K
Kathleen Martin
Guest
TECH COMPANY PROFITS and stock prices rose to new heights over the past two years—but the industry’s pandemic-proof confidence has now turned sickly. Economic worries have prompted tech giants and startups to cut costs, freeze hiring, or even begin layoffs. Last week, The Washington Post reported that an internal memo at Meta encouraged managers to identify low performers to eject, as the tech giant, like many others, prepares for leaner times.
“It reminds me of the dot-com bust—the very first tightening of the belt, reining in the exuberance,” says Coco Brown, CEO of the Athena Alliance, a networking organization for women executives in business, including tech and venture capital. That means tech companies will offer less generous salaries and fewer office perks—and likely have less diverse workforces.
People working to improve diversity in tech are worried that companies looking to cut costs may end up undoing the modest progress they have made toward diversifying their workforces through hiring more women, LGBTQ people, and people of color.
That’s because many times the roles that historically underrepresented groups are hired into tend to be seen as the most expendable, says Sarah Kaplan, director of the Institute for Gender and the Economy at Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto.
When her students are hired into technical positions, Kaplan has noticed that women are offered less prestigious roles. “A male engineer will get hired into a coding job, and a female engineer will be hired into a user interface job, where coding is seen as one of the most high-status positions,” she says. “Even as companies have tried to make progress, that progress has not always been in the highest status and most highly compensated areas.”
A 2018 Pew Research study found that the tech industry is one of the least diverse areas of the STEM fields. In the same year, Google reported that only 2.5 percent of its workforce identified as Black and 3.6 percent as Hispanic and Latinx.
In 2020, in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, The Plug, a media and research company focused on the Black tech ecosystem, found that some 200 tech companies promised to make greater efforts toward diversity, equity, and inclusion. There have been modest gains—Google’s most recent diversity report shows that 5.3 percent of its workforce are now Black and 6.9 percent Latinx—but Kaplan says the figures tech companies offer to measure diversity can make it hard to truly know whether substantial change is being made.
For instance, figures released by Amazon reveal that the most diverse level of the company is also the lowest, categorized as “field and customer support.” “All of [Amazon’s] diversity is in their warehouse operations,” Kaplan says. “Companies that have big cafeterias and things like that often are counting their cafeteria staff, and [those jobs] would be more likely to be populated by underrepresented minorities or people from lower socioeconomic groups.”
Continue reading: https://www.wired.com/story/tech-layoffs-diversity/
“It reminds me of the dot-com bust—the very first tightening of the belt, reining in the exuberance,” says Coco Brown, CEO of the Athena Alliance, a networking organization for women executives in business, including tech and venture capital. That means tech companies will offer less generous salaries and fewer office perks—and likely have less diverse workforces.
People working to improve diversity in tech are worried that companies looking to cut costs may end up undoing the modest progress they have made toward diversifying their workforces through hiring more women, LGBTQ people, and people of color.
That’s because many times the roles that historically underrepresented groups are hired into tend to be seen as the most expendable, says Sarah Kaplan, director of the Institute for Gender and the Economy at Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto.
When her students are hired into technical positions, Kaplan has noticed that women are offered less prestigious roles. “A male engineer will get hired into a coding job, and a female engineer will be hired into a user interface job, where coding is seen as one of the most high-status positions,” she says. “Even as companies have tried to make progress, that progress has not always been in the highest status and most highly compensated areas.”
A 2018 Pew Research study found that the tech industry is one of the least diverse areas of the STEM fields. In the same year, Google reported that only 2.5 percent of its workforce identified as Black and 3.6 percent as Hispanic and Latinx.
In 2020, in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, The Plug, a media and research company focused on the Black tech ecosystem, found that some 200 tech companies promised to make greater efforts toward diversity, equity, and inclusion. There have been modest gains—Google’s most recent diversity report shows that 5.3 percent of its workforce are now Black and 6.9 percent Latinx—but Kaplan says the figures tech companies offer to measure diversity can make it hard to truly know whether substantial change is being made.
For instance, figures released by Amazon reveal that the most diverse level of the company is also the lowest, categorized as “field and customer support.” “All of [Amazon’s] diversity is in their warehouse operations,” Kaplan says. “Companies that have big cafeterias and things like that often are counting their cafeteria staff, and [those jobs] would be more likely to be populated by underrepresented minorities or people from lower socioeconomic groups.”
Continue reading: https://www.wired.com/story/tech-layoffs-diversity/
