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Know your worth, and pay it forward
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In episode 2, we talk about the Lunar New Year and how some people have to navigate it in the workplace. We dive into how organizations can play a role in spearheading changes to make a more equitable, inclusive, and safe workplace.
We discuss Michelle Yeoh and the golden globes speech and how that moment defied Asian stereotypes, and what that may mean for our community in the workplace. We play myth busting with the concept of Asians being crazy rich and dive deeply into salary negotiation and its importance.
Michelle Yeoh and the golden globes speech
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHpDqn0nlK8
Salary databases — Know your worth!
Tech start ups
https://www.builtinnyc.com/salaries
Salary for Industrial/organizational psychologist
https://www.newhaven.edu/_resources/documents/arts-sciences/graduate-programs/industrial-organizational-psychology/siop-income-employment-report-2022.pdf
Higher Education Institutions
https://www.chronicle.com/page/special-note-about-the-chronicles-faculty-and-staff-pay-data
Keep in mind, if the college/university is public, there is a good chance that salary data is public in that state. Google is your friend!
Federal Salary
https://www.federalpay.org/gs/2023
Article for nerds
Asians don't ask? Relational concerns, negotiation propensity, and starting salaries.
https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2022-58136-001
GPT Haiku
Know your work, be bold
Negotiate your high value
Claim what you deserve
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction of Hosts
00:00:09
Speaker
Hi listeners, welcome to another episode of Hidden in Plain Side. We're here. I'm Echo. I'm Doug. And I'm Jenny. Yeah, let's dive in. So how is everyone doing during this Lunar New Year?
Challenges of Celebrating Lunar New Year
00:00:25
Speaker
Do you celebrate? I don't. If I weren't in Korea with some of my family members, I probably would, but not here.
00:00:35
Speaker
Echo, that's a great question. And it's something I've kind of been wrestling with in my years in the US, working and going to school, because it's something that I think we celebrate as a community, but isn't really recognized at the national, the state level, or even enough so that there's time off for it.
00:00:59
Speaker
For me, I'm pulled both ways in that, do I take time off to celebrate and engage with the community? Or do I not celebrate or limit that and just keep my workload the way it is? Otherwise, that double-edged sword is that I take time off.
00:01:22
Speaker
when people were coming back and I miss out on things and I miss out on, um, you know, important meetings or things that other things I need to be part of as people are ramping back from the Gregorian new year. I don't know if there's a part of me that feels like, you know, I like, you know, people encourage it, but then there isn't really that time to really have that
00:01:49
Speaker
I feel like I don't have the ability to really take that off because if we think about December or you got Christmas, New Year's, right? And then people start coming back and depending on when the Lunar New Year is, right? Because it changes every year.
Recognition of Lunar New Year as State Holiday
00:02:05
Speaker
It could come around, you know, January or even February. And it's not really something that, um, I dunno, I would say when I was younger and I didn't have, I had fewer responsibilities, it was easier to celebrate with the community.
00:02:22
Speaker
as I get a little bit older and I have more responsibilities, it's really hard to really take time away and kind of find community as well, too. And for me, that's all that's kind of been the push and pull of this. And yeah, just.
00:02:41
Speaker
I want to give my two cents on that because I know some states, I think New York has recognized it, but not every state has. And it's really hard to celebrate something when it's how you really even talked about in the workplace.
00:02:56
Speaker
Yeah, I think New York City actually had that back in 2021. They make it like the city holidays for public school and stick the city up. And then California had it last year. So California become the first aid actually had
00:03:14
Speaker
Lunar New Year as the state holiday. And this came out like two days ago. New York State actually announced the next year that Lunar New Year is going to be the state holiday. So it's the second state that has announced that. I'm super grateful for that, even though my company itself is not going to have
Floating Holidays Concept
00:03:34
Speaker
that.
00:03:34
Speaker
Uh, yet, but, uh, but I was literally on the FaceTime call with my family for like five hours. Um, and just having more of like virtual celebration with them. And that was my morale, uh, quite a bit. And I appreciate that. I took that day off on the January, uh,
00:03:55
Speaker
23rd, I believe that was the day. And I thought that's a great experience for me. So I appreciate the companies that actually give the opportunity for the employees to choose their own holiday, but also recognize it's not every employees have that luxury to celebrate it. So from what I'm hearing is we want workplaces to include Lunar New Year in their holiday calendar so Asians can go and celebrate
00:04:25
Speaker
down in the new year. And there may be something that don't celebrate and that's okay. True, you might not celebrate it, but you still appreciate a day off, no? That's why I like this idea. I think in the past few years, people are talking about this concept as like a floating holiday where the employees can choose their own, your own like a PTO, but the concept like now you can pick two or three
00:04:52
Speaker
holidays out of your own like pick and celebrate it, it gives more of a flexibility to people who don't celebrate the traditional like Christmas or New Year.
