| There are a few things at work - Silicon Valley companies do not necessarily match the local demographics either. And even if you look at county wide stats, it doesn't account for displacement to neighboring counties. And these neighboring counties also represent the "silicon valley" workforce. There are roughly half as many black people in the "Bay Area" compared to 20 years ago. But the black population increased in neighboring counties significantly. While Asians are "over-represented" in tech, they are under represented in leadership and senior roles - compared to their representation in the lower ranks. While there are a lot of technical roles at tech companies, the results aren't any different for those non-technical roles either. And let's not even discuss how hiring and recruiting practices lead to a very limited pool. If most black engineers come from HBCUs and tech companies never recruit at HBCUs - well they are missing out on a large pool. If most hires come from internal referrals and the average person doesn't have a diverse friend pool - it keeps the status quo. So diversity is broken on multiple levels, and it is easy to hide. 1. tech workers don't match the percentages in the larger regional job force
2. non-white people are not represented in leadership, not even commiserate to their ratios in the larger tech workforce
3. There are a lot of non-engineering jobs that should have more diverse pools (sales, marketing, administration, etc) and these roles still have the race problem.
4. Recruiting and hiring processes reinforce the status quo on "diversity" Something is broken, but we spend a lot of time trying to obscure that fact. |