So according to that ranking, a company with 80/20 female-to-male ratio is much more diverse than a one with 20/80 ratio. I don't think that "diversity" is the correct term for what they're measuring.
Diversity certainly isn't the only term--the other is inclusion. We stand by some of these female heavy companies that are inclusive of underrepresented groups in tech. That's the difference between 80/20 and 20/80.
Our ranking weighs gender and race-based diversity across all types of roles, as well as a score calculated from the Simpson’s Diversity Index. With Simpson's, diversity goes up as a result of an increase in demographic richness and evenness, commonly used in university admissions. It's one of several variables used in the ranking, and probably speaks a little more directly to the way in which you're interpreting diversity.
Dear Tech People is the result of pulling over 70k profiles on LinkedIn across 100 companies and processing all the data with name analyzers/facial recognition tech/and a bunch of actual humans on mturk. The project seeks to answer questions like how many women work at Snap or how many black engineers are at Docker. Hopefully the transparency in this project helps diversity advocates make cases for the change they want to see.
I'm excited to share this project on behalf of the creators. If you're interested in learning more, you can contact them at deartechpeople(at)gmail.com.
So you broke LinkedIn terms of service, shared people’s photos without their consent, and asked mturk workers to identify those people’s race and gender?
Something about that really creeps me out. I don’t want someone looking at my photo to determine if I’m Asian or Latino, or male or female or whatever else, then shaming my employer based on the data.
What’s next, auto scanning of resumes to make sure the name sounds like a girl’s name? Requiring photos when applying to jobs to ensure you are “black enough?”
This is a really interesting initiative! Thanks for sharing! Was there anything surprising you all found? Have you had a lot of feedback from underrepresented groups?
1) Only two companies in the entire ranking have outperformed the American population in terms of diversity. We all know that tech can do better, but this is pretty surprising given that most companies on the list are based out of SF and NYC, two areas are quite diversity relative to the rest of America.
2) Because this is the first time we can compare this amount of standardized diversity data across companies, it's the first time we're really able to see who is doing better than who. It's interesting to see some companies that are often lauded and branded as diversity thought leaders, doing less well than we'd all expect.
3) Some patterns have emerged: NYC based companies tend to do better than SF based companies. Ecommerce companies tend to outperform security companies (though we saw that one coming). More importantly, this data shows how company structure and sector can make it easier or harder to be inclusive in certain ways. That's why we've included sector averages. We hope those numbers help people make more informed analyses about how well a company is performing given their role make up.
We've had a lot of feedback from underrepresented groups that will inform product improvements moving forward--from accessibility to which companies people want to see on the list next. Most of all, we've had affirming feedback that these numbers really do help people make the case for diversity initiatives and kickstart conversations at their companies. We're excited about the prospect of seeing real initiatives come into existence because of DTP data, and that's what we really hope to support and see more of!
xeeeeeeeeeeenu|8 years ago
adinathoughts|8 years ago
Our ranking weighs gender and race-based diversity across all types of roles, as well as a score calculated from the Simpson’s Diversity Index. With Simpson's, diversity goes up as a result of an increase in demographic richness and evenness, commonly used in university admissions. It's one of several variables used in the ranking, and probably speaks a little more directly to the way in which you're interpreting diversity.
derekjobst|8 years ago
I'm excited to share this project on behalf of the creators. If you're interested in learning more, you can contact them at deartechpeople(at)gmail.com.
chatmasta|8 years ago
Something about that really creeps me out. I don’t want someone looking at my photo to determine if I’m Asian or Latino, or male or female or whatever else, then shaming my employer based on the data.
What’s next, auto scanning of resumes to make sure the name sounds like a girl’s name? Requiring photos when applying to jobs to ensure you are “black enough?”
idiotclock|8 years ago
adinathoughts|8 years ago
1) Only two companies in the entire ranking have outperformed the American population in terms of diversity. We all know that tech can do better, but this is pretty surprising given that most companies on the list are based out of SF and NYC, two areas are quite diversity relative to the rest of America.
2) Because this is the first time we can compare this amount of standardized diversity data across companies, it's the first time we're really able to see who is doing better than who. It's interesting to see some companies that are often lauded and branded as diversity thought leaders, doing less well than we'd all expect.
3) Some patterns have emerged: NYC based companies tend to do better than SF based companies. Ecommerce companies tend to outperform security companies (though we saw that one coming). More importantly, this data shows how company structure and sector can make it easier or harder to be inclusive in certain ways. That's why we've included sector averages. We hope those numbers help people make more informed analyses about how well a company is performing given their role make up.
We've had a lot of feedback from underrepresented groups that will inform product improvements moving forward--from accessibility to which companies people want to see on the list next. Most of all, we've had affirming feedback that these numbers really do help people make the case for diversity initiatives and kickstart conversations at their companies. We're excited about the prospect of seeing real initiatives come into existence because of DTP data, and that's what we really hope to support and see more of!