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TWITTER, FACEBOOK, LINKEDIN, Yahoo, Google – what have they all in common?
Apart from their status as Silicon Valley giants, they are in a less illustrious list of major tech companies found to have a less than diverse employee profile.
Twitter joined the list yesterday of hi-tech corporations who have turned over the gender and ethnic breakdown of its staff – which shows that they employ, for the main part, white or Asian men to their well-paid jobs.
Who cares? The Reverend Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition and the civil rights group ColorofChange.org, for two.
While Facebook, Google, Yahoo and LinkedIn had already released their info – which showed that they too had an overwhelmingly male, white and Asian, staff – Twitter had been slower to hand over the figures.
Now that they have ColorofChange says that the “shocking lack of Black folks in these companies: less than 3%” is a situation that needs to be rectified. The organisation has called upon its members to tweet about the lack of diversity – using Twitter’s own platform to highlight the issue.
It had also originally sent this email to its members. Read it in full here.
That was in response to a New York Times article about Twitter’s lack of female representation at board level, to which Twitter’s CEO Dick Costolo replied flippantly last October:
This led to a spotlight on diversity across a number of tech giants – which are becoming huge employers, not least in Ireland, and seen as progressive in so many other ways. The campaign from Rainbow PUSH and ColorofChange for the release of staff headcounts took hold of tech news headlines:
Twitter – the latest to release figures – show that 70% of its workforce is male, and in the US, 90% of its total workforce is white or Asian (it still hasn’t provided that racial breakdown for outside the US).
Associated Press reports:
Things look even worse when the numbers are boiled down to computer programming positions and other technology jobs that tend to pay the highest salaries. Just 10 percent of those jobs are held by women worldwide. More than 90 percent of Twitter’s technology jobs in the U.S. are being handled by whites and Asians.Twitter’s scarcity of women, black and Latino workers mirrors similar situations at Google Inc., Facebook Inc., Yahoo Inc. and LinkedIn Corp.
Yesterday, Rev Jackson called the numbers “pathetic” but welcomed the disclosures as “a step in the right direction”.
Twitter had Janet Van Huysse, now its vice-president of diversity of inclusion, blog a post called ‘Building a Twitter we can be proud of’. She had been head of HR for four years but has now been “honored to focus specifically on these efforts (to create a more diverse workforce)”.
She wrote: “We are committed to making inclusiveness a cornerstone of our culture”.
This was the breakdown released by Twitter, by the way:
Meanwhile, the latest tweet from Twitter’s recruitment account @JoinTheFlock is from 18 July and is giving people a reason to work there:
http://vine.co/v/MQPgAqImbtK
… to which this was one of the replies:
In her blog, Janet Van Huysse does write: “And like our peers, we have a lot of work to do.”
- additional reporting by Associated Press
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But if these White and Asian males are the best people for the job why not hire them?
Because they aren’t the best for the job and only an idiot would think so.
People hire people like themselves and have always done so. Only when they are forced to be more inclusive will they hire a more diverse workforce.
Could anyone honestly believe that women aren’t capable of being part of the technology sector? You genuinely hear it often but that’s because the technology sector is one of the most insular and bigoted parts of the economy.
Women couldn’t be doctors until we discovered women are often better doctors. The women can’t code bulls**t is just a reflection of the nasty elitism in tech.
Go back to business insider.
@David
As per usual with this kind of article, we are only given half of the numbers we need to be able to understand if there truly is a diversity problem.
Twitter is a tech company. Look at the number male to female ratio for tech jobs. 10% female, 90% male. That is roughly in line with the m/f ratio of graduate software developers which is about 7% female and 93% male.
It is not Twitter’s fault that women are not interested in studying computer science. If they were to beef up their numbers of 50/50 male and female they would indeed be hiring some extremely poor programmers.
@David Burke I work in the tech industry and I’m often involved in the technical part of job interviews for new candidates. The simple fact is that a lot more men apply for jobs in the tech industry than women. Therefore a lot more men are hired.
I work with women who are very technical and capable. I wouldn’t claim for a minute that women are less technical or capable of doing the job than men.
Also in the future I’d refrain from personal insults when trying to make a point. It makes you look petulant and weakens your argument.
@david
There is a major problem with women becoming doctors. The leave the profession when they have kids.
I work in IT and very few woman stay in the profession. They either quit completely or go part time. How can you promote such an employee? Not true in all cases but it is certainly a common pattern. That is starting with a very low rate going into the field. You also have the majority of those studying higher maths are male. That is a building block for going into engineering of any kind.
I still haven’t heard of a desire to increase men into nursing or more importantly teaching where the numbers of men has dramatically decreased. Don’t forget leaving cert exams in Ireland now show a massive gender bias against males
I I hope the journal doesn’t repeat last years fiasco of systematically excluding boys from it LC results day photos; Gender balance on that front should be an absolute given.
Why don’t women go into tech?
Because the sector is incredibly sexist and insular and has little interest in changing. If you aren’t a libertarian white or Asian male we don’t want to hear from you.
