Discrimination charges at Pinterest reveal a hidden Silicon Valley hiring problem
Two Black women who worked at Pinterest went public with their stories of pay disparity and discrimination. Their experience illuminates tech’s wider problems with pay “leveling.”
In July of 2018, Ifeoma Ozoma started a new job as the public policy and social impact manager at Pinterest. After working on the large public policy teams at Facebook and Google, she was excited to be the second person on Pinterest’s team, where her responsibilities included leading half of the global public policy team’s work. She believed she would be building the team from the ground up, with the head of public policy as her partner. Plus, Pinterest was pre-IPO, meaning that there was a significant financial opportunity to be had once the company went public.