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Comment by mathattack | Hacker News Reader

I don't think "teaching women to negotiate" is practical. Is Google or Facebook supposed to send candidates to negotiation classes before offer negotiation time? Is there evidence that a training class can overcome whatever combination of nature and nurture causes the discrepancy?

Let the market drive the compensation level. If "the compensation for the position - take it or leave it" is too low, then the company won't be able to hire anyone, and they will have to alter it over time.

If it's "take it or leave it" from the employee, you wind up underpaying people with humility, and overpay people who are overconfident.

Note: I'm not at one of the large companies that have been in these lawsuits, and lost an internal fight to move to the "one price" policy that I'm advocating for. I'm doing my best to implement it in my part of the organization, and even there it doesn't always work.

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Of course Google and Facebook are not going to send candidates to negotiation classes; they would stand to lose from such an arrangement.

Rather, there are many ways to approach this:

1. Salary negotiation could be included within curriculum at CS schools. (Schools would love if alumni made more money!)

2. Techniques could be included in books (like "Soft Skills"), podcasts, etc.

3. The culture in Silicon Valley could emphasize the importance of negotiating a fair wage.

Left to their own devices, companies WILL exploit those who believe that negotiation is "bad". Companies might not even do so intentionally, but might do so merely by hiring the cheapest employees who have the highest skills.

A side effect is that even if only 75% of employees negotiate to higher wages, the "market rate salary" for employees will increase. If, instead, 75% of employees did NOT negotiate, you'd see a depression in wages.

> 1. Salary negotiation could be included within curriculum at CS schools.

This is such a good idea. The modern school system oscillates between industrial training and academic pursuit, and very practical skills like this one (or householding finances) which could directly benefit the actual person, are terribly neglected.

What is it that stops teachers from talking about everyday matters related to money? Is it their own sense of inadequacy on the subject? Fear of letting out how much they (don't) make? Is it "political pressure"? Or simply that they love their academic subjects so much, they'd rather not talk about more prosaic stuff?

Taught software dev for four years in higher ed. I always had modules on resume/cover letter, behavioral interviews, core value matching, self promotion, salary negotiation, and other job-related things.

Student feedback always suggested these were incredibly valuable lessons.

> Is there evidence that a training class can overcome whatever combination of nature and nurture causes the discrepancy?

There is also the issue that the same behaviour is seen differently when coming from men and women. What is assertive in a man can be aggressive and offputting in a woman. Which means you'd have to have different kinds of courses for different genders, and it only starts there (more minority groups with less studies of what happens when they act the same as a white male). So, there is even more of a hurdle for potential training classes to overcome.

I always hear assertions about negative reactions to assertive women. Has any science been done on it?

Yes, it appears that women are penalized for assertiveness (more than men).

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/men-see-powerful-women-a...

https://hbr.org/2013/04/for-women-leaders-likability-a/

Thanks!

How much of that is the result of intrinsic gender differences vs. learned culture?

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