Silicon Valley Salaries Are Shrinking, Leaving Workers In the Lurch (mercurynews.com) 234
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Mercury News: Krista DeWeese has been laid off four times in the last eight years. She wakes up every morning feeling anxious. Will I lose my job today -- again? Will I have enough to pay the rent? Even though she's an educated, experienced marketing professional, worrisome thoughts trail the 47-year-old Fremont native's every waking moment. Currently a contract worker at a health science company, she has been struggling to find secure work that pays enough to keep up with the exorbitant cost of living in the Bay Area. She has a lot of company. The past year has been tough for the Bay Area, as thousands of layoffs skittered across the region. Even workers at Silicon Valley's tech titans -- including Meta, Apple and Google -- have faced job cuts. Since 2022, tech companies in the region have slashed roughly 40,000 jobs. And with each layoff, workers are entering a market that is less friendly to job seekers than it used to be.
New research from tech advocacy organization Women Impact Tech, which examined job and salary data nationwide from 2020 to 2023, affirmed what many people already know: companies are tightening their belts -- slicing jobs and salaries alike -- and many people are struggling to find work that pays enough to live comfortably in the Bay Area. Despite having the highest tech salaries in the country, Silicon Valley has experienced the biggest drop in pay compared to other tech hubs, falling 15% from 2022 to 2023, according to Women Impact Tech. And with inflation, DeWeese and others are watching their spending power shrink. More than 10 years ago, she was earning over $100,000 in total compensation. That amount has dropped 15% since she was laid off from Yahoo in 2016, and has not increased since. "I feel like my career has been frozen in time," DeWeese said. "Things have been at a standstill."
Paula Bratcher Ratliff, president of New York-based Women Impact Tech, said that the shrinking pay hits especially hard for women, given the continuing gender pay gap. "The Bay Area took one of the largest hits," Ratliff said. "Women make up about 28% of the entire workforce in tech. When you're seeing an overall decline at 15%, and for pay equity, women have not made much traction." [...] Despite the trend of shrinking salaries in the world's tech capital, Ratliff, with Women Impact Tech, doesn't believe it's necessarily a race to the bottom. "Today, about every company is a tech company, whether they're in retail, consumer goods or hospitality," Ratliff said. "There's so many opportunities in tech without having to focus on those jobs with the tech organizations alone. We're seeing great companies emerge." While it's still unclear where the light is at the end of the tunnel for DeWeese, she remains hopeful her situation will improve. "You have to have hope or else you're just going to live in fear of being let go, again and again," she said.
New research from tech advocacy organization Women Impact Tech, which examined job and salary data nationwide from 2020 to 2023, affirmed what many people already know: companies are tightening their belts -- slicing jobs and salaries alike -- and many people are struggling to find work that pays enough to live comfortably in the Bay Area. Despite having the highest tech salaries in the country, Silicon Valley has experienced the biggest drop in pay compared to other tech hubs, falling 15% from 2022 to 2023, according to Women Impact Tech. And with inflation, DeWeese and others are watching their spending power shrink. More than 10 years ago, she was earning over $100,000 in total compensation. That amount has dropped 15% since she was laid off from Yahoo in 2016, and has not increased since. "I feel like my career has been frozen in time," DeWeese said. "Things have been at a standstill."
Paula Bratcher Ratliff, president of New York-based Women Impact Tech, said that the shrinking pay hits especially hard for women, given the continuing gender pay gap. "The Bay Area took one of the largest hits," Ratliff said. "Women make up about 28% of the entire workforce in tech. When you're seeing an overall decline at 15%, and for pay equity, women have not made much traction." [...] Despite the trend of shrinking salaries in the world's tech capital, Ratliff, with Women Impact Tech, doesn't believe it's necessarily a race to the bottom. "Today, about every company is a tech company, whether they're in retail, consumer goods or hospitality," Ratliff said. "There's so many opportunities in tech without having to focus on those jobs with the tech organizations alone. We're seeing great companies emerge." While it's still unclear where the light is at the end of the tunnel for DeWeese, she remains hopeful her situation will improve. "You have to have hope or else you're just going to live in fear of being let go, again and again," she said.
California is the problem here (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:California is the problem here (Score:5, Insightful)
California is hecka expensive, but in the past, companies paid a premium because of the concentration of highly skilled workers ... who came here because of the concentration of companies that pay well.
