Notes on Diversity and Inclusion in the Tech Industry
Consider the history: That Time When Women Stopped Coding
- What occurred during the same time as the beginning of the decline of women in computer science?
The rise of personal computer use in U.S. homes.
- Why does it matter that males had been playing on computers growing up?
It shapes the narrative, but also gives those socializing male a leg up on others when it comes to tech literacy and familiarity.
Review the data: Employee breakdown of key technology companies
- What three take-a-ways do you have looking at this data?
- The obvious takeaway regarding gender is that the share of female employees in tech industry is across the board less than the share of female members of the population.
- The share of black and latino employees in the tech industry is abysmally low, while the share of asian employees is disproportionately higher.
- There are only 2 black CEOs of Fortune 500 companies.
Ask the question: Why diversity matters to your tech company
- When are diversity efforts most successful?
When they’re led by commitments from the leaders of the company.
- Why do diverse companies perform better?
More varied perspectives allowing for greater creativity and innovation.
- Give an example of how a diverse company can serve a diverse user base or vise-versa.
If there are no women in the room when a product is designed, then there may be ways that the product will affect users who are women that the male designers would lot be likely to anticipate.
Things I want to know more about
I’m curious to look at Code Fellows’ diversity stats, it seems like they do relatively well at promoting diversity and inclusion in their enrollment/recruitment.