Reddit CEO Ellen Pao Eliminated Salary Negotiations to ‘Level Playing Field’
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Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images(NEW YORK) — Reddit CEO Ellen Pao, who recently lost her own sex-bias case against a major venture capital firm for which she worked, says she can provide what the company calls a more “level playing field.”
Named the interim CEO of web company Reddit last year, Pao said that her firm has eliminated salary negotiations for new employees because they can be detrimental for women.
Two weeks ago, a jury ruled mostly against Pao in her gender discrimination lawsuit against former employer Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Pao alleged she was criticized during performance reviews for qualities that male employees were praised for, such as being “aggressive,” according to the lawsuit.
She explained to the Wall Street Journal in an article published Monday that she has an “interesting perspective” at Reddit to create an, “equal opportunity environment for everyone.” One of her moves has been to eliminate salary negotiations for new employees.
A spokeswoman for Reddit told ABC News that Reddit eliminated salary negotiations in the past few months to provide candidates with “a more level playing field.” The company negotiates to convert cash to equity if workers want more equity in exchange for a lower salary.
Reddit, based in San Francisco, has about 75 employees, according to the spokeswoman.
“Men negotiate harder than women do and sometimes women get penalized when they do negotiate. So as part of our recruiting process we don’t negotiate with candidates,” Pao told the Journal. “We come up with an offer that we think is fair. If you want more equity, we’ll let you swap a little bit of your cash salary for equity, but we aren’t going to reward people who are better negotiators with more compensation. We ask people what they think about diversity, and we did weed people out because of that.”
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