Reddit CEO Ellen Pao Bans Salary Negotiations To Equalize Pay For Men, Women 892
sabri points out that Reddit CEO Ellen Pao plans to ban salary negotiations in an attempt to equalize pay for men and women. "After losing a sex-discrimination lawsuit in Silicon Valley last week, Ellen Pao continues on her crusade to bring gender equality to the tech world, but this time with a focus on her home turf. As Reddit’s interim CEO, Pao said she wants to eliminate salary negotiations from the company’s hiring process. In her first interview since the lawsuit, Pao told with the Wall Street Journal Monday that the plan would help level the playing field. 'Men negotiate harder than women do and sometimes women get penalized when they do negotiate,' she said. 'So as part of our recruiting process we don’t negotiate with candidates. We come up with an offer that we think is fair. If you want more equity, we’ll let you swap a little bit of your cash salary for equity, but we aren’t going to reward people who are better negotiators with more compensation.'"
Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Penalising better negotiators is hardly a good thing regardless if it's trying to promote equality. Really all they're doing is saving money.
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Really all they're doing is saving money.
Yep. I will bet good coin, that the average salary as a whole goes down over this.
Is negotiation a skill required for the job? (Score:4, Insightful)
If the ability to negotiate aggressively is not a talent required for the job, there is no reason why someone who negotiates well should get a higher salary. The same skills that make for aggressive negotiation (affinity for conflict situations for example) may make a prospective employee perform less well in team situations.
An interview should give the employer a chance to describe the job and the prospective employee a chance to describe their relevant talents. Each side should then know the market value of the applicants skills with respect to the job. If the company's offer does not match the applicants pay requirement, them should part ways. What does a negotiation accomplish?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
if the ability to negotiate aggressively is not a talent required for the job,
Aggressively is how the person eliminating negotiations framed it. The negative light is not surprising seeing as she obviously wanted to get rid of the practice.
Re:Is negotiation a skill required for the job? (Score:4)
Spot on. How about calling it the ability to negotiate well or successfully? For a whole bunch of reasons, men on average are more inclined to sell themselves and their abilities. If Reddit is too naive to see past this or they truly have a problem with aggressive/bullying negotiators then they need to become tougher negotiators themselves or stop hiring aggressive people.
Re: (Score:3)
We are talking about a simple number. One party wants to maximize it, the other minimize. There isn't any room for anything except a game of chicken there.
Nonsense. What we're talking about here is supposed to be a labor MARKET. In a market, people negotiate for prices. That's how markets get "price signals" that allow them to find the proper balance between supply and demand.
Pao wants to make it a "take it or leave it" deal, with the result, as one GP said, that the "price" will almost surely go down across the board over time.
No thanks.
Or they can take advantage of their vastly stronger position and simply refuse to indulge the candidates. Sure, they might miss out on "top talent", but it doesn't take that to maintain a message board.
While you have a point about message boards, again the result of not playing in the market is (which you have given k
Re:Is negotiation a skill required for the job? (Score:4, Interesting)
When is the last time you negotiated prices at the grocery store? Yes, there are places where you can do so, but the prices then get determined almost entirely by the relative skill of the hagglers, rather than the actual value of the merchandise. "Market pricing" is an almost completely unrelated phenomena determined by the intersection of supply and demand curves for commodity-scale trading.
Of course there are other options as well to try to get the best of both worlds - transparent salaries for one: put everybodies salary on their name plaque and you'll get a lot of disgruntled workers if you let Frank' superior haggling skills earn him a substantial pay raise, despite him being the office slacker.
Re:Is negotiation a skill required for the job? (Score:5, Insightful)
When was the last time you didn't negotiate prices on a house or car? And which is selecting an employer more like, buying you milk and bread for the week or a major purchasing decision?
Re: (Score:3)
Neither. You aren't a buyer but a seller, and you can't afford to wait for a better price because every second that goes by unsold (unemployed) is lost forever with zero profits but non-zero upkeep costs. Your position is like a landlord who must pay a constant mortgage from his property and can't get rid of it (except via
Re: (Score:3)
Oh, I don't know - if I know that Jen down the hall is a crack programmer that busts her ass to accomplish more, faster than than I can, and can offer some god advice when I get stuck, then I've got no problem with her pulling down a substantially bigger paycheck than me. She's contributing substantially more value, so that's only fair.
And when it comes time to negotiate I can say "hey, she's making 80% more than me, but only contributing 30% more, I think I deserve a raise. You can then say either "no, s
Re: (Score:3)
Perhaps the employer should consider that if the new guy is worth X% more than the current staff because of market conditions, then the current staff is likely worth just as much more and could walk out the door to another job at the higher rate, so maybe they should all get raises too. If everyone knows that the job market is tight enough that the new guy can demand a higher wage, then they all benefit. Only management suffers from a well-informed workforce, and management has been fleecing this country
Re: (Score:3)
Games of chicken are easy to lose. I've found that those who claim to be good negotiators (such as with buying a new car) also tend to be somewhat annoying as well; aggressive, boisterous, high ego, self centered, etc. They're not afraid to lose that game of chicken, and indeed they are treating it like some sporting contest.
