Fixpert's Blog

I made this video for my students, but maybe it’ll help you too. I’m demo’ing my Jepson iPhone App Prototype here. And yes, when you’re talking about Pine trees, the Genus is Pinus.

secondverse:

“Women hold slightly more than half (52.3 percent) of creative class jobs and their average level of education is almost the same as men. But the pay they receive is anything but equal. Creative class men earn an average of $82,009 versus $48,077 for creative class women. This $33,932 gap is a staggering 70 percent of the average female creative class salary. Even when we control for hours worked and education in a regression analysis, creative class men out-earn creative class women by a sizable $23,700, or 49.2 percent.”

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The Income Disparity of Women in the Creative Class - Jobs & Economy - The Atlantic Cities

My own anecdote: Through a series of off-the-record disclosures, I found out what many of my colleagues at Yahoo were earning. Men in the User Experience Design group were generally making $20k more than their female counterparts. I asked for more money. When they didn’t give it to me I quit.

Another personal anecdote: At another job, over the course of several years, I had worked my way up to a very senior position on our tiny web team. I was all at once the: Front-End Web Developer, the User Experience Designer, the Visual Designer, the Design Researcher, the Illustrator, and Design Strategist. I was making around $30k, plus a $100 cash christmas bonus! This was for a $100,000,000/year company of about 500 employees. Their business was in the process of transitioning to being predominantly web-based, and I was seeing them through that change. I was over-worked, and under-appreciated. I met with my boss to discuss the responsibilities that I had, and the influence I had over the company’s web sales. I had a measurable impact, I could point to the numbers. 

When I asked for more money, he tried to guilt-trip me by saying that any money he gave to me, I was essentially taking away from my beloved teammates. They had children to feed, etc etc. For me to ask for more was like robbing them of their livelihood. I wouldn’t have it, and I continued to ask for a raise. He gave me his first offer, and I declined, saying that I deserved more. He came back a week or two later with a better offer and I finally accepted. I still wasn’t even making as much as I did at my first job out of college. When I finally left the company, they had to hire 3 people to replace the work that I had been doing.