Superficial Diversity Changes
00:05:05
Speaker
For Christmas, that's something like unique that has its own like
00:05:08
Speaker
history there, but I like this floating holiday concept, similar to some of the companies giving perks, and they give a broad range of categories where people can pick their own thing. So for singles, they can pick their own thing for gym membership, but for caregivers, they can pick this for
00:05:33
Speaker
nursery or nannies. So I like that kind of like flexible arrangement. Cool. I didn't even know that was a thing.
00:05:42
Speaker
If I can add to that, this would be great if organizations recognize it. And then I guess this is the other thing that we would like to also see is if there is this explicit commitment to it to actually then to really follow up and allow for that flexibility. Because I feel like sometimes organizations react to news or sensationalize social media and make short-term changes.
Economic Impact on DEI Initiatives
00:06:12
Speaker
Yeah, I know what you're talking about, like sort of the superficial check the box kind of changes the ones that don't stick around. Yeah, absolutely. And look, this is probably the same thing that has applied in the last two years with the aftermath of George Floyd, right? Guess what, like a lot of programs came out, a lot of diversity initiatives came out two years ago, right? Where are they now, right? This is where like, you know,
00:06:41
Speaker
For me, I would like organizations to, like, be a commit to it, you know, be real and be realistic with it. Like, don't go overboard and say, we're going to do this and that and all that. And then 18 months later, you know, we don't have the funds. The first thing we're going to cut is diversity training or microaggression training or limiting biases in the workplace. It's very frustrating. Do you think that it's dying down? Do you see that already happening, Doug?
00:07:12
Speaker
Um, Oh, I mean, I would say that it's, um, the intensity isn't the, in the fervor just isn't the same. The amount of work that I feel like, uh, people were looking to put in like.
00:07:26
Speaker
people, color, and potentially allies were looking to put in. That energy isn't there and isn't the same, I would say. In my past work, I was a director of people and I actually ran the DEI program. And when this stuff happened, there was a lot of how do I make this change? How do we end racism?
00:07:47
Speaker
They really didn't like it when I said, well, look, a lot of this stuff has been happening for a long time. You just haven't read it or you haven't been in the news cycle of it. But historically, a lot of this stuff has been happening. It just happens to be happening again. And because we're in lockdown during COVID, that's a lot of the news that you're getting nowadays, right?
00:08:07
Speaker
But the sad part is a lot of the stuff that's been happening systemically has been happening systemically. And if organizations want to play a role and they want to play a positive role in people's lives, their workplaces, I'd ask organizations to be serious about it and take serious consideration and not superficial. Like Jenny, like you said, checking it off those boxes.
00:08:37
Speaker
If you can't accommodate, let your employees know that you can't, but you're trying. Now, that's better than, you know, we're going to do it, but for this one year, well, guess what? Lunar New Year is going to happen again next year.
Support for Employee Resource Groups
00:08:49
Speaker
Well, that's a very good point, Doug, because with the economy, the way it is right now, you know, a lot of companies are tightening their budgets and DEI is, you know, unfortunately one of the places that gets cut first, but at least from where I sit and I work with a lot of pharma companies and pharma execs, that hasn't been the case. The fervor is still there and it's feeding a lot of our projects.
00:09:11
Speaker
What about you, Echo? Yeah, that's an interesting one for sure. And what Doug has mentioned got me thinking on like, because even like at the beginning during our checking, I mentioned a lot of companies now really only focused on like revenue generating activities now for the business given the micro economic situation that we're facing right now.
00:09:32
Speaker
I'm not yet seeing like there's any cut down on the budget for like diversity related activities yet, but it's just the mindset now we're moving towards more of like a budget conscious and constrained environment that worries me. Maybe like too early to say this is like alarming, but they just wanted to make sure like when companies are thinking about that,
00:09:58
Speaker
realizing this is also like a longer term commitment. This is not something that once you get into the place and then you feel like you can walk out in two years. That's probably what I'm going to share for now.
00:10:11
Speaker
And I don't know if this has also been relevant.
Social Media and Toxic Workplaces
00:10:14
Speaker
I'm also grateful to see more and more companies sponsor the URG, which is employee resource group, as part of the regular activity now, or like a reasonable business activity. So I remember a few years back when I was served on the one of the
00:10:33
Speaker
ERG board back then during like my previous roles. And that was pro bono. Like I do everything out of my own work time. It's a lot of coordination and having meetings with different parties to get things done to, to do those activities. So it's unpaid volunteer activity. But in recent years, I started seeing like people started to pay for those people who serve on the ERG board.
00:11:00
Speaker
So I think this is a great start, meaning like people recognize this itself is important work. And that's why people seeing the value, that's why people started to pay for those work that gets done. And that's something that it's a great direction that I wanted to see.
