Q & A Table of Contents
I Am A Woman; Am I Being Paid Fairly?
From: Lani, San Jose, California
Question: I work with a bunch of men in a software company and I feel like they pay me less because I'm not the man of the house and seemingly have no family to support. I don't want to go into negotiations with a chip on my shoulder, I want to be reasonable, but I need a reality check.
I make a small base salary, 10,000 annually. In addition they charge customers $100 an hour for my time and pay me 25% of that. Other factors: I work out of my own home where they only pay only the phone bill and all of the hardware is my own. I travel 5 days out of the month on average with no compensation. They pay for airline, hotel and meals.
How much should they be paying me? Right now it comes out to less that 40K annually and it feels like I'm working harder than that.
Response: You should begin with a little homework. Find out whether your impression about a pay differential is correct. How much does your employer pay other employees who have similar education, experience, responsibilities, etc.? Are there pay differences between employees who work from the corporate office and those, like you, who work out of their homes? Can you find out whether there is any differential between men and women, between heads of household and single people within your company? How does your pay compare with similarly-placed people who work for other companies in your business or in similar businesses?
With that information in hand, you should be able to do a far better job of figuring out whether you are being paid fairly. Moreover, if you have been able to get answers to those questions, you should be able to come up with a far better answer to the last part of your question than I could provide. Each business, each skill set, and each market has its own set of measures of fair levels of compensation.
When you go into negotiation with lots of information, you are far more likely to negotiate wisely -- and reach a wise resolution of the issues involved.
Good luck,
Steve
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