No, Facebook Still Isn’t Any Good At Hiring A Diverse Work Force

Facebook might be the social network that everyone all over the world wants a part of, but the company has a real problem with diversity behind the scenes. A report was just released at the end of last week which showed Facebook had made almost no progress in fixing the diversity problem it had pointed out to it several times, months ago. The diversity report, released Thursday, shows the Facebook is still 52 percent white.

Facebook has an employee roll that is also 38 percent Asian, four percent Hispanic, and two percent black. It’s the six percent overall of blacks and Hispanics that is most often pointed to when talking about the lack of diversity at the firm. Even more galling to most people than the social media juggernaut not being diverse is the excuse the firm gave as to why.

“It has become clear that at the most fundamental level, appropriate representation in technology or any other industry will depend upon more people having the opportunity to gain necessary skills through the public education system.”

Maxine Williams, Facebook’s global head of diversity said in a blog post in response to the diversity report. Huffington Post pointed out the “pipeline problem” is one that has been used at one time or another by companies all over the country. It’s an excuse Facebook has tried before. It’s an excuse that very rarely carries much weight with those pointing out the diversity problem.

Facebook likely thinks it has a point. The firm was able to point to numbers like very few women, of any ethnicity were likely to take the college board’s Advanced Placement Computer Science exam. The website pointed out there were seven states where fewer than 10 girls took this exam. There were also three states where no girls took the exam.

Further, Facebook pointed out “no Black people took the exam in nine states including Mississippi where about 50 percent of high school graduates are Black, and 18 states had fewer than 10 Hispanics take the exam with another five states having no Hispanic AP Computer Science (CS) test takers.” The problem with all of these excuses is Facebook is very rarely hiring people straight out of high school, so these test numbers are at least somewhat irrelevant.

There is also the argument that Facebook has plenty of jobs that have no background in computer science. Huffington Post came up with a table showing 60 percent of non-tech related jobs at Facebook are also taken up by whites. The piece of good news there is that the whites in those jobs are almost evenly split between men and women. Women have the edge in Facebook’s non-tech jobs with 53 percent of all of those jobs being made up of females.

It’s the non-tech sector jobs at Facebook, still made up overwhelmingly of whites that have really infuriated diversity advocates. One such advocate went so far as to call the excuses for the report “insulting.” Facebook has long been tone deaf to the responses it receives from the tech community in particular.

Facebook has been able to do this largely because of just how big it is. There isn’t a social media site that can take its place. The firm seems to feel as though it’s untouchable because of its size.

Facebook is certainly too big to fail. There isn’t going to be a sudden and swift response to the dragging of feet. Facebook needs to be aware of the slower developing but still effective response.

If Facebook continues to look as though it’s either disinterested in diversity, or hostile towards it, the tech community will eventually revolt. That community may not be able to take it down, but they can certainly hurt the bottom line and the reputation of Facebook.

[Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images]