It has been a year since Google first released its first employee diversity report, which prompted an industry-wide effort to be more transparent about tech’s predominantly white male culture. Nobody expected immediate, dramatic change, but Facebook’s latest report shows dismal improvement despite the company’s vows to do better.
Overall, Facebook has increased the number of female employees by 1 percent, while making virtually no progress in terms of recruiting and hiring people of color. Just fewer than one in three Facebook employees, 31 percent, were women, according to last year’s report. That number eked a percentage point upwards to 32 percent this year, but slid from 16 percent to 15 percent female employees in the tech sector.
The percentage of Hispanic, multiracial, and black employees remained stagnant at 4 percent, 3 percent, and 2 percent respectively. The number of all Asian Facebook employees, and tech workers, increased 2 percent compared to 2014.
Senior managers were 73 percent white, according to the report, 21 percent Asian, and 6 percent black, Hispanic, or multiracial. Only 1 percent are Native American, Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander.
“We have the same talent bar for everyone. But we want to find a disproportionate number of candidates who are women and minorities,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg previously told USA Today.
“While we have achieved positive movement over the last year, it’s clear to all of us that we still aren’t where we want to be. There’s more work to do,” Facebook’s global diversity director Maxine Williams wrote in a blog post announcing this year’s diversity report.
“Cognitive diversity, or diversity of thought, matters because we are building a platform that currently serves 1.4 billion people around the world. It’s vital for us to have a broad range of perspectives, including people of different genders, races, ages, sexual orientations, characteristics and points of view.”
Facebook isn’t the only company with weak employee diversity. Google also showed little improvement over the last year in its numbers despite vigorously recruiting blacks, Hispanics, and women.
Computer World reported that “hiring of blacks and Hispanics outstripped the company’s overall hiring growth, but these groups still make up just 2 percent and 3 percent of the company, respectively. Though 21 percent of its tech hires last year were women, their share of the tech workforce increased by only 1 percent.”
On a more positive note, Facebook said it has quadrupled the number of college freshman admitted to its Facebook University summer program, which focuses on marginalized and underrepresented pupils interested in computer science. Partnering with company COO Sheryl Sandberg’s LeanIn.org, Facebook also created “lean in” computer science and engineering to provide community support for college women in STEM.
