Apple, Intel Money Not Enough to Boost Silicon Valley Diversity

Posted June 9, 2015

Apple and Intel's investments aren't enough to change 'brogrammer' workplace culture.

Intel is will invest $125 million in businesses run by women and underrepresented minorities as part of its larger initiative to promote these groups within the work force, the company announced on Tuesday.
(JUSTIN SULLIVAN/GETTY IMAGES)

Silicon Valley companies are recognizing the need to encourage a more diverse workplace, but advocacy groups caution against simply throwing money at the problem.

Intel on Tuesday announced that the company will invest $125 million in businesses run by women and underrepresented minorities. It's part of the chip-maker's $300 million Diversity in Technology Initiative with the goal of better representing women and minorities in its U.S. workforce by 2020 through new hiring and employee retention goals.
"With this new fund, Intel Capital is committed to investing in the best talent from a myriad of backgrounds to cultivate brilliant innovations that serve the needs of a diverse public," Lisa Lambert, the executive leading the Intel Capital Diversity Fund, said in a press release.
Apple is also investing millions in diversity efforts. In March, they donated $50 million to the Thurgood Marshall College Fund and the National Center for Women and Information Technology. At its Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday, the company had two of its female executives onstage with Chief Executive Tim Cook to present their latest innovations -- a first for the tech giant.
"The most diverse group will produce the best product, I firmly believe that," Cook during his keynote. "If you believe as we believe that diversity leads to better products, and we're all about making products that enrich people's lives, then you obviously put a ton of energy behind diversity the same way you would put a ton of energy behind anything else that is truly important."

Advocacy groups praise these efforts, but also warn that more than scholarship money is needed to reform Silicon Valley’s sexist “brogrammer” culture. The lack of diversity at companies can encourage bias against women and minorities, but also damage innovation and limit the quality of products those companies sell, says Allyson Kapin, founder of Women Who Tech.

“Women have graduated through those programs and entered the startup world or the tech industry and faced a brogrammer culture where they didn’t feel welcome," she says. “Until we dismantle that culture in the industry and at startups to make it feel more welcoming to women and people of color then nothing will change.”

Citing harassment lawsuits filed by women against their former employers at Zillow, Tinder and GitHub, Kapin pointed out that things only began to change once the problems became public.

“That seemed to be OK in the culture at those companies, since nobody at the top was doing anything about it until it was published in the press,” she says. “Racism and sexism should not be tolerated.”

Women and minorities need visible role models at tech companies to remind them that doors are open to them, Elizabeth Bierman, president of the Society of Women Engineers, pointed out. Though she praised Apple for featuring female executives at the conference, small acts -- like co-workers asking new people to lunch or talking more openly with female co-workers -- can help make the office feel more inclusive and boost the “informal networking” that helps others advance in a business, Bierman says.

“When you ask someone out to lunch there can be an unconscious bias, since you might just ask someone who looks like you,” she says. “When people step outside of their comfort zone that kind of opens the doors for everyone to be included and opens the orbit of people who are considered for promotion.”

Women and minorities are making a greater mark on the startup world in recent years, as launching their own companies is a clear way to avoid “horror stories they have heard” about tech company workplaces that favor white men, Kapin says.

There was a 68 percent increase in the number of women who founded startups between 1997 and 2014, along with a 216 percent increase in the number of startups founded by women of color, according to a report compiled by Craigconnects and Women Who Tech. Getting funding for a new business is difficult enough, but during those years startups with all-male teams received six investments for every one given to a female-led startup, the report shows. Only 15 percent of venture capital-funded companies in the U.S. have a female executive, according to a recent Babson College report.

While investments like Intel's can help, the financial strain and time commitment required to found a startup make it difficult for many minorities to become entrepreneurs, says Maci Peterson, founder of Washington, D.C.-based startup On Second Thought. Venture firms often want entrepreneurs to work on their startups full-time before agreeing to fund them, but minorities may not have the savings or financial support from families that will enable them to work for free while waiting for investment, says Peterson, who is African-American.

"Sometimes I think it is overlooked that minorities can have a lot of student loans and can’t always afford to leave their full-time jobs,” says Peterson, whose company makes a messaging app that gives people a chance to cancel a text up to 60 seconds after they've sent it. “I’m lucky that I come from a family that could pay for my college outright, so I could leave my corporate job before we were fully funded.”

Her company is currently pursuing its seed funding, and Peterson is planning to add to her three-person staff. As the founder of her company, she says it’s important to encourage a culture where everyone feels included.

“Just diversity of thought is very important,” she says. “Without diversity of thought innovation never really happens.”