Our 2023/2024 Ireland Gender Pay Gap Report

Inspiration starts with Inclusion

At Pinterest, our mission is to bring everyone the inspiration to create a life they love. Each month, over half a billion people around the world come to Pinterest to discover what they love. We are proud of our place in the market as the creator of an inclusive, positive and safe space on the internet for our users, and we are equally proud of how we engage with our workforce both in Ireland and around the world. 

Creating belonging is core to our mission and everything we do. At Pinterest, we are committed to fostering inclusion by ensuring employees are appropriately rewarded for their contributions. We focus on ensuring pay equity. In this report, we’ll examine a distinct but related concept, which is the Gender Pay Gap.

Pay Equity vs Gender Pay Gap

Pay equity is about ensuring that employees who perform comparable work are paid similarly. Pinterest is an equal pay employer and takes regular steps to ensure that employees are being paid fairly and equitably, regardless of gender or any other protected category.

Compensation at Pinterest includes fixed and variable pay and may include base pay, incentive compensation and equity. In a dynamic workplace, maintaining pay equity requires vigilance and ongoing monitoring. Twice a year, we analyse compensation and make adjustments when necessary to continue to stand by this very important commitment.

The gender pay gap is very different and is best thought of as a measure of representation. A gender pay gap is the output of a statistical calculation comparing the average figures for both the pay and the bonus of women compared to men. It does not involve comparing like with like to assess equity. A low or zero gender pay gap means that an employer has an even spread of men and women across all levels of the business. A high positive gender pay gap generally means that an employer has a disproportionate amount of male representation in the more senior level roles with higher compensation opportunities. A high negative gender pay gap generally means that an employer has a disproportionate amount of female representation in the more senior roles.

In this report, we’ll discuss Pinterest’s gender pay gap in Ireland, based on criteria established by the Irish government. This is the third Irish Gender Pay Gap Report to be published by Pinterest. Whilst we are encouraged by progress we are making and benchmark positively against our peers in Ireland, we also acknowledge that there is more we can do. We will continue to identify opportunities to improve our efforts and will continue to engage transparently on our compensation practices along the way.  More detail on our 2024 results and our analysis of the driving factors behind the results are set out below.

Our 2023/2024 Gender Pay Gap Results¹

Interpreting the Data: Overview of the Results

• Median Pay & Bonus Gaps - Our Median Pay Gap remains very low at just 3.1% reflecting our even gender spread.  We also have a negative Median Bonus Gap which means that when we examine the data spread, the bonus paid to the woman in the middle  is actually higher than the bonus paid to the man in the middle.

• Mean Pay Gap - We have a Mean Pay Gap of 15.2% which means that average total compensation is lower for women than for men. However our Pay Gap has decreased by 1.3% since last year. We note the following:

  • Women are very well represented in Sales compared to other departments. This differentiates Pinterest as compared to other comparable organisations in Ireland, where Sales is a male dominated function.

  • Although men and women are evenly spread across different levels in the business, we have a higher representation of men in Director and Senior Director roles and Engineering which influences mean male pay.

  • In 2024, we increased the number of women in our most senior levels of Director and Senior Director by 3. Whilst these numbers are small, because these are highly paid roles and because our Irish workforce is small, the impact of these hires is significant, thus reducing our Mean Pay Gap from last year.

• Pay Quartiles: It is encouraging to note that the proportion of women in the upper (highest paid) quartile has also increased from 46.4% (2023) to 50.8% (2024). 

• Benefits and Bonus: We’d like to acknowledge that men and women are equally benefitting from our market-leading benefits packages and that almost all employees received some form of bonus this year.

• Bonus Pay Gap - Our Bonus Pay Gap increased from 15.8% in 2023 to 27.3% in 2024.  We note the following:

  • Engineering is an area of our Irish business where women are underrepresented. Although it’s a small part of our workforce (comprising 23 employees total) it encompasses some of our most highly compensated positions and therefore impacts our statistics. We recognize that this is a challenge across our industry, and we are actively working to increase gender diversity in Engineering. This also contributes to our Mean Pay Gap (see above).