00:11:19
Speaker
But to the point that we mentioned earlier, with this tighter economic situation, would that change for the future? I don't know. I am yet to know. As long as employees are willing to put their organization's foot to the fire and demand accountability, I see this movement
00:11:40
Speaker
continuing. And at least in my line of work, I haven't seen that further really go down, as I mentioned before. And I'm actually glad that we're seeing more examples of employees going on social media to expose toxic leadership and toxic workplaces. Because if it hadn't been for them, the public would not be aware of these things.
Consequences for Public Figures
00:12:08
Speaker
Yeah, and I think a recent example was what happened at the New York Times, where one of the editors had to step down. I think he had to step down. I don't think he was fired. But he had a history of saying racist stuff and sensitive stuff. So the other employees were like, this is not going to continue. So he eventually had to step down. And something similar happened, I think, at Bon Appetit.
00:12:35
Speaker
Um, yeah, maybe, could you look it up? Um, yeah, bone up. Uh, yeah. Did you find it? I believe the headline is, uh, Adam Rappaport, uh, steps down. Okay. So politically correct, uh, headline. And what was the reason for him stepping down? Um, um, it says something to the extent of addressing racially insensitive costume that surface.
00:13:03
Speaker
Okay, so it was a costume. Okay, good, good. Well, I'm glad he got fired or he had to step down. I don't think I would support that magazine if, you know, they allowed him to stay on.
00:13:18
Speaker
Hmm. I mean, there's a bit of this that's kind of, um, kind of frustrating to me because like, when you sign onto most organizations, like, you know, in a way your work like could stay with them, like, but you're also representing the company at a certain point, whether you're at work or after work. Right. Your employment is actually tied to that. When you sign that employment contract, it's not, and it shouldn't be just because
00:13:46
Speaker
You did something stupid and you got caught, like you shouldn't be doing some of this stuff, like period.
00:13:51
Speaker
Um, Jenny, I'm totally with you when I, when you say like, it's good to hear that people are, are not wanting to put up with some of this stuff that is, uh, some of these slights, some of these, um, things that, you know, we now view as, uh, as wrong or insensitive, but then like, you know, people need to, you know, I feel like people need to have better judgment because the way that they work, they, um, act outside of work, their behaviors outside of work.
00:14:20
Speaker
you know, and come back and, you know, bite them in the butt but you know they also need to know that they shouldn't be acting a fool, either outside of work, I mean, like you get into what you want but like, you know, you're still representing whatever organization you're with.
00:14:37
Speaker
even if you're not on
Michelle Yeoh at Golden Globes
00:14:38
Speaker
the clock. And that typically is in most handbooks already as potential violations. And it shouldn't have to wait till social media or netizens to call out folks. It's in there in those things that we sign.
00:14:56
Speaker
I think on that note that does bring back to the topic earlier is like if I would see like in the past two years. There has been this wave like people are more willing to speak up about their own experience in the workplace, which I think this is a great.
00:15:12
Speaker
call on no matter what event actually triggered that, but I'm so grateful to see that happen. Even the news that we read, Michelle Yang was like, hey, ask people to shut up when they were having that speech delivered at the Golden Globe. And I thought that's a great example of how Asians can break some of the stereotypes that we're having on ourselves. And curious to hear your thoughts on that behavior itself.
00:15:42
Speaker
Before we proceed, would it be helpful to set some context, provide some background information on what exactly we're talking about? I think, Duck, you were the one who brought this story to our attention, so do you want to take a stab at providing a little bit of background information?
00:16:01
Speaker
So this is a, I think a couple of weeks ago and it may be a little bit later when our audience actually takes a listen to this, but Michelle Oyo, I think won an award at the Golden Globes. I think it was at Best Actress, right? Yeah. Yeah. So that was actually.
00:16:17
Speaker
Huge achievement. I think she was giving her, you know, speech and it may have gone a little long. I didn't get a chance to watch the whole thing. But of course I saw that clip on the music playing and basically that's a subtle cue for her to wrap it up and get off stage, right? So they can cut the commercial or whatever it may be.
00:16:38
Speaker
And she turns over and she looks at, I think where the music was coming from tells him to shut up and I can beat you up. Right. And she says that facetiously.
00:16:49
Speaker
But I think it was really nice to just hear it from someone who may have the power and the privilege, I think at this point in her career, to say, this is really important to me. This was monumental. This is for a lot of the things. And this is for the writers who wrote a role that thought about me and the role of the actress that I am.
00:17:16
Speaker
And I thought that was pretty cool that, you know, she took a moment and say, hey, give me this moment and no, I'm not going to shut up. You're going to shut up because I'm going to continue my speech. And I thought that's why I thought it was.
Balancing Social Capital
00:17:30
Speaker
That's why I thought it was really cool.
00:17:43
Speaker
The other thing in there is I think even like in earlier chat that we had is talking about for people who already made it. In this case, she did like she won the award she has be publicly publicly recognized with her acting skills. And she can say that and it doesn't seem like there's any like bad consequences.
