FollowSilicon Valley is a white men’s world. Twitter released a HR report detailing some inside information about the Twitter workforce demographics. Not surprisingly, most of Twitter’s employee are white men. The company, though, “is committed to making inclusiveness a cornerstone of our culture.” Twitter has good reasons to aim for an increasingly varied personnel, because some research shows how diverse teams take better decisions and when women are leaders, the financial results are better.
Facebook, Google, LinkedIn and Yahoo have all published similar reports with similar results. Girls Who Code says that 37 percent of computer sciences graduates in 1984, were women, whereas today only 12 percent are.
Although a microblogging site at heart, Twitter develops alternative projects like the recent collaboration with Amazon to make online shopping even easier. A growing number of employees seems to be expected in these situations, so the Twitter workforce demographics might change.
Twitter workforce demographics display two characteristics, man and white
Statista.com shows that in November 2013, Twitter had 2.700 employees, a dramatic increase from just 900 in April 2012. The gender balance is clearly disproportionate among the workers. Men account for 70 percent of the general workforce and 90 percent of the tech-oriented employees. Only in non-tech positions women and men are found in equal numbers. Women account for just 21 percent of the leadership positions. In what regards the ethnicity, the trends are similar for all the three proposed categories. By looking at aggregated self-reported answers, we can see how Whites are a striking majority. Overall, 59 percent of the employees are white and 29 are Asians. Asians are working in tech positions clearly more than in not-tech ones. Whites occupy 72 percent of the leadership positions, followed by Asians with 24 percent. Other ethnicities are hardly present at this level.
Twitter actively supported organizations which are oriented towards fostering diversity and supporting underrepresented groups in tech-industry. Girls Who Code is such an example given by Janet Van Huysse, VP, Diversity and Inclusion, Twitter. Other nurseries like sf.girls and Girl Geek Dinner might produce a change in the long-term for Twitter workforce demographics. Van Huysse concludes with a remorseful message. “We are keenly aware that Twitter is part of an industry that is marked by dramatic imbalances in diversity — and we are no exception. By becoming more transparent with our employee data, open in dialogue throughout the company and rigorous in our recruiting, hiring and promotion practices, we are making diversity an important business issue for ourselves.”
