Over 30 companies sign White House’s Tech Inclusion Pledge

Silicon Valley has, finally, in the last year or two, started to solve its diversity problem. Of course, progress is slow, and even companies that are trying fix the problem are running into issues along the way.

It’s important to not lose sight of the goal, though, which is why the White House, on Wednesday, launched an initiative to address the issue, called the Tech Inclusion Pledge. It is exactly what it sounds like: tech companies sign to commit to making their workforces more diverse and inclusive.

“As the eyes of the world are on Silicon Valley for the President’s Global Entrepreneurship Summit, senior leadership at 28 companies are today making a bold commitment to fuel American innovation and economic growth by increasing the diversity of our technology workforce,” the pledge states.

“We resolve to take action to make the technology workforce at each of our companies fully representative of the American people, as soon as possible. We will treat this goal as a top management priority and business imperative, because tapping the full measure of talent from across the country is critical for the long-term success of both our individual companies and the nation as a whole.”

It outlines three goals:

• To implement and publish company-specific goals to recruit, retain, and advance diverse technology talent,and operationalize concrete measures to create and sustain an inclusive culture

• To annually publish data and progress metrics on the diversity of our technology workforce across functional areas and seniority levels

• To invest in partnerships to build a diverse pipeline of technology talent to increase our ability to recognize, develop and support talent from all backgrounds.

The pledge already seems to be having an effect, as 33 technology companies announced that they have already taken it. They include Airbnb, Box, DataSift, GitHub, GoDaddy, Intel, Lyft, Medium, Pinterest, SAP, Spotify, VMWare and Zynga.

“In May, we shared a report which measures our progress in the necessary work of diversifying our workforce. As we stated then, ‘we must create a company where anyone, regardless of what they look like or where they come from, can grow and thrive.’ For GitHub to be the best version of itself, a diverse workforce is an imperative,” Nicole Sanchez, ‎VP of Social Impact at GitHub, wrote in a blog post. 

“As an industry, we will only be able to build products that change the world when we have more of the world at the table, engaged in their creation. We encourage our friends in tech to join in on this important pledge.”

“We embrace the unique magic of every single individual at SAP,” Bill McDermott, CEO of SAP, said in a statement. “It’s no longer about our differences as ‘accepted.’ This misses the point completely. It’s the differences that define our world view. It’s the differences that create the fabric of our culture. We’re a company that believes in trust, love and the unqualified right of every person to be exactly who they are and live exactly how they choose.”

Solving the diversity problem in tech

A number of companies have already begun publishing data about the diversity in their organizations, including Twitter and Google, but that doesn’t automatically solve anything. 

Facebook, for example, has barely made progress in making its workforce less male and white. As of June of 2015, the company was 55 percent white, down from 57 percent in June of 2014. It is 68 percent men, down only one percentage point from the year before. In tech jobs, they are 51 percent white and 84 percent men. In senior leadership, it is 73 percent white and 77 percent men.

Microsoft, meanwhile, saw the number of minorities, and women in tech roles, increase, but it lost 2% of its female workers overall.

A number of companies have also begun putting money into initatives that are meant to drive up these numbers. 

For example, Intel announced it was investing a whopping $300 million to “build a pipeline of female and under-represented engineers and computer scientists,” as well as to actively support hiring and retaining more women and under-represented minorities.

Apple, meanwhile, put $50 million into creating outreach for minorities, and women, in tech. That included partnering with the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, a non-profit that supports students enrolled in public, historically black colleges and universities (also known as HBCUs), such as North Carolina A&T State University, Howard University, and Young’s alma mater Grambling State University.

It also partnered with the National Center for Women and Information Technology (NCWIT), a non-profit that helps create a broader pipeline of female technology workers.

In 2014, Facebook, Box and Pinterest announced that they had gotten together to launch a new mentorship program called WEST (Women Entering and Staying in Tech). The idea is to get more women interested in computer science, and to help them be prepared for the tech jobs of the future.

WEST features women who have technical jobs at all three companies, who will serve as one-on-one mentors. They meet with mentees individually and as a group, in-person and online, over the course of a year.