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The Problem with ‘Diversity’ and ‘Inclusion’ at Tech Companies
There is a difference between equity and equality for your diverse employees
Tech has a diversity problem. At the biggest tech companies in the United States, nobody seems to know how to meaningfully increase staff diversity. If they did, we wouldn’t see such abysmal rates of growth among minority employees at major tech companies — for instance, the percent of Black hires overall rose by only 0.7% at Google in 2018, 0.1% at Microsoft in 2018, and 0.3% at Facebook in 2019.
Despite these dismal statistics, some employees at these same major tech companies seem to think that diversity isn’t necessary. In 2017 an anti-diversity document was circulated within Google (it eventually became public and the author was fired), and earlier this year Quartz reported that a program manager at Microsoft used an internal messaging service to claim reverse discrimination against white and Asian men. Ignorance of equity-based social movements got so bad at Facebook that Mark Zuckerberg made a company-wide statement in 2016 to remind employees to respect internal support for the Black Lives Matter movement.
Regardless of how one feels about the politics of diversity, the economics of it are hard to argue against. There is plenty of research from places…
