The recent elevation of Indian-born Sundar Pichai to CEO of Google represents another instance of someone from a minority group rising to the top in Silicon Valley. People of Indian origin also serve as CEOs at companies like Microsoft and Adobe Systems. But despite the presence of these very visible tech stars, Silicon Valley has actually had a relatively poor diversity record.
For instance, Twitter’s global workforce is seventy percent male and thirty percent female, but within technology categories, men make up ninety percent of workers. Their overall workforce is only twelve percent non-white or Asian, but among technology workers, this proportion falls to eight percent. As reported by CNNMoney, only four percent of Twitter’s senior management team are non-white or non-Asian and nearly four in five are men.
At Google, eighty three percent of technology jobs are held by men – at Facebook and Yahoo – eighty five percent. This state of affairs appears about to change. Many of Silicon Valley’s most noteworthy companies like Pinterest and Pandora maintain internship programs with large numbers of women, racial and ethnic minorities. As reported in Bloomberg Business, tech firms try to convert about half or more of their interns into full time hires.