Re:Is negotiation a skill required for the job? (Score:5, Insightful)
Games of chicken are easy to lose. I've found that those who claim to be good negotiators (such as with buying a new car) also tend to be somewhat annoying as well; aggressive, boisterous, high ego, self centered, etc. They're not afraid to lose that game of chicken, and indeed they are treating it like some sporting contest.
The problem is not "women don't negotiate" in this case, the problem is "Company chief aggressively negotiated own salary but demands that no one else in company is allowed to do as she did."
Re:Is negotiation a skill required for the job? (Score:4, Interesting)
"If the ability to negotiate aggressively is not a talent required for the job, there is no reason why someone who negotiates well should get a higher salary."
Maybe you are right.
But how funny that the "solution" this CEO proposes to avoid negotiation is "I'll make an offer and you'll take it" instead of, say, "you'll make an offer and I'll take it".
"What does a negotiation accomplish?"
Last I reviewed, a hiring contract is still a contract. You know, that stuff about "meeting of the minds", "consensus ad idem", "mutual assent"...
And this specific kind of contracts are basically about exchanging labour for *money*. It's difficult to reach that "meeting of the minds", "consensus ad idem", "mutual assent"... about the exchange of labour for money when one party is void to bring the issue about money onto the table. Oh! and how convenient for the hirer while, at the same time, inconvenient for the hiree.
Re: (Score:3)
In my experience some companies will ask once, "what is your current salary", or "what would you like as a salary". Then I get an offer that's a small to medium bump up above that. That's not really negotiation.
Re:Is negotiation a skill required for the job? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Is negotiation a skill required for the job? (Score:5, Informative)
"Well, I have to ask - did she negotiate her own salary?"
Are you kidding!?
She's talking about the minions, not the masters. Of course she negotiated her contract to the latest comma.
Re: (Score:3)
"I'd guess that most potential employees would not be happy if it were the latter"
You are right. And you know why? Because most potential employees are aware that their leverage power against the employer is already very reduced to offer relevant-to-the-negotiation-process information if not required. For one, the employer knows perfectly what are the current salaries on staff and its deviations from average that the potential employee knows nothing about. Even about the overall market rates it's almost s
Re:Negotiating is necessary. (Score:5, Interesting)
If I did negotiate and get a much larger salary than someone with the same skills as me, isn't that unfair and selfish?
No... what's unfair and selfish is that the employer is taking unfair advantage of the other person by accepting their work and not paying nearly as much as they are willing to pay for that kind of work.
In other words, the company is exploiting them for more than the company's fair share of the profit from their work.
And you with your negotiation stood up to them and avoided that level of injustice.
It's selfishness and unfairness; sure, but not on your part... on the employer's part.
Re:Negotiating is necessary. (Score:4, Insightful)
i've found that most employers do ask you what you expect as salary, knowing that most people will under-value themselves.
i'm terrible at negotiations (coz i'm not an extroverted sales-arsehole) but even i know to reflect that question back by asking what's being offered.
about the only thing i am consistently good at in negotiations is gettring rid of any clauses that say that whatever i do (whether in my time or theirs, on my equipment or theirs) belongs to them. I have my own projects and i contribute to various open source projects and i bring my own personal toolbox of tricks and techniques (that i've developed in my own time over many years) in to benefit my workplace - there's no way in hell i'm going to let them own that for any price. i have any clauses like that replaced with clauses that say, in short, that what i do on their time on their equipment is theirs and anything else i do is mine. if they're not willing to agree to that, then they're not the kind of employer i want to work for.
Re: Negotiating is necessary. (Score:4, Insightful)
If you read the summary carefully, they are not stating a salary value for a job in advance of making a offer to someone.
They are interviewing and then making an offer they feel is appropriate for that interviewee, that means that they can still adjust the offer based on the person in front of them (and who is to say the hiring managers don't offer less to women?). All thats changed is that the offer is set in stone, the interviewee either takes it or leaves it.
This scheme will live or die on how well they predict the job market for the roles they are hiring for but I don't see how it really addresses the stated goal of equalizing pay ranges between genders.
This scheme doesn't work too well anyway - I won't go for the interview without an upfront statement wrt the salary. I don't think I've ever gone for an interview which did not have a salary range stated upfront. As recently as Monday I've told a slave-trader that the job-spec he sent me neglected to mention a salary range. He came back with "They offer competitive market rates" and I replied with "I don't interview for people who cannot afford me". I will not be going on any interview soon (mostly 'cos I'm happy where I am, but regardless).
It's actually quite simple - if they cannot afford me then they should waste my time. If I'm unable to adjust my expectations downwards then I won't waste theirs. There is no "Well, we'll offer you competitive market rates for your skills after we interview you," there is only "don't enter the fitting room if you can't afford to buy!"
Re: (Score:3)
Those good negotiators you are hoping will be promoted out of harms way are exactly the sort of person who tells the customer anything is possible and then leaving the small details like actually implementing the feature up to the techies.
That's not a good thing for real techies.
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Interesting)
I think that in the end they might make it harder for themselves to recruit talent.
