Silicon Valley's Diversity Issues Being Addressed by Google
Silicon Valley has faced scrutiny due to the homogeneous group employees in the influential sector.
And the $33.3 billion company Google has called attention to the "unconscious bias" or "unintentional hiring discrimination" that's present in its own backyard, recognizing how its own lack of diversity has contributed to the overall absence of nonwhites and women in Silicon Valley. But, it aims to address that diversity issue.
Non-white Latinos and women make up a very small portion of Silicon Valley's technical workforce, according to CNNMoney. And that same issue carries over to Google, where only 17 percent of tech employees are women and only 2 percent are Latino. Sexual-discrimination claims and high-profile lawsuits have manifested in Silicon Valley, thanks to an atmosphere that's overwhelmed with uniformity. Google's executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, was recently fingered for reportedly interrupting co-panelist, Chief Technology Officer of the United States and former Googler Megan Smith.
The multinational tech company released workforce demographics that offered a breakdown regarding ethnicity and gender. Approximately 70 percent of Google's employees are male, and 61 percent are white. Forty percent of the company is non-white, but 30 percent of employees are Asian, and just three percent are Hispanic and two percent are black. When it comes to the non-tech sector, however, there are more women (48 percent) and more Latinos (4 percent), compared to tech, where men represent 83 percent of the workforce.
Google attempts to address the imbalance by tracking intelligent women and non-white perspective employees; encouraging women and non-whites to nominate themselves for promotions, and developing networks of support to ensure that white males aren't the only ones benefiting from all that Google has to offer.
The corporation even hosts a variety of resource groups and support networks, including: the Asian Googler Network, the Black Googler Network, the Filipino Google Network, the Gayglers: Google's LGBT Network, the Google American Indian Network, Google Veterans Network, Google Women in Engineering, the Greyglers, the Indus Googler Network, Special Needs Network , Women@Google, Hispanic Googlers Network (HGN) and numerous other groups.
The HGN commits itself to attracting and retaining top Hispanic talent, and the group sponsors Hispanic cultural events, including Hispanic Heritage Month and Latino Family Health Day.
"Googler in Residence," yet another program offered by Google, began when an African American computer scientist working with Google approached Howard University, asking if he could spend one year in residence there. That idea was expanded and black Googlers were assigned five historically black colleges; then, 30 universities across the nation. Google will continue to create exposure, and intends to continue to introduce schools and students to talented and diverse individuals from Google.
Supporters of diversity in tech hope that Google will become more like the online marketplace Etsy. According to Etsy, the overall workforce is 51 percent female and 41 percent male. And their tech team is 69 percent female. Presently, Etsy is drastically different from other business in Silicon Valley. Google's tech team is 83 percent male, Facebook's tech team is 85 percent male and Twitter's tech team is 90 percent male. That said, Etsy is still overwhelmingly white (79 percent). Just 4 percent of all employees are Hispanic/Latino, and just 3 percent are in the tech sector.
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