Literanista
June 15, 2009
The Tech Industry’s Diversity Problem via Hispanic Digital
The high-tech industry has a diversity problem, according to a new study.
Blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans only make up 6.8% of engineering and other technical staffers in the tech industry, the Anita Borg Institute, a group that promotes the hiring of women in high-tech, said on Monday. These groups make up an even smaller percentage of workers at higher levels within tech companies.
So-called under-represented minorities make up 27% of the population as a whole and receive 18% of undergraduate computer-science degrees. They earn 8% of masters and doctoral degrees in computer science. But they were barely present at the seven large Silicon Valley companies the Anita Borg Institute studied. (The companies weren’t identified.)
“You need diversity to have innovation,” says Caroline Simard, the study’s author.
