On Tuesday , Facebookreleased its yearly diversityreport with a mighty call . For the first time in three years , the society said it in reality increase its proportion of opprobrious employees , from 2 percent to 3 per centum . But here ’s the thing : Facebook has n’t released the hard number that would actually essay that . By pretermit this crucial data , Facebook ’s cheerful , promiscuous - to - read diverseness report flunk to rightfully increase transparency or company accountability — and obscures entropy that could cater existent penetration into how nonage fare in the tech Earth .
Since public diversity reports became standard at tech giants likeGoogle , Apple , andMicrosoft , all have include a variety splash Sir Frederick Handley Page . These are glossy , manicured data visualizations that include backwash and gender breakdowns of each company ’s employee , complete with beautiful , smile brownish masses and links to outreach opening .
These pages do n’t weigh .
commonly shroud way down at the very bottom of these pageboy is a contact to the veridical turn , each company’sEqual EmploymentOpportunityform ( or EEO-1 ) . In Facebook ’s most recent write up , it ’s on the footer of the 5th page . The EEO-1 is the numerical spreadsheet that company send to the Union government to prove they are n’t plunder the Civil Rights Act by discriminating against minority applicants .
Looking atFacebook ’s EEO-1 , the first affair to observe a mismatch between what ’s in the flashy story and what ’s in the datum . The taproom graph in Facebook ’s report are establish on June 2017 employee datum . The EEO-1 it colligate to is from 2016 . In fact , its file nameliterally ends in “ 2017/08 / eeo-1 - report-2017 , ” even though it ’s 2016 datum . ( Googledoes this as well . ) This mismatch makes it very difficult to scrutinize Facebook ’s title ( offered in 29 - level letters ) that it increased black employees by 1 percent . Their explanation :
Please mention that due to the way of life the government tracks EEO-1 data , the numbers reflected in the below form are representative of a point in fourth dimension in July 2016 , and not our current 2017 data .
So here ’s what we have intercourse . In 2015 , Facebook utilize 145 mordant the great unwashed . In 2016 , Facebook reported having 259 black employees — over 100 new blackened hire . gravid ! But how many people did Facebook hire overall ? Between 2015 and 2016 , Facebook hired a whopping 2,795 new employees . That stand for out of almost 2,800 new hire , only 114 were black . Simply put , in 2016 Facebook hired grim people at a ghastly rate of only 4 percentage . If Facebook actually did increase ignominious representation , it would call for about 150 new black hires in 2017 , assuming the company grew at the same pace .
With that in mind , let ’s await at two likely headline .
Both are completely truthful , but which one paints a rosier mental picture of Facebook ’s diverseness elbow grease ? That ’s the difference between take a “ diversity composition ” versus looking at the EEO-1 datum . Here ’s another headline :
In 2016 , 14 percent ofHarvard ’s admitted applicantswere black . At expert , Facebook ’s hiring rate for black applicants this yr was only 8 percent — double what they did in 2016 , but still far below the 14 percent of the US universe that identifies as black . How much should we applaud Facebook for raising their own pitifully low bar ?
The EEO-1 also include a sex dislocation , which is helpful because women of all airstream face sexuality - specific barrier to hiring and employment . In 2016 , Facebook reports hiring 58 calamitous men and 56 black woman . This is actually great news , because even when companies prioritize inscribe more people of people of color , they ignore sexuality conservation of parity and hire more men .
But this good news accentuate another serious problem with these data visualizations . There are graph and charts denoting backwash or denoting gender , but none denoting both race and sex . just put , multifariousness paper are in effect design to obliterate data on non - lily-white women , probably because they ’re the least take in tech . That true statement is desolate for black women . Thoughblack women gain two - thirds of all degreesawarded to fatal students in 2014 , black men earned anastounding 74 percent of electronic computer science degreesto pitch-dark students that same yr . Rather than sort out how this touch use , Silicon Valley covers it up by not include intersectional ( and thus unflattering ) data visualisation . So when we talk about how “ gruelling ” it is to increase diversity , we should also talk over how hard it is to get company to address the problem in devout .
variety report card are a belittled part of a much large sociological problem . No one expect Silicon Valley to solve this country ’s racial and gender fairness publication all by itself , but the tech community of interests ’s current approach is off . at long last , diversity is about people . And levy and nurturing people deserve more than a enhancive approach .
We reached out to Facebook for a more specific explanation of their dated number and will update this storey if we hear back .
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