But WFH changed everything. If people aren't coming to the office, then it doesn't matter if they are in San Jose or Atlanta ... or Mumbai.
Companies no longer have a reason to pay the "California premium".
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or Mumbai
Except companies that have to follow US law and can not afford data leaving US jurisdiction.
If you outsource to Mumbai or really anywhere with hit-or-miss employer protections for intellectual litigation, then it's just a matter of time before your data is sold to the highest bidder.
Someone takes a list of emails and sells them here in the United States, employers have legal recourse to crater that person under litigation the likes most mortals have never seen. Someone in Mumbai sells that list of emails,
Re:California is the problem here (Score:4, Interesting)
It definitely matters if you're working from Mumbai. In my experience working with people over 3 timezones away comes with a definite productivity hit. Over about 6 timezones and you aren't able to work effectively.
But yeah, leaving HCOL areas makes a lot of sense.
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There is a very good reason to pay a higher premium than Mumbai, like having an employee whose experience is real and isn't secretly the same body filling a seat for three of your roles and a handful of competitors roles as well.
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Recent surveys have tipped companies hands on all that. The scheme of paying people in San Jose, Atlanta, Dallas, Oakland, or Akrin less for the same job because of their location instead of using the normal strategy of paying based on the employer location/market is just the sister to the return to work scam.
It's all just a cover to get as many people to leave voluntarily as possible in a form of unofficial layoff.
Re:California is the problem here (Score:5, Informative)
SV definitely had a super high concentration of tech workers. It's silly to say otherwise. Where do you get the idea that wasn't true?
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Heh....
Seriously though, there was only one time in the modern era where finding a job was nearly impossible in the valley, during and right after the dot bomb era for a painfully long few years. I found 2 FTE plus 2 short term contracting gigs but all of them were the worst shit jobs I'd had since high school. During normal times I wouldn't have even sent a resume to any of them.
And in 2008, there were jobs but salaries took a big hit.
There are still jobs today, you just can't quit Friday, send resume Sa
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"There are still jobs today, you just can't quit Friday, send resume Saturday, sign papers Sunday and start Monday anymore and your new salary will probably be flat not up.
It took my buddy about 4-5 months to find a job that will be his first time as a VP. "
Grats to your buddy and this isn't anything specific to the valley like people are trying to suggest. It's no different here in Dallas. According to some recruiters I know and others trending on social media companies list positions, they recruit and eve
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Yeah sorry man, that was clearly a fake job. I've had similar happen and once I was also the internal guy waiting around while they wasted 2 other's guys' time interviewing. I passed by one in the hallway by accident. Felt bad for him. I hate that fake hiring bullshit.
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Re:California is the problem here (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly. Other places are cheap. Pittsburgh is cheap. Sure, it's a shit hole, but it's cheap. My wife is a woman. She makes about $160K/year. It goes a long way in Pittsburgh. Our mortgage payment is under $1100, and that's on a 15 year note too.
Not much shitting on sidewalks here though, so if that's a must-have for you, Pittsburgh isn't where you want to be.
Re:California is the problem here (Score:5, Informative)
And if you don't want world class orchestras, operas, ballet, food, beer, wine, architecture, biotech, high tech, high culture, low culture, nature, and literature, then, yes, stay in Pittsburgh
Surprisingly, Pittsburgh is pretty good for orchestras, operas, ballet, food, beer, wine, architecture, biotech, high tech, high culture, low culture, nature, and literature.
Remember, a few decades ago it was one of the manufacturing centers of the world, home of billionaires (they were called multi-millionaires back then) and they built (and endowed) a lot of infrastructure.
Re: California is the problem here (Score:2)
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Re: California is the problem here (Score:5, Insightful)
And if you don't want world class orchestras, operas, ballet, food, beer, wine, architecture
I'm sure most San Franciscans believe that. It is, after all, the city that disappeared up its own asshole.
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On the flip side, being worth 1/1,000,000 of the average bay resident enables one to buy a cup of coffee without sweating their housing payment outside the bay.
Flashdance (Score:2)
You mean you never saw the Jerry Bruckheimer film "Flashdance"?
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I've been there. The city is literally a giant trash dump with a handful of sparkling spotless neighborhoods occupied by elites.
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And if you don't want world class orchestras, operas, ballet, food, beer, wine, architecture, biotech, high tech, high culture, low culture, nature, and literature, then, yes, stay in Pittsburgh and away from San Francisco.
