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Twitter says it ‘met many’ of its goals around diversity last year, so it’s setting new goals for 2017

Twitter’s workforce is a little more diverse, but still predominantly white and male.

Happy-looking employees of Twitter posed around a table as if working
Happy-looking employees of Twitter posed around a table as if working
Twitter

Most Silicon Valley tech companies have workforces that look the same: They’re predominantly white and predominantly male, especially in leadership and technical positions.

Twitter is no different. But unlike most of its tech counterparts, the company set measurable goals for diversifying its staff in 2016, and now it says it “met or surpassed many of [them].”

On Thursday, Twitter released updated employee demographics info. A few of the key changes to Twitter’s workforce over the past year:

  • Underrepresented minorities, which includes anyone who is not white or Asian, hold 9 percent of Twitter’s technical positions, up from 7 percent in 2015. This group also makes up 6 percent of Twitter’s leadership; underrepresented minorities held zero leadership positions in 2015.
  • Women make up 37 percent of Twitter’s U.S. workforce. The company was aiming to jump from 34 percent to 35 percent. Women also make up 15 percent of Twitter’s technical workforce, short of its goal of 16 percent.
  • Women hold 30 percent of Twitter’s leadership roles, up from 22 percent in 2015. The goal for last year was 25 percent.
Twitter

So Twitter’s workforce is more diverse. But it’s also still dominated by white and Asian men, which is why the company has released a new set of diversity metrics for 2017. Like last year, those goals focus on bringing more women and minorities into tech and leadership roles.

Twitter isn’t small — it has roughly 3,500 employees worldwide, so even small jumps in percentage points represent dozens of employees. (The demographic data around underrepresented minorities, though, is just for its U.S. workforce.)

Twitter

Twitter’s not the only Silicon Valley company working to change the demographic breakdown of its workforce. Pinterest also set measurable hiring goals for minority and female employees in 2016, and while Facebook doesn’t set public goals, it also reports employee demographics each year.


This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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