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Techs poor record of diversity

By Catherine Rampell
Tech companies are finally spilling some of their most sought-after secrets.
No, not related to their R&D. Im referring instead to other tightly guarded information they once declared trade
secrets: data about the number of women and minorities on their payrolls.
After years of trying to deflect attention from the issue, Google blogged in May about the diversity, or lack
thereof, of its staff, acknowledging that just 17 percent of its tech employees are female and 5 percent are black or
Hispanic. Since then, other peer-pressured tech Goliaths rolled out similar metrics, including LinkedIn, Yahoo,
Facebook, Twitter, eBay, Apple, Pinterest and, just last week, Pandora and Indiegogo. Most have fessed up to
lousy records and committed to making things better.
The public response has been a bit harsher than these firms probably hoped.
Apple ... claims to Think Different, but their hiring reflects more of the same, scolded ValleyWag, a tech news
site. J esse J ackson demanded that the Obama administration and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
investigate whether the firms are denying opportunities to minorities.
Sure, there are probably things these successful companies could do to become friendlier to women and
minorities and to diminish the so-called brogrammer culture. Some Silicon Valley firms, for example,
glorify long, late hours, which may not be as accommodating to women (who are more likely to be primary
caregivers).
The people who are most recognized and rewarded are often the guys who pull the all-nighter to fix the bug right
before its supposed to ship or go live, Ann Mei Chang, who was the senior engineering director at Google for
eight years, told me last year. Women are more likely to have tested stuff and worked hard all along the way to
make sure there wouldnt be problems at the very end, and that kind of work style is not always as rewarded.
Even if all thats true, I am still sympathetic to these companies. The challenges leading to underrepresentation of
women and certain racial or ethnic minorities in tech and other STEM fields start long before the recruiting
process.
It begins when kids are young and have access to scant engineering and computer science role models, especially
those who are female, black or Hispanic. Schools are dropping the ball, too. Few teach any tech skills beyond
how to consume, rather than create, technology. Which is understandable, to an extent; if youre a struggling
public school, youre not going to invest resources in computer science when your funding depends on not
leaving children behind in math and reading. Most states dont allow computer science to satisfy math or science
requirements, relegating such instruction to elective or extracurricular activities, if its available at all.
Even if more schools did allow students to take computer science in lieu of, say, a natural science course, its not
clear theyd be able to staff those teaching jobs easily. Would-be educators with programming skills have pretty
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lucrative outside options.
By the time students enroll in college, few intend to major in engineering or computer science, with numbers
especially low for women and ethnic minorities other than Asians. The few women and minorities who express
interest in these fields have high attrition rates. One result is that only about 18.2 percent of bachelors degrees in
computer science, and 19.2 percent in engineering, were awarded to women in 2012. Most troubling, in raw
numbers, the total number of women receiving bachelors degrees in computer science fell in the last decade,
from 13,690 in 2002 to 8,730 in 2012.
Exactly why so many aspiring computer scientists and engineers, particularly females, attrit is unclear. Harsher
grading in these departments, relative to the easy-A humanities, seems to be a factor. The lack of role models
among postsecondary instructors might also discourage women and minorities from sticking with the field, which
creates a Catch-22.
A lot can be done to encourage women and minorities to enter these lucrative occupations and firms. Companies
certainly have a role to play, but interventions need to start long before the rsum-screening process begins.
Catherine Rampells email address is crampell@washpost.com. Follow her on Twitter, @crampell.
Copyright Kenosha News.
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