#1, Nobody moves to a city for it's orchestra and ballet unless they're either IN the company or are a patron that is so rich, they can afford to live beyond the insane hobos crapping on your sidewalks.
#2, Almost every city big enough to have a pro sports team also has nice orchestras, ballets, art museums, etc.
#3, There are these things called "airplanes", and if your local orchestra isn't good enough for you, you can hop on this marvelous contraption, fly to see the San Francisco *insert culture-y thing h
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And, yes, Pitt is a wonderful city th
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Re: California is the problem here (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate to break it to you, but homelessness is not exclusive to SF or California.
Of course not, but it's definitely much worse here. Not only in terms of numbers but lax enforcement of laws in the name of "compassion" means they're more likely to be aggressive. Nearly every day I see the same people begging for money to cover funeral expenses. Not exactly unique to this area, but the fact that they walk in the middle of the street in busy traffic while holding their stupid signs up is. They're also free to smoke crack anywhere they want, because that's compassion. Doesn't matter if the police already know they're going to get wired and assault somebody after because they already have a history of it.
They don't shit on the sidewalk down here in LA though, that's a bay area exclusive because apparently they decided that sanitation is inhumane. People used to simply dump their chamber pots into the street in the old days, so surely it must be safe!
They do other weird shit down here though; a friend of mine apparently has a neighborhood pest in the form of a human sized raccoon who believes it's his right to dig through trash cans and spill them all over, and if you try to stop him he might behave like a regular sized raccoon does.
Re: California is the problem here (Score:2)
Re: California is the problem here (Score:2)
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Large cities are less likely to have job opportunities or affordable housing opportunities that people can use to get on their feet. They are just more likely to have services homeless can utilize to continue surviving without needing to get a job and get on their feet.
Re: California is the problem here (Score:2)
I grew up in a very rural area of the midwest. The cost of living was so low that people that would have been homeless elsewhere could afford a trailer on a half acre, on meager government benefits and a little under the table work. And because there isn't the overcrowding the charitable services weren't stretched as thin.
The metro I live in has homelessness. It's an issue. It's nothing like what I saw in the bay area even 10 years ago, the scope and severity in California was unreal. I get a lot of that is
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I've been in one of those towns and that seems fair since the cities are where the homeless drifted in from to begin with.
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Nope, it is just as bad in Dallas. Technology companies are listing positions but they aren't hiring and salaries have been stagnant for a decade.
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Re: California is the problem here (Score:5, Interesting)
No, plenty of people want to live in not-California. Difference is, most of not-California doesn't make building homes akin to squeezing blood from a stone. So the housing isn't over priced.
I live in a part of not-California called the Boston suburbs. Much like California, building housing here is damn near impossible because most available land in the suburbs is "conservation land." And housing here costs almost as much as there.
Re: California is the problem here (Score:5, Insightful)
You can build anything you want in Houston, but that's one of the reasons it's a shit hole.
Former Houstonian here and you're utterly full of shit. The lack of zoning is one of the only saving graces of living around Houston. It's zoning-happy assholes like you that make everywhere else so much more expensive. Busybody douches with a "got mine, up yours" attitude want to camp on the property they own while restricting anyone from building more. The blazing hot weather mixed with 100% humidity along with hordes or illegal immigrants driving like idiots is why Houston is a shithole.
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You can build anything you want in Houston, but that's one of the reasons it's a shit hole.
Former Houstonian here and you're utterly full of shit. The lack of zoning is one of the only saving graces of living around Houston. It's zoning-happy assholes like you that make everywhere else so much more expensive. Busybody douches with a "got mine, up yours" attitude want to camp on the property they own while restricting anyone from building more. The blazing hot weather mixed with 100% humidity along with hordes or illegal immigrants driving like idiots is why Houston is a shithole.
Houston serves as a cautionary tale of what happens when there is a complete lack of urban planning. The climate is just the cherry on top to maximize its shittiness.
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Houston serves as a cautionary tale of what happens when there is a complete lack of urban planning
Wrong. It's an inspiration to anyone who cares about individual freedom and property rights. It's not bad because you say it's bad, because you've already shown yourself to be a pro-rent-control idiot and anything you say after should be judged accordingly. You simply "say so", huh? Well, I'm a former resident and I say you're full of shit and have been since you started your pro-communist thread. The most oustanding evidence is that Houstonians themselves say things like this article Expert: Houston's lack [houstonchronicle.com]
Re:California is the problem here (Score:5, Informative)
That's why real estate is so expensive in California.