E.g. they find a really talented person who already has a job, but they REALLY want THIS person, so they make an offer. This person already makes at or near the amount offered, so he/she wants to negotiate for more before considering taking the position. End result is they don't acquire the talent they want and settle for something else.
I personally haven't tried to bargain for more, but I'm still rather fresh out of college so I've been rather satisfied with the offers I've received.
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that in the end they might make it harder for themselves to recruit talent.
Or easier, now that the initial offer is also their best offer, rather than a low-ball. This may also encourage more resume submissions from people that don't like to haggle.
Re: (Score:3)
No, it will continue.
Instead of negotiating for salary, it becomes a negotiation for pay grade.
"You are offering a job on pay grade #37, but I assure you, my background and history mean I should be on #43."
Same negotiation rules apply, just a different name for the salary.
Re:Hmm (Score:4, Insightful)
Or, conversely, they find a strong willed individual who's great at negotiating but sucks at the actual job and their overpowering personality always derail's team tasks.
Negotiating skill does not equate to job performance, unless your job is being a negotiator.
Re: (Score:3)
Then someone failed to properly screen the candidate for the job to begin with. You need to figure that sort of thing out before the offer, not during.
As I told someone who I was negotiating with on a salary once:
"When I walk in that door, I work for you and this company, but right now, I am here on my own behalf and I need to look out for myself and my family."
Just because you negotiate doesn't mean you're a team-killing egomaniac. You're looking out for yourself and yours, which no one is going to do fo
Re: (Score:3)
it makes as much sense as assuming tall people will be bad shoe salesmen because theyre too far from the ground.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
A reputation is not proof. There are more than a few "great" men who've gotten by on their reputation for past deeds while they talk impressionable young devotees into doing the bulk of the actual work for them, which they then take credit for.
Re: (Score:3)
"I think that in the end they might make it harder for themselves to recruit talent."
Yes, you're rationale is quite convincing. But don't fool yourself thinking this haven't been already thought of by them. Two possible outcomes I see:
1) They plan on reaching non-poaching/salary rates' collusion agreements with their competitors (not as if it was the first time).
2) For the ones they really like, they won't negotiate, but they'll throw "clues":
-I won't negotiate but, of course, before I make you an offer y
An even better tip ... (Score:3)
Pro tip: never accept the first offer......companies can always offer more.
Even better tip: While you are still in college take the negotiations class. A good negotiations class that covers the art (psychology, etc) and science (game theory, etc) over a quarter/semester timeframe (readings, homework, in-class negotiation practice emphasizing recent reading/lecture topics -- i.e. applying different negotiating strategies) is incredibly valuable and a hell of a lot of fun when done right.
Re: (Score:3)
Penalising better negotiators is hardly a good thing regardless if it's trying to promote equality. Really all they're doing is saving money.
Unless being able to negotiate benefits for themselves at the expense of others (there's usually a fixed amount of money for raises etc) improves quality of their work, I don't see why being a better salary negotiator is reason to have higher salary. On the contrary, a good negotiator is likely to be able to push their inferior solutions through over better solutions from less good negotiators. Also if it leads to poorer salary (as well as envy) and therefore higher attrition rate for people whose skills li
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If men are better negotiators...
Is Pao saying that women are inferior negotiators? Sound s sexist to me.
Re:Hmm (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
"(1) Women are socialized to not negotiate"
Having been married for 28 years I can tell you that this statement is utter nonsense.
Re: (Score:3)
Many people that have a job already are seeking another one. Those are the ones you hire; not those that are unemployed. However, there are fresh recruits coming out of school that often have more than one offer...it's like that for the very good talent in the SF Bay Area. I know this for certain because my wife works in recruiting in a Valley company...everyone is competing with Google.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
If a man and a woman both use the same tactics for negotiation, the guy will, on average, be rewarded for it more than the woman. There is a lot of evidence that there is subconscious bias applied - guys are seen as "hard negotiators/motivated/etc" while gals are seen as "high needs/bitchy/demanding".
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
If a man and a woman both use the same tactics for negotiation, the guy will, on average, be rewarded for it more than the woman. There is a lot of evidence that there is subconscious bias applied - guys are seen as "hard negotiators/motivated/etc" while gals are seen as "high needs/bitchy/demanding".
Um huh - I sort of agree, but by the other women.
I know a number of women who were successful in their fields, including my SO.
Most of them say their biggest problem is not with men. But with other women. My wife, who can negotiate as well or better than anyone I know, BTW, has had more problems with other women who simply hate her. Oddly enough, the men she works with and those who worked for her, just love her. And since she's dealing with a number of construction guys, they are not always the most liberated. But they do what she tells them to do, no griping. The women though, are not so nice.
And the same went for the successful female engineers I've worked with. The less successful ones had more of a concept of forcing a new paradigm on the workplace, with a sort of 40 hours only outlook, no lost vacation, sick leave balance of 0.
Meanwhile the successful men and women were doing what they had to to get the job done, not trying to mold the workplace towards the LCD.
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
"The less successful ones had more of a concept of forcing a new paradigm on the workplace, with a sort of 40 hours only outlook, no lost vacation, sick leave balance of 0."
Oh! but, but... what a f* bastards! 40 hours/week, and stay by the hiring contract they signed... how they dared!!!???
