【1991 Archives】

991 Archivestimes they are a-changin': Snap, Inc. has released its first annual diversity report.

The analysis, which the company conducted internally, includes current representation statistics alongside numerical goals to increase representation of women and minorities. It also details organizational commitments to more deeply integrate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) into the company's business practices.

CEO Evan Spiegel announced the release of the report Wednesday with a blog post that echoed his progressive statement about the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minn., in May. In it, he focuses on the history of oppression in the U.S. and the recognition and representation owed to minority groups.

"In the U.S., we have learned that we cannot move forward without acknowledging our past and recognizing that we are here today at the expense of other people," Spiegel writes. "It is clear that we have a choice: allow these inequities to be perpetuated in the United States — or do our part to better fulfill the shared values we seek to uphold as a society."

Alongside Spiegel's words in the report, and lots of information about Snap programs to improve DEI, however, there are the numbers. Snap emphasizes in its report and a letter from its VP of DEI, Oona King, hired in 2019, that it presents its report "humbly." That's for the obvious reason that the numbers on their own don't look so good.

Snap employees are:

• 51.1 percent white

• 33.3 percent Asian

• 6.8 percent Hispanic/LatinX

• 4.4 percent "multiracial"

• 4.1 percent Black/African American

• Less than 1 percent Native American/Alaskan native

The demographics are even more homogeneous at leadership levels. The director level+ is 70.4% white, VP and above is 74.2% white, and the executive level is 83.3% white.

Snap also released statistics around female representation within demographic groups and in tech roles. Women are 32.9% of Snap's workforce, comprising 16% of tech teams and 7% of tech leadership.

Snap's numbers are comparable to its Big Tech contemporaries. Despite companies like Google, Apple, and Facebook releasing diversity reports since 2014, Black representation in Big Tech has remained largely flat, at around 4 to 6 percent.

Unlike other Big Tech reports, the "commitments to do better" actually come with some concrete, numerical goals and promises. Snap plans to:

• Double the number of women in tech at Snap by 2023.

• Double the number of underrepresented U.S. racial and ethnic minorities at Snap by 2025.

• And meet a long-term goal: "Reflect the racial and gender diversity (including non-binary) of the different places where we operate."

It is also including DEI as a component of performance reviews for all employees, and explicitly for executives, committing to a living wage ($70,000+) for all employees, and expanding mentorship and training opportunities. It has committed to several internal and external audits of bias, including of its Discover content, machine learning tools, supplier diversity, and trade association memberships.

Snap released the report on the tail of controversy. After Mashable reported on accusations of racial bias within the content team (which ex-employees first spoke about on Twitter), Business Insider reported that Spiegel didn't want to publicly release a diversity report because he feared it would add to the perception that people of color are not represented in tech. The public conversation about race at Snap resurfaced when Business Insider later reported that Snap had hired a law firm to investigate employee allegations of a "whitewashed" culture.

The diversity report lives on a website it is calling the Citizen Snap report. The report itself is 40 pages long and includes a strategic plan for goal setting and tracking progress.

Snap says its diversity report had been available internally for several years. It previously told Mashable that it was considering how and when would be best to release the report in a way that would be productive. The company says it told employees last week it would be releasing the numbers publicly and that it decided to move ahead with its planned launch date despite the rescheduling of the appearance of Big Tech CEOs before congress to the same day.

CORRECTION: July 29, 2020, 3:33 p.m. EDT A previous version of this story stated that Snap apparently decided the time was right to release its diversity report some time after the June 11 Business Insider report on Spiegel telling employees on June 9 of his reticence to do so.

Snap says that this is not true. It had planned to release the report before B.I. reported on Spiegel's remarks.