Whether it’s snapchat or tinder or zeebox or stackoverflow we see incredible misogyny from C. Level down which would never ever be tolerated in any other industry.
And the yet the blame is always placed on women. “oh women just don’t do tech”. Well yes that true but that’s because it’s a cesspool of sexism and if you can’t see that you are part of the problem.
I’m not denying there is a dark sexist edge to the industry though I wouldn’t consider it to be as endemic as you seem to. I would question how much that affects college entrance though. I’d like to see a study on how much perceptions of the potential work in industry affects decisions of men and women entering computing degrees, I know I didn’t give much consideration to that sort of thing when picking my degree and I’d imagine most 17/18 year olds wouldn’t be aware of this as it’s not something most people encounter until they actually end up in one of the jobs where it is apparent. Would be interesting to see if the data would suggest otherwise
Because every greedy, money-grabbing one-percenter is willing to suspend his lust for cash just to hire people who look a bit like him?
@Tim Stephen Hendy <- Nailed it.
"If you aren’t a libertarian white or Asian male we don’t want to hear from you"
@David
What does libertarianism have to do with anything? The only connection I can see is that your thinking is so steeped in academic feminism – which is heavily based on marxism – that you view anyone who doesn't roll over and accept what you say as a libertarian.
"Whether it’s snapchat or tinder or zeebox or stackoverflow we see incredible misogyny from C. Level down which would never ever be tolerated in any other industry."
You got a source you can cite for any of that?
When will people just accept that men are better at some things and women are better at other things. End of.
Tech brogrammers are sexist, they don’t hire women. Simple really.
ahh Jack don’t pull a hissy fit.
I’ve actually no interest in academic feminism but I do strongly support equal rights for women. You seem to have some issue around paranoia but you sound like a MRA activist.
All the companies I mentioned have had recent sexism scandals at C level and down. Do you even follow the tech industry.
A vote for the promotion of ability over gender or race quotas….
In a computing course of 100 undergraduates less than ten percent will be female. The fact that less than ten percent of the workforce in the same industry is female isn’t discrimination on behalf of the employers its just a fair reflection of the ratio of available qualified potential employees.
I’ve also noticed a shocking lack of short people playing professional basketball, is anyone investigating this?
According to An Bord Altranais (2013 register) there are a total of 127,697 registered nurses in Ireland, 8,682 of which are male.
Is this also news?
In some countries, women only make up 1.1% of bricklayers. Something must be done about this!
And zero per cent of sewage workers and refuse workers. .. We need to impose a gender balance here too…
And I suppose the NBA are racist for me made up of predominantly Black Americans?
I don’t see any great clamor for gender equality in premier league football or formula 1, or indeed the tour de France….
I’m sure these companies hire people based on their qualifications and experience.
It’s hardly their fault if a certain ethnicity fails to meet the standard required.
You also have to look at the % training in programming etc. if there are 400% more whites and Asians than other races trained as programmers then it stands to reason there will be more hired. Say no to tokenism.
On top of this, the statistics relate to their worldwide workforce. With half of the world population being Asian, the Asians should really be the ones up in a huff about not having a higher proportion of the workforce. They have offices in Mumbai, Seoul, Tokyo and Singapore.
Along with Asia, they also have eight offices in Europe, one in Australia and two in South America. All of these areas have a lower black population than the USA, thus lowering the proportion of black personnel again. Yes, in an American’s eyes, it may look like a small percentage. But then again, that’s typically American, isn’t it? The world stops at their country’s borders.
Shocking reports in yesterday’s newspapers regarding the lack of men in the bra fitting industry.
I applied and was told to p iss off pervert! !!!!!
But is the trouble really that they’re not hiring women/other ethnicities or that these other demographics just aren’t training themselves in the skills needed?
I’m female, studying computer science with artificial intelligence. In a year of ~200, I am one of 15 girls. Out of those 15, only about 3 or 4 of us are on the “technical stream” (ie. programming), the rest are studying business computing.
If there were more women and other minorities in IT with tech skills, then we could blast Twitter and Google for lack of diversity, but the fact of the matter is… there’s not.
So maybe instead of pointing blame at these companies, we could point blame at the education systems and ask what’s going wrong that we aren’t teaching more people these skills, and why more aren’t interested.
Do you cover combinatorial optimisation in your course? Not strictly AI I know. Just wondering.
They’ll always be outliers but on the whole women don’t do computing in college. That is what happens.
I wonder about the ratio on the Journal staff myself from time to time. Where authors and articles are concerned I certainly would question it. In my experience, it tends to be pretty gynocentric all things considered.
One has to wonder if there is an agenda at play?
“Rescue services are busy these days. What are the bets someone will get into difficulty and drown tomorrow now that temperatures are due to soar? Thatâs a safe bet imo.”
How did that go for you after Niall?
http://www.thejournal.ie/drowning-water-safety-ireland-1526537-Jun2014/
Well considering 140 die per year, was it too much of a stretch to consider on a hot day summers day someone is more likely to drown?
