Posted on May 29, 2014

Google Discloses Its (Lack of) Diversity

Elizabeth Weise, USA Today, May 28, 2014

In a rare glimpse behind the tech curtain, Google on Wednesday released its diversity figures.

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Eighty-three percent of Google’s tech workers internationally are male. For non-tech jobs, the number is 52%. Its leadership is made of up 79% men.

In terms of racial diversity, the company overall is 61% white, 30% Asian, 3% Hispanic and 2% Black.

For tech positions, the numbers are similar–60% white, 34% Asian, 2% Hispanic and 1% Black.

In terms of leadership, the company skews more white. Seventy-two percent of its leaders are white, 23% Asian, 2% Black and 1% Hispanic.

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A San Jose Mercury News attempt in 2010 to get Silicon Valley’s 15 largest companies to disclose the race and gender of their workforces resulted in five companies, including Google, Apple, Yahoo, Oracle and Applied Materials, fighting the request on the grounds that it would cause them competitive harm.

A similar attempt two years later by CNN Money had much the same results.

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Speaking to Gwen Ifil on the PBS NewsHour, Google’s vice president of “people operations,” Laszlo Bock, said, “We’re not where we want to be when it comes to diversity. And it is hard to address these kinds of challenges if you’re not prepared to discuss them openly, and with the facts.”

The only tech company of Google’s size that has freely released its diversity information in the past is Intel. It posts its yearly federal Equal Employment Opportunity report to the federal government on its website.

For 2013, the chipmaker had a workforce that was 76% male, 57% white, 29% Asian, 8% Hispanic and 3% Black.

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