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Comment by nullrouted | Hacker News Reader

I have a serious question and please don't crucify me but can this partly be because women aren't as confrontational as men and won't argue for a higher salary when hired (since we know thats when you get your good base salary)? I remember when my girlfriend got hired at her current tech company and I begged her to make sure they put her stock and bonuses in writing but she refused because she didn't want to piss the company off and lets say the deal went bad for her. Obviously this is an anecdote about one situation but I wonder could this be one of the reasons? Companies want to pay you as little as possible to get your talent, it is up to you to negotiate for a better salary and if that isn't happening then I'm not sure what you do? I believe for equal pay for equal work totally but I'm wondering if one of the reasons we don't see that is the salary negotiation process. Please share your thoughts.

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Yes, definitely. This is a common hypothesis, and it gets some study. See, for instance,

http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Women_Don't_Ask

http://geekfeminism.org/2011/06/17/quick-hit-one-reason-wome...

http://fdiv.net/2012/01/20/pseudo-science-and-pseudo-feminis...

There is both the possible cause of women being socially conditioned (or biologically wired, or whatever causes this) to be less confrontational, and the possible cause of women finding it riskier / being in worse negotiating positions for structural-inequality reasons.

Why is it women being socially conditioned?

Maybe men are socially conditioned to seek higher salaries (to support their family).

I suppose working for more than $100k might be a rational decision, but research shows it's probably more trouble than it's worth (if you're only thinking of yourself, and don't have an addiction or a boat).

I think this can be read as a different way of saying the same thing. If men are socially conditioned to do something and women are not, then you can see that as women being socially conditioned to not do that thing.

I've seen this argument. Reddit banned salary negotiations because of it.

When I saw that I wondered whether employers could use such reasoning to hire men over women in positions like sales and acquisitions that require negotiation.

I don't think people appreciate what a two-edged sword that research is. Either we admit sex-differences can factor into performance, or we don't.

Research showing that men on average are better at negotiation may mean that making skill at that a factor in hiring or pay has a disparate impact unrelated to business function for jobs where that is not part of the duties, but it doesn't mean that substituting sex discrimination for more direct skill assessment for jobs where that skill is required is either appropriate, efficient, or legal.

Skills not being perfectly evenly distributed by race or sex doesn't justify race or sex discrimination in place of assessment of individual skill. There's second edge you try to portray does not exist.

Here's what you're missing. If there is a sex-based difference in negotiation skill then there's no way that we will have the same outcomes in hiring and compensation between the sexes even in a system where there is no bias.

Up until now, whenever there are different outcomes between men and women the assumption has been that they perform the same. Take a look at the gender pay gap arguments.

That's not what you said before, you suggested that the research could be used to hire men preferentially.

As for your"up until now ", that's not true. Some people assume bias in absence of clear evidence, others assume differences in ability, interest, etc. The research doesn't really provide a clear basis for any particular quantified level of unequal impact, so the people who start off with one or the other assumption in the absence of clear evidence of the source of a particular level of unequal results in a particular form or industry are likely to stay with that assumption even with this research. Neither the justification for deliberate bias you suggested in your first party note the soft on assumptions you now suggest is a result from the research we have.

Won't negotiation be a part of any job that requires interacting with other people?

Then again, you see studies like this: http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/lean-out-th... so perhaps negotiating less is acting rationally

It's part biology, part conditioning.

On average, men tend to take more risks than women (a testosterone thing, hence the "having balls" expression).

In anonymous settings, when there's no risk of physical harm (video games) woman are as agressive as men. If the gender is revealed/emphasized, a difference appears. The same goes for math tests.

I don't think this hypothesis explains why ie: black men, unfairly stereotyped as aggressive & etc, earn lower salaries than white men.

I would say it's maybe a tiny bit biology, a tiny bit conditioning, and a large part racist/sexist/etc politics of exclusion.

Remember that even women discriminate against other women, e.g.:

In a randomized double-blind study, science faculty from research-intensive universities rated the application materials of a student — who was randomly assigned either a male or female name — for a laboratory manager position. Faculty participants rated the male applicant as significantly more competent and hireable than the (identical) female applicant. These participants also selected a higher starting salary and offered more career mentoring to the male applicant. The gender of the faculty participants did not affect responses, such that female and male faculty were equally likely to exhibit bias against the female student.

http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.full.pdf

I'd say conditioning is more than just a tiny bit.

I never said these were the only reasons, and I didn't mention race at all.

@geofft was wondering whether the "intrinsic" differences were due to biology or social conditioning. The answer is: both.

Of course there are extrinsic factors as well.

"Politics" implies a deliberate, concerted behavior, which may exist, but this kind of bias is often subconscious, and present regardless of the gender/race of the evaluator.

A minor point but maybe an important one: I wasn't actually wondering, because it doesn't matter, I think. There's enough reason to believe that this phenomenon exists, in aggregate, between most men and most women. There's been no explanation for it offered that holds that the effects are just (e.g., something that claims that men's work output is correspondingly greater, or their need for income is). So whether it is nature or nurture, unless we think Google can fix the root cause, the right thing for Google to do is accept that the phenomenon exists and work around it. They don't need to track the phenomenon down.

It's like how Google focuses heavily on technical interviews over college GPA or even college degree. They've found that having a degree and a good GPA is not well-correlated with what they're hiring people to do. They could put a bunch of work into fixing the college system, but instead they design their hiring process to take it into account as little as possible.