Answers on a postcard……
Chin up, maybe next time
Don’t worry about it, kid. I don’t see the Journal as a ‘likeathon’ experience like your good self.
Look around any Computer Science class in the country. 98% male. How do people expect tech companies to hire 50/50 male / female when there just aren’t enough females to fill the roles.
To be fair Journal.ie, you showed us your tech team the other day and the very same can be said for you.
Bull. The amount of times I’ve tried finding a man on Twitter, and I haven’t gotten a single one yet. Explain THAT.
Because you’re fugly. .
Bit harsh.
64% of the US is “white”. But only 59% represented in the overall US barchart. The story here is the huge over-representation of Asians compared to their US population.
But as pointed out in another comment on this page which I’m too drunk to go looking for, Twitter have a good number of offices in Asian countries which accounts for the higher Asian representation and also in other countries outside the US which explains the lower Black or African American representation.
Comment was by Dennis Collins…. up there ^^^
Part of the problem is that a lot of the tech industry isn’t very inviting to women and minorities. Jane McGonical had said that she moved away from Silicon Valley because the “boys club” environment pissed her off. Another woman left her role as CEO of a small software company because all the devs (who were male) just sat around and drank beer all day. She set up another company with more diverse staff instead. At a games jam recently, a journalist covering the event kept trying to condescend the female participants to the point where entire teams completely quit the event entirely.
The industry is pretty volatile as it is. This kind of shit is dragging it down. We need all hands on deck to keep it going. Tech shouldn’t be some arcane or elitist boys club. Its important, it will always be important and putting people off pursuing it as a career will just hold it back.
It’s a bit of a chicken egg problem in that certainly the boys club environment can be intimidating or off putting for women but came about because of a lack of female interest in the technical professions. When I specialised in computers the % of girls I shared class with plunged dramatically.
This leads to predominantly male social groups which will inevitably contain the odd disaffected male nerd some of whom have had very little female social interaction through either school or college, they simply don’t know how to interact with women. These are the people that end up populating small firms and create that men only vibe, even though the majority of male employees would probably relish a bit of gender balance in their work teams.
Obviously that needs to stop but I’m not sure how to address it, the misogyny is unacceptable but I don’t think even wiping it out completely would result in gender balance. I don’t know why women aren’t drawn to computing in the same numbers as men, but at the same time I don’t know why men aren’t drawn to teaching, nursing, biology, medicine, social work or the arts to the same extent as women. This issue seems to get a lot of attention in tech mainly because tech jobs are generally very well paid and the main source of lucrative new business in the country. If tech weren’t as economically important then we wouldn’t see half as much of this, just like we don’t hear about why we don’t have more female refuse workers or more male beauty salon workers.
I agree. Having attended an all girls school I couldn’t understand why more of my peers weren’t interested in computers. Most were exceptionally bright and would have had the aptitude for a tech career. My interest in IT came from home rather than school.
I’d like to change a lot of things about our school system but the biggest would be to abolish single gendered schools. I don’t see how we can create equality of opportunity while we still segregate the sexes. Also I might be wrong but I suspect it’d help with our alcohol problem
Since when are Asians NOT a minority?
“Too Many Asians” doesn’t sound like much of a campaign slogan to me, but this is the entire truth of what is being said here. Racist b*****ds.
They’re hitting 50/50 in non-tech roles. Why not retrain in-house as a first port of call? The women currently working for them have shown some level of interest in tech industry and have an awareness of how the organisation operates. They’d also have multi-skilled loyal workers at the end of it, and create an extremely positive progressive model for other women to follow.
I don’t think you appreciate the extent of the knowledge and skills required for someone to be made into a competent software developer. The cost and effort of retraining non technical staff would be enormous and would still result in a bunch of non technical roles to be filled. It’s much easier to hire people straight out of college who have spent 4 or more years developing their abilities. Also doing all training in house would lead to an extremely narrow knowledge base and creative stagantion
“Why not retrain in-house as a first port of call? ”
Yes. Great idea. And why not train nurses to be doctors and legal secretary’s to be lawyers in-house.
Ciaran – you might be right but maybe it’s still worth asking. Attempts to increase female uptake of programming courses from general population seem to be failing so could be time to look at women who are involved in some way in tech.
Jack – don’t get your knickers in a knot sweetheart, it was just a suggestion. Now, why don’t you take your sweet ass out and get me a coffee? My puny brain could never figure out those machines. Mwah.
They are hiring the best, ladies increase your efforts and you may with hard work get the same. Relying on tits as a qualification is disgraceful
If a journo can do a story on even one actual black programmer who has been knocked back from getting a start in one of these tech giants simply due to the colour of their skin, then I’ll take notice of Rev. Jesse’s guff. Until then… it’s a non-story I’m afraid.
In fairness why would anyone hire women, swanning off having babies with absolutely no regard for their job responsibilities. Men are a safer bet that’s why men get top jobs they actually turn up
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