What will come next? Abolishing slavery!!!???
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, when I was in my 20s and even 30s I thought the same way you did. Looking back on it I realize there were a lot of tech companies that got a lot of free work that was left on the table from me and my peers because of those attitudes. Sure, staying late a couple of nights to finish something or booking time on the weekend is fine *as long as your company is also fine with giving you that time back somewhere else*. Most companies aren't, treating it as a one way street, especially in software/tech and that's not right.
Companies love attitudes like yours because it helps weed out the people who won't be taken advantage of.
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
"The thing is, if you go to a company where everyone works 60 hours a week and you want to work 40, you are fucking everyone else in your team."
I have no problems, in principle, to sign for a 60 hour/week under a fair agreement both parties are comfortable with. And under such a fair agreement, I don't give a damn about how much the rest of my team works nor I think I should.
But the thing is, if you go to a company that hires for a 40 hour/week but where everyone works 60 hours a week, not such an uncommon scenario, it is the company the one fucking all of them, not the one that wants to stay by the letter of the contract that both the company and him have agreed upon and signed.
It is curious -and sad, how we the minions get to accept the master's rationale and make it ours.
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Informative)
You're missing the part where there are actual studies that show that when women DO negotiate, they get penalized FOR doing so. Women are seen as "pushy" and "demanding" whereas a man doing the same thing is "assertive".
Re:Hmm (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps—just perhaps—the women who do attempt to negotiate are, statistically speaking, more pushy and demanding. There is a certain style to negotiating. Maybe, by and large, women are less likely to negotiate. And, maybe, the ones who do are more likely to do it wrong. I think it possibly could be more complicated than people would like to think.
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
So you say. I say that doing the things that would get a woman called "pushy" are typically things that would get a man called "pushy", and doing things that get a woman called "bitchy" would generally get a man called an "jerk" or an "asshole".
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
These days... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Men negotiate harder than women do"
Let's punish people who are good at something! Diversity!
Re:These days... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Men negotiate harder than women do"
So everyone is penalized because women are inferior to men. Nice.
But the bigger issue is why negotiating even exists at all. Too many companies want to make the hiring process like buying a used car, offering you a low figure, hoping you'll take it, and only offering more if you "negotiate harder".
Re:These days... (Score:5, Insightful)
It exists because you've got two parties with two different goals. One wants to get paid as much as possible, the other wants to acquire something for as little as possible.
Re: (Score:3)
It exists because you've got two parties with two different goals. One wants to get paid as much as possible, the other wants to acquire something for as little as possible.
All monetary transactions are like that. Yet we don't negotiate for toothpaste, gas, etc.
Negotiations helps both sides find the middle ground that is acceptable in transactions where the stakes are high enough to be worth the trouble. Which side of that middle band the deal lands on depends on the skill of the negotiators. In the case of hiring, "no negotiation" means the employer needs to make a better first offer than with negotiation because there is plan B if the candidate refuses the first offer.
Re: (Score:3)
You contradict yourself.
Re:These days... (Score:4, Insightful)
If it's $100K, there's going to be multiple 1000s in wiggle room.
But mostly, you list examples of buying 'goods' and not services. Services are inherently more negotiable since it's time vs money instead of stuff vs money. (basically the same as above)
Re:These days... (Score:5, Informative)
All monetary transactions are like that. Yet we don't negotiate for toothpaste, gas, etc.
That's because nowadays, we (in first world countries) rarely interact with anyone that has the power to charge a different price for toothpaste and gas.
Back when the store/station workers were also the store/station owners, we did negotiate for toothpaste and gas. And this negotiation can still be seen in less "developed" countries where the person doing the selling is the person that sets the price of the items.
Re: (Score:3)
Of course we do - We just do it in a way less blunt than "A shekel for that, you must be mad!".
Do you pay $6 for your toothpaste at 7-11, or $4 for the same brand and size at Walmart? Similarly, do you fill your car at the closest QwikyMart charging $0.15 higher than everyone else, or do you plan ahead to get gas at the average-priced Shell/Mobil/Major-Brand-X, or do you go out of your way to get gas at Sams for $0.10 less than everyone else has? We "ne
Re:These days... (Score:5, Insightful)
I feel like it exists for a few main reasons:
- People have different priorities. Some are all about the money, some want the retirement contribution, some want equity, some want vacation, etc. People also proportionally value these things differently. How much do you value an extra week of vacation to say, more retirement contribution or more salary? Negotiation solves this problem.
- As has been said, the employer and candidate have two directly opposing goals. The employer wants to pay the least they can while not feeling like you'll get a higher paying opportunity a few weeks later, and the employee wants the most money.
- Negotiation keeps things competitive. If every company stopped allowing negotiations, it would either become a race to the bottom or the top (I'm actually not even sure which, but the cynic in me thinks bottom).
Ultimately, I think this whole thing is stupid. I'm a guy, but I have to imagine this is patronizing as all hell to women. Isn't this the kind of shit feminists have been fighting forever?
Re:These days... (Score:4, Informative)
How much do you value an extra week of vacation to say, more retirement contribution or more salary?
