https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Tech-companies-still-struggle-to-hire-black-12980211.php
june 9 2018 When Maxine Waters, the Democratic representative from southern Los Angeles, toured Silicon Valley during the first week of May with fellow members of the Congressional Black Caucus, she was blunt about the technology industry’s lack of progress hiring black employees. Waters, standing at a lectern in front of a wall of windows at Lyft’s offices in San Francisco, said she was “floored” to learn that black workers make up 1 or 2 percent of the workforce at several prominent tech companies.
“I’m not about diplomacy,’’ said Waters, threatening regulation. “I’m not urging, I’m not encouraging. I’m about to hit some people across the head with a hammer. I know how to do this, and I know how to do it well.’’
Tech companies know that they have a race problem. But their efforts to address it have so far yielded little.
Facebook says that 3 percent of its U.S. workforce is black, up from 2 percent in 2014, while black workers in technical roles stagnated at 1 percent. Only 2 percent of Google’s workers are black, a figure that has remained static for the past three years. The Alphabet unit’s efforts to increase that have sparked an internal backlash, with one former employee suing because of perceived discrimination against white and male candidates.
