No black or Hispanic employees hold tech leadership positions in at Uber — something that “clearly has to change” — the Silicon Valley-based ride-hailing firm said in its highly anticipated diversity report, just released.
Media responses to Uber’s first-ever diversity report, range from “not great” to “not the worst thing ever.”
The report details the demographics of Uber’s employees as of March 2017. What’s not surprising is that Uber, like many other tech companies, is disproportionately white and male.
“What surprised me, though, is that Uber fares slightly better than Facebook and Apple when it comes to female representation,” Megan Rose Dickey reported in Telecrunch. “Uber also has pretty solid (overall) representation of (black) people in comparison to other tech companies,” Rickey said.
Uber’s diversity is on par with the tech industry and that’s not great, Recode’s headline read.
Unfortunately for the company, the pressure to publish the numbers mounted after former employee Susan Fowler published her account of the sexism and sexual harassment she endured during her year working at Uber.
Telecrunch’s headline was kinder: “Uber’s first diversity report is not the worst thing ever.”
Here’s the make-up of Uber’s employees, according to the report:
In the U.S. overall, Uber is 49.8 percent white, 30.9 percent Asian, 8.8 percent black, 5.6 percent Hispanic and 4.3 percent multiracial.
However, in U.S. tech jobs, those numbers look worse for blacks and better for Asians. In U.S. tech jobs overall, Uber is 46.2 percent white, 47.9 percent Asian, 1 percent black, 2.1 percent Hispanic and 2.4 percent multiracial.
When it comes to blacks and Hispanics in U.S. tech leadership positions — there are none. Uber is:
Uber acknowledges that it lacks diversity in U.S. tech leadership positions:
Our leadership is more homogenous than the rest of our employees. For example, no Black or Hispanic employees hold leadership positions in tech. This clearly has to change—a diversity of backgrounds and experience is important at every level. This is especially important in leadership, because leaders have a disproportionate influence on the culture of teams. And research shows that leaders from diverse backgrounds are more likely to hire diverse teams themselves.
In terms of race, here’s how Uber compares to others, according to Telecrunch:
Facebook (2 percent black, 4 percent Latinx, 3 percent two or more races), Apple (9 percent black, 12 percent Latinx, 2 percent multiracial), Airbnb (2.9 percent black, 6.5 percent Latinx) and Pinterest (2 percent black, 4 percent Latinx, 4 percent two or more races).
Globally, Uber is 36.1 percent female and 63.9 percent male. In tech roles, women make up just 15.4 percent of the workforce globally. In global tech leadership roles, women have 11.3 percent of the jobs.
Uber’s overall female representation is not great, Telecrunch reported, but it’s not as bad as female representation at Facebook (32 percent female) and Apple (32 percent female), for example. It’s also not as good as female representation at Airbnb, which is 43 percent female, and Pinterest, which is 44 percent female.
There is positive news in the Uber report, Recode reported. In the last year, Uber doubled its workforce, and 41 percent of new hires were women. The company also says 15 percent of its employees have work visas and have immigrated from 71 different countries.