  • Bonus Pay Gap calculations exclude salary but include the value of equity that has vested during the 2023/2024 Snapshot Period. We note the positive increases in share price from June 2023 to June 2024 and that Engineering remuneration packages are typically more heavily weighted in equity than other functions in Ireland such as Sales. This has a compounding effect. The overrepresentation of males at the most senior levels in Engineering and their significant contribution to mean bonus pay has driven this swing in the Bonus Pay Gap.

  • There has been a reduction in the number of men in level 13 roles by 9 since 2023 across the Irish business. The Bonus Pay Gap for men has increased because there are fewer men in these more junior roles with lower bonuses. Their removal from the dataset pushes up the mean/average bonus pay.

Progress on Measures during 2024

• Interview Training: We continue to roll out global interview training supporting our internal commitment to consistent and equitable recruitment practices.

• Networks: We have developed a robust strategy focused on building a diverse pipeline of talent. Our hiring teams directly build these relationships and we work with external partners to broaden our reach. Highlights:

  • Dublin Tech Summit (Sponsored):  Former CTO gave a keynote speech highlighting our newest inclusive AI, body type. 44 employees were in attendance. The DTS remains a key networking opportunity for Pinterest to expand its network of engineering talent including potential female candidates 

  • In-House Dublin Recruiting Event: Invite only in-office recruiting event with a focus of inviting employees who identify as women and other marginalised gender identities, in addition to 50+ external prospects. 

  • Black Girls in Tech Ireland’s Awards Gala (Sponsor): This organisation aims to provide a community to Black women in tech and those who want to get into tech all over Ireland. Multiple employees attended the gala, and  helped select award winners.

• Women@: We continue to focus on the advancement and progression of female talent through our ERG Women@. In  March 2024, over 1200 global employees RSVP’d (70 in Dublin) to attend the Women’s conference for a jammed packed schedule of empowerment, creativity, and resilience. Women@ also hosted an in-office Meet & Greet in May 2024 for our most senior female Engineering Leadership to inspire employees.

Commitments for 2025

• Diverse Slates: We deepened commitment to Diverse Slates (90% of the time on eligible roles) - a practice of diversifying candidate pools and interviewing multiple candidates from underrepresented backgrounds - to diversify talent at interview stage globally and will continue this into 2025. 

• Our Commitment to Pinflex: Pinflex is a core part of what makes Pinterest so special. We recognise the value of empowering individuals to have flexibility in how they get their work done by balancing flexible remote work with in-person interactions. We know this enables those with caring commitments to continue to thrive at work and get the flexibility and support that they need to stay in the workplace. We will continue to support this working model whilst balancing business needs.

• Networking Opportunities: We will continue to focus  on creating more opportunities for women in tech to connect and grow. A good example of this is our collaboration with Pyladies, an organisation  established to promote the participation of women in coding and technology, which we will invest further in 2025. We will strengthen our partnerships with D2 Collective, Women in PM, Connecting Women in Technology and Women in Tech Ireland, all of whom do important work in promoting representation in our industry for women.

• Attend Web Summit to build Talent Pipeline: We will attend the Web Summit (due to take place in Dublin) in 2025, at which we aim to ensure that 40% of those we meet are women, so that we can showcase opportunities at Pinterest Dublin. 

• Increased Frequency of Gender Diversity Sourcing Sessions: Pinterest currently conducts gender diversity sourcing sessions on a biweekly basis to ensure that our recruitment practices and processes are set up to ensure that female talent is identified effectively. We commit to offering these sessions weekly in 2025. 

• Leverage Data and Feedback from Employees: We will capitalise further on this data and leverage feedback so that we can ensure that Pinterest’s direction as a business is informed by the voices of our people.

In closing, addressing the gender pay gap remains a critical part of fostering inclusivity and equity at Pinterest. While we acknowledge the progress made since last year, we recognize that there is still work to be done. We are committed to implementing the strategies outlined in this report to continue narrowing the gap and ensuring that every employee feels valued and equitably rewarded for their contributions at Pinterest. We are dedicated to maintaining transparency and accountability as we move forward and will continue to share our progress, challenges, and milestones in supporting our goal of closing the gender pay gap.