California real estate is expensive because of intentional voter-supported policies restricting the construction of new housing, especially affordable high-density housing.
Most building permits are denied, and those allowed are only for big single-family houses on big lots, resulting in expensive housing and sprawling suburbs.
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That's why real estate is so expensive in California.
California real estate is expensive because of intentional voter-supported policies restricting the construction of new housing, especially affordable high-density housing.
Most building permits are denied, and those allowed are only for big single-family houses on big lots, resulting in expensive housing and sprawling suburbs.
The other big factor is that many people want certain types of homes in certain areas, such as single family homes in good school areas or condos near train stations or with shorter commutes. Yes, these homes often start at more than $2 million. However, there are homes that cost $500-700k, not super cheap compared to other states, but arguably more affordable than other states considering the much higher salaries.
I would perhaps argue that government policies aren't the problem. The big problem is lack
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$500k for a house in California? Not within 5000 miles of a tech job.
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It's capitalism.
Bullcrap. Government-enforced restrictions on housing construction are the opposite of capitalism.
it was not liberal policies that cause the high prices.
Yes, it is. California's "no growth" anti-market policies are most prevalent in areas controlled by Democrats and mostly opposed by Republicans.
When liberal policies like rent control are proposed there are massive pushback against it.
For good reason. Rent control is not the solution. It will only exacerbate the problems by forcing even more rental properties off the market. If there isn't enough housing the solution is to build more housing, not government price fixing.
This is more about Silicon Valley though (Score:2)
Silicon Valley's housing has always been a special type of expensive these last 20+ years and that has only gotten worse as demand has increased year on year. The problem here is that those specific communities won't even zone enough housing for their white collared workers let alone their working class so now the only voters left vote in the interest of their property values by keeping housing supply low and not building high density housing. That wave of workers fleeing the area then heavily impacted rent
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It really isn't. This is a problem with the tech market everywhere. And anyone who is trying to find something in it knows because most positions are remote anyway.
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There are many reasons involved. First, the expensive parts of California are also already crowded, and probably limited in space. The Bay Area in particular cannot grow outwards easily. There are oceans, bays, and hills in the way. The old style of adding new landfill is a bad idea in an earthquake prone region. Building further on the hills is discouraged because residents want openspace and the land is either public land, parks, state parks, national parks, etc. Places like LA just decided to spraw
Re:California is the problem here (Score:5, Insightful)
but government is not the major driver of prices
Nope. Wrong. They definitely are. Zoning and restricting building permits are the reason and it's super super clear to anyone who's looked at the problem and doesn't have a fucking red armband on.
References:
Glaeser, Edward L., Gyourko, Joseph, and Saks, Raven E. "Why Is Manhattan So Expensive? Regulation and the Rise in Housing Prices." Journal of Law and Economics, vol. 48, no. 2, 2005, pp. 331-369.
Ward, Bryce A., and Glaeser, Edward L. "The Causes and Consequences of Land Use Regulation: Evidence from Greater Boston." Journal of Urban Economics, vol. 65, no. 3, 2009, pp. 265-278.
Note California appears to be on fire in State of the Nations Housing [harvard.edu] there at Harvard.
The Urban Housing Institute agrees with the parent, not with you. [urban.org]
Essentially the primary reason prices are high, are the reasons that conservatives love: raw capitalism.
Completely wrong and completely unsubstantiated with any facts whatsoever. Why should anyone believe this when you didn't even go one step beyond "supply and demand" and ask yourself why supply is low?
Supply is low, demand is high
Apparently all the reasons the parent post cited just bounced right off your skull and you don't get that's exactly why supply is low? Yes, the law of supply and demand still applies even when the market is distorted by the government's bad calls. That's all the more reason why they need to sod off and have their ability to restrict property rights rolled way way back.
Gentrification is not something that happens because of ultra liberalism, but because of rich people who as a demographic are much more heavily leaning towards the GOP policies.
Being a liberal partisan and wishing really hard doesn't make you right, it just makes you look dumb. However, nothing makes you look as stupid as proposing rent control (SMH). Nothing fails and makes the situation worse as much as rent control and apparently you've never looked into that, either.
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It's more complicated than that tho' - sure building permits and zoning make it hard to build in Manhattan (for example); so why don't more people/businesses go somewhere else and reduce the demand?
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I live in the city of San Jose, one of the most expensive real estate markets in the world.
