
The gender wage gap in Silicon Valley – based on AngelList data - zrgiu_
https://medium.com/@synopsi/the-gender-wage-gap-in-silicon-valley-f32229dcf935
======
romanhn
Interesting data, BUT... "Next couple of new employees are going to be women
up until we balance our team." \- this is gender discrimination and it is
illegal.

How about actually making the workplace attractive to woman applicants? Things
like ridding your careers page of implicit biases and bro culture, putting
extra emphasis on personal as well as professional growth, attending/hosting
various women-oriented events/meetups/conferences, involving your leadership
with mentoring at and recruiting from places like the Hackbright Academy, etc.
etc.

It costs money, it costs time, hell, it takes a long time to produce results,
but you know what - it's worth it! They are an outlier, but I do like Etsy's
approach (and results) to gender diversity -
[http://firstround.com/review/How-Etsy-Grew-their-Number-
of-F...](http://firstround.com/review/How-Etsy-Grew-their-Number-of-Female-
Engineers-by-500-in-One-Year).

~~~
stale2002
"How about actually making the workplace attractive to woman applicants?"

Yeah, and do you know what the best and easiest way to make a workplace more
attractive to women is?

It is to have other women in the workplace!

I know many women who are unwilling to even apply to a company if they know
they would be the first or only woman on the team.

It is a chicken and egg problem. Until his company is able to get SOME women
working there, it is going to be extremely difficult to attract them in the
first place.

Because of this it makes a lot of business sense to prioritize hiring women if
your team is extremely imbalanced.

~~~
romanhn
Agree with you up until the very last sentence. It does _not_ make business
sense to break the law (and gender discrimination is a real thing a company
can get sued over). No matter how tempting, you can't magically wish the
problem away and say "I'll hire 5 women, then 10 people of color, then a
couple of LGBT folks, then I won't have any diversity problems". It doesn't
work that way.

Yes, it is a chicken and egg problem. Yes, the first couple of hires will be
difficult to make. But if you don't have the framework in place to actually
_support_ these women once they join the workplace, guess what, even if you
luck out into making those hires, they won't be sticking around. It's not a
one-time kind of thing.

~~~
stale2002
Ehh, there are effectively equivalent ways of ensuring that you hire X more
women without discriminating against men in the interview process.

If you have X people interviewing at your company, you should hire the best
person who interviews, no matter the gender.

The REAL way to go about this is to discriminate at the referral/reachout
stage.

If you go to your all male engineering team and announce "We are hiring! Refer
all your friends!". What you are effectively doing is discriminating against
women, because you are going to receive 20 male referrals and 1 women
referral. But THIS isn't illegal.

I am suggesting that you do this same but biased towards women referrals,
instead of biasing it toward male referrals. You make specific, targeted
efforts to get as many women as possible to apply, while not bothering with
referral/reachout processes that are likely to receive male heavy
applications, and THEN accept the best person who applies to the job, which
will almost certainly be a woman, since instead of having a 20male-1female
application ratio, you now have a 1male-20female ratio.

One way of ensuring that you get women referrals is to reach out to all of
your female engineering friends, and ask THEM for referrals. Or when you are
making your job postings, forward it along to the mailing list of all the
women in tech meetups, facebook groups, email lists, ect.

I mean, thats what the tech industry is doing right now, but targeted at men,
and they never get in trouble for it, even if it is "accidental" that the job
postings only get sent to tech groups/meetups that have a 20-1 male to female
ratio.

~~~
vorotato
>The REAL way to go about this is to discriminate at the referral/reachout
stage. >If you go to your all male engineering team and announce "We are
hiring! Refer all your friends!". What you are effectively doing is
discriminating against women, because you are going to receive 20 male
referrals and 1 women referral. But THIS isn't illegal.

God this hit me like a sack of bricks. It's exactly what I would do and I now
realize, dudes gonna have dude friends, just like how ladies are gonna have
lady friends.

------
newacct23
>Education shrank the results to single digits for each occupation, gender and
work experience, so I decided to remove it from the final dataset.

First of all you could have used buckets. Secondly, it doesn't seem like you
have enough data judging from your charts.

