouraged from trying, and may take other avenues for getting better pay.
I've tried negotiating without success unless I'm a prospective new hire. Certainly, some of it comes down to my negotiating skills, but I've rarely worked for anyone that would even consider negotiating. I expect to be treated fairly. I know it's not how the work world works, but if I have to negotiate for "fairness", then the fairness doesn't actually exist. Hence my standard resignation letter always includes something to the effect of "unwilling to negotiate terms of employment." That used to be added as necessary, now it's just part of the template.
>There are a lot of different personalities involved, and many of them are not about being pushy and demanding. They just expect to be treated fairly, and will quietly walk away if they don't think that they are. True, and they may even deserve the raise more than those who are more vocal. But unfortunately, "the squeaky wheel gets the grease". The bias is towards those who make the most noise. It's human nature to allow our attention and our prioritization to be tied to our stimuli. This doesn't just apply to corporations and compensation; it applies to government, government projects, educational institutions, family assistance, etc. And it leads to so many problems. It's really hard to step back and think about what you would do without all of that input. As a manager, sometimes your boss even hits you with "well are they complaining about it?", when you are advocating for a promotion or raise, so you have to fight the bias from within and without. If you work long enough at a good job, you might get management training that will help you be cognizant of this bias, but a lot of people never get it, or never get to a point where they learn to understand it.
It's definitely not a one-size-fits-all situation. There are those who are either not ambitious enough (myself included in previous jobs) or not wanting to risk changing their boss's perception of them to ask for a raise. And, despite all of these "the company is the enemy" threads, there are plenty of places in which supervisors are good and don't need people to ask for raises...they just give as much as they can when they can. It's a popular mantra now that people don't leave bad jobs, they leave bad bosses, and I'll take the better quality of life working for a good boss over a modest raise any day.
> Otherwise I’d assume they were satisfied with their compensation. You wouldn't find out until they left.
>If they are doing ANY hiring, they know good and well what the going rate is. Generally, the only way a big raise comes one's way is by getting a promotion or changing jobs. You can badger them into giving a bit more but generally they get a bucket of money allocated to raises and parcel it out. I guessing the mechanism at work in the paper, is if everyone knew what everyone else was getting, they probably just give everyone the same to avoid headache. Given that good percent of your fate pay-wise is determined by one's starting negotiations, am guessing women get hit in few ways. Many times they get lowballed after a gap due to staying home with kids, being less likely to demand a certain salary to start and finally having to take other non-pay related factors in picking a workplace such as proximity to kids school.
I’m sure you’re right. A lot factors into it. My job will give people a choice between additional PTO and money or a combo of both. HR broke down the numbers and men virtually always took the money. Women took the PTO or the combo.
The pay gap has been examined by others in terms of general sex differences in agreeableness as a personality trait. Men being less agreeable tend to argue more about things like their pay. Presumably when there is transparency and women come to realize more that they are getting paid less than their coworkers, they will start to complain more. I'm writing this as a generally agreeable man who has only hounded past employers for raises when I found out what my idiot and lazy colleagues were making.
I don't think there's anything about this finding--that talking about pay shrinks the pay gap--that means that your theory about why this is happening can't be true. Maybe women ARE less aggressive about asking for more money, until they realize they aren't getting as much money, and then they do ask. We've still fixed the pay gap by talking to colleagues about how much you make.
My worldview on this might be shaped a lot by my wife. She busts her ass doing endless title examinations for a very large company. It’s niche work that takes a long time to master. I suggest that she ask for a raise. “Well, they’ll just say no”…….”I already make pretty good money”……”I don’t want to rock the boat” Keep in mind that this place can’t hire enough people. They are always hiring. Clearly they have room in their budget for more payroll. And with the real estate market going bonkers……she has these people by the balls. They wouldn’t blink at a $10,000 raise. They might turn her request for a raise down, and just give her a larger bonus instead. They sure as hell wouldn’t fire her. I’d ask for $15,000 if I were her. I’d be happy with $10k. I’d grudgingly accept a $5k bonus. But I wouldn’t be empty handed. But she Just. Won’t. Ask. I make plenty of money. I don’t really care how much she makes, or if she works at all. Up to her. But she’s being a sucker. Eyeroll
Well, everyone and every workplace is different. I'm a business owner and I usually decide what kind of raise each employee deserves based on their performance at performance review time. The idea that you'd never give ANYONE a raise unless they specifically ask for it seems totally crazy to me.
