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Reddit CEO Ellen Pao Bans Salary Negotiations To Equalize Pay For Men, Women

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.'"

16 of 892 comments (clear)

  1. Good luck with that strategy. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Informative

    Now you know why behind every cuntish company is a stupid fuckin cunt. In fairness, I have to admit, I let my manager know well before review time what i expect to make, jobs are like cunts, a dime a dozen. If your not willing to bid farewell and shake your managers hand and let her/him know what a failure he is at his job (which is to keep managing you) then you might be a cunt too.

  2. Re:Yeah, right. by Anonymous Coward · · 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.

  3. Re:These days... by LessThanObvious · · Score: 4, Informative

    Saying men negotiate harder than women do is about the most sexist thing I've heard lately from an executive.

  4. Re:Yeah, right. by Minupla · · Score: 2, Informative

    Actually, according to the latest figures I can find:
    http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/20...
      in 2009, women were on average paid 80% of men, across a broad segment of the work spectrum.

    This data is from the US Dept of Labor. If you have a more recent or competing authoritative citation I'd love to hear it, but in so far as I'm aware we still have an issue.

    Min

    --
    On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
  5. Re:These days... by tlambert · · Score: 3, 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".

  6. Re:These days... by s0nicfreak · · Score: 4, 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.

  7. Re:Yeah, right. by Anonymous Coward · · 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 than male candidates for initiating negotiations. In Experiment 3, participants evaluated videotapes of candidates who accepted compensation offers or initiated negotiations. Male evaluators penalized female candidates more than male candidates for initiating negotiations; female evaluators penalized all candidates for initiating negotiations. Perceptions of niceness and demandingness explained reistance to female negotiators. In Experiment 4, participants adopted the candidate’s perspective and assessed whether to initiate negotiations in same scenario used in Experiment 3. With male evaluators, women were less inclined than men to negotiate, and nervousness explained this effect. There was no gender difference when evaluator was female.

    link
    https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/cfawis/bowles.pdf

  8. Re:Hmm by Tawnos · · Score: 2, 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".

  9. Re:Hmm by Ixokai · · Score: 4, 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".

  10. Sometimes it does hurt to ask by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Since this is a bit buried and you seem genuinely inquisitive I repost -

    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 than male candidates for initiating negotiations. In Experiment 3, participants evaluated videotapes of candidates who accepted compensation offers or initiated negotiations. Male evaluators penalized female candidates more than male candidates for initiating negotiations; female evaluators penalized all candidates for initiating negotiations. Perceptions of niceness and demandingness explained reistance to female negotiators. In Experiment 4, participants adopted the candidate’s perspective and assessed whether to initiate negotiations in same scenario used in Experiment 3. With male evaluators, women were less inclined than men to negotiate, and nervousness explained this effect. There was no gender difference when evaluator was female.

    link
    https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/cfawis/bowles.pdf

  11. This can actually work by EmperorOfCanada · · Score: 4, Informative

    One of the big problems with salary negotiations is that inevitably everyone knows everyone else's paycheque. So if you find out that the guy sitting beside you doing the same job is earning way more then you just look at your paycheque as a biweekly insult.

    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).

  12. Re:Pao = Sexist by Eythian · · Score: 1, Informative

    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.

    It's cultural. In general, men who negotiate are considered confident, whereas women who do are considered bitchy. This provides a negative incentive for women to negotiate, which then becomes ingrained.

  13. Re:Hmm by Daemonik · · Score: 2, 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.

  14. Re:Is negotiation a skill required for the job? by turbidostato · · Score: 4, 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.

  15. Re:Hmm by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 1, Informative

    Thanks to sex reassignment surgery, we now have some input from people who have literally been on either side. And guess what? Their evidence supports the obvious interpretation of the stats that we have: they really get treated differently doing the same exact thing when they switch their sex. The "pushy" vs "assertive" behavior is one repeatedly reoccurring example that they bring up.