On Wednesday, Amazon published its latest workforce demographic data, revealing what many critics have long suspected: Black, Latino and female employees are underrepresented in the best-paid jobs. According to the company's data, less than 4% of senior managers and executives are black, and less than 23% are women.
For years, executives at big tech firms have pointed to a "limited pool of Black talent" to excuse the persistent underrepresentation of African Americans in their companies, particularly in the most senior positions. But recent data illuminates the shortcomings of this oft-cited explanation.
For one, the percentage of African American STEM graduates greatly exceeds their representation in technical fields. In 2017–18, African Americans received roughly 10% of undergraduate STEM degrees, and accounted for 11% of Science and Engineering master's degree recipients. Yet, at the nation's largest technology companies, including Google, Facebook and Microsoft, African Americans make up less than 5% of the overall workforce.
The problem lies not just with big tech, but with the tech industry at large. Between 2005 and 2017, more than 90% of technology-intensive innovation-sector growth occurred in just five metro areas: New York, Boston, San Francisco, San Jose, and Seattle. Over that span, college enrollment rates among African Americans increased from 31 to 37 percent, while those of White adults budged slightly from 39 to 42 percent. African Americans also bridged the digital gap with White Americans, particularly in urban centers, due in part to expanded broadband access and the increased affordability of smartphones.
Yet, in each of these cities, the share of African Americans in high-digital occupational groups, such as engineering, computer and mathematics, and management, has stalled or, in some cases, fallen.
In Boston, White workers outnumber Black ones by about 27-to-1 in computer- and mathematics-related professions, compared with the overall ratio of 9.5-to-1 for workers in the city. In Seattle, home to Amazon, White workers outnumber Black workers nearly 28-to-1 in computer- and math-related fields.
Simply put, gains in educational attainment and digital skills among African Americans have not translated into increased representation in high-tech. Instead, evidence points to the reluctance of high-tech firms to recruit, train and invest in Black employees as the driving force behind the lack of Black representation in tech.
Fraeda Klein, a partner at the venture capital firm Kapor Capital, argues that the industry's reliance on personal relationships to grant access and opportunity produces a network effect that militates against Black inclusion.
Google's recruiting practices, in particular, have come under increased scrutiny. In December 2020, April Curley, a former diversity recruiter for Google, published a series of tweets about her experience working at the tech giant. Curley's criticism of Google's discriminatory hiring practices wasn't revelatory; a cursory glance at any of the company's recent annual hiring reports reveals a glaring underrepresentation of Black people. What did attract national news headlines was Curley's claim that Google's work environment was "white toxic".
"I quickly became aware of all the racist s*** put in place to keep Black students out of their pipeline." — April Curley, former Google diversity recruiter
Curley later tweeted that Google never hired a student from a historically Black college and university (HBCU) into one of their key engineering roles because they "didn't believe talent existed at these institutions".
When high-tech companies do hire Black employees, they do little to provide them with institutional support to succeed. Timnit Gebru, a Black woman who led Google's ethical artificial intelligence team, spoke out about how she felt targeted at the company.
"They wanted to have my presence, but not me exactly. They wanted to have the idea of me being at Google, but not the reality of me being at Google. I was constantly devalued." — Timnit Gebru
Gebru's experience is not uncommon. According to a 2018 Pew survey, 45% of Black STEM workers said that they have had someone treat them as not competent because of their race, compared with 28% of Black workers in other occupations. And 29% of Black workers in technical occupations have felt isolated in their workplace because of their race, compared with 16% of Black non-STEM workers.
The rapid pace of the high-tech industry incentivizes firms to simply buy new skills instead of developing them, and it's plausible that this mentality has contributed to the toxic and exclusionary workplaces that have become common in the industry.
Regardless, recent evidence suggests that reversing the broad exclusion of Black people from tech occupations that promise upward mobility will require more than just increasing the talent pipeline through investments in education and expanded access to digital resources. It will require tech companies themselves to move beyond empty platitudes and procedural "diversity and inclusion" workshops, and invest in outreach to underserved communities, and worker upskilling and reskilling. It will also likely require state and city governments to reserve economic incentives and tax breaks to technology companies that commit to such investments, and meet basic thresholds for inclusion.