The tech industry diversity statistics in 2018 show that the industry is overwhelmingly white and male. The number of women in Apple and Google barely passed the 30% mark, while Microsoft has a mere 26%. Only 3% of Google’s employees are black, Netflix has 1% more at 4% black employees, and Apple is at 9%. The number of black people working at social media sites is between only 2-4%.
According to TechRepublic, increasing diversity efforts in the IT industry could result in $400 billion more revenue per year. It cites CompTIA CEO Todd Thibodeaux saying that “Financially a one percentage point move toward representative diversity leads to a three-point increase in revenue. … Companies in the top quartile for ethnic and gender diversity are more likely to surpass industry norms for revenue and operating margin. Companies in the bottom quartile for diversity aren’t just lagging behind, they are rapidly losing ground.”
The study Why Diversity Matters by McKinsey found that diverse companies perform better. This is true over a few different objective criteria. When contrasting financial performance, the most gender-diverse companies perform 15% better on average. The most ethnically diverse companies perform 35% better on average.
In 2015, Intel put $300 million into diversity efforts, including tying executive compensation to diversity goals. In November, Apple unveiled an entrepreneur camp for women. On Monday, Microsoft pledged $10 million by 2020 to Code.org, a nonprofit focused on computer science education.
In about 25 years, the Pew Research Center predicts that the majority of people in the US will be people of color; so of the minority babies born in the US today, a good portion must end up in such careers for tech to continue to thrive.
