Roger Fingas
Apple on Thursday released its 2017 diversity report, showing steps forward in some areas, but work to do in others.
Internationally the split between male and female workers has remained unchanged since 2016, sitting at 68 percent versus 32, Apple said. Putting a positive spin on the situation, Apple noted that the number of women in leadership positions has grown 1 point to 29 percent, and within leaders under 30, women have advanced 3 points to 39 percent.
Non-whites now represent 46 of the company's U.S. workforce, up 2 points since last year though just 1 point since Apple's first-ever diversity report in 2014. Half of the company's domestic hires between July 2016 and July 2017 were from "historically underrepresented groups in tech," namely women, blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans, Native Hawaiians, and other Pacific islanders.
Accompanying the report is a new marketing video, "Open," which touts the importance of different perspectives and Apple's acceptance of various ages, races, religions, disabilities, and sexual orientations.
Apple has sometimes come under fire for being predominantly male and white, like many other U.S. high-tech firms. In October, Apple's new head of Inclusion and Diversity — Denise Young Smith, formerly in charge of human resources — drew flak for allegedly downplaying the need for better gender and racial representation.
Charles Martin
Amber Neely
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AppleInsider Staff
Malcolm Owen
Oliver Haslam
18 Comments
My personal hope for Apple is that they are maniacally hiring the very very best people. And not hiring to achieve a certain % or quota
That said, do everything possible to better the inflow pipeline across all demos
But no one should get in the door unless they are personally awesome
Here's the thing... So-called "Whites" make up 73% of the US population, but a much smaller fraction of the world's population. Is this the alleged "imbalance" that is being addressed by Apple? If so, they better start hiring a LOT more Asians and Indians, otherwise this should be chalked up to Apple buckling under to political correctness run amok.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_States#Race_and_ethnicity
And it should also be noted that less than 4% of the population falls into the label of "LGBT", yet this population is overrepresented both in the media and in these diversity pushes.
http://news.gallup.com/poll/183383/americans-greatly-overestimate-percent-gay-lesbian.aspx
Curious how many people they have over the age of 40.
As long as they are hiring the most qualified people I’m all for diversity. If it’s about quotas and giving a job to a lesser qualified candidate because of their race, sex, ethnicity, to meet the diversity numbers then screw that. It’s nothing less than reverse discrimination.
Diversity does not work....we tried that at my former employer..it sucks because they hired based on diversity crap and ends up those that are really telented and experienced bears the burdens. Ex military are better choices than skin colors in general...