In big tech companies across the United States there’s a common problem, that the majority of their leadership and staff are Male and White. To some, that might not sound like a bad thing, but considering a lot of these products are used the world over by people of different races, different ethnicities and more, the problem becomes a little clearer. This is of course not including the fact that the United States is a country built on generations of families from all over the world. Google, arguably the largest tech company in the US, released figures on the ethnic makeup of their workforce last year, and they did so again this year. Considering the numbers were, shall we say, less than flattering the question a lot of people have been having is why?
Talking to Business Insider, Google’s Director of Diversity and Inclusion, Yolanda Mangolini said that “We were willing to take the risk of bad press because, at the end of the day, what was most important to us was changing the face of technology and driving the change in the industry.” In 2014, the makeup of the company was 61% White, 30% Asian, 3% Hispanic and 2% Black at their base in the United States. Their 2015 figures, listing findings from January of this year, show the overall split of employees to be 70% Male and 30% Female, so there’s more than just Race at play here, and the only sector this figure gets a little smaller is in the ‘non-tech’ section with 47% Women and 53% Men. Ethnically, the figures remain the same, give or take a percent, as the 2014 figures.
Mangolini herself maintains that change won’t happen overnight, and says that she “always tells executives there isn’t a quick fix.” Other big names in the industry did follow suit however, with Microsoft and Facebook releasing similar figures. Google seems determined to change this for the better however, and while they don’t have an overnight fix or workaround as we often find in software, they are trying to diversify themselves for the future, and we wish them the best of luck.