My house is on a 3/4 acre lot because that's what the government required.
My lot could have easily accommodated three or four houses, each with a reasonable yard, or an apartment building with ten units.
California's housing problems are absolutely caused by government policy.
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Policies from decades ago. Overpriced housing was a thing in the 70s, people were complaining about it then. And the governments in the 70s and 80s weren't all liberal, some of the policies showed up when there were GOP governors. Why? Because the voters did not want crowded cities. NIMBYism, meaning what the voters want, even if it goes against good urban planning.
Government policy is always a reflection of what the voters want. And the voters several decades back were pretty much a mix of left and r
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Most of the SF area is filled in. Where is all this new housing going?
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Most of the SF area is filled in. Where is all this new housing going?
I live in San Jose, which has mile after mile of low-rise commercial areas, surrounded by many more miles of extremely expensive houses on big lots sprawling into the exburbs.
The solution is to increase density by building highrise apartments, townhouses, and single-family homes on much smaller lots.
Businesses should be mixed with housing so people can walk to shops and walk or bike to work.
This is the opposite of current policy, which intentionally creates housing that requires a car because it prevents th
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California real estate is expensive because of intentional voter-supported policies restricting the construction of new housing, especially affordable high-density housing.
Most building permits are denied, and those allowed are only for big single-family houses on big lots, resulting in expensive housing and sprawling suburbs.
This is as close as anyone here has come to describing the problem in California.
Let's get specific... It's 1978's Prop 13. This fundamentally shifted the planning calculus in California. Since property taxes are capped at 1% of value, and only appraised when a property is sold or significantly remodeled, the cities and counties can't recover the cost of the bonds they use to expand streets, water & sewer plants, etc... So for the projects they do approve, they take it up front. The planning & p
Re:California is the problem here (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem here is California, not the person and not the industry. Leave Cali for Chicago, Dallas, Houston, New York, Atlanta and you'll be fine.
Many people would rather live in California than those places. That's why real estate is so expensive in California.
There is still a relatively higher concentration of tech companies in the Bay Area. Since switching jobs is a major (and often the major) driver of raises and promotions, that ability to much more easily switch jobs is significant to one's overall lifetime earnings.
The Bay Area also has far better year-round weather than almost anywhere else in the US. No hot and humid summers, no freezing temperatures, no tornadoes or hurricanes or floods. There are wildfires, but not in the Bay Area itself. There are major earthquakes, but even the 1989 earthquake endangered or even affected a very small percentage of people. Ski resorts and beaches are easy day trips.
The other big thing is that even though the Bay Area is expensive, the higher pay results in accumulating assets faster, albeit at the expense of more stress for some people. For example, from the same OP-linked article, Bay Area salaries are $40-45k higher than in Chicago or Atlanta. Even after taxes, that higher salary can afford higher rents or mortgage payments and still have more money left over.
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Hmmmm, ok yes to most of it but I was there for the 89 earthquake. It impacted everyone. It was no small thing. I lived through it and the aftermath and it changed the freeway layout forever.
And fires? I was nowhere near them and still lived under dark skies at noon and had to buy half a dozen high end air purifiers just to survive indoors during the bad years. Without them I was coughing myself into a nearly unconscious hyperventilating state. That wasn't minor either.
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Everywhere else either is also going to have fires sooner or later, or has cut down all the trees. Almost nobody has been managing their forests well.
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Omg yes on shitty forest management. I'm just going to agree and stop before I write a short book on that one.
But damn being only partially down wind was epic. It looked apocalyptic looking outside to see a dark orange sky like late twilight bright at noon.
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Too expensive! Well, what about research triangle in North Carolina? Wow, expensive, have you priced some of those home in North Hills part of Raleigh, that used to be the cheap part of town?
Huh, how about that (Score:2)
And with inflation, DeWeese and others are watching their spending power shrink.
Wonder who DeWeese and her colleagues voted for ...
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Lol, I mean Joe did sign something called The Inflation Reduction Act and so yeah he must have reduced inflation.
Do you also believe inflation was 9% under Trump like Joe said?
The wage gap is mostly myth. (Score:5, Insightful)
I love how the article has to call out female "wage gap" harming what is still some of the highest paid workers in the world. When many major companies have done investigations to make sure that they weren't underpaying their female engineers - only to discover that they were underpaying male engineers instead.
