3.8 Girls’ Day Special: Survey on the Current Situation of Domestic Female Programmers

Introduction

Today is March 8th. PHP Chinese Network wishes all female programmers a happy holiday. It is you who hold up half the sky of the Internet and add color to the company. Thank you for your hard work! Today, PHP Chinese Network will talk about the current situation of female programmers in China on the topic of Girls’ Day.

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The world’s first programmer

More than 200 years ago, the beautiful Duchess Ada Lovelace was born. She was not only the daughter of the great British poet Byron, but also the world's first programmer. In 1843, Ada Lovelace published the world's first set of algorithms - the world's earliest computer programs and software. She also successfully predicted that the power of computers would far exceed numerical calculations.

In order to commemorate Ada Lovelace, celebrate the achievements of female workers in science, technology, mathematics and other fields around the world, and encourage more women to join these careers, the second Tuesday of October every year is designated as Ada Lovelace. Lovelace Day.

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For every five programmers looking for a job, there is only one female programmer

The scarcity of female programmers is a historical problem left over from the time when majors were chosen on college campuses. In the past year, judging from the registration data of php Chinese website, the number of registered male programmers was nearly 4 times that of female programmers. This means that for every 5 programmers registered to use php Chinese website, only one female.

Although female programmers cannot be compared with male programmers in terms of size, judging from the number of male and female programmers who have passed the PHP Chinese website review, the two are comparable.

As can be seen from the figure above, the passing rate of female programmers is slightly lower than that of male programmers with a difference of 7%. However, the final comparison of the number of male and female programmers who participated in the application is consistent with the number of registrations. It is still one in every four programmers. , has only one female programmer.

The scarcity of female programmers does not mean that they are unpopular in market competition. In fact, the number of job offers per person for the same position is about the same for male and female programmers. Taking the recently popular front-end positions as an example, the average number of face-to-face invitations for male and female programmers is 7 and 6 respectively, and male programmers only have 1 more face-to-face invitation than female programmers.

Compared with traditional industries, the Internet circle is a more open and free platform. Looking at the changes in the number of female programmers on the timeline, it has shown an increasing trend in recent years. Before October 2015, the average number of male programmers using PHP Chinese online every month was about 500, which was nearly 25 times the number of female programmers participating in the same period. In March 2016, this number had shrunk to 10 times.

The HR of an e-commerce website in Shanghai told php Chinese: "In the first two years, there were very few female programmer job seekers in the market, but since last year, there have been more female job seekers doing development, especially Java programmers, which have become more popular recently. On average, there are 1 to 2 female programmers for every 10 job applicants."

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##The salary of male programmers in the same position is generally higher than that of female programmers

Here, we capture the two most in-demand positions recently: Java and front-end, and look at the average salary difference offered by companies to male and female programmers.

It can be seen that whether it is Java or front-end, the salary of female programmers is 10%+ lower than that of male programmers. When converted into specific figures, the monthly salary difference is 3K-4K.

Generally speaking, the salary of an employee is directly linked to the person's work ability and the value he or she may create for the company in the future. However, in the high-intensity and fast-paced Internet circle, especially in some start-up companies where one person has multiple jobs and has a long-term 996 position, Employees often have to sacrifice a lot of personal time to devote themselves to work in an all-in state.

In this case, when recruiting employees, many companies will naturally believe that when women reach a certain age, they have to get married, have children, and return to their families, which will inevitably affect their work efficiency and enthusiasm, and the value they create for the company will naturally be greatly reduced. . Therefore, lowering their salaries has become a matter of course.

Does this mean that the older women are, the greater the pay gap is with their male peers? We look for answers in the next set of data.

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The longer the working years, the greater the salary gap between male and female programmers

Similar to the salary difference between male and female programmers in different positions, whether they are junior programmers with less than two years of work experience or senior programmers with more than 5 years of work experience, the average interview salary of male programmers is still generally higher than Female programmers, and the salary gap between the two increases with their working years.

When they first enter the industry, both male and female programmers are in the entry-level stage. The first two years of work are the starting point for career development, so the salary difference between the two is also minimal. After two years of working, the gap begins to appear. It is not until five years later that most women are about to enter their third year of employment, get married and have children. The dispersion of energy has widened the biggest gap between them and men in the workplace, with a salary gap as high as 24%.