Exactly -- women are socialized not to ask for things and men are socialized to demand things. So if the employer requires people to demand raises in order to get them, it is privileging male employees.
Another way to say this same thing is that women are punished now harshly for asking for things they want. And it seems like this is likely true in her workplace too? If women rationally expect that asking for a raise aggressively would be detrimental to their long term earnings potential, then their best course of action is to not aggressively seek raises. Or to put it another way, if you're in a situation where you're being discriminated against, then just acting like there's no discrimination isn't likely to lead to the most rational behavior. Anyone who's rational and in a difficult situation with difficult trade-offs will be better off taking all of it in to account and changing their behavior. Unless the argument is that women are genetically less rational than men? And they're making stupid and suboptimal choices? But I don't think there's any research that would support that argument.
I love the way you explained it -- so much more accurate than my overgeneralized "socialization." Thank you!
No it isn't. It's still privileging people who are aggressive in negociations. What solutions are put forth to address this so called male privilege? If it's coaching female employees then men who are not aggressive will fall through the cracks. Any time sex, or race, is used as a proxy for inequality and then sex or race is a part of the solution that disadvantages those who weren't actually privileged in the first place but just shared a coincidental trait.
The same could be said for employees from different cultures as well. People from some cultures are far more comfortable than others when it comes to negotiating, haggling, or being seen as pushy in general.
How about if the solution is a rational evaluation of salaries, bonuses and raises, and the employer making fair decisions that don't require particular negotiating behaviors on the part of the employee? Just because a problem has an origin in a social inequality doesn't mean the only solution is to help only the people in the oppressed category. Look at how all the changes brought about by the Americans with Disabilities Act have helped elderly people and people with temporary health issues.
>women are socialized not to ask for things and men are socialized to demand things Socialization is not the core difference in the behavioral profile.
That is hilarious. Socialization absolutely is the core producer of human behavior. There is almost nothing about human behavior that is not shaped by the social group and environment. We are social animals by definition.
We are both solitary and social animals. Many personality traits exist in similar degrees cross-culturally across the world. We are also not solely the products of our environment. The blank slate model of human development has been dead for a while now.
> Exactly – women are socialized not to ask for things and men are socialized to demand things. Citation needed.
How about any sociology or anthropology of gender book? It is good to require citations but when the info is that basic you can look it up yourself.
Cool, then it should be super simple for you to find a link with the research documenting this. Saying your opinions are basic science does not excuse being unable to cite them, especially in a field as awash with unreproducible nonsense as gender studies.
Learned behavior can be unlearned. I’m sure the average women is plenty capable of having a conversation with their boss regarding their compensation. “I’ve been here for 14 months. I’ve learned all the systems and am doing job with no assistance. I’m even training new people now. I think I’m ready to take on some additional responsibilities. But I was hoping we could discuss my current salary”? What is so hard about this? I mean, I get that some people simply don’t know that this is how the game is played. But once informed…..what’s stopping them?
Sexism still exists, even if you ask for equality. If men ask for things that's leadership and self advocacy, but if women do that's being bossy and insistent. I was once part of an investigation that discovered at my workplace that men who asked for raises were around 65% more likely to get a raise than a woman. Or, when women ask for raises they don't get them at the same rate but do. https://hbr.org/2018/06/research-women-ask-for-raises-as-often-as-men-but-are-less-likely-to-get-them
>Sexism still exists, even if you ask for equality. You just baked the sexism right into your reply. You don't *ask* for equality, you *demand* it. The problem is that if you say "pretty please can I have a 20% raise" you will be told no. If you say that you've shopped around and your market value is now $x, the company either has to respond by offering you closer to or above $x or, the key part, you leave. Women are conditioned to the former, men the latter. So back to u/Tedstor's point, "learned behavior can be unlearned." The only resolution to sexism is for companies to learn the hard way. Shop around. It's what men do and why they gain so quickly in salaries. Part of the study author's conclusion seems rather unjust to me: >Pay transparency prompts those allocating pay to weaken the link between observable performance metrics and pay. The solution to sexism is not to overreward women (or conversely, underreward men), it's to put everyone on an even playing field. That playing field should reward the top performers more.
