Bloomberg Businessweek - USA (2020-08-10)

◼ TECHNOLOGY Bloomberg Businessweek August 10, 2020

17

THEBOTTOMLINE Theworld’slargesttechnologycompanies

didn’tinheritthesameracialdisparitiesentrenchedatother

centuries-oldinstitutions.Theyreplicatedthemanyway.

spokespersonsaidina statement.“Weneedto

ensurethatourcultureofinclusionisa toppri-

orityforeveryone.Weacknowledgethatthereis

muchmorethatweneedtodotoimprovethe

livedexperienceofBlackandAfricanAmerican

employeesatMicrosoftandmembersofthecom-

munityinsociety.”

Theopportunitytobuilda diverseworkforce

perhapsseemedmorepromisingata younger

companysuchasFacebook,whichhasadded

42,000employeesgloballyoverthepasteight

years.Facebookwasfoundedin2004,Microsoft

in1975.Butaccordingtocompanyfilingswiththe

U.S.EqualEmploymentOpportunityCommission,

therewereonly 260 Black employees in Facebook’s

11,200-strong U.S. workforce in 2016. That count

increased to more than 1,000 in 2018, but only after

Facebook’s total workforce roughly tripled.

Facebook has managed to increase the pro-

portion of women among its technical employ-

ees to 24% in 2020, from 15% in 2014, the first

year it published its diversity stats. In that time,

however, it hasn’t managed to increase the share

of Black U.S. employees in those roles by a sin-

gle percentage point.

Chief Diversity Officer Maxine Williams, who

joined Facebook in 2013, says that failure doesn’t

have a simple answer—improving retention will

require systemic changes beyond what the com-

pany has managed so far, rather than “leaving it

up to chance whether someone has a good man-

ager.” Each team will need its own goals, she says.

“It’s bloody hard to keep doing this hard work

every day.”

In July, Facebook was accused of systemic dis-

crimination by a Black employee in a complaint to

federal civil rights authorities. Oscar Veneszee Jr.,

a decorated former U.S. Navy veteran, said he was

denied promotions and stalled by middling evalu-

ations, despite being good at his job. He had three

managers in three years and was often the lone

Black employee on his team. Veneszee said he was

forced to apologize to a White Facebook recruiter

after questioning why a list of potential schools

where Facebook was actively recruiting only had

one historically Black college or university on it.

“If someone is being silenced over raising diver-

sity concerns in recruiting, it means next time,

someone like Oscar feels like they can’t speak up,”

says Peter Romer-Friedman, a principal at law

firm Gupta Wessler who is representing Veneszee.

Facebook has said it’s investigating the allegations;

Williams declined to comment further.

Facebook in 2013 found zero correlation

between alma mater and performance, according

toAdamWard,a formerrecruiterforthecompany

who now runs his own firm. Current and former

Facebook staffers say that despite adding more

schools to the recruiting lists, White manag-

ers continue to select from the same Ivy League

and West Coast schools they’d attended. Many

of these institutions act as another racial filter

because Black students are often underrepre-

sented. “Companies will give unfair weight to a

school like Stanford, dipping down to the top 20%

of students, but might pass on a student in the top

2% of their class at Penn State because of baked-in

CHOU: PHOTOGRAPH BY ELENA HEATHERWICK FOR BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK. GEBRU: CODY O’LOUGHLIN/THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX

bias,”saysWard.Toprolesarenarrowlyfilledwith

peoplefromothertechcompaniesratherthan

BlackorLatinxexecutives in more diverse sec-

tors, he says.

Experts say the coronavirus pandemic and

global economic slowdown are hurting diversity

efforts, too. Businesses are looking for ways to

cut costs, and diversity and inclusion teams can

be low-hanging fruit. Companies give chief diver-

sityofficers“littletonobudget,”saysAubrey

Blanche,theformerdiversityheadatAtlassian

Corp.“They’retryingtosolve 400 years of struc-

tural oppression and, ‘Oh, by the way, they need

to hit their target at the end of the quarter.’ ”

�Shelly Banjo and Dina Bass, with Alistair Barr

◀ Google researcher

Gebru (top) and Chou,

a former Pinterest

engineer

ShareofallK-12enrollment

APmathandscience

APComputerScienceA

APComputerSciencePrinciples

Freshmenintendingtomajorin CS

CSbachelor’sdegreecompletion

U.S.laborforce

Computing& mathematicaljobs

High-techcompanies

Techfounders

Techinvestors

●White ●Asian ●Latinx ●Black

0 20 40 60 80%

Demographics of Computer Science

Share of group by race or ethnicity

BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS, U.S. EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY COMMISSION, HARVARD BUSINESS DATA: COLLEGE BOARD, NATIONAL CENTER FOR EDUCATION STATISTICS, NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION,

SCHOOL, RACIAL BREAKDOWN OF VENTURE CAPITALISTS. COMPILED BY THE KAPOR CENTER