Today, I’m lucky enough to work at Buffer, where our values and culture have led us to work toward creating a new way to think about compensation and value.
And as a result, this is now an area I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about, researching and asking questions about.
We don’t really identify as “experts” of anything at Buffer (there’s always so much more we can learn, and a beginner’s mind is so much nicer) and I’m definitely not an expert in this area, but I am starting to feel more confident about thinking on worth, value and compensation.
At Buffer:
- There is no negotiation.
- We are paid according to a salary formula that we all know and have vetted.
- Our pay is on our website for anyone to see.
Buffer has a value of “do the right thing,” which means we try to pay enough so that teammates can focus on work and not worry about paying the bills. We also have a value of transparency, so we share everything openly, including our salaries and how they’re calculated.
Equality wasn’t the main reason for doing this at the time — our founders just wanted to create a blueprint for others coming after them — but it’s my favorite side effect of transparency.
In this way, it helps not only us but also, we hope, other founders and potential employees — especially women, people of color and other underrepresented groups.
Because I am not alone in doing a terrible job of negotiating: Women generally negotiate much less than men.
A study of graduating university students found that only 7 percent of female students attempted to negotiate an initial job offer as compared to 57 percent of men (Babcock & Laschever, 2003).
This created a starting salary difference of 7.4 percent — and over time, even small differences in starting salaries can lead to substantial gaps.
Especially because asking for a raise is another hurdle that can be tough for women. Another survey by Elle magazine found that 53 percent of women had never asked for a raise, compared with 40 percent of men.
So why don’t women negotiate job offers and ask for raises? Often women worry that asking for more money will look pushy or damage their image. Research shows we’re right to have that concern.
Women who request either a raise or a higher starting salary are more likely than men to be perceived as greedy, demanding or just not very nice. Studies have shown that both male and female managers are less likely to want to work with women who negotiate during a job interview.
In one experiment by Linda Babcock, viewers watched videos of a man and a woman asking for a raise, using an identical script. Viewers liked the man and agreed that he should get a raise. The woman? She was successful in getting the money but viewers did not like her. They thought she was too demanding and aggressive.
Additionally, there’s a big cultural stigma in many places in the world attached to talking about money openly that can make things even more challenging.
How does transparency help?
All this has led us to where we are today: With more companies opening up their data and revealing unequal wages for…