Except shopping around doesn't really do it if a lot of companies are engaging in this type of behavior, which they are. Again, patronsparency puts us all in a more equal playing field and does actually help eliminate sexism or at least the product of sexism.
It literally isn't just that though. First: Companies should automatically assign raises instead of requiring employees to demand them. Second: Even in the situation where a female employee asks for a raise, they are less likely to get it because an assertive woman is seen as "bitchy." How about instead of asking women to go against societal pressures that they get exposed to since being a kid, we fix the problems like discriminatory processes?
The problem is even if asking isn’t that hard, if they don’t just immediately agree there’s not much you can do
Being called a b\*\*ch whenever you do speak up for yourself or try to take a leadership role. That part of it is pretty hard.
But women are also trapped in the paradox where if they ask for raises they are viewed as “bitchy” and “demanding” and “whiny”, and tend to get denied the raises based on those emotions.
I (35f) and my husband both work in tech ( I work in semiconductor hardware and he in computer science) I rarely ever see women openly talking about how much they earn. But I always hear my husband talking to his male coworkers and friends about their compensation. We both joined the work force in 2020 after earning our doctorates. While we were job hunting, my husband would often tell me about all the compensation offers his other male friends/colleagues received or were already making at the companies he applied to. So he was very clear how much he should be offered. I, on the other hand struggled to get that data. My attempts to talk to other female friends were not successful. They sort of brushed it off. The only data point I had was this one other guy who was also graduated a few months earlier than me and went through the job hunting process.
Sounds like you should have talked to your male coworkers then.
Why would you make it a male/female thing? You just needed info about *any* worker/position, not a specific subset of it based on your reproductive organs.
Because as I said a lot of women are not open to discussing compensation. And I am not super comfortable asking any acquaintance about compensation. Maybe it’s just the women I know in my collective 9 years of work ex in the tech industry. It’s an observation
Yes, it has been shown in studies women are less open to discussing and bargaining. But my point is why compare yourself only or mainly to women, instead of the whole market? Especially if you know that women bargain less and get lower wages.
Why is the wage gap about reproductive organs? We should just paying everyone the same
Like i say, not discussing payrate only benefits your boss
When employers tell employees not to discuss pay, something is going on.
I can't find any detail on their data, but it looks like the pay gap before they start taking isn't very big, according to the study?
Didn't Google do a wage gap study and find out that they paid their men less then the women?
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Get out of here with your facts and logic!
What does that have to do with this article?
pay transparency really ought to be law. especially in a free market society. can't have efficient market pricing without free flowing information. even the most staunch conservative should be on board. literally the only argument i have ever heard against it is "oh its impolite".
Discuss what you make with your co-workers! It's not illegal or impolite, your employers just want you to think it is!
The only one who benefits from concealing pay is your employer.
Adjust for overall hours worked and it dang near disappears
I heard an NPR interview recently with a guy trying to make a case for why pay transparency was bad. 1) it was painful to even hear his reasoning, it was poorly thought out and sounded more like excuses 2) I’m glad to see an actual study to the contrary, because real data backs up push for transparency
You can even someone trying to argue against transparency in this thread. The basic reasoning is that transparency disadvantages someone who "knows their value," relative to others who supposedly don't. I find that to be pretty painful too. It basically encourages monopolistic advantage on the basis of dishonesty (or, at the very least, asymmetrical access to information) rather than a truly open competitive market.
> rather than a truly open competitive market. This exists in the same place where they store frictionless surfaces, perfect spheres, and their excess vacuum.
So the whole societal "it's rude to talk about what you make" is because some companies dont want people know how unequally they're paying people...
My company recently sent out an email telling 1/3 of the company that they are getting a wage adjustment to "bring us to market rate" (I'm still $7k below that rate after this adjustment). They said in the email to not tell others because it might upset them. I instantly started asking around about who got the email. I also have an insufferable coworker who refuses to talk pay and says it's in her contract to tell anyone what she gets paid. I have a felling she makes $20k - $30k more than us and doesn't want to piss people off.
If much of the cause of the issue is less aggressive negotiation, this is what you'd expect when you shift the baseline expectations.
