USA TODAY International Edition
Why are big tech firms still so white at the top?
People of color are far less likely to hold seniorlevel jobs, even after companies pledged changes
Charlotte Newman, a Harvard Business School graduate who worked as an economic policy adviser to New Jersey Democrat Sen. Cory Booker, says she had high hopes when she joined Amazon in 2017. But scanning the company leadership, she saw few women and people of color in positions of power.
“As a person of color coming in the door, how can you feel there is an upward trajectory for you when the executive layer of the company doesn’t have anyone who looks like you?” said Newman, who is a senior manager at Amazon and is Black.
USA TODAY used U. S. Census Bureau estimates of workforce demographics and employment records from 54 corporations including Google parent Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft, to put numbers to the deep racial
divide inside technology companies that are part of the Standard & Poor’s 100, an index of the most highly valued firms in the stock market.
An analysis of that data found that Black and Hispanic workers are far less likely than white employees to work in management or professional roles at the nation’s top companies.
The young tech sector which prides itself on being innovative is reproducing the kind of gaping racial disparities commonly exhibited by more mature industries like banking.
In fact, little has changed since USA TODAY first investigated these companies’ level of diversity in 2014.
In 2016, 93% of Amazon’s 105 top executives were white, making it the whitest leadership of the S& P 100 companies that USA TODAY surveyed.
More than three- quarters of the Amazon executives – 78% – were men, according to the most recent federal data Amazon has released publicly.
The company declined to provide more recent EEO- 1 data, but USA TODAY reviewed company leadership using an internal Amazon staff directory.
Not a single Black executive reported directly to outgoing billionaire CEO Jeff Bezos, who stepped down July 5, and little more than a handful sit on the teams of his direct reports, according to the review. Bezos’ successor, Andy Jassy, also has no direct reports who are Black.
Amazon told USA TODAY it doubled the number of Black directors and vice presidents last year and has similar goals for 2021, with a focus on increas
ing the number of Black women in midlevel and higher corporate roles.
By the time George Floyd drew his final breath under a white police officer’s knee in May 2020, Newman says she knew deep in her bones it wasn’t enough to protest in the streets.
For years, Black colleagues had tapped on her door to quietly commiserate. They said they’d been hired into lower- level positions than white coworkers with similar qualifications and were passed over for promotions. Then there were the microaggressions and the racist comments.
So Newman decided to speak up about racial justice in a place few dare: inside her own company. In a federal lawsuit filed this year, she alleged she was hired at a lower level than she should have been and was underpaid, denied promotions, sexually harassed and subjected to racial stereotypes describing her as “too direct” and “scary” and looking “like a gorilla.”
A spokesperson said Amazon does not tolerate discrimination or harassment. “We also reviewed Ms. Newman’s interview process, leveling and onboarding, and determined that she was properly placed in her role at the company,” the company said in a statement.
Newman sees it differently. “Is there a pattern of discrimination across the company that disenfranchises women and Black employees in particular and employees of color more broadly?” she said. “The answer is yes.”
Absent from top- level positions
Across all U. S. industries, white employees are three times as likely to be executives as Hispanic or Black employees. But at Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft, white employees are five times as likely to land top jobs as their Hispanic co- workers and seven times as likely as their Black co- workers, USA TODAY found.
Women are less likely than men to be executives or managers in the nation’s workforce.
The disparities persist in the largest tech companies, with one gap that is notably wider: Black women are about half as likely as Black men to hold leadership jobs in big tech.
Almost 1 in 2 white employees at firms examined by USA TODAY held professional roles. Only 1 in 5 Hispanic workers and 1 in 9 Black workers did. While the gap for Hispanics is on par with the U. S. labor force, it is almost three times wider for Black employees.
Overall, inequities at these tech companies stem from the roles people of color tend to fill. Black and Hispanic employees disproportionately work in lower- level and lower- paying positions, USA TODAY found.
For example, of the nearly 52,000 Black workers at Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Amazon, 64% are la