Dice did a study and found that

>when you control for education, level of experience and parallel job titles,
says Dice, men and women earn the same amounts.

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2013/03/20/women-
are-...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2013/03/20/women-are-now-paid-
as-much-as-men-in-tech-study-finds/#1cfa195650dc)

> At that point I made a decision to change this by enforcing a new hiring
> rule. Next couple of new employees are going to be women up until we balance
> our team

I hope you get sued

~~~
haimez
But you know they won't be, because good luck winning that case, and before
that, good luck finding a lawyer to represent that case.

~~~
stale2002
Also, apparently anti-discrimination laws dont kick in until you have 15
employees, so what this guy is doing is probably not illegal anyway.

~~~
striking
Depends on the state. In CA, the number is 5. [1]

1:
[http://www.workplacefairness.org/minimum](http://www.workplacefairness.org/minimum)

------
Kpourdeilami
> At that point I made a decision to change this by enforcing a new hiring
> rule. Next couple of new employees are going to be women up until we balance
> our team

I stopped reading after this part!

~~~
pyre
If he had decided to give preference to (e.g.) Syrian refugees because he felt
a sense of wanting to help, would you have the same response? If he gave
preference to a veteran out of Patriotism or an ex-con out of a belief in
"second chances" would you have the same reaction?

~~~
apineda
Interesting argument. So you are equating being born the female sex the same
as being a war time refugee, war veteran or ex-con? Could you explain that
analogy a little better?

~~~
pyre
I was just presenting other situations where an employer might give someone
hiring preference.

Is it just the idea that someone was getting hiring preference that isn't 100%
tied to skills that is the issue? Or is it _specifically_ because it was
_women_ that were getting hiring preference?

------
inmygarage
Generally as a startup, many applicants come through current employees,
friends, investors, etc. This generally encourages the cycle of the same
people getting the same jobs. Don't rely on your website to widen the
diversity of your funnel, even if your jobs list is current...most startups I
know are not great about keeping this current anyway.

A few (relatively easy) ideas:

1\. Join a few "______ in tech" email lists, and if you don't feel comfortable
joining the list or it is not allowed, at least email the moderator and ask if
they take job postings.

2\. Send someone from your company to attend to a "____ in tech" meetup. There
are a lot and they happen often. Ask people at these meetups where they get
their information, what email lists they are on, etc. Then, act.

3\. Interns. People have mixed thoughts on interns, fine, but the "lack of
experience" trope happens because it's really hard to get that first chance.
Take a chance on someone in a lower-risk way.

4\. Host some kind of public-facing community event one or two times per year.
Advertise it on your website and your twitter. Generally as a woman I am more
comfortable attending something like this rather than cold-emailing a company
for a position that I am not even sure they are hiring for. See: "Code as
Craft" at Etsy. Tech-centric topic, inclusive and public-facing way to see the
office, meet employees etc.

~~~
mc32
>Generally as a startup, many applicants come through current employees,
friends, investors, etc. This generally encourages the cycle of the same
people getting the same jobs.

Is that a bad thing? I say this from the perspective of small businesses who
typically hire family then friends, etc. In theory it may be bad as they may
eventually run out of vigor and ideas... but is it bad in other ways? I have
known many businesses started by immigrants where lots of the employees were
family, same ethnic group, etc. but I had not though of it as "wrong" in a
moral sense maybe wrong in a business sense (as I think it limited their
potential, but I saw that as "their" problem, not a social problem.

------
cleandreams
I thought this was an interesting article and then I read the comments. Oh
dear, a bunch of white guys kvetching and clutching their...pearls. Your
deprivation moves me. Really. Anyway I had a point to make, as a software
engineer for 30 years and a woman. (The proportion of women in the field has
fallen by half since I started my career.) For my last job I went with a high
end recruiting agency and the recruiter got me to raise my salary request by
25K. I ended up getting 10K above her suggestion. It was interesting to see
that indeed I was undervaluing myself. In this I find that I was pretty
typical of female engineers. I'm glad I took the recruiter's advice. By the
way my salary seems to be exactly in line with the salary of men with my
experience, from these charts.

