Work can be frustrating at the best of times, but there’s something particularly infuriating when you find out that your company is hiring someone else to do your exact role at a way higher salary than you’re getting paid. That’s exactly what happened to Kimberly Nguyen. The 25-year-old poet, who does a coding job by day, ended up applying for her own job after discovering what was going on.
As Nguyen shared on Twitter, she saw the job listing for “another UX writer” at her company on LinkedIn. Another set of hands on deck is always helpful. However, she then realized they were offering $32k – 90k more” than they pay her for doing that exact job. Yikes!
While a few thousand dollars’ difference here and there might be understandable, this is a significant gap. Not only that, but Nguyen has been “arguing for months about the pay inequity.”
She wrote: “If the difference were like $10-15k I feel like I’d be less upset. But I’ve been asking for a raise for months and they’re out here flaunting they’re willing to pay a new person at least $32k more than me??? For the same job??”
Kimberly Nguyen is standing up for pay inequality

Whenever Kimberly Nguyen has asked for more money from her boss, she’s been told that it’s just not the right time as the company has been struggling. So, how is it that a new hire could be getting so much more?
“I have told my managers multiple times that I know I’m being underpaid,” she shared. “I have gotten the runaround, and they know they can do this right now in a tough labor market.”
The company later claimed that the job posting was “internal” and “wasn’t meant for anyone to apply to externally.” This despite the fact that it was publicly listed on LinkedIn. They claimed it was a legal requirement to do so even if they planned to hire internally.
However, that doesn’t change anything for Kimberly. So what if it’s a current colleague? Why should they get so much more money?
Commenters asked her if she had gotten a response to her application, but Kimberly thinks her days are numbered at the company. “LOL, no. I’m actually pretty sure they’re going to fire me for this whole debacle,” she wrote.
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