USA TODAY International Edition
Uber just like rest of tech: White, Asian, male
Uber’s first diversity report confirms the embattled ride- hailing company faces the same workforce challenges as its tech world peers.
While the company employs a good number of women, African Americans and Hispanics, those groups are not well represented among Uber’s top leadership and technical positions and instead skew heavily toward support and operational roles.
Of Uber’s 12,000 employees worldwide, 63.9% are men. In the U. S., white employees represent 49.8% of the workforce, Asians 30.9%, blacks 8.8% and Hispanics 5.6%.
The diversity scorecard gives Uber low marks for advancing women and people of color into leadership, professional and technical positions in the company.
For example, customer service representatives are 49.7% women, 33.5% black and 15.2% Hispanic. City- based operations staffers are 43.6% women, 18.4% black and 9.3% Hispanic. Yet Uber technical jobs are held by only 15% of women, 1% of blacks and 2.1% of Hispanics.
For leadership, Uber says that globally 22% of women are in such positions, and in the U. S. blacks hold 2.3% of leadership positions and Hispanics 0.8%.
“This report is a first step in showing that diversity and inclusion is a priority at Uber,” CEO Travis Kalanick said in a statement. “I know that we have been too slow in publishing our numbers, and that the best way to demonstrate our commitment is through transparency.”
Diversity has taken on growing urgency in the tech industry, especially in its power center of Silicon Valley. Tech companies here, staffed mostly by white and Asian men, fear they will lose touch with the diverse nation — and world — that form their consumer base. At the same time, women and minorities are being shut out of one of the fastest- growing, highest- paying sectors of the American economy.
Uber, which had repeatedly refused to release its employee demographics, did so as pressure mounted on the company in the wake of its myriad issues.
Even Uber’s own recruiting team did not have access to the demographics, according to Bloomberg News. The lack of data was out of step with a company that obsessively tracks and analyzes every bit of data it can get its hands on and other major tech companies, most of whom have been making annual reports available to the public since 2014.
But releasing the report itself represents a step in the right direction, Freada Kapor Klein of the Kapor Center says. She and her husband, Mitch Kapor, are Uber investors and wrote a scathing open letter to Kalanick after engineer Susan Fowler wrote her blog post describing a sexist work environment.
“It’s great that Uber has now released its numbers,” Kapor Klein said. “This is hopefully a first big step in Uber turning the page on changing its culture.”
Uber’s workforce should eventually echo its driver demographics, says Orson Aguilar, president of The Greenlining Institute, an Oakland- based activist group.
“Uber should strive to have its workforce meet the diversity of its drivers, who are 50% people of color,” he says.
A 2016 SurveyMonkey Intelligence report found Uber’s U. S. drivers are mostly male, white, high school graduates between the ages of 30 and 49 who make less than $ 50,000 per year. Black drivers represent 28% of the driver pool, Hispanics 17%.
Uber’s diversity report does not include drivers since they are considered contractors.
“It’s a good step, but just the first step for Uber,” said civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, who recently met with Kalanick. “They’ve still got a ways to go to change their culture, but they are at least in the game now.”