The "wage gap" isn't from companies paying women less for the same work - it's that women make different choices in work profiles, which costs them raw wages.
As another poster put it - move out. The high wages are causing companies to outsource from silicon valley, depressing wages there, but it's still one of the most insanely expensive places to live in the world. It needs fewer people if nobody is going to fix the housing problems (which I view as mostly politically and NIMBY caused).
Re:The wage gap is mostly myth. (Score:5, Insightful)
The "wage gap" isn't from companies paying women less for the same work - it's that women make different choices in work profiles, which costs them raw wages.
And take more time off when they have children than their spouses, meaning if they are the same age in the same job, they actually have less work experience.
The other big, big factor, according to the research, is that women negotiate for different priorities when they're looking for a job. Men will usually negotiate for every last dollar, where women are far more likely to negotiate for flexible time off, and other perks that don't show up on the paycheck.
(Interestingly, one study found that when pay is completely transparent during job offer negotiation - the candidate knows what future coworkers are already making - the "pay gap" tends to increase.)
But none of that services the narrative that men are evil and must be subjugated for their own good by their female betters.
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Women who "negotiate" for more time off are not doing "equal work" compared to those who do not. Your argument is an open contradiction, so save us the lecture on narratives.
"nterestingly, one study found that when pay is completely transparent during job offer negotiation - the candidate knows what future coworkers are already making - the "pay gap" tends to increase."
Sounds like a study you did, it is preposterous on countless levels.
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Women who "negotiate" for more time off are not doing "equal work" compared to those who do not. Your argument is an open contradiction, so save us the lecture on narratives.
And that's what taustin was explaining, he wasn't claiming that the situation is actually "non-equal pay for the same work", he was explaining WHY the work isn't equal. so save us the strawman.
Sounds like a study you did, it is preposterous on countless levels.
That's why we do studies though, because "common sense" is not always correct.
It's like how when fast food restaurants started putting calorie counts on their menu, the average number of calories per order went UP, not down. The predictions were that calorie counts would go down as people made healthier choices.
It's
Re:The wage gap is mostly myth. (Score:5, Insightful)
All you need to know is this:
If the wage gap was real (men being paid more than women for the same job), why would money hungry corporations ever hire men? Just hire all women and save yourself the pay gap monies!!!
Oh. Because it's totally BS.
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Indeed. I've posed this question to supporters of the wage gap before.
It helps when the people who believe in the wage gap being a deliberate thing (IE supervisors see female candidate and deliberately lowball the wage) also believes that corporations are soulless evil paperclip maximizers (which, to be fair, is close to the truth).
In addition, there's LOTS of corporations out there, and it's fairly easy to found a new one.
If I could truly get away with paying women something like 70% of the salary of men
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I can answer the question about why companies don't just hire all women.
Because they'd need to hire 10x as many HR people (also all women) to handle the endless team of complaints and drama those women file every 2 seconds.
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I remember reading about a legal firm back in the day that refused to hire women for basically this exact reason - the supposed increased risk of lawsuits over sexual harassment and such.
Of course, they promptly got sued for sexual discrimination in their hiring practices...
Again, I don't dispute that there are individual cases of sexual discrimination out there, just that it doesn't add up to some sort of systematic pay gap.
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Note that even your 'hire all women' proposal highlights the REAL gender discrimination in our society. If you hire only men the law against gender discrimination will be applied to you. But if you discriminate against straight white men, that's just fine, carry on.
speaking as an economist . . . (Score:3)
Speaking as an economist . . . It's *trivially* easy to explain why an employer would pay women less than men. What we *cannot* explain is why an employer would pay men more than women!
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Exactly. Instead of an engineer, they choose a female engineer. Instead of a software developer they choose a female software developer. Teacher? Female teacher. Marketing specialist? Female marketing specialist.
Uh, no. That's not how it works.
It's more things like that women will tend to go for positions that are more secure - like government jobs, that while they're more secure, also pay less. Positions with more flex-time available, less demand for overtime, less field and outside work, etc... Women who are willing to do that stuff make more money. It's all about "tendencies" after all.
People tend to forget that job pay also includes things like how hazardous or nasty the work is - and men traditionally are w
Re:The wage gap is mostly myth. (Score:5, Informative)
Traditionally speaking, calling people names like "misogynist" is what you do when you can't properly counter the argument they made, indicating that you're losing the argument.
By definition, less pay for equal work is unjust.
