太震惊了！我发现那些男同事的工资竟然比我高$10,000到$15,000！

Well done on getting your result, something people don't consider is that internal recruiters and HR are often just budget managers, and they are assesed on managing those budgets, and some of them are either arseholes, or in the job long enough to be able to throw lowballs at people to get them in the door, then they go back to their boss like a german shepard whos just caught a rabbit and go "look at me, i've saved this money on recruitment", often the line managers don't know what you are paid, or their bosses.

You should condense this and cross post to r/personalfinance

There is the general rule over there that if you want to get a substantial raise, you need to either get a promotion or find a job at a new company. I think they generally miss the quasi-illegal pay discrimination angle. This may help some people out there who suffer from pay discrimination because of age or race as well as gender.

I'm also really curious (and doubt you will get to find out) if this is a result of explicit sexism by the HR rep who determined the salary, or implicit sexism. Neither is excusable, obviously, it would still be interesting to know if they just need to fire the HR guy, or if it's institutional and the hiring process is the problem (things like having you say a salary first, looking at past salaries, low balling and expecting applicants to push back).

I think he was actually personally angry enough with HR when he learned my salary to go and sort it out, even after having said it’s not his business.


Which should be so much more common! The fact that it isn't more common is one thing that shows that management attracts more... we'll say "not nice" people than nice people. At my last job one of the people had interned there during college, and then picked up a job right after college. He'd worked there for something like 8 years and had picked up some very important responsibilities, but his pay had started low and barely increased over 8 years.

On his way out to a better paying job he mentioned how much he was making at the current place and I was appalled. If I had been his manager I would have flat-out not accepted having a report taken advantage of like that. It reflects terribly on the manager, HR, upper management, and the entire company! People that don't understand that, or that understand it but ignore it out of selfishness, are such a widespread and enormous problem.

I’m grateful you shared this. We definitely don’t live in a post-sexism society, so it’s important to hear an actual example of how things can be improved for the individual that’s most impacted by societal issues.

I think it’s VERY important that anyone knows how to “be your own advocate”, you did your research and nobody could really argue with you. But it’s still ridiculous you were even in that boat to begin with.

Corporate business structure straight up just dissipates any sense of responsibility so that no one ends up liable when mistakes are made, which is why the knee-jerk response from the department head was “talk to HR”.

It’s literally every person above you that is technically responsible for underpaying you. Most individuals will fight the urge to do the right thing, because it’s way easier to shrug off the responsibility and just blame someone else/society for underpaying women. I’m thankful your superiors took the time to contemplate your worth and give you closer to what you deserve, but it’s scary how the system is set up to continue to exploit anyone it can, instead of supporting and cultivating the individual to help the company.

In the business world, one rotten apple spoils the bunch, and eventually ends up CEO.

As a CEO I'd like to throw this out there. Always try and verify your salary whenever you can. As has been stated by others this is "protected" activity in the USA. You can not be fired for this but do be discrete. They can always find something to fire you for if they want and a legal battle isn't fun. So like don't be talking loudly about it in front of your boss unless you know the culture at the company is okay with it. Talking to coworkers about pay can feel awkward but doing so can help you determine what your "value" is for a specific area given a specific set of skills and experience. At my company we use published pay rates that are attached to the position not the person. Whoever does job X gets paid Y period. If pay for Y is adjusted, the pay across all people in Y goes up. I personally think this is the best solution. Ability to do a specific job does not mean skills at negotiation. I don't need a staff filled with people who's primary skill is selling themselves. All it takes is one bigot in HR to really hurt a lot of people. In a lot of larger organizations the departments don't have any control over offers. This is ostensibly to "avoid" nepotism but it's more often HR overreach. I've done hiring like this and you basically just say yes or no and it disappears into the void and you hope that in a few weeks you see the person sitting at a desk.