Equity Pay Gap: Are women or everyone in general taking LOWER salaries (half) in this market?

Question

Across 2-3 different slacks I saw positions targeted at women where the pay was something like $150K for these qualifications: 7+ years experience with a Master's to work on GenAI...and I'm like, why are we underpaying women software engineers WAY below market rate? The excuse I heard from one woman founder that posted this on Slack was that they didn't have the money as an early stage startup (understandable it usually is lower than FAANGMULA but this is pretty atrocious), and then another said they were a non-profit. But in general I'm worried that the pay bands for a lot of women engineers I am seeing job postings where the ranges are NOT where they should be and on the extreme low end by 30-50% lower.

Is it really that common that this market sucks so bad that women are taking less than half of a salary that was made in 2019 because "the market sucks right now and layoffs suck?" Meanwhile I can see in my feed complaints from non-technical staff at (former "writers" at Airbnb that they only made $500K a year annually and left last year to found their own consultancy to make even more than that).

What is up with this, why are the pay bands for women that much lower? And overall some people have commented pay bands in general are that much lower and that people are only taking HALF the salaries just to keep healthcare because they don't want to get a retail job or something or sell their plasma (yes all true stories I've heard from people ranging from a PhD (in Physics) who took two years to become an iOS developer that worked at a car wash for 2 years and other recruiters laid off at FAANGMULA that sold their plasma to survive).

https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/laid-off-bay-area-tech-workers-struggle-jobs-19545761.php

This makes me angry and what is wrong with the world? Is this for real the market that we are in?

Should we be applying to roles that don't even list paybands or salary only to find out that we think we should be making like 300K with 8+ years experience or something like at an L4 or L5, only to find out we should be paid like a college junior (BS)?

Alex Chiou · Accepted Answer

Pay is definitely dropping across the industry due to the market. It sucks, but it's basic supply and demand where the supply of jobs is very low and the demand for jobs is very high. Companies are just following capitalism and giving lower wages as they know they can get away with it.

When it comes to the gender angle, I don't know if it's more pronounced for women. But the gender pay gap is definitely still around as it always has been (I just don't know if it's widened over the past 2 years).

The pay decrease cuts across 2 angles as well:

The same roles are paying less
It's harder to get into stronger roles than before. So an engineer who could probably scrape by in a FAANG interview in 2021 has virtually 0 shot of making it into FAANG now.

My general advice is to play the long game and just take what you can get (while playing your cards right and doing things like negotiating). The market will improve with time and bull markets generally last longer than bear markets, especially in tech. Some experience is better than no experience.

Equity Pay Gap: Are women or everyone in general taking LOWER salaries (half) in this market?

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