HN doesn't allow to go that deep in comment thread, thus replying there...
> How do you figure? If they're able to pass whatever company's interview and negotiation is no longer a factor it seems more likely that salaries will become more equitable. I'd guess the correlation between negotiating skill and technical skill is small at best.
In 2-tier (technical + negotiation) interview, candidates have to show they're good enough technically first. Then they negotiate their worth. In what you propose, they'd have to negotiate their worth right away. If company isn't willing to pay, why would they hire said person for higher wage?
Even purely technical job interview is sort of haggling. Well, aside from bullshit whiteboard tests which suck left and right.
The way the system is set up now puts the candidate at a disadvantage because he or she has no idea what the company is willing to pay or what their criteria are. In a situation where the cards are laid on the table -- here is the position or positions and here is the salary or salaries -- both parties have the same information and are free to focus entirely on the question of competence. A lot of the negotiation process now involves irrelevant crap like finding out your current salary -- so that then the candidate has set the lowest acceptable offer and the company can negotiate from there.
Besides penalizing candidates for lacking knowledge that isn't really relevant to work performance (like how to dance around offering a current salary, for instance), the current system also tends to perpetuate whatever disparity already exists by tending to base offers at least in part on current salaries, and also will reflect the gender disparity shown in responses to salary negotiations which I mentioned above.
I don't guarantee such a system would make things better but I do think there are some reasons to think it might.
IMO negotiating is part of relevant skillset. Especially for more senior (= better paid) positions. One has to know not only how to write code, but back up his decisions as well. Or prevent others from causing issues.
That skill has little to do with salary negotiation. And you keep on asserting that salary negotiation has nothing to do with gender, which seems to me to be skipping most of the work of refuting my arguments, based as they are on the premise that one's gender affects one's success in salary negotiation.
Also, I think that these changes would likely benefit male workers too, but not to the same degree as women.
Yes, you're correct, I think we shouldn't discuss this as a gender issue.
IMO you're mistaking correlation for causation. As you say yourself, changing current salary setup would affect both women and men. This is not gender issue and this should be discussed on other points than gender. Making it about gender is counter productive.
Looking at this form economical perspective, as long as we don't have objective way to measure programmer's productivity, I don't think we can get away from salary negotiations.
> How do you figure? If they're able to pass whatever company's interview and negotiation is no longer a factor it seems more likely that salaries will become more equitable. I'd guess the correlation between negotiating skill and technical skill is small at best.
In 2-tier (technical + negotiation) interview, candidates have to show they're good enough technically first. Then they negotiate their worth. In what you propose, they'd have to negotiate their worth right away. If company isn't willing to pay, why would they hire said person for higher wage?
Even purely technical job interview is sort of haggling. Well, aside from bullshit whiteboard tests which suck left and right.