00:18:06
Speaker
but rather enhance her character a bit more. But for people who haven't made there yet, where they are still struggling to get themselves visible or recognized by their own capability, I think that presents a bigger challenge for them to be even seen and even act in the same way that Michelle has been seen on the stage.
00:18:35
Speaker
I think the example there is like the Asians has been...
00:18:39
Speaker
perceived as you should be like non-dominant, you should be like obeying those rules, you should be more obedient. That type of stereotypes that does sometimes like put people very difficult to say things like, hey, shut up, like I'm still having done my business here. Because you will be like perceived as you are penetrating that, that stereotypes and get penalized by that.
00:19:07
Speaker
And I thought that was kind of interesting to see where that line should be joined. Echo, I take it you're extending this back from where Michelle Yeoh is and where some of us are, starting out in organizations. Do we have the social capital?
00:19:23
Speaker
to do that? That's a really interesting question. I think with any new job African who are just starting out and getting their feet wet in the industry, I think regardless of race and gender, I think it's hard to say that or get away with that, right? At a certain point, when do you have that clout? When do you have that social capital to do so? And is it okay?
00:19:45
Speaker
That is a very good point. And, you know, there are situations where people don't say anything, even when they do reach that, you know, that pinnacle, that senior leadership position or whatever, their highest achievement in their field, they still won't speak out because they don't want to rock the boat. So the fact that she did and the fact that she was able to use her platform
00:20:08
Speaker
to do that I think is fantastic and the fact that she was breaking stereotypes. It's a lot harder for people like us but one can hope that we can make small strides given the platform that we have.
00:20:43
Speaker
Bye!
Debunking Asian Myths
00:20:48
Speaker
So for this segment, we prepared something called myth busting. So I wrote down a few things on a list of commonly held myths that people have about, or perception that people have about Asians, and we are either gonna confirm it or debunk it. So for the first one, the first myth is Asians are crazy rich, and because they're crazy rich, they don't need any help or resources.
00:21:16
Speaker
Who wants to take this one? Sure, Jenny, I can take a crack at this. I believe it is a myth.
00:21:26
Speaker
So I'm sure a lot of people know about household incomes, and that's actually reported. And you can actually break that down by race. And typically, Asian households actually do bring up, bring in the highest incomes, regardless of education. One of the things that we actually don't take a look at or don't consider is actually household
00:21:48
Speaker
members, person per household member. And sometimes that actually gets overlooked because you have multi generational households within Asian families, because you have pie, grandma, mom and dad, and adult children in that as well, too, you add all that up, you can maybe see that those incomes are actually a little bit higher. And
00:22:14
Speaker
when you actually consider person per household, it's actually very similar to actually white household income. So it's actually, they're not richer. They're just more of them per household on average.
Economic Disparities Within Asian Communities
00:22:28
Speaker
Fact, not a myth. I think there's some truth to that statement where people were
00:22:35
Speaker
seeing like Asians are rich people those days, given how fast the economy has grown over the past few years. So for example, on the GDP level, United States is still like number one, there's no doubt on that. I think back in like 2021, according to the World Bank data, United States has
00:23:04
Speaker
21.439 trillion as a country, and then followed by China, which is like 14.140 trillion. And then next to it is Japan. So two big Asian countries has, well, cumulatively, they will surpass the United States. This is why I'm trying to explain why people have that perception, or my themes, this perception is true, is because
00:23:32
Speaker
people get to a certain degree, they do see the Asian countries has grown significantly over the past few years. And they might also be feeling like, oh, this is the same case for people in the States, where they see like Asian faces, regardless, they're coming from China directly, or they're have they have been like living in the States, but they're in life. They just assume that hey, you guys like has been like so well dove echo myth or fact, though. Is this a myth or a fact?
00:24:04
Speaker
Oh, that's definitely a miss. But the reason why I bring it up is like why this could be interpreted as a fact sometimes. God, I see what you're doing here. Thanks for that. But just to add on to that, the last conversation. So I don't know if our listeners know this, but the race with the largest income divide, as of 2018, are Asians, Asian Americans.
00:24:32
Speaker
Well, here's the other thing I think we don't talk about. As we were actually talking about locations, guess where a lot of Asians actually reside? In bigger cities, you're going to have higher incomes in bigger cities like New York, San Francisco, because of the higher living standards that are there, right? But look, if you're making... But even in those cities, you know, some of the most destitute people are actually Asian Americans. And New York City, that's in New York City, the poorest group
00:25:01
Speaker
or Asian Americans. Like that, I recently found out about that and that just blew my mind because I thought at least in New York City, you know, they would be doing much better, but that's not the case. I mean, look, I think I mentioned that I lived in Section 8 housing. I mean, that's subsidized housing for folks that need it, right? And our family had to do that, I think for the first seven years when we were first open.
00:25:24
Speaker
My other argument is that because there's a larger concentration of Asians in larger cities that require a higher income just to pay off that rent or whatever, you're going to see that spike in that higher salary.