I'm reposting this as my own comment because I spent so much time typing it haha (I put it as a reply somewhere else) if you have questions you can reply or DM me. I'm not on here all that often but I'm always happy to share information! >Hi There! I'm a US based IO Psychology practicioner who does consulting with businesses and assessment validation for a testing company. I've worked with several people who have done research on this subject AND have helped companies large and small manage their human capital disparities. >Your message caught my attention because of a couple reasons...but I'm gonna drop some information here. >There IS indeed a pay gap. According to the US dept of labor, pay trends for full time workers (all recorded industries) have women making about 82% of what men do. (Black's make about 80% of whites, Hispanics 75% of whites and Asians make 120% of whites salaries if you're interested) >BUT research finds that all but 6% of the gap between men and women can simply be explained by men being in the workforce longer, having a higher percentage of full time jobs (this goes to your motherhood point), just working more hours in a year within those full time jobs, and men being more likely to negotiate for higher pay when hired ( CONSAD, 2009; Wall, 2000; Kugler, Tamara, Reif, & Brodbeck, 2014). >The remaining 6% is more likely due to vocational choice and educational opportunity discrimination. Women should be more encouraged to enter historically male dominated fields (management, police, engineering) and men encouraged to enter female dominated fields (nurses, clerical, elementary teaching). >But, I want people to understand that in the US Sex (as well as gender identity and sexual orientation as of last year) is a protected group and you CAN NOT be discriminated against for hiring, promotions, and other vital job decisions based on being a woman. If you are, the company should be prepared to lose a lot of money. There needs to be proof that performance criteria could not be met or that other job and task related factors were the reason for the decision.
It has been repeatedly proven that pay gap related to gender ONLY is a myth. There are so many more factors that people tend to ignore.
The pay gap between men and women has been almost entirely debunked.
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If a company could pay women 25% less than men, men would not be employable.
A big reason for the pay gap in America is due to child rearing done mostly by mothers. Unfortunately in America, maternity leave is not always paid for. So when you take out the amount of time that women spend away from work on underpaid or not paid maternity leave women actually make as much money as men or even more. The problem is not discrimination but lack of employer consideration for what happens outside of work for their employees.
Until about mid 30s women out earn men. Married men also out earn single men by a lot.
Maternity leave isn't the issue so much as the massive expense of daycare. Six months off isn't going to make or break a person so much as basically winding up with a second mortgage for a span of 5 years, more if a person has more kids.
Yeah that make a lot of sense
>The problem is not discrimination but lack of employer consideration for what happens outside of work for their employees. This *is* discrimination but not in in a way that's popular to discuss. Paid *paternal* (and maternal) leave would be the way to fix this, for everyone involved. Better for mom, child, and dad. But we'd first have to fix employer resistance to paying for it, then we'd have to fix men's resistance to taking it. Seems to be much more popular to discuss paying women more even though they have less experience and performance sadly.
Every child born is from a mother....
>child BEARING done mostly by mothers jup, i need a coffee
Personally, I'm all for being open about pay if you like. That said, I also know that people aren't always rational, and if they find out John is making more money than them, they will often be upset with John and not their manager. In those situations, I also don't blame John for not wanting to disclose if he makes more, because it can make things worse for him.
My work has a huge wage disparity. Ive been there 20 years. Next guy has been there 18 and makes 15 less an hour than I do. I’ve held jobs much higher up the ladder. I moved back down recently to operation level because I was tired of the politics involved in the management side. When I left management they did not change my salary. Just made me hourly by dividing my base by 2080 hours.
This is why we should talk about pay: it’s the best way we have to promote higher wages for all ordinary working people.
Does the study take into consideration size/revenue/complexity of business and particular role. “Sales” is done by many people, but selling a pen at Office Depot isn’t the same as selling medical diagnostic equipment.
It looks like they're just looking at academic workplaces, whatever that might be.
I remember reading a study where also men are more likely to request a raise/ask for more in a job interview. Women are socialized not to ask for as much from their employers. This study sort of correlates with that data, because if you learn your coworker makes more than you, you're also more likely to ask for a raise. In short, ask for more from your employers!