Vacation accrual rate and initial vacation balances are generally non-negotiable. Most of silicon valley outsources their human resources to a couple of companies, and, posing as a company interested in obtaining the services of those of both Apple and Google, and in the middle of considering options, neither company could handle an initial balance.
The Apple one (ADC) could handle a different accrual rate, but given business rules and set-limits, they would have had to have pretended I was at Apple 5 years to give the extra week of accrual, and it would top out exactly the same point as anyone else who had been there for sufficient years to top out, as soon as I hit "sufficient - 5". In addition, there would have been sabbatical triggers, stock vesting triggers (I'd vest month-to-month, instead of a one year cliff).
In the Google case, I delayed my start date as an "unpaid absence" to get the vacation. In the Apple case, the boss stepped in and said "just take the week; let me know when it will be ahead of time, and don't schedule it through the system, and I'll ignore it if you will" (worked until the second manager change happened).
Payroll systems are generally set up on a "minimal business rules" basis, and are stupid hard to change.
So no, some things are not in the bucket with everything else as "everything's negotiable".
Re: (Score:3)
linky [philly.com]
End result? Women's rates when up and men's went down...totally what they were going for I'm sure
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This is the Social Justice Warrior brand of feminism rather than the egalitarian brand of feminism.
Re:These days... (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Negotiation is not about collaboration nor finding the best solution, it's about finding the best deal. Good negotiation skill is always detrimental to the person you negotiate with. In a team, a good negotiator is detrimental to the team.
I don't think that's true at all. Good negotiators make good team members because they are able to compromise. They know how to view a situation from somebody else's point of view and create solutions that are beneficial to all parties. It's the people who are unable to negotiate that suck at teamwork. They get focused on only their point of view and refuse to concede any points, when dealing with poor negotiators it is often "My way or the highway!".
Re:These days... (Score:5, Informative)
Saying men negotiate harder than women do is about the most sexist thing I've heard lately from an executive.
Re:These days... (Score:5, Insightful)
maybe its not about men vs women. that's a red herring.
in the bay area, at least, job salary negotiations exist mostly for non H1B's. H1B's will take what they can get and be thankful for that.
US born and raised folks have had more options and they won't be manipulated (as much) as foreign workers let themselves be.
which do you think companies want more of? those that can walk and go elsewhere vs those that are indentured?
the same for salaries. those who are indentured won't be able to negotiate salaries. those few of us who are left, 'need' to be stripped of that right, too (according to her).
this is CEO vs common man, not man vs woman.
war on the middle class, just with a distraction tactic added.
same old, same old (sigh) ;(
Re:These days... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
So, you are proposing that female negotiators are on average more douchebaggy than male negotiators?
No, I'm proposing that people who complain that they get called 'bossy' are, very often, in fact bossy. There's a difference between leading and bossing......if you don't know it, please find out before continuing this conversation.
Negotiation (Score:5, Insightful)
We come up with an offer that we think is fair.
That's a pretty poor negotiating strategy if you're trying to hire the talent you want rather than the gender you want.
Why wouldn't I spend the time to fly out and interview if there was a significant chance I wouldn't like whatever number it was that they considered 'fair' and I couldn't negotiate from there?
Re:Negotiation (Score:5, Insightful)
Because you should know what they are offering beforehand, otherwise why go? You are paid for your ability to work, probably at a technically challenging job, not for your skill at negotiation and self marketing. If you have more skill go for a better job or try for a "senior" version of the same post but dont expect better pay for the same work.
Re: (Score:3)
We come up with an offer that we think is fair.
The truth is that everyone negotiates, even women.
Need a relocation package to minimize the risk you're taking? Now a woman or a man can't even ask for one because the CEO has tunnel vision and doesn't want hear your needs. Need special hours, either much earlier or much later, to avoid being stuck in traffic for one hour and a half on the 101 (instead of breezing by in 42 minutes)? Now you're out of luck, because the CEO is demanding that HR sticks their fingers in their ears and says "Take it or leave it!
What if you are hiring a salesperson? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Actually, what she's doing is saying that even if there are differences, they shouldn't be allowed to matter. I don't think she should be allowed to discriminate on any basis (including education, knowledge, ability, etc.), so suggest that Reddit should simply hire for all positions by simply drawing names from a hat, so any difference between applicants doesn't effect the outcome.
Yeah, right. (Score:5, Insightful)
So, she makes a sexist statement to defend not negotiating in order to eliminate sexism? Fail. Would she use the same claim to defend hiring men over women for positions which involve negotiating contracts?
Re:Yeah, right. (Score:5, Informative)
In more specific terms it is a known and measurable effect that men who push and demand more are praised as go getting or leader types and women making the same moves are called names, bossy at best, and penalised for asking. So women learn not to push because others punish them for it, not because of any real difference in temperament or talent.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
YES
paper title -
Social incentives for gender dfferences in the propensity to initiate negotiations: Sometimes it does hurt to ask
Abstract -
Four experiments show that gender differences in the propensity to initiate negotiations may be explained by differential treat-ment of men and women when they attempt to negotiate. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants evaluated written accounts of candidates who did or did not initiate negotiations for higher compensation. Evaluators penalized female candidates more tha
"Reddit must suck already for women" (Score:3)
"Reddit must suck already for women"
It does.