Racism, sexism and politics play a far smaller role than you might imagine. It's a matter of skills, for example, in 2001 there were more than 16,000 Asian Americans who scored more than 700 on the math SAT. While there was less than 700 black Americans who scored more than 700 on the math SAT. So sure, in aggregate black males earn less than asian American males and white Americans (asian Americans also earn more on average than white Americans, are whites being discriminated against?), but if you compare apples to apples (similar education, experience, test scores, etc) then there is virtually no gap. The dogma is that statistical disparities demonstrate some form of discrimination, this assumes that there is an equality of performance which is virtually impossible to find in the real world.

> (asian Americans also earn more on average than white Americans, are whites being discriminated against?)

Really? Seems like an unnecessary thing to say.

If you take a closer look at the numbers, this isn't really the case. Asian households are larger, so median incomes are larger, and Asian-Americans tend to live in about 5 states, which have on average higher costs of living (and as a result higher median incomes).

Source: http://reappropriate.co/2014/10/how-both-bill-oreilly-and-jo...

If we're looking at SAT scores: in 2013, about 50,000 white students scored 700 or above in the math SAT, as did about 49,000 Asian students. Google's statistics at http://www.google.com/diversity/ indicate they have about twice as many white employees as Asian employees overall, and about three times as many in leadership. What gives?

You can say that 650+ math SAT score is more realistica assesment of average Google talent. There are 78400 Asians with 650+ score and 133440 whites with 650+ score in math. There are only 4200 blacks with 650+ score. Numbers pretty much align with Google diversity report.

> but if you compare apples to apples (similar education, experience, test scores, etc) then there is virtually no gap

Wasn't there literally a recent study that sent the same resume to employers and only changed the name and the white names got significantly more attention than stereotypically black names?

In this case the argument claims that women aren't merely stereotyped to negotiate less often/less forcefully, but might do so empirically.

Regardless of stereotypes, you would have to look at the actual statistics of how black men negotiate to make such a claim.

The more interesting thing to me is not just that the base salaries were different, but that her personal bonuses were denied by her manager while her male coworker's bonuses were awarded — despite both of them being involved with the creation and distribution of the spreadsheet.

Regarding negotiation, I don't think companies really benefit from doing it. If they offer as much as they are willing to pay for your talent up-front, then you can adopt a take it or leave it attitude. The company will gain the benefit of increasing pay equality. Having pay equality is a step towards increasing diversity, and increased diversity will produce better products and companies.

> The more interesting thing to me is not just that the base salaries were different, but that her personal bonuses were denied by her manager while her male coworker's bonuses were awarded — despite both of them being involved with the creation and distribution of the spreadsheet.

There's nothing that says they had the same manager. They may have, in which case this is very suspect. Or they could have had different managers who were reacting differently to the situation.

The bonuses are awarded at the boss' discretion. If s/he didn't like her, there would be a bias against her. It's no different in social circles, discussion forums, etc. it's not necessarily performance or knowledge that gets the kudos. So, it's very likely she was being overlooked because the boss didn't like of respect her. I am making no comment or judgement on her.

That's true, it's too little data to draw any useful conclusion from.

> and increased diversity will produce better products and companies

really? do you have proof for that?

I'm all for diversity and everything, but hiring just to fill racial quotas or gender quotas is NOT the solution to building a successful company.

From a quick googling on the subject, sorry I don't have time to dig up more right now.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-diversity-make...

The tagline: "Being around people who are different from us makes us more creative, more diligent and harder-working"

The truth is that gender, sexuality and race are irrelevant if all your employees are 20-something graduates of the same 10 CS programmes.

You're certainly not the first person to think of this, you need to be careful with that though or you get wage suppression and price fixing for work:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/reddit-ceo-ellen-pao-ban...

There are other solutions for this, of course. Collective bargaining comes to mind: if I negotiate a 10% increase in wages just because I'm good at negotiating (not because I'm objectively a 1.1x programmer in a way my union agrees with), it's a 10% increase for everyone.

There's also another solution: salary transparency. If you believe in markets, you'd agree that a critical element of them working properly is an abundance of information.

Umm...why do I need to be careful of the thought? I questioned if it was a reason for the disparity, not that I agreed with it. Secondly, your article seems to mention Ellen agreed with my question

Yes, and Ellen responded by banning salary negotiation. Which seems to me like a thinly veiled way of strong arming people into being paid sub par wages for their work.

I think it really sucks that you have to say stuff like "Please don't crucify me" to preface a completely valid question because it has to do with women. Why are these conversations so prone to vitriol if you don't blindly nod in approval with the "feminist" perspective? And in saying this, ironically, I expect that I will in fact be "crucified."

It's a community thing, I guess. Meaning, it depends on which community (online community in this context) you are interacting in. Such a thing wouldn't be so risky to say on 4chan or even Slashdot.

And I think it divides the community and makes discussion of these topics difficult if not impossible. I don't really like communities where certain well thought out, even completely innocuous or carefully worded opinions are discarded automatically and treated with ridicule just because of some dogmatic allegiance to whatever topic. I get that it's the internet and people tend to be perpetually angry and combative about stuff, but other topics that don't regard feminism are much easier to discuss. Maybe I should just try to avoid all of the gender or race topics on HN because it seems like questioning anything just leads to flame wars.

Won't someone please save you!

I'm not confrontational. But I'm a man. Does that mean we'll do something artificial to help women and leave my salary untouched?

"Artificial"? I didn't realize nature had salaries.

Artificial - as opposed to letting things take its natural course.

That's my point - there is no "natural" course to setting salaries. There is only the current course and potential new ones, but neither are "natural".

Unless you are in sales or some other position where negotiation skills are part of your job performance, they should not affect your pay.

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