00:25:44
Speaker
you may see that and you also may, this also may, because of this aggregation of everybody, you're not gonna see the folks who are a little bit older, who are, you know, on welfare, in a rent controlled environment, trying to make it day by day, right? Some of that stuff is silenced or kind of washed out when we average all these things together, right? But, you know,
00:26:11
Speaker
There are, I think if you even take a look at a map of like where Asians are in the U.S., they're mainly concentrated in bigger cities. And guess what? That's where some of the bigger salaries are because the rent, the cost of living is just substantially more. And you may have inflation based on inflation, but a higher number just because of that, too.
Income Gaps Among Asian Subgroups
00:26:31
Speaker
And I haven't really seen anything that actually controls for that as well. And it's actually something that's I think a lot harder to actually go into.
00:26:38
Speaker
Yes, bigger cities are, you know, HCOLs, higher cost of living, and you're going to command a higher salary, but that also means that in the same city you will have people who are on the other extreme of poverty, people living paycheck to paycheck.
00:27:00
Speaker
Yeah, so, you know, a few weeks ago, I went to a volunteer event with a friend and we were serving the homeless food over the Lunar New Year. And I was just really amazed at the amount of, I guess, diversity that showed up. It wasn't just, you know, I assume that because it's Seattle, it would be a lot of, you know, mostly white people, but it was
00:27:29
Speaker
white people, it was black people, it was Asians, Latinos. And the Asian people that showed up were mostly elderly people. I don't think they were homeless, but they were obviously not, you know, doing that well. I mean, one lady came with her cart filled with plastic, you know, bottles. So I mean, I was just, when I saw that, it was surprising.
00:27:57
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, that's, I guess, part of that harsh reality, right? That, you know, the folks who are older, who, I don't know if they have like dependence or if they lost their dependence over the pandemic or even before that. Life is actually, can be pretty hard in the U S you don't have a job. You don't have a house. You don't have a car. Like good luck to you. I mean, it's not like you can just like, not every city, you can rely mass trans to get to work.
00:28:25
Speaker
Right. If you don't have that savings or that cushion, like I think and this applies to a lot of Americans, right. You could be a paycheck away from homelessness, you know, and that that that is that's a harsh reality of just really living in the U.S., especially if you live paycheck to paycheck.
00:28:46
Speaker
Yeah,
Refugee Experiences and Economic Opportunities
00:28:47
Speaker
life is tough. It's all about making that paycheck. I did want to add on something to that, which is when you start parsing out the different subgroups within the Asian American label, you'll start to notice significant pay gaps, even within Asian Americans. So for example, on one end, I believe that it was the mean income, the average income for Indian Americans,
00:29:15
Speaker
is about 100,000, followed by Chinese Americans, which is 70,000. So even among those two groups, you see a pretty significant gap. And then on the other extreme are, I believe, Burmese Americans, whose average annual income is around 30,000, which is significantly lower than the other groups. So all that to say is there is a big divide
00:29:42
Speaker
Let me add a little bit to that, Jenny, I think what you're bringing up is, you know, I think it's, there's the type of job in the industry matters as well too, right, if you're
00:29:55
Speaker
coming over and going into a tech industry versus if you're leaving a country in search of asylum or on refugee status, right? There's a huge difference there. And as a refugee myself, like, you know, our family came over to the US with literally a box of clothes, right? Because of the fear of the prosecution of our former government potentially even killing my brother and sister when they took over.
00:30:24
Speaker
right? There isn't time to prep to get out of the country when that's the case, right? When other people have an opportunity to actually get educated and be able to hone their skills based on a job that's in high demand, I think it's also different. So I think there's a lot of different factors that play into this as well, right? If you have
00:30:49
Speaker
those who are coming over who aren't well educated, the next generation aren't going to really have those steps to follow, to understand. And not only do they not have that, they also don't know what they need to do in order to get a high paying job in the US, especially if all they see is their friends, family, community members actually going into low skilled labor, right?
00:31:11
Speaker
That is a huge difference. If you're in another country and you have the opportunity to get into a certain sector and you know other people in that sector, you're able to network and figure out how the visa work and how it's different for STEM fields staying in the US after there are other aspects of their visa expire.
00:31:39
Speaker
and how certain industries allow for potentially green cards, that matters a lot as well, too. So I think it's a lot.
00:31:48
Speaker
more complex than just, you know, Southeast Asian versus South Asian. There's a lot of factors and historical, historical aspect and laws that actually in the U.S. from the 19, the Naturalization Immigration Act of 1965 actually plays a huge role in bringing talented people into the U.S. that can do the work that they can. Some Southeast Asian, some did not come over to the U.S. because of that.
Salary Negotiation Behaviors
00:32:18
Speaker
So thanks for providing that perspective, Duck. And you just illustrated exactly why it's important to parse out the differences, right?