~~~
ewjordan
Your point is spot on: people should _always_ know what they're worth when
they negotiate salary at a job, asking for what you can get is the most
crucial thing when taking a job.

Both men and women are uncomfortable negotiating up (I've heard that women are
much more hesitant about this, but I don't know the research that well and
never sat on the hiring side of salary negotiations), and low asks are
probably the biggest mistake anyone can make: $10-20k doesn't mean shit to the
manager that wants to get you on their team if you negotiate it at hiring
time, but if you try to get that bump during annual raise period, that's
almost impossible to achieve at any large-ish company (it means either nixing
raises for other people on the team or calling in VP-level favors, which most
managers don't have the ability to do).

In tech nobody is ever going to tell you to piss off for asking for $10k more
than they can offer, they're just going to negotiate you down (if even that -
most of the time they'll just say "yes" or split the difference). Now, if
you're $50k+ out of line, that could be another matter, but that's why you do
some research and don't go crazy with your ask.

The rule for contracting is more brutal, but also a bit simpler: you should
always be losing a lot of business because of how high your rate is, somewhere
between 25% and 50% is my rule of thumb. If clients are saying "yes" without
negotiating or at least complaining, you're _definitely_ charging too little.

Protip: you can look up top salaries at most non-profits online, they have to
report them for I think the 15 highest paid employees. Pick a smallish one in
your area, look at the engineers there, and you've got an anchor for senior
engineering rates. Non profits might not be 100% competitive with for-profit
companies, but the better ones have to be somewhat close as far as base salary
(they don't offer stock or other perks, usually) if they want good people.

------
smegel
> Born white and male in today’s world I won the lottery without having a
> clue.

Here we go. (actually I stopped reading).

~~~
epistasis
There's a couple comments to this effect. Why? It comes across as being
unwilling to consider ideas at all.

~~~
mc32
Probably because Germans have won the "German lottery", Japanese have won the
Japanese lottery, People from Syria "lost" the lottery. Many advanced nations
in a kind of way "won" the lottery for their people. Many Americans believe
Europeans won the lottery vis a vis the US because they think things are much
better and more fair there. On the other hand, people from poor countries
think America is a lottery and put great efforts at crossing the border...

It also has a "guilt" aspect to it.

------
ilzmastr
Nice work!

How many data points per graph? Really just 1 median salary a year (20x2 data
points and 1k^2 pixels :)? I would have preferred just points with straight
lines over the interpolated wavy line that looks fibbed. Why not more points?
Why not a heat map/2d histogram instead of medians? And why not have the same
axis on all the graphs?

------
xfour
Looks pretty compelling based on the graphs at the bottom. Seems like OP could
lead with those or at least make a percentage right up at the top for those of
us that need a TLDR instead of a play by play.

------
Svenskunganka
> At that point I made a decision to change this by enforcing a new hiring
> rule. Next couple of new employees are going to be women up until we balance
> our team

Most of us can agree that this is a bad decision, but I've always wondered how
people can end up with such tunnel vision. Men in IT has always been
overrepresented, so it's not surprising that the majority of teams are mostly
men. But what I wonder is why this person thinks that hiring women only will
change this trend? It is in fact gender discrimination, but I believe that
inspiring women to work in the IT field is the key to solve the problem. I
don't think anyone wants special treatment due to their gender, but rather
evaluated by their skills and experiences.

~~~
jordanlev
> But what I wonder is why this person thinks that hiring women only will
> change this trend.

As someone else pointed out in another comment, many women feel better about
working at a place that already has other women.

------
daxfohl
Completely tangent, but I'm surprised ops and hardware are so low.

------
crappola
Any idea where I can find LGBTQ wage gap too. Also, now that female glass
ceiling is broken, which glass ceiling is next? L,G,B,T or Q?

------
dfsegoat
Would be helpful to see some histograms. The patterns of the data seem oddly
suspect to me (sinusoidal - with things like Operations in 5 year earning more
than ops at 7.4ish year). Maybe I am missing something but am assuming this is
just because of sample size. It seems extreme for things like Operations and
Hardware Engineer though.

------
skyrw
Now all men who were rejected can easily sue you. Solid move bro.

------
DelaneyM
Data collection: A+

Analysis: needs improvement.

From the article:

> Based on the data, women are definitely undervaluing themselves in
> comparison to men. The gap starts around $10k/year for the first year and
> grows to a staggering $30k/year after 10 years of working epxeriences. [sic]

An alternative interpretation is that women are behaving entirely logically
with the knowledge that their employability is maximized if they set their
desired salaries lower than men with equivalent experience. Efficient markets
are a thing.

I'm not saying that's my interpretation of the data, I'm just cautioning
against jumping to conclusions when that conclusion is implicitly blaming the
victims. It's a really great analysis and the dataset could set up a great
follow-on study of causation.