Well yes. But where does "different work profiles" indicate that the work is actually equal? Men tend to take profiles that require more hours, more hazards, more outside in inclement weather, more nasty in general, etc...
What part of that implies "equal"?
By the same token, they also often trade pay for more flexible hours, more job security, better benefits, etc...
It only matters what they can do at work, you know, look good and fetch coffee for the boss.
While kissing up to the boss is always a potential factor, sadly, consider the other bits:
"I need Friday off."
"No, I'm not working overtime"
"No, I'm not working the night shift"
"I need child care at work"
"No, I'm not doing work outside"
etc...
By no means am I saying every woman does this, the "wage gap" is a statistical measurement after all, and once you adjust for all the differences between how men and women select and work at jobs, it disappears. By some studies, women are actually overpaid a bit after the adjustments, on average.
Honestly, dudes should probably stop allowing themselves to be exploited so much for so little pay increases. Take more time off to be with the kids. Refuse to work that much overtime, insist that businesses hire more people instead.
Re:The wage gap is mostly myth. (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, here's a question for you:
If companies could truly get away with paying women less, why aren't companies out there hiring exclusively women, if they can pay less for equal work?
Personally, I assume that there would be multiple companies out there that notice and shift towards hiring as many women as they can. Why? Saves on the bottom line, reduces labor costs, makes shareholders happy.
Then there would be a shortage of female workers, so they'd have to pay a bit more to get them (but still less than men). But at some point the difference in pay would be a rounding error, not a gender wage gap anymore.
So if you look at "equal work" standards, I figure women are paid just as much as men. But the work isn't equal.
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Oh, here's a question for you:
If companies could truly get away with paying women less, why aren't companies out there hiring exclusively women, if they can pay less for equal work?
Since you ask, IMHO it's because the people doing the hiring are predominantly men, and they tend to value more highly those job candidates who are like them. It's a difficult pattern to break.
Re:The wage gap is mostly myth. (Score:4, Insightful)
Except that when companies went and anonymized resumes to hide whether or not the applicants were female, the number of women interviewed went down, not up. Well, except for traditional music, apparently. I've never disputed that there could be exceptions.
At my university, they did a study into why female engineering graduates weren't getting employed as much in their field. But it turned out that male engineers would apply to 70+ positions if that was what it took to find a job - and the average number to get a job was 50. For female engineers, it was like 12 interviews to get a job, on average. But they tended to give up after only 7.
But again, it doesn't need to be "all" the companies making the break. It would only take a few - the fewer companies that break down and preferentially hire women, the greater the competitive advantage the ones that did would enjoy. Wouldn't have to be every industry either.
Basically, company breaks down and hires women -> better profit margin than normal for industry -> Shareholders happy and such -> their hiring females gets into trade news, magazines, and such -> other companies in the field decide they need to start doing it as well -> hiring managers are over-ridden and directed to hire women -> eventually, all the women are hired up -> wages go up to keep attracting women -> wage gap disappears.
I haven't really seen any signs of this. So I end up with the studies that show that the wage gap disappears once you control for everything. Women tend to take more time off, so have less experience*, seek jobs with more flexible hours, benefits, and security, with the consequence of less pay.
*Note: Married men tend to make more than unmarried men, but unmarried women make more than married women.
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Except that when companies went and anonymized resumes to hide whether or not the applicants were female, the number of women interviewed went down, not up.
You would need to hide who is being hired, not interviewed. That would be a difficult study to conduct in any meaningful way.
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"If companies could truly get away with paying women less, why aren't companies out there hiring exclusively women, if they can pay less for equal work?"
They are. Since Biden took office more than 90% of new positions at fortune 100 companies have been filled by women and people of color. Why wasn't it happening before? Because it's illegal. Also the 'wage gap' is a disputed and highly suspect thing at this point, there was a time it wasn't but that was the early 90's.
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"By definition, less pay for equal work is unjust."
No it isn't. People should not all pay the same price for the same good, get paid the same for the same job, etc. That is a world where nobody gets ahead and nobody falls behind with everyone locked in stasis. Everyone who wants to advanced in that world presses a button and mindlessly follows a line that lights up on the floor to the 'advance here' queue which spits people out for advancement in the random line order... people who go about life following t
Marketing? (Score:5, Insightful)
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I don't want to belittle this person's anxiety (Score:4, Interesting)
But the story presents itself as being about tech workers - yet the example presented is about someone who works in marketing?
