Do Women Avoid Salary Negotiations? [pdf]
fieldexperiments.com
fieldexperiments.com
Just to get you started and maybe entice you to read the paper, the abstract says: "We observe interesting data patterns. For example, we find that when there is no explicit statement that wages are negotiable, men are more likely to negotiate than women. However, when we explicitly mention the possibility that wages are negotiable, this difference disappears, and even tends to reverse. In terms of sorting, we find that men in contrast to women prefer job environments where the ‘rules of wage determination’ are ambiguous. This leads to the gender gap being much more pronounced in jobs that leave negotiation of wage ambiguous."
One interesting result that's not in the abstract: even when the wage was explicitly negotiable, only about 25% of people bothered to negotiate! (This is for an "administrative assistant" style job.)
Saying explicitly that it's negotiable means to me that there's more available and I only have to say a few words or pretend not to be interested in order to get that money.
I also learned early on in my career that when taking a job it's better to push for a higher salary at the beginning, because raises always seem to be based on what you're getting now, and targeted at just enough to stop you going elsewhere.
--edit-- male, for the record.
Declaring it negotiable means to me that they may be willing to pay more to a better candidate, me!
I guess it depends on the stage. In a job ad $Negotiable means I won't bother applying because I don't know what ballpark we're looking at. A negotiable amount in an ad (for example $100k, negotiable) could mean they'll try to low-ball you later, or it could mean you can argue them higher. At that point it depends who you're dealing with.
But if you've been through the interview process and there's an offer made, but someone drops the n-word that's when you know somebody has a little more money to play with and it's your job to try and tease it out of them.
Uncanny. That's exactly the same kind of gnawing feeling that I have many a time as well. And that sometimes makes me bite my tongue and leave an offer/negotiation the way it is. Oh well!
By negotiating you are presenting yourself as someone who stands up for himself, and more of an equal to your potential boss. That sets the stage for greater responsibility (if you want it). No reasonable person ever begrudges someone being a hard negotiator on salary and benefits.
Not true at all. Both Felix Denis and Donald Trump have written about the perils of hiring overly mercenary employees. So did one of my former mentors. Being a hard negotiator on salary and benefits is a hallmark sign of optimizing for a short-term relationship.
I'm not trying to say that discrimination is ok, I'm just saying that the typical system requires you to ask for money, you're not just given it out of the kindness of your employers heart.
Perhaps if women are implicitly required to negotiate, and choose not to, then they will be recruited by another organization who is willing to pay them more without negotiation. You've just lost out on a good engineer - the employer has done themselves a disservice.
i guess like other people are saying, i'm not sure if people look at two equal candidates and discriminate based on sex/age/other.
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/09/14/1211286109.abst...
1) women negotiate less 2) women take more time off for children, thus advance more slowly
Basically showing that there is no inherent gender discrimination on wages in the US, in the aggregate -- that it's entirely due to choices made by women, not any kind of discrimination whatsoever.
On the other hand, there are also blind studies testing resumes in certain areas, which show that employers perceive resumes with male names to be stronger than identical resumes with female names. And on the other other hand, I feel like every engineering place I've worked would always hire an equally-qualified woman over a man, since there are so few of them to begin with.
So, who knows...
Simply because it's a choice made by women doesn't mean that they're not being constrained by discrimination or sexist norms.
Consider: what if the reason women choose not to negotiate is that the penalties for negotiation are higher for women? E.g., they'll be perceived as bitchy or ungrateful, while a man would lose nothing by negotiating or even gain character points for being assertive and proactive.
Not providing evidence that that's the case, here (though to some extent it certainly is). But even free choice is constrained by the system it's embedded in.
“1) women negotiate less 2) women take more time off for children, thus advance more slowly”
… not be due to inherent gender discrimination (mostly strict gender roles)? Those things explain gender discrimination, they certainly do not explain it away.
I'm not saying it necessarily is, but just that it's one theoretical way in which they might "not be due to inherent gender discrimination" or "strict gender roles".
Suppose testosterone makes men more aggressive (and thus more likely to negotiate), and women have less of it -- then that's purely biological right there, no gender discrimination required.
Successful people negotiate everything: job title, compensation, authority in hierarchical companies, project allocation. If turned down for a raise, they get a better project or a "meaningless" title that improves the CV. They're resilient against rejection (an inevitable outcome of negotiation) but they keep trying and working to improve. The rest, who don't, get mediocre results-- male or female. In software, there are a lot of people who don't know how to negotiate-- at all.
