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Google Expands Howard West To Include More HBCUs, Hopes To Reverse Years Of Hiring Inequality

Google Expands Howard West To Include More HBCUs, Hopes To Reverse Years Of Hiring Inequality

In the summer of 2017, Washington, D.C.-based Howard University sent 26 students — mostly juniors — to Google’s campus in Mountain View, Calif., for an intensive 12-week course on coding.

Most of the students were eligible to apply for full software engineering internships at Google for this year. Fourteen students applied and four of them received offers from Google.

The program, dubbed Howard West, succeeded beyond expectations, and now Google is expanding it to include 100 students from other historically Black colleges and universities, according to a Google blog.

Howard West is the latest effort by Google to reverse years of hiring patterns that have resulted in a homogeneous workforce, USA Today reported.

Google began releasing diversity statistics in 2014. In 2016, it reported that just 2 percent of workers were Black and Black Googlers made up 1 percent of the company’s tech workforce.

Google’s 2017 diversity report showed little change for Black workers. Black Googlers still made up only 1 percent of the company’s technical workforce.

Howard Sueing is a software engineer and Google instructor for Howard West. He started working for Google in 2015 — not that long ago — but “during a time when pathways for Black engineers were much less defined.”

Sueing described his first days on the job as “a daily dose of culture shock. The result was a hit to my productivity, potential impact and peace of mind,” he said in a Google blog.

Now Sueing is helping potential new Google recruits to navigate a Silicon Valley landscape that notoriously excluded Black people.

Proximity to resources, inclusive cultures, and fairness in institutional processes play fundamental roles in shaping a person’s experience of the world,” Suing said. … “It’s my hope that programs like Howard West enrich a new generation of engineers who land in Silicon Valley, already positioned to thrive.”

In 2018, Howard West will expand from the original three-month residency to a full academic year—and for students not only at Howard, but also from other HBCUs. “The expansion was part of the original program goal, and it’s wonderful to see it blossoming so quickly,” Sueing said.

Sueing said mentoring students was one of his favorite experiences from the pilot. Students designed, implemented and launched an Angular web application as apart of their coursework.

Lauren Clayton, 20, is one of the four Howard West graduates who plan to return to Google next summer as a software engineering intern. After graduation, she told USA Today she hopes to work in Silicon Valley.

“Definitely, Google is on the list, and I would like to be in the Bay Area,” she said. “That’s where everything is happening. That’s the place to work if you are in tech.”

Alanna Walton, 22, also from Howard, has interned at Google for three consecutive summers. But after graduation, she’s going to work for a company in New York, she told USA Today. The tech workforce in New York is 7.3 percent African American and 9.6 percent Hispanic versus Silicon Valley, where 2.2 percent of the tech workforce is African American and 4.7 percent is Hispanic.

“When I was in Silicon Valley, I realized Silicon Valley really isn’t for me. It didn’t feel as inviting as I wanted it to,” said Walton, who grew up in a predominantly African-American community. “New York is a little more comfortable.”

Google brought in a new vice president of diversity in 2017. Danielle Brown worked previously at Intel and had been at the forefront of Intel’s diversity efforts, Tech Crunch reported.

HBCUs
( AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)