

Do Women Avoid Salary Negotiations?  [pdf] - Uchikoma
http://www.fieldexperiments.com/uploads/w18511.pdf

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mherdeg
I often find that when people discuss studies they rarely get beyond the
abstract (and sometimes not even past the title!)

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.)

~~~
Nursie
That's weird.

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.

~~~
xiaoma
My feelings is that _everything_ is a negotiation... but there's always a
price.

~~~
mratzloff
There's usually a price for not negotiating as well, and it's not just
monetary.

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.

~~~
xiaoma
> _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.

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christopherslee
i didn't read this, but i always wondered if women's salaries are lower on
average because of a reluctance to negotiate. (thus citing that women's
salaries are lower than men's has nothing to do with gender bias?)

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.

~~~
crazygringo
I recall (can't find them now) there are studies which basically explain away
the entire wage-gap between men and women as two factors:

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...

~~~
arrrg
How can this …

“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.

~~~
crazygringo
How could it? Well, it could be biological, for example. An awful lot of
personality traits are affected by our biology.

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.

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michaelochurch
I don't think it's just a problem for women. Most of us enter adulthood with
_terrible_ negotiation skills, especially in engineering. I certainly did. The
percentage of people who are decent negotiators is small and, empirically,
most of them seem to be men.

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.

~~~
jvm
I was confused by your comment

> 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.

~~~
michaelochurch
Sorry, I was talking about "fear of negotiating" topic. I don't claim to know
why there are gendered pay disparities, and there's certainly some injustice
going on. Lack of desire to negotiate can't explain all of it.

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.

~~~
jvm
I actually want to apologize. I misread your comment as contradicting the
article: Saying basically that there is no gender disparity, or if there is
it's women's intrinsic shortcomings, so I apologize about that.

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.

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Tycho
Salary negotiations - they should probably teach this at school. My company
has a 'comp day' where you head into a room with a couple of managers and they
tell you what you're getting. But I've got no idea what the protocol is for
disagreeing. Presumably it's their for negotiating otherwise they would you
send you a letter and skip the meeting. A lot of people, when they don't know
the protocol of a situation, will just nod and be swept along.

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HelloMcFly
If you want more information on this topic you can start by looking up
articles by Alice Stuhlmacher, a professor and researcher at DePaul
University.

