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Apple’s Hiring Practices Aren’t Matching Up with Its Diversity Goals

Tim Cook hails workforce diversity progress while acknowledging “how much further” Apple has to go.
Photo courtesy Apple

It's that time again: tech companies release their employee diversity reports and tech writers get to pore over it and sound the clarion call for, yes, more diversity! It's good for business, as common wisdom and rigorous academics show. Apple just released their latest diversity report. Where are they running short?

Image: Apple

Well, the gender gap is still a problem, and women in tech remains a perennial issue for any tech company. And like most tech companies, non-white and non-Asian leadership is running extremely short. In raw numbers, Apple is actually performing

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pretty well

in making sure their Hispanic and black workers are represented. For reference: blacks and Hispanics make up 13 and 17 percent

of the US population

.

Image: Apple

Compare that to Google:

Image: Google

Here's Facebook:

And that's just for general employees. The problem resurfaces when you get into the tech and leadership roles.

We're not going to list the rest of the companies because at this point we're picking out minute differences, but the bottom line is this: women are still outnumbered 4 to 1 in tech roles, and blacks and Latinos are still highly underrepresented in tech and leadership roles.

And the problem of underrepresentation surfaces in very ugly ways: prospective minority workers may see that they're not being represented in the field they're going in. Apple had a lot to say to their own credit, and they are doing something to help the next generation of tech workers.

But the grandiose changes they promise won't happen at the drop of a hat, especially when the rest of the industry seems set in its ways, as far as the numbers go year by year.