White or Asian men are the typical employees in major US technology firms, and this has changed little since the first wave of “diversity reporting” last year. Workforce data provided by companies was global regarding gender and limited to the US regarding ethnicity.
Google Inc was overall 70 percent male in January this year, a make-up unchanged from last year. When it came to purely technology jobs, the percentage of men rose to 82. About 60 percent of Google employees were white, while about 31 percent were said to be Asian.
The Internet giant stepped up recruitment of blacks and Hispanics last year, but their share of the workforce remained unchanged at 2 and 3 percent respectively. Google said that it has ramped up university recruitment and is devoting US$150 million this year to improving diversity.
Apple Inc increased last year’s hiring of women, blacks and Hispanics by more than 50 percent, adding a total of 15,900 positions in a new record for the world’s biggest technology company, according to chief executive Tim Cook, who maintained that there was “a lot more work to be done.”
California-based Apple’s workforce was 69 percent men at the end of June, compared with 70 percent last summer. The share reached 79 percent for technology positions.
Some 54 percent of Apple employees were white, while about 11 percent were Asian. Apple showed a relatively high proportion of employees who were Hispanic (11 percent, unchanged) and black (8 percent, up one point). Facebook Inc has Sheryl Sandberg as its second most powerful executive but was still 68 percent men in late May, down one point from the previous year.
The share reached 84 percent when limited to technological positions. Whites made up 55 percent of the social network’s workforce in a drop of 2 percent from a year earlier, while the share of Asians rose 2 percent to 36 percent.
The share of Hispanics and blacks did not change, remaining 4 percent and 2 percent respectively. Facebook has begun resorting at times to a “Rooney Rule” that has been in force since 2003 in the National Football League. The rule calls for at least one qualified candidate from an under-represented group to be proposed for each vacancy. This rule is being tested by other technology firms including Twitter and Pinterest.
Intel Corp has also adopted the Rooney Rule. The world’s largest chip maker disclosed a breakdown of staff in July that was virtually unchanged compared to the end of last year. Men account for 75 percent of employees, and even 80 percent in technological jobs.
Fifty-four percent of employees are white, followed by Asian workers at 32 percent. Hispanics made up some 8 percent of the workforce while 3.5 percent was black. Intel is striving to have its workforce reflect the demographics of the US population by 2020, with a goal of 40 percent “diversity” hires this year.
In June, Intel launched an investment fund of US$125 million targeting start-ups run by women or ethnic minorities.
Microsoft Corp’s ranks of employees was 72 percent men in late June, and the share rose to 83 percent for technology positions.
The US software giant classified 59 percent of its workers as “Caucasian,” and said it was 29 percent Asian, starting with chief executive Satya Nadella.
Only 5 percent of Microsoft’s workforce was Latino and 3 percent was black — levels virtually unchanged from an initial diversity report published in October of last year.
Amazon reported that 63 percent of its workers as of the middle of last year were men.
A racial breakdown of employees was given as 60 percent white, 15 percent black, 13 percent Asian and 9 percent Hispanic.
Civil rights activist the Reverend Jesse Jackson and his Rainbow Push group criticized the lack of details about job assignments, contending that a high percentage of the online retailing giant’s black and Latino employees “work in their warehouses.” Yahoo Inc has a woman at the helm, with former Google executive Marissa Mayer working as chief executive since mid-2012.
The company’s overall workforce was 37 percent female in June in a share unchanged from a year earlier. Men still dominated technology jobs, accounting for about 84 percent of employees.
Approximately 47 percent of Yahoo workers were white, while the share for Asians was given as 43 percent. Hispanic and blacks made up 4 and 2 percent of the Yahoo workforce respectively.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained