wage gap

Women at Google, Like Women Everywhere, Make Less Than Their Male Colleagues

Photo: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Remember that anti-diversity memo in which now-ex-Google engineer James Damore used a whole bunch of Wikipedia [citation needed] “science” to argue that “discrimination to reach equal representation is unfair, divisive, and bad for business?” Well, here’s another reason he was entirely wrong. (In case the other zillion weren’t enough for you.) An internally conducted survey of just over 1,000 Googlers — that’s roughly 2 percent of the company’s staff, according to the New York Times, which published the survey earlier on Friday — shows that there is a marked wage disparity between male and female employees. Women, unsurprisingly, make less across the board when it comes to salaries and bonuses. (Google told the Times the survey was “incomplete,” and that it “does not take into account a number of factors, like where employees are based, whether they are in higher-paying technical positions, and job performance.”)

The gap between salaries at the lowest level — the survey breaks down employees by seniority in six tiers “from entry-level data center workers at level one to managers and experienced engineers at level six” — in the survey is about $15,000, the Times reports. On every level, save for one, women make less money in annual salary than their male peers. At levels three through six, this amounts to thousands less per year — the widest spread being women at level four making $125,000 to men making $136,600 — than men. For bonuses, a level-one woman earns $3,500, while a man earns $6,900. Mid-level bonuses — levels three and four — have women ahead of men, but by level six, there is a $7,000 split ($40,700 for women to $47,800 for men). So much for that wage gap “myth,” eh James?

Women at Google Make Less Money Than Their Male Colleagues