2003-06-24 - 12:32 p.m.

Dear readers, today your hero Warrior Geek is seeing red. In case, there was any ambiguity about my gender, I'm a girl. I bring this up because it's revelant to today's rant.

About 2 weeks ago I had my performance review. It was pretty much glowing. Good job, Geek, A+ for you. My manager didn't have my salary information but mentioned that he didn't know what they were going to do about my salary since it was below the minimum for a level 3 software engineer.

Last week I was talking to North Carolina and commenting on not getting my raise yet but said I didn't care since I was confident it was going to be a big joke and probably amount to like $30/week. He kinda got quiet and said, "oh I got my raise and it was more than a $30/week difference." Good to know.

So today I met with my manager and he told me I am now classified as a software engineer 2, and as predicted, my raise amounted to about $30/week. He had no real explanation as to why I should be a level 2. (Although it was obvious they didn't want to give me the raise I was due for my title.) He said it was more appropriate to classify me as a level 2, though I fail to see how. The corporate intranet has a listing of years experience as it relates to job title and I have the work experience of a level 3, not a level 2. Apparently, my only missing qualification for being a level 3 is having a dick.

As I'm thinking about it, I'm noticing all the girls that work here have junior level jobs if they do tech work. I know girls with CS degrees and C++ experience doing HTML. Indie Rock (also a girl) has been given more and more responsibilities with no promotion or raise, she's actually working a second job now to pay her bills because she's so grossly underpaid here. The boys get to go to tech conferences, they get cool projects, they get more senior titles, attention from managers, respectable raises. I am getting fucked here and I am pretty sure it's because I'm a girl.

I was going to just quit but now I'm pissed off. I'd like to haul them to court. I am sick of the rampant sexism in the IT industry. I am tired of frat boy bosses lavishing career opportunities and attention on my male co-workers while I get work that, frankly, bores me at best. I'm not being given growth opportunities, I'm not being challenged and to top it off I'm getting outright screwed.

The kicker in the fairness department is this, I am now making the salary I was making 3 years ago. I took a pay cut when I started working here because my last job involved an hour commute and they were doing layoffs and the economy was in poor shape. I didn't get laid off but I didn't want to stress over the threat of it and the 10 minute commute to work was appealing. I'd be less disguted with all of this if I knew the boys were getting screwed over in the salary department and that the company was just lowballing across the board. I know, accordingly to salary.com I'm grossly underpaid for my skills and experience. It is more of a slap in the face to realize it's because I'm a girl. I am going to be meeting with the other girl geeks later today to come up with a game plan. I'm not just mad on my behalf, I'm mad about the way they are being treated too.

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