through the global employee data of several leading tech firms where available. The data isn’t exactly black and white: not all companies declare their figures and most don’t reveal the ratio of manual labourers to executives. But some interesting patterns arise and it’s clear that some are better represented than others.
In the last 12 months, Facebook, Apple, eBay and Microsoft hired 1% more women. LinkedIn increased their female staff by 3%. Google’s gender ratio stayed the same.
Microsoft gained 3% non-white employees, Facebook 2%; while Google, Apple and eBay increased their non-white staff by 1%. LinkedIn lost 3% of its non-white employees.
Within the companies who expanded their ethnic diversity, Asian staff accounted for the majority of the increase, while the ratio of Hispanic employees remained static. Apple registered the biggest jump: 3% increase in Asian hires.
When the employees of an organization better represent their users and desired users, they will build more effectively for those groups. When YouTube’s almost entirely right-handed developer team built the iOS app without considering how left-handed people would use it, for example, 5% to 10% of videos were uploaded upside down as a result. This factor may be especially relevant for leaders of consumer tech companies.
When Tracy Chou of Pinterest shared the company’s demographic information last year, she explained: “We only stand to improve the quality and impact of our products if the people building them are representative of the user base and reflect the same diversity of demography, culture, life experiences and interests that makes our community so vibrant.”