Geeks and Race: Google Resisted Publishing the Racial Makeup of Its Workforce for Years — Now Expects Kudos For Admitting Only 2% of it's Workforce is Black

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For years tech firms like Google have resisted providing data on the diversity of their workforces. Companies like Google and Yahoo hid behind the excuse that such information was a trade secret. Now we know why Google fought so hard to hide the racial and gender makeup of its workforce: only 2% of its workforce is black and women are woefully underrepresented. If Google was really serious about increasing diversity in its workforce, it would have started working on diversity years ago when it was first confronted on the issue. Google's hiring practices suggest that a wider discussion about racism among Nerds and Geeks is long overdue. As Eric Ware points out, "Geek racism appears to be a growing trend that is picking up steam and becoming more vocal based on social media trends." —Ronald David Jackson

Only 2% of Google's American Workforce Is Black

By Max Nisen
The technology industry is frequently thought of as a place that’s heavily white and male, and often unfriendly, if not hostile, to women. Google took a look at its own diversity record and released the data to NewsHour and in a blog post, and it confirms many fears.

According to the data, women make up 30 percent of the company’s total workforce, and 21 percent of its leadership. Only 17 percent of its technology employees are women. It’s data that the company hasn’t released before, and much more than others in the tech industry have made available.

Only two percent of the company’s total U.S. workforce is black, and three percent is Hispanic. Asians are comparatively overrepresented given their share of the U.S. population, making up 30 percent of the company’s American employees.

The gap is most acute among the company’s tech workers. Here’s the full breakdown of the company’s technology-specific workforce, which at Google mostly means engineers. The top two gender numbers are global, and the race numbers are from the U.S. only:

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Silicon Valley Work Environments — Better Than Sweatshops?: "I Do Not Know One Person Who Is Happy at Amazon"

Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com (Photo by James
Duncan Davidson)

"Amazon is an amazing company.
As long as you don't work here."

Several insiders at Amazon describe the company's bizarre and sometimes exploitative workplace culture.

By Hamilton Nolan

"Everyone is so tired, all the time"

I've been with Amazon for a little over a year and you can count my experience in the Ugly category.

This soulless machine looks down on employee work-life balance as "weak" and "uncommitted to the customer." I've got to hand it to them though. Amazon does put the customer first. Many other huge corporations make the same claim, but this company backs it up. The problem is that it comes at the expense of the employees, their health and their families. I've heard that the average employment of an Amazon corporate staffer is less than a year and a half. I am not sure if that is true, but it would not surprise me at all.

Think about how expensive it must be (financially and to their reputation, which are not so different in the long term) to lose hard-working, smart people at such a frequency. Trust, morale and institutional knowledge erode every day, only to be buoyed by the wide-eyed n00bs who start in their place. It is not long until those people get tired too, and so it goes. That approach to employee replacement cannot go forever. It is only a matter of time until the tech world runs out of smart people who believe it will be "different for me." (My theory: they bank on candidates from other countries who are not only unaware of the rumours, but who see the compensation as a windfall and don't care about the consequences.)

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