Apple Makes Slight Progress On Diversity While Its Rivals Are Making Practically None (macrumors.com)

The workforce at Apple is still predominately white and male, reveals the diversity report the company released Wednesday. But that doesn't mean that its efforts to improve diversity haven't yielded improvements. This is the third year that the Cupertino giant has released its diversity numbers and the balance is improving, although a bit slowly. From a MacRumors report: Its overall workforce, including tech, non-tech, and retail jobs, is 68% male and 32% female as of June 2016, a slight change from a 69%-31% split in 2015. Apple's race and ethnicity breakdown among U.S. employees is 19% Asian, 9% Black, 12% Hispanic, 2% Multiracial, 1% Other, and 56% White, representing a 2 percent increase in White employees and a 1 percent increase in both Asian and Hispanic employees compared to last year's data. Females represent 37% of Apple's global new hires, while U.S. underrepresented minorities represent 27% of global new hires. Apple defines underrepresented minorities as "groups whose representation in tech has been historically low -- Black, Hispanic, Native American, Native Hawaiian, and Other Pacific Islander."Washington Post compares Apple's progress to other Silicon Valley giants, claiming that rest of the industry is mostly sitting idle. (Alternate source: Reuters) From the report: At Facebook, black and Hispanic employees make up 2 and 4 percent of the employee base. Despite commitments to diversity, neither Google nor Facebook have made a dent in those numbers since they first announced them in 2014.

Comments

Job security

[DidgetMaster]

I wonder if any black or woman programmer has ever been fired for incompetence, insubordination, or for refusing to do their work at Facebook or Apple? Is the company too afraid to get rid of bad programmers if doing so might hurt their 'diversity' numbers? Years ago, I worked with a woman who wanted to be let go so that she could collect unemployment or get a severance package. She did everything she could think of to get the company to get rid of her. Nothing worked so she finally left voluntarily.

Re:It's not a bad thing

[HornWumpus]

Hire a moron today, to promote intellectual diversity. Make sure (s)he has lots of responsibility.