In school, we live in an artificial environment where everyone is assessed on similar projects and grades are fairly objective. So negotiating for a better result-- a B rather than a C-- is seen as dishonorable and weak. You should have studied harder. This no-negotiation zone is reasonable in a world where grades are (in comparison to workplace performance reviews) exceedingly fair and 90-95% get passing grades. If you're on the threshold (a 'D' student) it means you were a weak performer who managed to squeak by.
But in the real world, for promotions and favors and work autonomy and VC funding, pass rates are << 50% and if you don't have it in you to negotiate for a better outcome, you're screwed.
Excellent points.
Many "computer people" are really good at what they do because they leveraged their introversion into uncommonly high levels of programming skill. In such an environment, the interpreter is "fair", the compiler is "fair" (although often uncompromising and unforgiving).
Once you get the "right" answer, it stays right and doesn't change unless external circumstances change (e.g. new compiler, new hardware, something breaks).
On the other hand, the human world is not always "fair", and it's often possible to push back against a judgment, using only high confidence and a loose but passionate argument.
Belief that the human world operates with the same exact logic and precision as the computer world is a source of many misunderstandings.
This topic has been food for thought!
(And everything in between - my post was a generalization of one side...)
Had to lol at that one!
I agree with most of what you're saying, but I also think you're kind-of side stepping the issue that the paper sought to quantify.
Yes its not just a problem for women, but there's a lot more pressure on women to avoid confrontational negotiation[1] because they'll be branded much more negatively (ie "Bitchiness" or some other term), and if they are, then they risk being taken less seriously.
Men don't have the same problem, as culturally strong/pushy personalities (that might fare better in negotiation or negotiate more) are seen as less of a cultural negative. It's something explicitly expected of one gender and seen as more repulsive in the other, and that becomes a big deal for things like salary negotiation.
[1] See Women Don't Ask: The High Cost of Avoiding Negotiation - http://www.amazon.com/dp/0553383876/
For what it's worth, there's what looks to be a strong rebuttal of most of the things this book says here:
http://fdiv.net/2012/01/20/pseudo-science-and-pseudo-feminis...
(I'd tend to think that your point stands anyway as being obviously true, but after reading the rebuttal again along with the link to this article I'm not sure anymore.)
This perhaps-useful rebuttal is, I agree, buried in a largely-unrelated rant about what the rebuttal-author wishes every discussion of feminism (or privilege in general) was about. As you say, third-wave feminism talking points. Whether they're interesting or not, they're not what the book is about. Sorry, jstrecker, you don't get to dictate the content of all conversation.
(To give the ranter eir due, I think ranting about privilege -- the subject of the rant -- is largely correct, and deserves more of us thinking about it more often. I'm not sure the tactics of the crazy-street-preacher are the most effective ones, though.)
1) Woman asks for higher salary; 2) she must be a bitch. 3) Therefore, she is taken less seriously.
What does that even mean?
> I don't think it's just a problem for women.
Since the paper provided clear evidence that this problem is worse for women. But then I kept reading and learned that you believe
> The percentage of people who are decent negotiators is small and, empirically, most of them seem to be men.
So that clarified to me that actually you a) believe women are inferior and b) that you did not read even the article's abstract which clearly stated that
> We observe interesting data patterns. For example, we find that when there is no explicit statement that wages are negotiable, men are more likely to negotiate than women. However, when we explicitly mention the possibility that wages are negotiable, this difference disappears, and even tends to reverse.
Implying that women's failure to negotiate arises from being socialized not to raise a fuss about wages rather than a difference in intrinsic ability.
All in all pretty standard for a top comment about gender issues on HN.
I certainly don't believe that "women are inferior". I was talking about negotiation skill. It can be learned, and there are plenty of women who are excellent at it.
I still think it sort of reads that way but it's obviously not what you meant and I clearly see now how you meant it to be read.
It does not do that for me. The existence of a gender role or a population bias in current society says nothing about men or women being superior or inferior. It most likely says something about society.
The percentage of people who are serial killers is small, and empirically, most of them are men.
>So that clarified to me that actually you a) believe women are inferior
There is absolutely no way your quoted portion could honestly be read in a way that suggests that. "Empirically, most of them seem to be men" explicitly disavows any attempt at explaining the difference.