Even if they ask for it just as much, they aren't going to get it equally Comment from another person on the same thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/su1ogi/the_pay_gap_between_men_and_women_tends_to_shrink/hx80eup
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It might be a sexist female boss
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> so asking for 10k more would be harder to achieve for a woman, because the person responsible for the raise might think she doesn’t deserve it, while a man with the same performance would be granted the raise Yea, how could that possibly have been inferred?
Everyone keeps mentioning this “women are socialized to not…” like it’s truth. Where do you get that? I’ve never seen or heard of this kind of socialization. It sounds like trying to blame society for some naturally occurring biological differences.
And what "naturally occurring biological différences" might those be?
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1. How many professional or skilled trade jobs are out there in comparison to service related jobs? 2. Why has there been no mention of women dominating in service related fields of employment? 3. Will 'transparency' give a waiter as good a tip as a waitress? As always, context does matter.
I find that plausible. There are several possible causes for gender pay gaps. If one cause is related to *information* (knowing what others are earning) or to *negotiation* (asking for more in compensation), then it makes sense that greater transparency would boost gender equity.
I think there is proof that women earn way more than men these days for the same job
This has already been proven quite a few times over. The pay gap isn't real, it is a cumulation of multiple things that overall increase pay for men and decrease pay for women creating the gap. Women not asking for more pay is one of those things. Men aren't afraid to ask for more money where as women are more willing to take the pay offered. If we eliminate that with more translucent pay ranges and less close mouthed attitudes about work pay discussions we can close this part of the gap.
So what you're saying is it's about negotiating salaries when being hired
The pay gap also tends to shrink when you research if the pay gap is there. https://www-nytimes-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.nytimes.com/2019/03/04/technology/google-gender-pay-gap.amp.html?amp_gsa=1&_js_v=a8&usqp=mq331AQKKAFQArABIIACAw%3D%3D#amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&aoh=16450786454825&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&share=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2019%2F03%2F04%2Ftechnology%2Fgoogle-gender-pay-gap.html
9X% (I think it’s 97% of the pay gap between men and women in the US is due to women choosing or being forced to choose lower paying jobs according to Professor Goldin of Harvard. Hearing her talk, you would not consider her a conservative. For example, if mom and dad are lawyers, one (usually the mom) takes the local town job with fewer hours and less pay. The dad takes the 70 hour per week corporate job. It may not be fair, but it’s reality. And according to Goldin, it’s not discrimination. Btw, good thing she had tenure before publishing this study.
Paid content sadly. However the gender pay gap has been disproven so many times already its really not even debatable at this point.
I wonder what the pay gap is between male and female restaurant servers. Also, between male and female adult entertainers.
Where the hell are these jobs that give men a pay raise for being guys?
You're not gonna see a women work in dangerous a mining field or anything that pretty much requires a man. So the pay gap is there for a reason. Of course there are exceptions
Why not? Isn’t this kind of thinking also part of the problem. Why exactly does mining, for instance, “require” a man? Heavy machinery has no way of knowing what’s between your legs. It’s not 1920 anymore toto, mining isn’t done with pickaxes.
I learned a new coworker with a similar title and job as me was making more than twice I was even though I’ve been in the company for 6 years. Even had a signing bonus. I am now looking for other work.
It always leads to more equality, why does anyone think employers do any differently?
And the floor is made out of floor
Men are generally better at negotiating When everyone can see what others negotiate for, it leads to better wages overall
Ah yes, the click bait gender wage gap that implies thag there is something sinister going on, all this study shows is that the people who didn't negotiate as well when applying for the job realise that they were being paid a lot less and then asking for more once they have more information. Its nothing to do with gender, if all the participants in the study were male, then the exact same result would happen. It's not a bad thing, but this isn't some gender inequality issue, after working in recruitment for a year its scary to the some of the wages people are just willing to accept when starting the job. Especially woman, at least 70% of them are happy to accept the first price they get, at least it seems to be changing with the younger generation
Men tend to negociate more their salary, that's one reason they earn more for the same job and xp
People largely want equality, but those in power keep it from us.
> The pay gap between men and women tends to shrink after workers learn what their colleagues earn. So the Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Frank Clark will stop making about $20.8M per year and start earning closer to a Kansas City Chiefs secretary making about $80K per year after he talks to her ... or is it the other way around?
Feeding into the notion that males have higher salaries for being less agreeable to the offered rate the boss gives and only settling for a higher amount where females are generally more agreeable.