It is no secret that tech has had a long-standing diversity and inclusion problem. The homogeneity of the industry isn’t just a superficial issue — it’s arguably a root cause of many larger issues that plague tech. It has implications for justice and fairness; it also results in devastating flaws in the industry’s own products. Consider unjust facial recognition technologies that exacerbate discrimination against people of color or virtual reality headsets — designed primarily by and for men — that could cause women to feel nauseous. These are just two examples of products in an industry with an insufficient diversity of perspectives going into the product design. Now, amid building social pressure, the industry is pledging to take new steps to narrow its persistent diversity gap.
To Increase Diversity, U.S. Tech Companies Need to Follow the Talent
A state-by-state analysis of where companies should recruit — now that employees can work from anywhere.
December 04, 2020
Summary.
If the tech industry wants to address its longstanding issues with diversity in its ranks, tech companies may need to go to where diverse talent lives, not the other way around. So, where should these companies look? Crunching data on where Black, Latinx, and female STEM graduates live; where lower cost of living removes certain barriers to entry; and where digital infrastructure is reliable and affordable enough to be conducive to remote work, this article identifies six states — Georgia, Texas, Delaware, Virginia, Connecticut, and Maryland — that rank high on the Tech Talent Diversity score and are outside the traditional tech clusters of California, New York, and Massachusetts.