I’ve joked in the past that the places I worked resembled monasteries. With the exception of a few support people, the staff was entirely male.

But this has changed over the years. In applied mathematics, almost half of the graduates are women. I have worked with some extremely talented female mathematicians who have completely outclassed my mediocre mathematical abilities. I have worked with some really talented female hackers who turned out beautiful software in record time. I worked in one engineering group where most of my management chain was women. This organization employed about 6,000 people.

The distribution of people who apply for jobs at a company depend on the company. Small companies may have a less diverse applicant stream. This said, this doesn’t mean that you can’t attract a more diverse population. Recruiting at “women who code” events or conferences is one way to do this. I just returned from a computer security conference and noticed that there were more women attending than I had seen in previous years.

Another way to recruit a diverse population is to have paid internships and summer programs for university students. I have seen how effective this can be.

Snapchat is an example of what can happen when a single perspective dominates (e.g., young, extremely rich, white men). Companies are stronger and more creative if they have a more diverse staff.

In Snapchat’s case they may just figure “we’re rich, so fuck you”. This level of wealth tends to give people a feeling of untouchable power. The teenagers who use Snapchat for sexting are not necessarily the most culturally sensitive crowd. But releasing offensive plugins is not a recipe for future growth.

You can’t change society, but you can try to recruit the best staff that you can find. And this includes working to recruit a diverse staff because they will help you build better products.