The Wall Street Journal ran an interview with Ellen Pao yesterday. She discusses many things, but her quote regarding salary negotiations really hit a nerve:
“Men negotiate harder than women do and sometimes women get penalized when they do negotiate. 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.”
It sounds like, from her quote, that Ms. Pao wants to stop rewarding better negotiators in the hiring process (typically men, in her estimation), to help women and other poor negotiators. I know many women that enjoy negotiating and might find this patronizing and wrong, while others have anecdotal stories of problematic negotiations. There are also studies that show a lack of gender differences in negotiation outcomes. I also wonder about the impact on the hiring process in general at Reddit.
What do you think? Is this helpful to women and poor negotiators? Is this really not negotiating with candidates or simply moving the negotiation from salary to other compensation?
The entire article focuses on much more than negotiation. It is an interesting look at how Ms. Pao views the Reddit culture and the changes that they are making to the company: http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/04/06/ellen-pao-on-reaction-to-kleiner-case-workplace-sexism-and-running-reddit-qa/
I don’t like it. How does the company come up with a salary it thinks is fair? Will each candidate be offered the same amount? Does it change based on experience? A company deciding a fair salary doesn’t necessarily fix the gender gap unless every single candidate is offered the same salary and then there is a policy in place to ensure fair raises. Isn’t that usually where the problem comes in later anyway? I don’t think Reddit’s policy will fix anything in the long run, however, the thought behind the policy is certainly noble.