Income gap for women in Silicon Valley is terrible (paid, qualifications)

[boxus]

Originally Posted by jade408

Gender gap: Men getting paid more than women in Silicon Valley - Local: In The Peninsula

No shocker. And before anyway talks about women not becoming engineers? I know plenty in my circle who found out they were paid 20-49% less than their peers.

Did they file a complaint? What was the result of the investigation? How did they find out the pay difference? Did they know all the experience, education, and skills these men had? That would be a lot of information to know, considering it is usually private and organizations just do not hand out info on other employees.

[jade408]

Originally Posted by Ruth4Truth

What you're saying is that the tech field is one huge "old boys' network"? A throwback to the early 20th Century and other bygone eras?

Yes it is. Great article in the Chron talking about this:

http://www.sfchronicle.com/business/...pute-27163.php

And contrary to popular belief, female techies aren't faring any better. I see it in my own circle. My female friends with masters in CS are paid less than their male peers.

[Ruth4Truth]

Originally Posted by jade408

Yes it is. Great article in the Chron talking about this:

Does not compute - San Francisco Chronicle

And contrary to popular belief, female techies aren't faring any better. I see it in my own circle. My female friends with masters in CS are paid less than their male peers.

Wow, a "white-male-dominated bro culture", the article says. That's outrageous! How can the companies afford to limit themselves that way? Microsoft in Seattle vacuums up all the talent they can find, they can't afford to be picky! It's great for qualified AA women, for example. I can't vouch for pay equality, but I know they'll take any qualified candidates irrespective of gender and ethnicity.

I wonder to what extent the problem in the Bay Area relates to women maybe being more reticent to negotiate a good salary for themselves. Do you think that's a factor? Is there any recourse for this disparity, legal recourse, I mean?

[FabianS]

Originally Posted by boxus

Did they file a complaint? What was the result of the investigation? How did they find out the pay difference? Did they know all the experience, education, and skills these men had? That would be a lot of information to know, considering it is usually private and organizations just do not hand out info on other employees.

Men will typically threaten to leave a company in order to get a raise if they think they deserve it.

Peer Reviewed Studies(tm) have shown that men(generally speaking) take more risks like this. Sometimes it works out, and sometimes it doesn't as things like male traffic fatalities show.

I'm guessing that(generally speaking) women typically don't like to take the 'threaten to leave' approach, and thus end up with slightly less pay.

[jade408]

Originally Posted by Ruth4Truth

Wow, a "white-male-dominated bro culture", the article says. That's outrageous! How can the companies afford to limit themselves that way? Microsoft in Seattle vacuums up all the talent they can find, they can't afford to be picky! It's great for qualified AA women, for example. I can't vouch for pay equality, but I know they'll take any qualified candidates irrespective of gender and ethnicity.

I wonder to what extent the problem in the Bay Area relates to women maybe being more reticent to negotiate a good salary for themselves. Do you think that's a factor? Is there any recourse for this disparity, legal recourse, I mean?

Start ups are really clichey. For example, at the company I work at currently, 75% of the employees have worked with the CEO or other person on the team before.

Especially in the early phases, the net that founders cast doesn't go much further than their social circle. Once the company gets a little bigger, they look harder for talent. But for companies under 100 people, it is a small incestuous circle of friends. Let's extrapolate, if most of your friends look and think like you, you won't see any diversity.

We all know the early employees are the ones who have the big cash outs.

I did go to the hackathon last night in Oakland, and one of the speakers was Mitch Kapor, and he echoed that exact same problem that is widening the gaps between the haves and have nots.

I worked on a project to organize hackathons at black colleges. One of the comments we got from prospective employers was "these schools are not known entities for us, we'd rather recruit from the schools we know more about..."

[Ruth4Truth]

Originally Posted by jade408

I worked on a project to organize hackathons at black colleges. One of the comments we got from prospective employers was "these schools are not known entities for us, we'd rather recruit from the schools we know more about..."

What this seems to be leading to is segregation by company. Black IT grads need to start their own companies in order to create jobs in the field for other Blacks. Which could be challenging re: accessing startup capital. A sad situation, that such a thing would be necessary.

Maybe some kind of talent pool could be organized as a resource for employers to turn to when looking for hires...? Some entity needs to be organized to address these issues.

[jade408]

Originally Posted by Ruth4Truth

What this seems to be leading to is segregation by company. Black IT grads need to start their own companies in order to create jobs in the field for other Blacks. Which could be challenging re: accessing startup capital. A sad situation, that such a thing would be necessary.

Maybe some kind of talent pool could be organized as a resource for employers to turn to when looking for hires...? Some entity needs to be organized to address these issues.

I am in an organization for this, and there are similar for others. The capital gap is a huge problem. Mad much as we say silicon valey is full of Asians etc, 80% of money goes to white males! mostly from Stanford, MIT and Harvard.

I don't believe for a minute that the only people with good ideas are white males from 22-28.

It doesn't help if you start a company and you can't get you foot in the door for capital.

Mitch Kapor's fund and a few other organizations are trying to address this, but that represents a very small amount of the money that's available. There is definitely a talent gap, but the talent that exists now had a huge opportunity gap based on both access and unintentional bias. When you think about studies on how people with "black names" don't get job interviews.....and out overall societal problem where each person of color represents their entire ethnic group while whites are individuals. It is clear we have a really long way to go.

It's not just a problem black (interest anyone else here) needs to address, everyone needs to be an ally to improve the country. Our future depends in it. If we decide a huge portion of our society isn't worth the effort, where does it leave us?

[Ruth4Truth]

Originally Posted by jade408

I am in an organization for this, and there are similar for others. The capital gap is a huge problem. Mad much as we say silicon valey is full of Asians etc, 80% of money goes to white males! mostly from Stanford, MIT and Harvard.

I don't believe for a minute that the only people with good ideas are white males from 22-28.

It doesn't help if you start a company and you can't get you foot in the door for capital.

Mitch Kapor's fund and a few other organizations are trying to address this, but that represents a very small amount of the money that's available. There is definitely a talent gap, but the talent that exists now had a huge opportunity gap based on both access and unintentional bias. When you think about studies on how people with "black names" don't get job interviews.....and out overall societal problem where each person of color represents their entire ethnic group while whites are individuals. It is clear we have a really long way to go.

It's not just a problem black (interest anyone else here) needs to address, everyone needs to be an ally to improve the country. Our future depends in it. If we decide a huge portion of our society isn't worth the effort, where does it leave us?

There are Black stockbrokers with Black clients. Maybe the org you're in and others can start networking, raising awareness of this need, doing presentations, and thus build a groundswell of support. Some Black business leaders would jump on this if they knew there were a need, and that they could make a difference.

Do outreach. Think creatively; get Black entertainers on board (Belafonte, especially, is really into activism and can bring others in, S. Wonder, etc. etc. (fill in the blanks yourself). Just brainstorming. Bill Gates would probably be interested, too, since the effort would be encouraging more tech grads from an under-utilized demographic. Re: the talent gap, you could enlist the involvement of Black colleges, at which point a job expansion comes onto the horizon via those fundraising activities for startups. Maybe you (& co.) have already thought of some of this.

[BayAreaHillbilly]

Not all engineers are paid really high. My finding is the really high pay goes to a small cadre of HW gurus at the hot companies, as well as, of course, anyone on the bleeding edge of SW.

More women in the ranks and in the trenches.

So yeah, it is still a (European-American, East Asian, South Asian) boys club in the more elite ranks.

[Tall Traveler]

Some of the gap is due to fewer women choosing to go into IT but women still are paid less for equal qualifications. Come on people, make it right.