An excerpt:
Up to that point the Women’s Surge had resulted in promotions for some, but Ms. Robbins felt there was more to be done. At one of her regularly scheduled meetings with Mr. Benioff, she brought Ms. Seka along, and the two made a stark claim: Women were probably being paid less than men at Salesforce.
Mr. Benioff didn’t believe it.
“I didn’t know that there was a pay issue until they came to me and said so,” Mr. Benioff said. “My reaction was, ‘I don’t really think this is right. This isn’t how we operate.’ ”
Wanting to see the numbers himself, Mr. Benioff commissioned a review of all 16,000 salaries at Salesforce. “I said ‘Let’s start at the top, one person at a time,’ ” he said.
As the data came in, ugly, age-old truths were revealed. It turned out that Ms. Robbins and Ms. Seka were correct: Many women at Salesforce were being paid less than their male counterparts.
“In certain positions, people were not being paid at the same level,” Mr. Benioff acknowledged.
Now Salesforce is in the process of raising the salaries of underpaid women (and a few men), one at a time.Read more in the NYT.