Oh! You meant the company, not the site! My bad!
It does.
Re:Yeah, right. (Score:5, Interesting)
The gender wage gap is a myth. When you control for all the extraneous variables, men and women are paid the same. The reality is that men are paid more because they are willing to take uglier, riskier jobs, move longer distances for them, work longer hours, have more experience and qualifications in occupations with stronger demand, are willing to demand higher salaries, and are less likely to leave their career tracks for family obligations. Sorry to burst your politically correct bubble.
http://www.amazon.ca/Why-Earn-More-Warren-Farrell/dp/0814472109/ [amazon.ca]
The wage-gap argument doesn't even make sense. Just imagine if a company could get the same productivity out of women and pay them 30% less. It would have an enormous competitive advantage over every other company in its industry and all the companies would quickly be forced to either hire all women themselves or go out of business, not because of any misguided government interference, but purely because of overwhelming free-market forces. The same argument applies for women in the boardroom. If they gave a company a distinct competitive advantage, every company would already be forced by the market to have lots of them.
Re: (Score:3)
the nordic countries have this great policy where they reward fathers time off for newborns in the same quantity as mothers
this levels the playing field in terms of what children do to careers. in places like the usa, women's careers are interrupted by kids, men's aren't
but if a woman takes 2 months off for kids, and then a man takes 2 months off, having children is equally damaging to male and female careers
that's the best way to get equality: reward men with time off with their kids too. make child rearin
Re:Yeah, right. (Score:5, Informative)
http://content.time.com/time/b... [time.com]
http://online.wsj.com/news/art... [wsj.com]
http://www.consad.com/content/... [consad.com]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/... [huffingtonpost.com]
http://www.thedailybeast.com/a... [thedailybeast.com]
http://www.slate.com/articles/... [slate.com]
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/th... [cbsnews.com]
http://www.aei-ideas.org/2014/... [aei-ideas.org]
Crazy (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought she was a little off, because of her battle with her previous employer. But this is ridiculous. According to the WSJ, she is personally vetting potential candidates for their attitudes on diversity, and if a candidate says "I am not concerned about diversity" or "I don't consider diversity important" then they don't get hired. And now this salary non-negotiation thing. No one of any value is going to interview there.
I suppose the ones who are already there are safe because if she starts firing, say, white men, she's going to eventually have a nasty lawsuit to deal with. But I know her type. She probably won't fire anyone; she'll just harass and hound them into quitting.
I can't believe Reddit wants this person as their CEO; she's going to destroy the company.
Re:Crazy (Score:4, Insightful)
I suppose the ones who are already there are safe because if she starts firing, say, white men, she's going to eventually have a nasty lawsuit to deal with.
My observation is that unless said white males are either gay or Jewish there's no hope for them to ever win a discrimination lawsuit.
Re:Crazy (Score:4, Interesting)
You're a funny guy. She tried to sleep her way to the top and then sued her employer when she failed. Her husband is in court over claims that he ran a Ponzi scheme. Who's spinning who here?
Dead before it even starts (Score:3)
This is a stupid policy, but irrespective of that it will be circumvented by the direct line managers before it is even put in place.
HR rule - All employees of a categorisation must be paid the same.
Hiring Manager - OK HR. Please create the new position Systems Engineer Class 7a please. This role is paid X.
HR - But you were hiring for a Systems Engineer Class 2.
Hiring Manager - Correct but we have had some scope change and require a Class 7a which is exactly the same as a Class 2 but paid $3,600 a year more and happens to look exactly like Joe Blogs here.
University are just as dumb (Score:5, Interesting)
This reminds me of a policy that was caused the closure of Computer Science labs between 2AM and 6AM. The justification went something like this;
There are women who are afraid to be on campus late at night and therefore will not access the computer labs during that time. If men have access to the labs at that time they will have an unfair advantage in completing their work. Therefore to keep access equal the labs will be closed
It lasted about two months until they got security cameras in the labs. I think that was a face saving thing as many women on campus were upset about the closure too. This is the same faculty that shut off the phones in the labs because they could be used to make long distance calls (with some work). They forgot that those same phones could be used to call security if needed. This whole idea of making everyone equally bad is just stupid.
Re: (Score:3)
At that time I was the President of the Computer Science Course Union and very involved with the discussions about this issue. I was at every faculty meeting where the decisions about this policy were discussed and made. Here are the answers to your questions.
1) Had there been attacks on women on campus or in the area?
No. There had been no sexual assaults on campus in the previous months.
Was the closure actually to discourage anyone (including women) from hanging around the labs late at night when the crime rate is higher (before a camera was installed)?
No. This is a very quiet University in a very quiet city. I was involved in the discussion and phrases like the one I referenced were uttered. I didn't say they were quotes because
She's a piece of work. (Score:3, Insightful)
Gay scammer husband who also sued for "discrimination", and will possibly spend time in prison for fraud. Real bitch on wheels that nobody at work liked, and she felt entitled to raises/bonuses/etc... Sues company nice enough to hire her in the first place, and which bent over backwards acceding to her crazy demands prior and during the lawsuit.