This is the problem I see with a lot on threads on the topic of social justice here and places like reddit. Some have a pervasive need to read everything in the worst possible light, even going to the point of inventing enemies to support a narrative of widespread persecution.
>All in all pretty standard for a top comment about gender issues on HN.
I'm not sure what you expect from a forum such as this. There simply isn't much to add in terms of the socialization aspect of this article that hasn't already been hashed out in other threads about gender issues. This study doesn't really add any new information that would warrant another discussion on the issue. Discussing how everyone is affected by lack of assertiveness in general, and specifically in salary negotiations will likely have much more utility, thus comments along that line get voted up. There is nothing to be read into this.
But in the real world, for promotions and favors and work autonomy and VC funding, pass rates are << 50% and if you don't have it in you to negotiate for a better outcome, you're screwed.
I already had a bad day and shouldn't have read that line in the end. I am going to go and crawl into a foetal position until daybreak! :-(
Don't be depressed about it. Three words: parallel vs. serial. Build redundancy in your system. That's what "networking" is really about. Redundancy and parallel support.
In a typical corporation, unless you're savvy enough to devote serious effort toward internal networking, you have serial dependency: you need to get along with your boss, who needs to get along with his, and so on... up to the company itself performing well in the market. It's a chain of dependencies up to the top. If one link breaks, it disrupts your career. Parallelism is what you need to aim for.
If you have 20 1-in-5 chances, then your odds are overwhelmingly good of getting at least one hit: 98.9%. What you have to do is string together a set of these low-probability, high-impact opportunities... and be resilient against the inevitable rejections. As much as I loathe the "Game" worldview, don't get "one-itis".
I think I got what you are pointing out, but then again, maybe I didn't. Firstly, the serial dependency bit clicked instantly (Well, it's easy because you can see that's all you've been doing all along!).
But the parallelism bit flew past my head. Are you recommending that :
1. be savvy enough to devote serious effort toward internal networking?
2. Try to work on multiple teams/areas/domains?
3. Keep your contacts in outside organisations well primed and ready to help?
Or was it something more obvious that ended up getting missed? Some more details would be helpful.
Thank you.
You need to figure out what efforts are actually important and will keep you in good standing, but also sneak away time for your own career goals. This will (a) ensure progress that's independent of local political winds and (b) give you a head start if things go to hell (which they can easily do, because even if you have a good boss, there might be a problem with his boss-- or boss^2, or boss^3) and you end up looking for another job.
>> Don't. It's a classic newbie mistake.
Not helping my cause here, but I am a 10+ year industry "veteran" with those problems :O
But sometimes it is easier said than done -- at least that's how things seem to load on my plate. Do you remember the old chestnut on rocks, stones, pebbles and sand [Well, here it is: http://justinlim.wordpress.com/2006/11/28/of-rocks-pebbles-a...]. Somehow it seems like I am always given sand, filled to the brim in my bottle, right from the start! :-/
P.S: there's also a "beer" joke version of it that is probably more popular: http://www.avolites.org.uk/jokes/rock.htm
Anyway, I thought I grasped it correctly, and you have confirmed it.
>> there might be a problem with his boss-- or boss^2, or boss^3) and you end up looking for another job and you end up looking for another job.
And that's how the credits seem to roll as well :-[
This is definitely cultural, by the way. Where I grew up in India, everyone negotiates for everything, even very cheap trinkets.
Actually, I also thought about this one. I was actually thinking of the market scene from "Life of Brian": "What? You don't want to haggle on price?"!
But I did not pursue this thought as this is less of culture and more of context. In cheap trinkets or some other shop, the one thing on the back of your mind is that you can always walk away from it and there is no harm done. Moreover, in this case it is a buyer's market, as in, you simply try your luck with another shop/keeper if it didn't work out with a previous shop. And in the end, humans are loss averse, so there is still a lot of satisfaction if you came away without spending a single penny/rupee/roubles/etc.
OTOH, a job negotiation is anything but that. More often than not, a job market can be a seller's market (depends on your situation as well). You have invested a lot of time and effort in a particular interview (remember humans being loss averse? Now the tables are stacked against you), and if the negotiation scenario is lined against you (no other competing offers at the same time, the company is doing work that you would love to get into and the company knows that for sure, etc.) then it is not as clear cut as a trinket price negotiation.