00:32:47
Speaker
So the next topic is going to be the negotiation article that Echo sent us a few weeks ago. Should we open up with just like setting the context? So what was the article? What's the title? Yeah, so the title.
00:33:05
Speaker
So the title is actually called Asians Don't Ask, Relational Concerns, Negotiation, Propensity, and Starting Salaries. It was done by a professor at MIT, Jackson Liu. The article is published on Journal of Applied Psychology. That sounds really interesting. So could you say more? Sounds like the title is a mouthful, but what was the, like in a sentence or two, what was the article about?
00:33:31
Speaker
Yeah, so basically what they've done is they looked into the starting salary for a 19 year worth of data from an MBA program where they compare the starting salary for East Asians, Southeast Asians, and South Asians and whites. Okay, so Southeast Asians are? Vietnamese people. Vietnamese, Cambodian. Thai. Thai. Singaporean.
00:34:01
Speaker
Okay. All right. And then South Asian or Indian Pakistani. Okay. And then the East Asians are Chinese, Japanese, Japanese, Korean. All right. Okay. And what did they find? So they have find there's a sanitary gap, uh, emerged between East Asian South Asians and
00:34:21
Speaker
South Asians. So what they have found out is South Asians were able to get paid higher at the starting salary than the two other Asian groups. Huh. So why did they merge Southeast Asians and East Asians? Because I imagine, you know, Chinese and Koreans are different from Vietnamese and... We're totally different. Yeah, we're very different. We are not alike at all.
00:34:48
Speaker
Yeah, I think that was quite interesting. What they found is this gap they only find to be existing in those two
00:34:58
Speaker
Asian groups like AKA East Asians and South East Asians from like South Asians. And one of the argument they had or the hypothesis they had there is East Asians and South East Asians were having this like a face culture, meaning like we value face, we value the relationship harmony. And so by asking more in your salary, it kind of jeopardize the future relationship with the employer
00:35:27
Speaker
where the South Asians, on the other hand, have more of this owner culture, meaning they're more bought to ask for more in their salary.
Long-term Effects of Salary Negotiation
00:35:40
Speaker
That's very interesting. Jeff, what do you think about this? I don't know. I mean, for me, I'm kind of contra...
00:35:50
Speaker
I like what this author did in kind of bringing this together and making the job the same. So to showcase that, it was actually, even when the job is the same, when you don't negotiate, you get a lower salary. And he was able to actually showcase it through isolating of all these other variables that
00:36:13
Speaker
Regardless of the job or the industry or the SES and all this those who actually didn't negotiate Got lower pay and that's usually how it is If you were to tell me an industry if people who didn't negotiate got paid lower, I believe yeah I wouldn't I would say like I wouldn't need to study it to Know that but it's good that it's also there in the psychology realm is that as well. Yeah so basically what this is is
00:36:41
Speaker
saying is if you are South Asian you will most likely have a higher salary because you negotiate whereas if you are East Asian or Southeast Asian you're less likely to negotiate.
00:36:53
Speaker
Or ask for that. Ask for more. Ask for more. I think it's also interesting to think about from this compounding factor. This is just we're talking about starting January. This is what they were looking at. So imagining the compounding effect on this. When you started, though, and over the years, how much of a bigger gap that will presence with those different groups. So I saw that I was quite interesting to think about.
00:37:23
Speaker
from the time horizon, like how, how much that really continue to widen. Yeah. I mean, because if this is, uh, then just come out of MBA, let's assume that maybe they're, it's like they're 30 and they have 35 years to work. Uh, some folks have a little, um, you know, a leg up on other folks from, from the get-go and it does, uh, over a career is worth a lifetime's worth of work.
00:37:48
Speaker
that could be a huge difference in salary, whether you negotiate or not. So I guess what we're saying is people regardless of who you are, negotiate. But I find that it's fascinating that they looked at, you know, Southeast and East Asians versus South Asians. And Echo, you brought up an interesting point about, you know, one group being a face culture versus the other group being a
00:38:15
Speaker
Or was it honor culture? I mean, at least that's the hypothesis they had. I don't think they'd be able to show the evidence of the causal effect of that. But I think it's one of the hypotheses that we could argue. Even think about my own experience. I didn't ask or negotiate in my starting center when I first get out from the college.
00:38:45
Speaker
from grad school, how about you two? Oh, I didn't either. I think it depended on the situation. So the situation moderated whether I negotiated. Okay, tell us more. So there's this one job that I took a few years back that I knew that if I negotiated, I would actually be making more than the person who's supervising me. Actually, it's actually similar to this other job, but I didn't have a close relationship to this supervisor I did with the other person.
00:39:14
Speaker
And the last thing I wanted to come across as is someone who was just wanting more and more money, where I thought the offer was decent already. I think I could have asked for more, given my level of work experience and my education background. But I did feel that it could have jeopardized the working relationship I
Impact of Pay Transparency
00:39:36
Speaker
would have had. So I opted not to do that.