She then gets a job as CEO at Reddit 'somehow' (some sort of shady nepotism), and proceeds to get revenge by basically turning the place into an SJW-only space.
If I was a white dude working at Reddit I'd be looking around for other work.
Oh, and she can't ban salary negotiation. She can only say Reddit won't budge on their first offer. The potential employee can just say "mm, OK, but X-Cotech just offered me 5% more - see ya."
Statistical Reports Are Always Right... (Score:4, Funny)
... as long as they agree with my opinion.
Sounds good to me. (Score:5, Insightful)
It means that in order for Reddit to be competitive in hiring, they will need to make a first offer (the fixed salary+benefits) that is at or above the market average. As a jobseeker, I can just look at what they have to offer and take it or leave it. No haggling. No drama. That sounds good to me! I'm decent at negotiating, but I don't enjoy it.
For jobs where negotiating skill is NOT part of the job, the negotiation ban should make hiring decisions better correlate with merit. And generally, I want to be surrounded with people hired for relevant merits, and not just good self-promoters.
A modest proposal for equal pay for title... (Score:3)
A modest proposal for equal pay for title...
How about you allow them to negotiate from a base from which the position is set.
If they negotiate less high than everyone else who has negotiated, you give them the highest rate previously negotiated.
If the negotiate higher than the previous high, everyone gets a raise.
Solves the same problem, doesn't it?
Pao = Sexist (Score:5, Insightful)
Is this because woman are unable to negotiate as hard? Because they are unwilling to? Because they are too stupid to? What is her explanation? Is it hormonal? Does it have to do with having different body mass distribution? Inquiring minds want to know.
If it's to their advantage to negotiate hard and men and women are indistinguishable professionally, women obviously are just as able to negotiate hard (and, given negotiations I've been in, I have no reason to doubt they are not just as capable at this art).
Pao is really insulting women by saying this.
This really opens a Pandora's box. If she thinks women, by virtue of being female, are not as good at this important aspect of professional life, one wonders what other parts of their professional lives women are not as good at. She should give us a complete list - who knows what might be on it.
I wonder what would happen if she ran a purchasing organization or a sales organization. Usually the willingness and capability to negotiate effectively (and, therefore, hard) are basic job requirements for these positions. Would she refuse to hire women because, as she has stated, they are not as good at negotiating hard (ouch, there's a sexual discrimination lawsuit waiting to happen)? Would she refuse to negotiate salary and lose the very people who would negotiate effectively on behalf of her company? In reality, negotiation is always a part of almost any senior job -- you have to negotiate for headcount, resources, approval for projects, even convincing a customer that they don't need something is "negotiating".
Perhaps she has realized that she (the individual, not the gender) is not good at negotiating and this is a convenient way to avoid acknowledging this reality.
Perhaps she doesn't realize that no party to a successful negotiation goes away unhappy - does she lack confidence in herself and her own staff being able to negotiate successfully?
If Reddit has a candidate they really want and offers them $180K and they get an offer from another company for $200K (assuming similar fringe benefits and option valuations), how is it good for the company to walk away from the candidate instead of negotiate? Both $180K and $200K may be "fair" offers. Just because her company didn't happen to guess precisely what the FMV was for the person will she really stubbornly refuse to negotiate and start over from ground zero in trying to fill the position (which will likely cost tens of thousands of dollars in staff time and more tens of thousands of dollars in delay in filling the opening)?
I also assume that if the board offers, unwisely, to keep her on as permanent CEO and she wants a better offer than they gave her, she will understand when she when the board says "sorry, we don't negotiate and since you don't appear happy with our offer and we want a CEO who is happy with their situation, we retract the offer -- don't let the door hit your ass on the way out".
Re: (Score:3)
She shouldn't be hiring managers who would fault someone for initiating negotiations. I, for example, begin to have second doubts about anyone who doesn't do so. What are the odds that I would start with the exact highest amount I was willing to pay? I certainly want employees (engineers in particular) who use logic and probability in their reasoning and recognize that.
I also want employees that are good enough to have other options. First, it helps confirm that they may be good employees. Second, they tend
Yeah, this is going to work well (Score:5, Interesting)
How does this work? Does Reddit give the same offer to all employees for a given job title? If so, and they make a single offer better than the market initial offer, they'll be paying non-negotiators more than they have to, and losing the best negotiators. This is likely to be costly.
If they make the same offers they made before this policy, they'll lose negotiators to other companies. If negotiation is correlated with skill this is a loss; otherwise, it could be a loss or a win.
If they make an individualized offer to each employee, negotiation will happen anyway; it'll just happen without explicit haggling. Candidates will try to signal that they'd require a lot to accept, in order to get a higher offer. I'd bet that candidates who would negotiate are probably better at that kind of signaling.
This can actually work (Score:5, Informative)
I worked for one company that paid its programmers a perfectly round number and everyone went up at the same time. But bonuses were far more complicated with a huge factor being voting among the employees. The company literally had a rule that if anyone discussed who they were voting for then it was an instant firing. This way the outstanding employees got massive bonuses.
What was interesting was that when some people came to the end of their interviews they would begin negotiating their salary after being repeatedly told that it was not negotiable. The ones who pushed this harder and harder tended to be douchebags and this pretty much always resulted in no job offer or a withdrawn offer. They genuinely seemed pissed.
