Google is only 2.5% black according to a quick search (and 3.5% Latino). That's all employees, not just developers. I'm not sure how that's even possible for a company of that size in America. AA may be underrepresented in tech overall but they certainly aren't in business, HR, legal, etc in my corporate experience so that number seems very low to me. I wonder if any analysis has been to done to determine if any biases or recruitment strageties resulted in those low numbers.
To Google's credit they are developing various pipelines to recruit underrepresented communities.
I'm guessing it's because Latinos and blacks in general are underrepresented in the white collar labor pools that Google draws from. Most Google employees, if not developers, are still in white collar office-type professions.
According to that study, black people make up 2-3% of the white collar workforce. This indicates that Google's diversity initiatives are broadly working, but Google alone cannot overcome the societal issues that keep various people out of these well paying career paths.
Hispanics represent about 5% of the white collar workforce, so again, the 3.5% indicates that Google is not exactly where one would expect, but still not as off as a naive analysis would seem.
The narrative that Google is not hiring people of certain skin colors because of racism on their part falls apart the moment you look at numbers over which Google has little control.
They show hiring and attrition numbers, but they don't break down every category by tech/non-tech.
I'll highlight these:
2018 (Tech): 2.5% (1.4%) black
2014 (Tech): 1.9% (1.1%) black
I guess there is some improvement here. For reference, California is ~6% black and the USA is ~12%. If you grew up in a black neighborhood or went to an HBCU, you are probably accustomed to much higher percentages than the average and being diffused into a huge organization might be jarring.
> AA may be underrepresented in tech overall but they certainly aren't in business, HR, legal,
Other than on admin support roles (and maybe even there), African-Americans are underrepresented in all of those fields. Less so than in tech, but still.
To Google's credit they are developing various pipelines to recruit underrepresented communities.