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Yahoo's Diversity Record Is Almost As Bad As Google's
theodp (442580) writes Comparing Yahoo's diversity numbers to Google's, writes Valleywag's Nitasha Tiku, is "like comparing rotten apples to rotten oranges." Two weeks after Google disclosed it wasn't "where we want to be" with its 17% female and 1% Black U.S. tech workforce, Yahoo revealed its diversity numbers aren't that much better than Google's, with a U.S. tech workforce that's 35% female and 1% Black. The charts released by Yahoo indicate women fare worse in its global tech workforce, only 15% of which is female. So, with Google and Yahoo having checked in, isn't it about time for U.S. workforce expert Mark Zuckerberg and company to stop taking the Fifth and ante up numbers to show students what kind of opportunities Facebook offers?
Not data, but. I recently was involved in hiring in a STEM field. Saw dozens of resumes a small number of them were from women. I don't know how many may have been from minorities because we don't ask. Of all of the candidates only three were considered qualified enough to interview. One was woman. She got the job.
However if you start at the beginning of the process the pool of people we had to chose from contained few women. Just so happened that this time a woman was the best candidate. Other times that might not have been the case, but in every hiring action I've been involved with the number of women who apply is always vastly smaller than the number of men.
According to Economix the number of women graduates in computer science last year was 20%. Computerworld claims it's even less at 18%. With a workforce of 35% women they are actually significantly above the average of new graduates.
So if there is a problem it's not Google's or Yahoo's. It goes back to why are so few women going into computer science? Perhaps for the same reason that so few men are going into nursing or veterinarian medicine? It just doesn't interest them as a profession.