Business & Economics: June 2011 Archives
This is about women, but I think the same goes for men: always ask for a lot more money.
Our process, despite the pay gap, is identical for men and women. We start with phone interviews, and move into a personal and technical interview. Once a candidate passes both of those, we start salary negotiations. This is where the women seem to come in last.The reason they don't keep up, from where I sit, is simple. Often, a woman will enter the salary negotiation phase and I'll tell them a number will be sent to them in a couple days. Usually we start around $45k for an entry level position. 50% to 60% of the women I interview simply take this offer. It's insane, I already know I can get authorization for more if you simply refuse. Inversely, almost 90% of the men I interview immediately ask for more upon getting the offer.
The next major mistake happens with how they ask for more. In general, the women I have negotiated with will say 45k is not enough and they need more, but not give a number. I will then usually give a nominal bump to 48k or 50k. Company policy wont let me bump more than 5k over the initial offer unless they specifically request more. On the other hand, men more frequently will come back with a number along the lines of 65k to 75k, and I will be forced to negotiate down from there. After this phase, almost all women will take the offer or move on to somewhere else, not knowing they could have gotten more if they asked.
At the end, most of the women I hire make between 45k and 50k, whereas the men make between 60k and 70k. Even more crazy, they ask for raises far less often, so the disparity only grows.
Once they've decided to make you an offer, asking for more money won't make them rescind it.
(HT: Susannah Breslin.)
So-called "experts" continue to be confounded by our slow economic recovery.
The economy's continuing struggles aren't just confounding ordinary Americans. They've also stumped the head of the Federal Reserve.Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke told reporters Wednesday that the central bank had been caught off guard by recent signs of deterioration in the economy. And he said the troubles could continue into next year.
"We don't have a precise read on why this slower pace of growth is persisting," Bernanke said. He said the weak housing market and problems in the banking system might be "more persistent than we thought."
I'm neither surprised nor confounded. There are three primary causes for the slow recovery:
1. Regulatory uncertainty. Everyone is anxious over the expansion of regulations under the Obama Administration.
2. Out of control debt and spending. We can see what debt is doing in other countries, and it's scary to see that our leaders have little capacity for serious cuts to spending.
3. Structural changes due to technology. Some of the jobs just aren't coming back, ever -- and it isn't clear that the displaced workers are capable of filling the new jobs that are being created.
Quick, someone nominate me for Fed Chairman or SecTreas!
Tom Blumer says that these five simple words explain what's going on in our economy: "Machines Are Exempt From ObamaCare".
On June 10, Catherine Rampell at the New York Times presented what she thought was a seemingly inexplicable and troubling conundrum, which this column will clear up:Spending on equipment and software has risen 25.6 percent in the last seven quarters, while companies’ aggregate spending on employees has risen only 2.2 percent.Somehow, capital spending is growing faster and labor spending is growing more slowly than has been the case in almost every previous recovery on record.
Just wait till the lefties convince the machines to unionize....
So now we're told that if we don't like the Obamacare mandate then we can simply earn less money.
[Neal Kumar Katyal, the acting solicitor general] responded by noting that the there's a provision in the health care law that allows people to avoid the mandate.“If we’re going to play that game, I think that game can be played here as well, because after all, the minimum coverage provision only kicks in after people have earned a minimum amount of income,” Kaytal said. “So it’s a penalty on earning a certain amount of income and self insuring. It’s not just on self insuring on its own. So I guess one could say, just as the restaurant owner could depart the market in Heart of Atlanta Motel, someone doesn’t need to earn that much income. I think both are kind of fanciful and I think get at…”
[Judge Jeffrey] Sutton interjected, “That wasn’t in a single speech given in Congress about this...the idea that the solution if you don’t like it is make a little less money.”
Wow, I really hope that President Obama runs with "Earn Less Money!" as his new campaign slogan. That'll be a winner. Though, it's hard to imagine how everyone earning less money will help our economy grow.
Hey, maybe all those "unexpectedly" unemployed people are just taking Obama's advice?
(HT: Gateway Pundit and Instapundit.)