One douche summed it up as "When I heard that everyone was earning X, I just had to earn X+1 so that I could prove I was better." This was even after he was told how the bonuses worked.
The cool benefit of bonuses was that it really weeded out the crappy programmers. Bonus time would come along. The results would be published and a few guys had literally zero votes and usually they were gone in a month or less. The only programmer ever fired for talking about bonuses went around with a sob story how he needed the bonus. Literally the next day he no longer worked for the company. This is the same company that didn't fire people after one threw a laptop through a window with the intent of hitting another worker. (they worked out their issues).
Better solution: Salary transparency (Score:3, Interesting)
There was a Planet Money story about this.
A company decided to make everyone's salary open knowledge, posted on the wall for everyone to see.
This would better solve gender pay equity than Pao's no-negotiation strategy. It puts more pressure on management to limit pay decisions to something defensable, prevents employees from pitting against each other for pay and minimizes management's ability to overpay or underpay. Employees know where they stand relative to other employees (and what they may need to do to make more). It motivates better paid employees to show they're worth it and makes it harder for well-paid employees to goldbrick.
The problem with no-negotiation is that for any given hire there are a finite number of employees available to take the job and the best candidate is likely to either be a little better or a little worse than average. Without the ability to negotiate, the better candidates will be less inclined to take the job because it only offers average pay and the below average ones will be more likely to take the job because it pays above what they're worth. You'll end up trending towards below average talent for more than they're worth.
Transparency allows for positioned to be negotiated for and if a given hire has an above average skillset and experience, you can agree to pay them more and won't have to worry about justifying it. The same is true the other way around -- it's justifiable to pay below average, too when you have legitimate reasons of skill or experience.
Pao's strategy is right out of the socialist playbook -- arbitrary price controls, and it destroys the free market's ability to seek efficient pricing. This isn't a political complaint, but an economic one. Most current job markets with "secret" pay agreements now are also bad because they create an imbalance between seller and buyer by eliminating pricing information.
It's also pretty sexist because it attributes a behavioral attribute to gender. I'm pretty sure Carly Fiorina, Meg Whitman, and other Fortune 500 CEOs don't have a negotiating weakness.
wrong assumptions (Score:3)
Men negotiate harder than women do
You see, that's the problem right there: Stereotypes.
Some people negotiate harder than other people. Maybe statistically speaking, men fall more often into group 1 and women more often into group 2. You're trying to tell me that's the only factor? I'm quite sure introverts fall more often into group 2 while extroverts fall more often into group 1. Maybe redheads fall more often into group 1, or people born in August. Maybe tall people. Probably younger people fall more often into group 2. People shortly after a divorce, people with pets, people growing up with older siblings...
It's so crazy that we focus on the sex thing when there are one thousand differences between person A and person B, most of which were not theirs choice, many of which are equally genetic.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
doesn't want labor t be able to negotiate higher pay. Their kind hates us and wants us to die. She is so Republican. She thinks we have no rights.
Really? She sounds more like a Democrat to me. I thought the mantra of the Democrat party was equality through mediocrity?
Re:Of course that Republican bitch... (Score:4, Interesting)
> I thought the mantra of the Democrat party was equality through mediocrity?
Some Democrats do this, yes. Some Republicans believe in ~~equality~~ fuck you, I got mine. I'm not sure which is worse.
You can't suddenly make mediocre people good at what they do, so the only way for the left to enforce equality is to make the good people mediocre.
I read an autobiography some years ago by a woman who was in the Chinese Army in the 70s or 80s, and one thing that particularly stood out was the part where she wrote about how she had to deliberately shoot badly on the shooting range, because anyone who could shoot well would be punished for making the others look bad.
That's 'equality' red in tooth and claw.
Re:I tried this myself (Score:5, Funny)
See, there's the problem. If it was a male cashier, he would have negotiated. I hear they're better at it.
Re: (Score:3)
"Negotiation" is very much part of what I am being paid for. Or what anyone is being paid for, who has to work with other people. Else, why the heck does the company send us to those Karrass seminars?
Moreover, I wonder how far Ellen Pao would have gotten without sharp negotiation skills.
This strikes me as one of those epiphanies that sounds good in your head but starts to fall apart when unintended consequences become apparent.
Re: (Score:3)
It's not that men are better negotiators, it's that they are more likely to try to negotiate in the first place, when an offer is not explicitly described as negotiable.*
I thought this was really well known. It is scientifically recorded -- one citation is here: http://www.nber.org/papers/w18... [nber.org]
It's actually often cited as a big reason for the gender pay gap, especially when you consider that negotiation isn't just about salary but also about position.
* There are also further possibilities, not fully prov
Re: (Score:3)
It may work out for candidates, though. Right now the company tends to start low and let the candidate name a higher figure, then go back and forth ending up somewhere in the middle. If their initial offer's too low the candidate will just name something higher, and unless the candidate's really cocky the company stands a good chance of getting them for less than they were willing to offer. With no negotiation the company knows there may well be competing offers out there so if they make their offer too low
Re: (Score:3)