Silicon Valley: There isn’t a Pipeline Problem
Facebook and other tech companies blame their lack of diversity on the “pipeline problem.” By pipeline, they mean that there are not enough women and people of color taking STEM courses, which will then lead them to STEM internships, graduating with STEM degrees, and then ultimately becoming ideal candidates for STEM positions at their companies. Because of the lack of underrepresented minorities entering the pipeline, the claim is that there are not enough of them in the applicant pool when it comes time to hire.
This is a popular source of blame for Silicon Valley’s dismal diversity numbers. The U.S. tech industry is 8% Latino and 7.4% Black. Black women and Latinas comprise 1% of the Silicon Valley workforce. Of those who are able to break into the industry, people of color are 3.5 times more likely to leave tech than their white counterparts. At Facebook, the percentage of Black and Latino technical employees is 1% and 3% respectively, and that hasn’t changed since they started reporting in 2014.
The problem is that the pipeline isn’t as big of an issue as Silicon Valley would like to believe.
There are 250 hispanic serving institutions and 13 historically black colleges and universities with engineering programs. 8,984 Latino and 3,599 black students graduated with a degree in engineering from 1995 to 2014. National organizations such as the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, National Society of Black Engineers, and the Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science boost membership numbers of over 61,000.
Facebook’s head of diversity Maxine William was famously criticized when she said “appropriate representation in technology or any other industry will depend upon more people having the opportunity to gain necessary skills through the public education system.” But with numbers like these, why does Silicon Valley still think there is a pipeline problem? Placing the blame outside of their control helps to defend their internal hiring practices and their inability to change them.
There are many obstacles that minority applicants face before they even apply at these tech companies. Often companies want applicants who had their own startups, whether they were successful or not. Yet, for many minority applicants who come from lower socioeconomic statuses, the risk of founding a startup is something they simply cannot afford; especially if their families are depending on them for a steady income. Personal/family savings makeup 63.9% of the source of capital for startups. Diverse applicants simply do not have access to someone else’s money to risk.
Tech companies prefer applicants who come from prestigious colleges. According to Business Insider, the top three schools that feed into Silicon Valley are UC Berkeley, Stanford, and Carnegie Mellon University. But these schools cost a lot of money, which is another barrier for many diverse applicants. The ranking or name of a college is not the be all end all of the talent and skills a student possess, but it is often an indication how much money a student and their family can spend on education. And because the leadership of tech companies also come from these schools, it seems as though they are more comfortable hiring from the familiar and are not inclined to recruit from a wider range of schools.
A computer science professor¹ who had many talented Latino students investigated why her students were not getting into internships with Facebook. During a site visit, she interviewed a nontraditional student in the internship program. The student was just as shocked as she was about how she got into the program. The student had zero programming experience, and yet she had been hired by Facebook through the prestigious school she attended for her secret weapon — confidence. Recruiters at Facebook told the professor that what hurts minority students the most in the hiring process is a lack of confidence. But this “lack of confidence” can just be a pretext for “culture fit.”
Often tech companies tout benefits such as ping-pong, beer, or other gimmicks. Loving beer isn’t an indication of technical skill, neither is coding or building computers since you were 10 years old. This narrative many in the tech proudly boast doesn’t mean this is the only path into the industry. Having exposure to computers and programming since you were a kid does not mean that you are more prepared, talented, or skilled than a candidate whose first coding experience was in college. In fact, most high schools in the US don’t even teach computer science. If tech companies are serious about hiring diverse talent, then they also need to drop the expectation that their candidates also enjoy the typical “brogrammer” antics. With such a narrow definition of a programmer, it is no wonder that any underrepresented candidate would seem to be lacking confidence when they realize that they do not fit into artificial expectations.
Blaming the pipeline problem helps to give companies kudos when they do something to fix it, like the many outreach programs Silicon Valley loves to support. The existence of these programs are not themselves a bad thing. In fact, we at NHMC celebrate when a tech company supports minority students in their pursuit of technical skills. However, when these programs are not implemented properly, they will fail to improve the diversity problem in tech.
That same professor² observed an outreach program at Facebook and noticed that the program had only 2 of the 20 students in jobs where they used technical skills. The other students were being groomed for HR positions and management. While it is true there is a lack of diversity across the board in Silicon Valley, not only in tech positions, these types of programs do little to increase diversity in company leadership. Even at first glance, the program was not making strides to bridge the diversity gap, and illustrates why companies need to be more deliberate in their outreach.
The same pitfalls need to be avoided in the reported partnerships between tech companies and colleges. Facebook has partnerships with UNCF and has their own Facebook University. Still, these collaborations have to be more than a presence on campus. Tech companies showing up to a handful of schools isn’t going to solve the problem. Instead, it will ensure that those companies continue to miss out on thousands of talented students who were unable to attend those schools.
Tech companies are not tapping in to treasure troves of minority talent. Black women and Latinas are on LinkedIn. They are plugged into to networks and are not shying away from Silicon Valley. Underrepresented minorities are graduating from computer science and engineering programs at twice the rate there are represented in the tech workforce. There are already graduates of CODE2040 who are waiting in the wings. If tech companies wanted to find them, they could.
Of diverse candidates who are discovered and hired, the uphill climb doesn’t end. The hostile work environment that awaits them is well-documented. Many people of color in the tech industry report isolation and discrimination that forces them to leave. The situation can be worse for employees not hired directly through the tech giants. For example, Facebook, as with other tech companies, does not extend its workplace perks to contractor workers. Women who worked on the trending topics team as contractors had their problems and reports of sexism ignored. At Intel, the cafeteria workers, who are contractors, went on strike for better working conditions at the tech giant.
Silicon Valley has tried to demonstrate that they are doing better at increasing their diversity numbers. Google, Twitter, and Facebook have each published their own diversity reports. Facebook is notorious for not sharing information about their inner workings, and its diversity report is no different, leaving much to be desired. When Facebook announces their diversity numbers, they chose not to report where their workers are from. Of the Latino workers at Facebook, most of them are from countries other than the United States³. When Facebook does hire a diverse candidate, it looks like they are hiring outside the country and ignoring domestic talent.
These diversity reports don’t tell us the whole story. What is the turnover of underrepresented candidates? What colleges are you recruiting from? How many recruits from Grace Hopper or SHPE end up hired? If Facebook wants to demonstrate good faith that they are actually trying to change their diversity numbers, we need more transparency and meaningful engagement with diverse talent.
Silicon valley still has a long way to go to fix its diversity problem. If they stop hiding behind the pipeline issue, they could actually make some headway.
- Phone interview with computer science professor. (Aug 13, 2018).
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