Facebook Diversity: Company Makes Little Progress In Hiring Women, Minorities

Facebook and other tech companies are struggling to have a more diverse workforce, which was a problem last year and also seems to be this year's issue, too. The idea was that the company would push diversity stats in the hopes of making the company a more diverse workplace. Well, it didn't exactly happen after Silicon Valley's major tech company released their diversity stats for 2015. Unfortunately, relatively little progress had been made.

While Facebook has increased its headcount by 59 percent in the past 12 months, over half of those hires were not women. The number of women hired at the company jumped by 1 percent (or 30 percent of the total population at Facebook, which was the same number last year). To add to that, the company employs just about 2 percent more people of Asian descent than it did a year ago, but it didn't make much headway at all in hiring Hispanic, Black or multiracial individuals for tech positions.

Google chief legal counsel David Drummond argues that moving percentage points for certain groups in a large company of 55,000 plus staff will essentially require much more time, responding to remarks at the meeting from Rev. Jesse Jackson that companies had not moved the "needle on representation" very much, according to Computer World. 

A blog post from Facebook's global director of diversity Maxine Williams also explains that the company's numbers are "trending up" but that they aren't quite where they'd like them to be, just yet. Facebook reworked its Managing Bias training course and added a "Facebook University " course, along with community groups aimed at minority college students and women. And as far as the hiring process now goes, the comapny has a pilot program that mandates "one qualified candidate who is a member of an underrepresented group," for any position.

Google's 2015 diversity numbers are also similar to Facebook, making women just about 30 percent of the employee base and 18 percent of its technical positions (a 1 percent increase from last year.)

Wonder what the diversity goal will be for next year? 

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