Twitter publicly announces goals for hiring diversity in 2016
It may have taken a while, but major tech companies are finally making diverse hiring more of a priority. To that end, Twitter has publicly announced its diversity goals for 2016 in an effort to hold itself more accountable going forward. Worldwide, the company wants 35 percent of its employees to be women in 2016, with 16 percent of "tech" roles and 25 percent of leadership roles to be held by women. Today, the company reported that 34 percent of its workforce was women, with 13 percent of its tech roles and 22 percent of its leadership roles held by women. Twitter's 2016 goals are pretty modest increases over what its reporting now, but it's still one of the few major tech companies making such goals public.
The company also shared goals for increasing minority representation for its workforce in the US. Currently, 59 percent of Twitter's workforce is white and 31 percent was Asian, and those numbers are even more skewed among Twitter's leadership -- 72 percent of leadership is white and 28 percent is Asian. The company wants to increase "underrepresented minorities" in the US to 11 percent and wants six percent of leadership roles to be held by those minorities in 2016. Twitter's leadership roles in the US actually got less diverse in 2015, so while these goals all seem like a small step forward, it can still mark a notable change over where things stand today.
[Image credit: AP/Mark Lennihan]