00:39:39
Speaker
So there's that honor culture coming into play. Yeah, as much as I like to fight the stereotype, I perpetuated it that time. This other time, I knew what this other person was making because their salary was actually public. And I purposely asked for more just to see what the organization would say. And because this organization, they were actually clear on their salary,
00:40:05
Speaker
They had a lower limit and an upper limit, and they were already offering me the upper limit. I just wanted to see what they would do, what they would do, whether they would break the rule that they set for themselves. Did you get that? I did not get that. I wasn't surprised I didn't get it, but I wanted to test and try. Yeah, yeah. So these are jobs that you asked for, or you're talking about jobs that you applied for once you had experience. What about right after college? Right after college?
00:40:33
Speaker
I did negotiate. And why? Did someone tell you to negotiate? Was it just part of who you were? Why did you negotiate? I had this wise woman that I was working with at this other organization, a Jamaican woman from New York that was a transplant to Iowa, told me one of the first things I knew to do when I got a job was to negotiate. No matter what they tell you to do or whatever they offer you, just negotiate. And I just listened to her.
00:41:03
Speaker
That's what she told me to do and that's why I didn't actually got, I think I got a 20% bump.
00:41:09
Speaker
because I negotiated. Wow, that's a big bump. I was told not to negotiate. I was also graduating during the financial crisis, you know, in 2009. And so I was told when I got my job offer, my career counselor actually said, this is a good salary, don't ask for more. So I was just like, okay. But once I started, you know, reading about negotiation and the fact that women don't negotiate, I started negotiating and asking.
00:41:39
Speaker
But I did not negotiate out of, you know, fresh out of college. Seems like that career service needs to be refreshed. Like they need to be retrained. I know. Yeah. You did actually also bring up a good point earlier, Doc, on like this information has been public in one of the agencies that you worked for. And so I was curious about like,
00:42:04
Speaker
how does this like a paid transparency will brought into this journey because knowing like one of those findings from their study that looked at it is they compared the consulting jobs versus non-consulting jobs so for the all the consulting jobs
00:42:20
Speaker
the starting salary are the same. Regardless of your background, regardless of your years of experience, they're all the same. And is that industry standard in consulting? I don't think so. I think that's what they were doing. Okay. I think firm across like a different firms, there are difference. But if you're working the same firm, same title, and you all started from like,
00:42:44
Speaker
MBA program, they're gonna get pay you the thing. So in some way or the other, like thinking about that, that seems like a good strategy for the organization to take on. So I thought that was interesting. Yeah, I like that. I like the transparency on that. I know that New York
00:43:04
Speaker
has required that those who are recruiting in New York list their salary range that they're working with. In the past, I think, organizations would say, we're really competitive. And of course, people would say, well, if you're really competitive, what's your salary? And of course, they won't want to say. I think one of the things that actually keep people of color and women making lower salaries is that
00:43:30
Speaker
organizations are not willing to disclose a salary that they have to work with. And they actually also then utilize past salaries to base their work experience or the people's worth from there. And that's also illegal in New York as well. So you can't ask people's previous salaries that they've had because historically if they've been systemically
00:43:56
Speaker
have been paid lower, of course they're going to tell you they've been making less. And of course that continues to perpetuate given where you started. So I like what New York has done. I hope that what New York has done will continue to pick up across other states. I know Colorado and I think Echo, you may mention
00:44:17
Speaker
California may have some of these rules in place as well too to actually protect workers from really their past discrimination that they've experienced. Yeah, that's a really good point. I remember when I was working in HR, compensation even within the organization was taboo, you never discussed it. And even within HR, they were very cautious about sharing comp data internally.
00:44:44
Speaker
among the HR team. And I think it's a missed opportunity, right? I think it is. I also want to say it's BS. Why? Explain. I don't know. For the roles I've been in, for the most part, I've gotten to see almost everyone's salary. Did you have to ask?
00:45:05
Speaker
Uh, at certain places, I was, I was privileged enough to have that information. I didn't have to ask because they needed to give me that information so I can actually, so you were comp. So obviously you knew that, but you had X, okay. You had your hand in the comp jar. Yeah. Yeah. And it also allowed me to take a look at, you know, other people with like similar performance ratings and whether how they, you know, got paid or their, their, uh, their pay raise was affected by that. And, you know, a lot of this stuff that we know at the systemic level,
00:45:35
Speaker
guess what, it happens at the organizational level too. So I would ask organizations to kind of check themselves, whether they're compensating people similarly when they get a similar rating, and whether they're bringing people in at similar rates, given their experience. That's something that I think organizations have that power and they have access to that. I think a lot of organizations
00:45:57
Speaker
to touch it because they can actually get themselves into trouble. They admit to it and have to do back pay and potentially go through a bunch of litigation as well too. I think that the data that we know at the system level, at least in the US, there are disparities among women and minorities
00:46:20
Speaker
And there's no way that it happens only in one industry. Just selfishly and personally speaking on this is I have friends like working the comp team and they don't go and check out the people's salary because they just
00:46:36
Speaker
become very painful experience to go through and seeing like how much this person is making and knowing like types of work, job he or she is doing. And then you were going to get like, yeah, I think you're going to go through some like emotional shit. I'm too nosy. I look at everybody's story. I don't care if you have work experience to me, or unless I would have known.
