Or, in other words, some people are better negotiators than other. Since there's no objective measure of how much Google must pay anybody, the only benchmark wo

Or, in other words, some people are better negotiators than other. Since there's no objective measure of how much Google must pay anybody, the only benchmark would be comparing to peers doing substantially similar jobs. Fortunately, Google is big enough so that there would be substantially similar jobs to compare. Unfortunately, while jobs may be the same, negotiating skills of the applicants (and whatever HR workers they negotiated with) vary. And if somebody gets a better deal, that automatically makes everybody holding the same job underpaid. BTW, in the same vein the article could be titled "Google finds it is overpaying many men (or women)" - since unless everybody has the same salary, half of the workforce would be paid less than median - thus being underpaid - and half would be paid more - thus being overpaid. Well, there could be lucky ones being paid exactly the median, but they are too boring to write an article about them.