~~~
lsiq
The gap is large enough that the efficient market argument doesn't hold very
much water. A 5k difference should be enough to favor one candidate over
another all else equals. If firms are efficient they wouldn't be paying 20k
extra for males.

I do think wages are really very much a bottom up thing in that people can
collectively raise their wages by simply not accepting lower pay. Putting a
(reasonably) high price on your head is not only good for you but for others
like you in the labor market. Firms are not really in a great position to keep
wages down, the best they can do is make sure nobody knows what anyone else
makes.

~~~
htns
As far as I can tell the data does not adjust for usual hours worked or
overtime beyond restricting to only full time data points. Men working more
hours than women is a consistent trend across pretty much the whole world.

------
brightball
I realize you're going to get a lot of controversy on something like this but
this is a great read. First and foremost, excellent work with the data
gathering. Now I want to tinker with TensorFlow.

I think you drew the generally correct conclusion from this:

"But I hope that it will encourage at least some women to think more about
their value for an employer and next time will negotiate a better deal for
themselves."

My only problem with the conclusion is that statements like this make the
assumption that women are not already thinking about their value. My family
owns a business that employees almost entirely women with graduate degrees.
All very sharp and want to do well in their careers but having diverse
interpretations of what doing well actually means to them. Your data is
probably better than any I've seen to point that out since it is based on
DESIRED salaries.

Some want to advance their careers primarily and while others significantly
value flexibility for sake of their families. Men tend to be more singular in
focus. We want to advance our careers for sake of ourselves AND our families.

The goals naturally align with a desire to advance in large part to make it
easier for our wives to take a pay cut to have more time for the kids. While
there are plenty of stay at home dads and role reversals today, the norm is
very much the opposite...and it's going to stay that way not because of social
acceptance but because of biology...unless of course men start carrying babies
for 9 months, going through childbirth, recovering from childbirth,
breastfeeding and everything that involves (waking up and night, pumping,
freezing milk) and the bond that naturally comes from all of that. Before
repeating the process for additional children.

A lot of that stuff is hardwired. I see my wife doing all of that and realize
there's only so much I can do to help...but I can try to make more money to
make life a little easier.

There are a WHOLE lot of women who decide they want to stop having to work for
a while after they've had kids, at least for the early years but then discover
that they can't afford too. Between student loans, potentially going overboard
on a mortgage from two incomes, etc NOT having a job with the new expense of a
child becomes almost unimaginable to handle. There's even a book about it
called The Two Income Trap.

All that's to say, don't make the mistake of thinking that people are
undervaluing themselves because you don't agree with what they're asking for.
You never know what they really want.

------
adamnemecek
> implying being born in Slovakia is winning some sort of lottery

~~~
easuter
Yeah, unfortunately a lot of these blog posts are very US-centric. There are
still plenty of people in Europe living in poverty and their white privilege
somehow didn't save them.

It's interesting how these racist ideas get tossed about proudly here and in
the US media.

~~~
adamnemecek
The author was actually born in Slovakia but it seems like he got infected
with white guilt when he came to the US.

------
bowmessage
"graphs generated for each occupation, representing a median (not an
average!)"

But the y-axis is labeled average salary!

------
james-watson
>If you are a female engineer living in the Bay Area, we’d love to meet you.

Totally not sexism folks. Equality at its best!