However, when comparing the salary increases of male and female programmers under the same conditions, we found that: except for female programmers with less than 2 years of work experience, their salary is 1% lower than that of male programmers, and that of female programmers with more than two years of work experience. The salary increases are higher than those of male programmers.

This is not unrelated to the lower starting salary of female programmers. Generally speaking, the higher the starting salary, the smaller the salary increase. This is the same as the salary increase of job-hopping decreases with the increase of working years. But even if the salary increase of female programmers is higher than that of male programmers, there is still a big gap between their salaries and those of male programmers.

Finally, let’s take a look at the difference between the salary increase expected by male and female programmers and the actual salary increase in interviews.

Although the expected salary of male programmers is 4.7K higher than that of female programmers, the expected salary increase of male and female programmers is the same, both 20%, and the salary increase offered by the company exceeds their expectations by about twice. Among them, the actual salary of female programmers is 5% higher than that of male programmers.

It can be seen that female programmers should have more confidence in themselves when changing jobs. Companies are willing to pay high salaries for capable people, regardless of gender.

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Companies above Series C are more willing to pay high salaries to female programmers

Women have always played the role of supporting their husbands and raising children in the family. Even working women tend to prefer relatively stable large companies in their job choices. From the comparison of the salaries offered by companies at different financing stages to male and female programmers, we found that: medium and large-scale Internet companies above the C round, or companies that do not require financing, offer female programmers higher annual salary than male programmers. member.

Companies below Series B offer lower salaries to female programmers than male programmers. Especially for companies in the Angel round stage, the salary gap between male and female programmers is as high as 23.8%. This may be related to the high pressure and intensity of technical work in start-ups, and companies are worried that female programmers are not as hardworking as male programmers.

In addition, in addition to the financing stage of the company, the city where the company is located may also affect the salary gap between male and female engineers.

Data shows that the salary gap between men and women in the four cities of Beijing, Shenzhen and Hangzhou remains at about 13%, while in Guangzhou it is only 3.29%. At the same time, the data also shows that among the five cities with the highest activity of PHP Chinese website, Guangzhou also has the lowest average interview salary: in the summer of 2016, the average interview salary of Guangzhou Internet companies was about 196,000 per year, while the other four places It is more than 250,000.

In previous interviews with php Chinese website, many programmers from startup companies said that when they need to work overtime all night, male programmers will usually assign a relatively small workload to the female programmers in the group, or simply Assign them the easiest tasks.

It is difficult to explain whether this is special care or discrimination against female programmers. Sometimes even female programmers themselves cannot tell clearly. Keso, an independent IT commentator, said in an interview with php Chinese website: "Sometimes gender differences should be seen and acknowledged. Due to some physiological and social reasons, men and women have different work-life balances. Seeing differences does not mean that Discrimination, we should provide more conveniences to women."

php Chinese website believes that care for women at work should be based on the other party’s wishes and should be handled appropriately. It is disguised discrimination to assign light and difficult tasks to female programmers without consulting them; when they are troubled by physical, family and other factors and are unable to undertake work that is too intense, proactively provide them with Help is caring.

As a male programmer, don’t let your good intentions become an accomplice in lowering the salary level of female programmers in the industry. Female programmers are an engineer first and a woman second.

php Chinese website said:

It can be seen from the data in this report that although the number of female programmers is gradually increasing and companies still have demand for female programmers, one fact that cannot be ignored is: the salary of female programmers is There is still a certain gap with men.

Regarding this issue, as an enterprise, we should put aside traditional concepts and invisible gender bias, and treat professional women more differently based on their abilities rather than gender. If they can create the same value for the company as male employees of the same level, give them Earned salary.

For female programmers, they must not only see their own shortcomings in the workplace, but also find ways to use their own strengths to make up for their shortcomings. No one is perfect, and gender is neither your armor nor your weakness. You should get as much reward as you put in. Don’t take chances if you get too much, and don’t swallow your anger if you get too little.

The meaning of this report is that we hope that more technical people in the Internet circle will be aware of the unequal salary between male and female engineers, so that every technical woman at work can be treated equally. Encourage them to make more of their own voices in the technical field, contribute their own strength, and obtain the income and rewards they deserve.