00:47:00
Speaker
I'm going to know and then I may not let them know that I know, but then I may want to figure out what is it that they know that I don't know that I need to pick up in order to get to where they are and whether I want to. I feel like sometimes there's a good amount of pay and then there's pay that you get that you deal with a bunch of other BS. I think there's a good threshold.
00:47:23
Speaker
In there and I for me, it's like, you know, I don't want to go too crazy with it I mean what we we we eat what three times two three times a day. Like how much money do you really need? Yeah after you pay off your lungs And also like I I like the idea that making the branch available so, you know, rather than speaking where you are compared to your peers and
00:47:48
Speaker
but I don't think I wanted to go to like each individual's details and see how much they are making, but it's good for you to know where you are at. Yeah. Yeah. So like for someone at my level, this is the range or this is the average salary. So that's why, I mean, I always look at Glassdoor when I'm negotiating, when I'm looking at a new job, potentially I always go there and see, you know, what's the, what's the average for someone with my experience for that level. And I have used it to negotiate my salary.
00:48:18
Speaker
In the past, I've used built-in NYC. It's a website that showcases all the startup jobs in the city. So builtinnyc.com? Yeah. And then they have built-in Denver. It's really built-in. It's all these other big cities there. They'll actually list
00:48:37
Speaker
You know, if you're like an HR director, this is how much you should be making, this is the range. So there's actually, that website is there. If you're working in, of course, academia at a state college, well, you know, that information is actually, should be public knowledge. So there are databases to let people know what those values are like.
Non-monetary Incentives in Job Offers
00:49:02
Speaker
If you had a private college, the Chronicle of Higher Ed actually has a database that also has salary information amongst men and women as well, too, between instructors, assistant professors, associate professors, and full professors. And of course, if you're in government. Well, that's publicly available. Yeah, federal government has, I mean, the GS levels have certain ranges that you're within.
00:49:31
Speaker
Oh, what's his name? Jerome Powell, right? The chairman of the Fed, I think makes 197,000 a year. And I think I just saw that the other day and I figured he was, you know, he's a government employee. We can probably figure out what GS level he's at if he's making that much. Yeah. I mean, this might be like going on a little bit, going on tangent there, but I wondered for those jobs, then
00:49:55
Speaker
it actually put organization or individuals to be more focused on the intrinsic. So what really incentivize you is really the work itself. Yeah. I mean, this could be an entire topic on its own. What are ways to incentivize people besides one's salary, one's financial compensation? Yeah. That's a great question. As someone who used to have to negotiate salaries with other folks because I was on the other side,
00:50:25
Speaker
I would always encourage folks to take a look at the total package, not just the salary. How many days are you getting off? Is the culture what it says it is? Is what's above the surface?
00:50:39
Speaker
Versus what's below the surface, right? Do they really mean it when they say take time off when you need it? Or is it take time off because it's kind of you know Not as busy right now, but we're busy as heck You're gonna have to work like 50 60 hours a week and you're not people you're not gonna be able to complain about it You know depending what job you're going into I think you should get to know What the expectations are for that? Given the pay so it's not you know
00:51:08
Speaker
I don't think for the most, I'm gonna say for the most part, I don't think most folks will be all right. I guess if you have the option to have multiple offers, like I would say pick the one that brings you that sanity and allows you the other time to do the things that you love because there's a chance you may do things at work you don't really care for. And that could take a toll on you.
00:51:37
Speaker
Yep. Yep. So, so the bottom line of this discussion is negotiate your salary. Yeah. Do you want to hear the, what chat GPT say about this? Oh yeah. Sure. Go ahead. Yeah. Are we closing already? Is it time to close?
00:51:52
Speaker
Yeah, we can close with Haiku wrote by Chat GPT on negotiating your salary. What was the prompt? The prompt is just asking the Chat GPT to write a Haiku for the episode on negotiating your salary. Okay. And so here's, here we go. Know your worth, be bold, negotiate your value high, claim what you deserve. Oh, I like that. Claim what you deserve.
00:52:23
Speaker
Nice. Yeah. Don't work yourself to death. It's not worth it. It's not worth it. And your workplace is not your family. It's true. You do not want to fire your own family.
Episode Conclusion
00:52:37
Speaker
Sometimes you want to. You should. Sometimes you should. But at the end of the day, you got to have your back. Because to them,
00:52:45
Speaker
you know we are sad to say um dispensable so well on a positive note let's uh should we close this out thank you everyone for listening to this episode of um know your worth and pass forward i'll we'll catch you all in the next episode all right thank you thank you bye