More About Our People, Programs and Progress in 2017
By Maxine Williams, Global Director of Diversity
With a global community of over 2 billion people on Facebook, the case for a more diverse and inclusive company is clear. Diversity helps us build better products, make better decisions and better serve our community.
We aren’t where we’d like to be, but we’re encouraged that over the past year, representation for people from underrepresented groups at Facebook has increased. This year, the number of women globally has risen from 33% to 35% and the number of women in tech has increased from 17% to 19%. Women now make up 27% of all new graduate hires in engineering and 21% of all new technical hires at Facebook. In the US, we have increased the representation of Hispanics from 4% to 5%, and Black people from 2% to 3%.
We are proud of the contributions of all of our people. Product Design Director Dantley Davis’ team is focused on building AR capabilities for the Facebook Camera. Delfina Eberly, VP of Infrastructure, Site Operations, runs our cutting-edge data center infrastructure. Community Operations Director James Mitchell’s team helps keep people safe on Instagram. We are already seeing a tangible impact from a more diverse Facebook – and we want to continue to find, grow, and keep the best talent.
We’re committed to building a more diverse, inclusive Facebook – and will remain committed. Much like our approach to launching new products on our platform, we are willing to experiment and listen to feedback. We want to highlight three programs in particular:
- Diverse Slate Approach: The more people you interview who don’t look or think like you, the more likely you are to hire someone from a diverse background. To hard wire this behavior at Facebook, we introduced our Diverse Slate Approach (DSA) in 2015 and have since rolled it out globally. DSA sets the expectation that hiring managers will consider candidates from underrepresented backgrounds when interviewing for an open position.
- Managing Unconscious Bias: Our publicly available Managing Unconscious Bias class encourages our people to challenge and correct bias as soon as they see it – in others, and in themselves. We’ve also doubled down by adding two new internal programs: Managing Inclusion, which trains managers to understand the issues that affect marginalized communities, and Be The Ally, which gives everyone the common language, tools and space to practice supporting others.
- Facebook University: We want to increase access and opportunity for students with an interest in software engineering, business and analytics. Facebook University gives underrepresented students extra training and mentorship earlier in their college education. We started FBU in 2013 with 30 students, and over 500 students have since graduated from the program, with many returning to Facebook for internships and full-time jobs.
You can see our latest employment data, read more about the impact of our people, and review some of our short, medium and long-term efforts in detail here.