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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.'"
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.
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/
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.