Equal pay warfare
Google Cloud exec’s suit claims sex discrimination
A former Wall Street executive jumped ship to Google only to be stiffed out of hundreds of thousands of dollars after the search engine giant passed her over for promotion in favor of less qualified men, a lawsuit says.
Ulku Rowe — who had 22 years of experience in financial services, including as a managing director at JPMorgan Chase, before she joined Google in May 2017 — says Google cheated her out of more money from her first day on the job, according to her Manhattan federal lawsuit.
Rowe, who was hired in the Cloud platform division, had enough experience to be hired for a “Level 9” director position, her lawsuit says. But she was told by her hiring manager that everyone hired for her role was placed in “Level 8” — a position that pays “hundreds of thousands of dollars” less each year, according to the lawsuit.
At the same time, Google allegedly hired several men with similar or lesser experience to “Level 9” roles, despite one having three years less experience in the industry than her and another not meeting the academic requirements, she claims. Rowe, who says she frequently serves as a Google Cloud spokesperson, has an MS in computer science and a BS in computer engineering.
The lawsuit said Rowe — who received “exceeds expectations” on all her performance reviews — was later passed over for a promotion after a reporting-structure change placed her under a vice president who “regularly excluded [her] but not her male colleagues, from staff meetings, e-mail distribution lists, team off-sites, and one-on-one meetings.”
Her complaint to Google’s human resources department was dismissed, the lawsuit said. She was eventually told her role was being changed and was given several options that all amounted to demotions, the suit claims.
Rowe is seeking compensation for lost wages as well as damages for violations of the Equal Pay Act.
A Google spokesperson said the company “thoroughly investigated Ms. Rowe’s complaints regarding unfair pay and level-at-hire and did not substantiate her concerns.”
Rowe’s suit against Google is not the first of type. In 2017, the search engine giant was hit with a classaction lawsuit from more than 8,000 female employees who argued that the Silicon Valley giant systematically pays women less than it does men. Google has denied wrongdoing.
Last November, more than 20,000 Google employees around the world staged a walkout in protest of the company’s habit of giving eye-popping severance packages to male execs accused of sexual misconduct — including a $90 million golden parachute for Android creator Andy Rubin.
Earlier this month, Google parent company Alphabet’s top lawyer was portrayed in a blog post by a former mistress as a serial womanizer who openly flouted the company’s rules against dating subordinates. The Google lawyer has denied her characterization of events.