Google calls NYT story on gender pay gap ‘extremely flawed’

Google calls NYT story on gender pay gap ‘extremely flawed’


Google calls NYT story on gender pay gap ‘extremely flawed’

Female Googlers are paid less than their male colleagues, but by how much?

On Friday, the New York Times obtained data suggesting that women hired into entry-level positions at Google make $15,600 less than men hired at the same level.

Google told reporters the Times’ analysis of the data was “extremely flawed,” saying women at Google are paid 99.7 cents for every dollar men make.

The Times cited data from a spreadsheet set up by a former Google employee in 2015 that encourages fellow employees to self-report their salaries, bonuses and other information, like gender. The Times focused on 2017 data from 1,194 employees classified across six management levels.

Women hired into entry-level positions, also known as “level one,” said they were paid an average base salary of $40,300 per year. Men hired into the same management level made $55,900, the Times reported.

The salary sharply narrowed by level six, where women reported earning an average of $193,200 per year, compared to $197,600 for men at the same management level.

Roughly 20 percent of Google’s technical workforce is female. Across the company, 31 percent of the company’s total workforce is female, according to Google’s latest diversity report.

The Times didn’t account for differences in role (a “level two” software engineer will make more than a “level two” human resources specialist), geography (Google employees in Mountain View earn more than Atlanta) or performance, Google said.

The company has previously said it obscures gender information when calculating salary offers and pay raises.

The report comes as Google continues to deal with fallout from an internal memo from a former male Google engineer who criticized the company’s workforce diversity efforts and argued, among other things, that women on average were less suited to engineering work than men.

The company also faces a U.S. Labor Department lawsuit that claims Google hasn’t handed over enough data to prove women aren’t paid less than men.