Diversity (Reading04-lgrazios)

I think it is obvious that there is a lack of diversity in the technology industry, just like most industries, but maybe there is less diversity in the technology industry. I believe this is a problem because diversity is really important for anything in general. The human race is diverse so anything involving humans should be diverse as well. What I mean is that since technology is to be used by everyone, than the people creating it and working on it should be an accurate representation of everyone so that what ever the technology workforce creates helps satisfy everyone needs. Similar to something we mentioned in class about how some issues aren’t addressed (or addressed correctly) because the people seeking to solve the issues have never experienced them first hand. That is probably one reason why diversity is important. Another reason might be that in order to have a safe work environment, it would be better if people don’t feel like minorities and if they feel like they are treated fairly. And having a diverse group of employees might help these.

In order to determine if this is just how it is or if there is something that can be done about it, on should consider where the issue arises. I think there are two parts to the diversity issue tech. First who and how companies chose to hire. Looking at Google’s diversity it is obvious that their workforce isn’t diverse at all, for example: only 3% of the workforce is composed of Hispanic workers. So, yes it is partly the companies’ fault since they hire very little people from minorities. So I was wondering why this is, so it got me thinking that maybe they only hire 3% because that is similar to the percentage of Hispanic people in the workforce overall, so I did some research and I found that the Tech workforce is 8% Hispanic (https://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/statistics/reports/hightech/). Now comparing those numbers there is a relevant difference so this tells us that Google can hire more Hispanics. Now, I felt that maybe there are too few Hispanics in tech in general because if you compare the percentage of Hispanics in other industries compare to the one is tech there are 13.9 % Hispanics in other industries (5.9% more than in tech).I believe this is also a significant difference. I noticed a similar trend with other minorities, so I believe the problem might also be that minorities don’t always get into tech as much as other industries.

I do believe this problem is being addressed but I believe that for a change to be noticed it is going to take some time. There are many resources out there to help minorities look for jobs. Maybe what could help more is to get minorities interested the technology industry and therefore expand their availability in the workforce.