1/3 of older millenials share their salary info with their co-workers

[Colleen27]

No. They told me it was "impossible." Clearly, it wasn't. When I learned he was being paid more, I marched into my bosses office, told them I was fully aware of his salary, demanded more. Got it. It wasn't the "only" time it happened with this same company. I saw it many times. Not an isolated example at all. Systematic belief that "men" were worth more. I was also asked, during my job interview, about my plans for having children. A flat out illegal question. Have you ever been asked that? I doubt it. Seriously doubt it. It was (and I suspect still is) something that women get asked. Now, it's probably more subtle than the direct question I was asked. And, mind you, I was a labor and employment attorney at that time. If they would do it to me, I imagine that it was a broad scale question that was asked. I could have filed a complaint, of course, but I did not....wasn't a wise practical choice for me to make (although it would have been a principled decision). And, that in a nutshell explains why employers get away with this crap.

Yep. And since labor laws are only as good as the enforcement, those illegal questions and blatantly sexist presumptions stand more or less unchallenged because people make the practical choice to leave well enough alone and keep their paycheck.

I have a friend from back in my IT days who makes hiring decisions now, and his perspective on it has been tough to hear. He has told me that only 50% of the job is how good you are. The other 50% is how clients perceive you, and since many of his clients perceive male techs as more competent, more authoritative, and more effective, men simply add more value for the company than women with the same skills. So of course he prefers to hire men and is more willing to negotiate higher pay, because he assumes they'll make the company more money than equally skilled women would.

I think that just proves what Gumbo said, they hired you as cheaply as possible. You didn't demand a higher salary when you were hired, you accepted what was offered then. Why would they try to give you more if you were being so demanding about it when you were hired?
You assume it was because he is a male, but maybe it was because you weren't assertive enough in the negotiations.

It so easy for employees to blame it on the system than to admit it may actually be them. Assumptions and opinions are not facts, so you can think what you want as to why someone is given a higher salary but you don't really know without a doubt.

But that's another facet of the problem. When women are as assertive as men in negotiations, they're perceived as difficult, *****y, or shrill. If they're not as assertive as men, the very agreeablity that employers (society) expect from women is blamed for pay discrepancies. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

The thing is, while real world situations are complex and hard to boil down to a single variable, there are controlled experiments that do just that... that show that a female name on a resume results in fewer interviews, lower starting pay offers, and less favorable overall impressions than the same resume with a man's name on the top. This isn't all in the heads of women who have experienced it.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.co...bias-in-science-is-real-heres-why-it-matters/
http://fortune.com/2016/06/08/name-bias-in-hiring/

 

[ronandannette]

No. They told me it was "impossible." Clearly, it wasn't. When I learned he was being paid more, I marched into my bosses office, told them I was fully aware of his salary, demanded more. Got it. It wasn't the "only" time it happened with this same company. I saw it many times. Not an isolated example at all. Systematic belief that "men" were worth more. I was also asked, during my job interview, about my plans for having children. A flat out illegal question. Have you ever been asked that? I doubt it. Seriously doubt it. It was (and I suspect still is) something that women get asked. Now, it's probably more subtle than the direct question I was asked. And, mind you, I was a labor and employment attorney at that time. If they would do it to me, I imagine that it was a broad scale question that was asked. I could have filed a complaint, of course, but I did not....wasn't a wise practical choice for me to make (although it would have been a principled decision). And, that in a nutshell explains why employers get away with this crap.

Why did you choose to work for a firm you believe to be both unethical (touching on illegal) and lacking in respect for women in general and yourself in particular? Whether or not I see things the same way, you've made your perceptions clear. I sincerely want to know why you took the job.

You know companies can change what they can afford, right? You said earlier the guy was hired more than a year after you. So the possibilities are:
A) He was a better negotiator than you.
B) The company's financial picture was better at the time he was hired.
C) It was because he was a male.
D) All of the above.

E) Market conditions changed.
I work in a somewhat cyclical industry and we've undergone a massive regional economic downswing due to the world price of oil. 10's of 1,000's of people were laid off in our industry alone at the same time that sales volumes and profit margins plummeted. There can be 100's of applicants for every position and the wage range is nowhere near what it was. It's very much a "take it or leave it" environment right now.

Should things recover like we all pray they do, future hires will likely have better prospects.

 

[TipsyTraveler]

Seems like they change the dates depending on who you ask, haha! I can remember being in high school and being labeled as Gen X (which Wikipedia claims ends with birth years in the "early 1980s"). So I don't quite perfectly fit in anywhere it seems.

You sound like you fall into the "Xennial" microgeneration wedged between Generation X and the Millennials, born 1977-1983, and defined as those who had an analog childhood and a digital adulthood.