News

Addressing Diversity in Tech Should Go Beyond Gender

I commend companies for continuing the diversity discussion within the Venture Capital and Technology communities. It takes courage and self reflection to publicly admit that you are not currently where you need to be. However, I believe companies could be even more proactive. A recent KPCB report broke down the company’s employee gender diversity but omitted ethnicity data. A note at the bottom of the report read, “We plan to add ethnicity data to this page in time."

Twitter employs only 49 African Americans despite diversity pledges

Twitter employs just 49 black people out of a total US workforce of 2,910. The tiny number of African American staff – 35 men and 14 women – represents just 1.7% of Twitter’s US staff. The Rev Jesse Jackson, president of the Rainbow/Push Coalition, who has long campaigned for tech companies to be more transparent about their lack of minority employees, told the Guardian that black people are “becoming intolerant” of Facebook and other Silicon Valley companies’ lack of progress in making their offices more diverse.

London’s diversity is one of the strongest attributes of its tech ecosystem

At the recent PreMoney conference in Silicon Valley, an uncomfortable discussion about racial diversity happened on stage. The speakers, Ellen Pao and Dave McClure, were trying to highlight an issue that is rarely spoken about: the under-representation of ethnic minorities in the US tech industry.

Facebook only hired seven black people in latest diversity count

Facebook is still dominated by white men despite Mark Zuckerberg’s repeated promise to get serious about building a workforce that better reflects the diversity of its 1.4 billion global users. In its diversity report released on Thursday the social network company revealed that more than half of its US staff are white, with the proportion dropping slightly from 57% to 55%. The proportion of Asian employees increased by 2% to 36%, but the shares of hispanic and black people or those of “two or more races” remained flat at 4%, 2% and 3% respectively.

Washington nudges tech on diversity

Washington is nudging Silicon Valley to diversify its workforce. Major tech firms have released breakdowns on the demographics of their employees for the first time in recent years, revealing that some of the industry’s largest companies are overwhelmingly male, and largely white and Asian, especially in technical jobs.