Comment by digitalzombie | Hacker News Reader

Comment by digitalzombie | Hacker News Reader

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Um... her conclusion is decent but she didn't learn much or gave much advice on how to find your worth. OP, had to date a cs dude and that dude pointed it out.

How to find out what you're worth without dating a programmer:

1. Save your vacation days. Apply for jobs, take vacation days for interviews and see how much your worth. You don't have to take the job but you're more than welcome to practice your interview skills, negotiation skills, and find out what you're worth (via how much they're willing to offer you before they tell you to screw off). Make mistakes in those interviews and learned from them.

2. Network with people and talk to them you might get an idea of what you're worth too.

3. Use sites like Indeed.com and search your particular title or skill set. They might give you an idea.

4. Talk to your head hunters. They might spam the crap out of you, but ask them about the position they're giving you and what their successful candidate got as salary. Remember job recruiters get paid via percentage of the negotiated salary. If they hired me for 80k and the recruiter contract with employer is 20% of the salary then they get 20% of 80k from the employer (NOT I, or out of my pocket).

And I really hate to be cynical since as you say, her conclusion is decent, but where she says:

> "PS: I left that job a few months later — one of the best decisions I've ever made!"

I would bet my first born and my entire life savings that she didn't leave voluntarily.

A good portion of my previous job was doing salary negotiations and personnel management. What I would bet the farm on, and would do so without hesitation, is that they gave her the raise, then immediately began looking for her replacement. Once they found a suitable candidate, they either canned her or found reasons to ding her on performance reviews, being late, etc, which would be justification to fire her with cause. I know because it's pretty much the operating manual for anyone who was in my position. Why pay someone double when you can find another sucker to work for half the pay? Even if it was 3/4 pay, it's still a savings and when we're talking tens of thousands of dollars, it's enough.

She was fired from her job and/or shown the door after asking for (and getting) her raise. I guarantee it.

Your glee in the baseless speculation that a woman was a) naive and b) lying to cover up some perceived indiscretion, is unsettling.

It's another example of the challenge women face in our industry, not to mention the overall culture of shame around firings.

Did the parent poster change their post? I ask because nothing in their post indicated to me that they were focussed on this person being a woman, that they were naive or that there was a suggestion of an indiscretion.

That is not to say that the parent poster and their employer/company does not sound sociopathic, just that we needn't bring sex warfare into this.

I have to say though, if the parent is being truthful (i.e. not trolling), it is a pretty sad state of affairs and pretty disappointing. If you ever find yourself working with/for such actors, start looking elsewhere. There are plenty of great employers/people in the world that you needn't waste your time working with scrooge-like caricatures.

He said:

> "Why pay someone double when you can find another sucker to work for half the pay?"

I see no mention of a "woman". Just because the person of interest was a woman, that doesn't make the comment sexist. Where I work (not in America), women get the exact same treatment as men. And when a women / lady gets a bad code review, she doesn't attribute it to being sexism and threaten to sue. She has the common sense to acknowledge her mistakes and improve upon feedback.

From my perspective (again, I'm not American), sexism is becoming a poor excuse for getting preferential treatment. And that's absurdly ironic.

> when you can find another sucker to work for half the pay?

Who says you can? People who will do that are rare, and often aren't as good as people who expect something closer to market.

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