Glassdoor’s recent analysis on the gender pay gap in the engineering sector raises important questions that should be answered by both employers and employees. As Glassdoor pointed out, the data doesn’t give a tremendous amount of insight into elements that may be behind the numbers – like someone’s performance reviews or special skills – but it does provide helpful inputs to gather information and foster more meaningful conversations between talent/employees and employers.
(Since the equal pay act was passed, this is specifically important to women) If you are in the engineering field or suspect you may be paid less than your peers, you have every right to ask the “why” questions and make an inquiry of your supervisor/manager. As someone who has sat on the employer side for many years, I can tell you that many things like performance ratings, practical experience or skill set, seniority and even something like location, will often affect overall compensation packages. And most of these are invisible to anyone other than the manager, HR and the specific employee. The challenge is to wade through what’s performance, skill-related or retention-based inequities versus the things outside of an employee’s control. For example, Lilly Ledbetter was doing the ...