Re:I don't want to belittle this person's anxiety (Score:5, Insightful)
Not only do they not work in tech, but they work in a field that's particularly ripe for automation with LLM
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Because high tech Bay Area is no longer high tech. It's all about Marketing! You think social media is "tech"? Social media is extremely low tech; a company isn't a tech company just because they have a lot of white collar jobs sitting behind a computer keyboard! The biggest "tech" companies in Silicon Valley are nothing more than advertising delivery systems!
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You think the infrastructure and code behind Facebook, Google, Twitter, AWS, and the rest is low tech?
Any bunch of new college grads could pull it off? Most newly graduated CS majors can't spell the words much less understand the concepts required to build a huge scaling infrastructure.
Did your company fire all the developers and replace them with marketing girls?
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The infrastructure behind most companies are complex. Are they all high tech companies? I think GE is a high tech company but it never gets on the list along with companies that don't do anything more than have a data center and a web front on it.
It used to be that "tech company" meant you made technological products - computers, computer parts, engineering parts, technological equipment, scientific equipment, integrated circuits, space telescopes, etc. Not advertising!
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Tech has marketing as well.
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It was about companies in Silicon Valley which could be anything
If you aren't a tech company or a business that services tech companies, then it makes very little sense to be in Silicon Valley.
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And if you are a tech company in SV you still generally have marketing and other non-tech staff. We live in a specialized world, experience in tech marketing doesn't necessarily translate into an equal or greater job if you try to skip to healthcare marketing.
Demand for workers is easing (Score:2)
Sam Clemens started his writing career in San Francisco.
Business (Score:5, Informative)
Companies only hire people because they need to, and only pay employees as much as they need to. If they could make money without paying any salaries, they would. There is a constant drive to increase profits and decrease costs. That extends to staff and how much they get paid. Companies exist for one purpose: to make money, all else is a side effect.
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Companies exist for one purpose: to make money, all else is a side effect.
With a philosophy like that, no wonder there are so many shitty companies. A company exists to do things for others. If they are good at that, they will be very profitable. If they concentrate purely on cash flow, the services they offer will suffer in support of cash flow, but once the quality suffers, the cash flow will stop.
Get out of that cycle and create shit for the purpose of creating shit. People want what they buy to be what they intended to buy. Anything less is cutting off a potential portion of
Return to Office? Who got tricked? (Score:2)
Remember all those articles about RTO mandates and some said that your job in SV included the cost of living in SV?
The ones stupid enough to move back to SV to RTO now got the short end of the stick.
Peak Digital. The frontier has been conquered. (Score:2)
That's pretty much the state of things.
Experts sitting in front of microcomputers building software from scratch is mostly a thing of the past by now.
There are 30+ ready-made libraries and classes for OIDC in every PL concievable. Absolutely no need for me or anybody else to build a new one. So goes for storage or any other generic software requirement ever.
I don't need to build a scalable backend anymore, I just need to be smart about booking the right services with Azure, AWS, Google Cloud or whatever. It
Fast Moving Change (Score:2)
I remember in the mid-90s when everybody who had a copy of FrontPage and a basic understanding of HTML could briefly command unreasonable salaries. That gravy train eventually stopped running - as will most such trains in IT. Most people have to continually adapt, and accept the fact that their income will not be tied to traditional modes of small continual increments and reliability.
And a lot of people will have to come to terms with the fact that their whole profession (such as it is today) may simply sto
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I'm having flashbacks of the machine shop in Long Beach that went out of business during a strike, when the union simply wouldn't be realistic.
The union picketed outside the empty building for a least a decade after it went under.
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My wife's place went partly union. Some departments voted yes, others no.
I did the math on the union vs non union workers' total comp after the union contract was put in place. After paying union dues and being stuck with the union deal for raises, promotion, bonuses, etc, the non-union people ended up better off.
Before the vote, the union was allowed to come in on company property and spread their propaganda and lies but the company is not allowed to provide any information at all. They must remain sile
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A 100% required vote to disband is not democratic.
I stoped reading right there.
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Lol, ok AC, whatever.
I'm retired and never worked at a non-government unionized place. Have you? Sounds like no from your very carefully chosen phrases. That puts me much closer to unions than you and I did the math.
The union didn't even add any job security. The staff keep their jobs for life and short of being caught stealing on camera or similar outrageous behavior no one gets fired.
But I'm sure you know bette. Right?
Re: time to go union! (Score:3)