27 Jun Rise Of The Bias Busters: How Unconscious Bias Became Silicon Valley’s Newest Target by Forbes’ Ellen Huet

Jon Bischke couldn’t have timed it better. He was traveling in New York City to pitch the newest product to come out of his startup, Entelo: a service that scrapes the web to help companies find a diverse set of job candidates, released just three days earlier. When he stepped out of his hotel room that morning, he glanced down at the USA Today and gaped at its front page. It was May 30, 2014, and Google GOOGL +0.97% had revealed its pitiful workforce diversity numbers and pledged to improve them. Hours later, his phone was buzzing with calls from NPR and the Washington Post.

Bischke couldn’t have known it that day, but that was just the beginning. Before Google’s move, most Silicon Valley companies resisted the idea, calling their diversity reports “trade secrets.” (Intel INTC -0.47% and HP were notable exceptions.) Once Google changed its mind, though, everyone else tripped over themselves to follow suit. Facebook FB +1.10% and Yahoo YHOO +% opened up in June, Twitter in July, Apple in August. In the past year and a half, the ritual has even spread down to hot private companies like Slack, Pinterest, Pandora and Indiegogo. Most had the same skew: women held about a third of all jobs, and even fewer in technical and leadership roles. Asian workers were far overrepresented with about a third of jobs, while black and Hispanic workers had just a percent or two. The accompanying promises were so similar it’s almost a joke: Here are our not-great stats. We’re not where we want to be. We still have work to do.

Forbes
Read Full Article