Since tech companies like Google started releasing their diversity numbers it’s become quickly apparent that those numbers skew heavily towards white male employees. It’s a problem, but one Google acknowledges and wants to fix. They’ve announced a plan to pay for women and minorities to learn to code.
The new plan was announced by Google X Vice President Megan Smith as part of Google I/O. It expands the recently introduced Made With Code initiative, a $50 million plan focused on getting school-aged girls to code. The new diversity push will pay for three months of continued education in coding for women and minorities in tech.
Google is joining with Code School for this endeavor and will be offering thousands of free accounts to qualified and interested people. According to CNET one thousand of these accounts have already been given, with an unknown number of spots still available. If you’re interested in taking Google up on the offer you can apply here.
It’s good to see Google working to even things out. Their recently-released diversity numbers show that only 30% of their employees are women, and employees in tech-roles are only 17% female. Smith said that’s not something to be ashamed of, saying, “We shouldn’t feel guilty about our biases, we should wake up and do something about them.”
(via CNET, image via JD Lasica)
- Take a deeper look at Google’s diversity numbers
- Facebook’s diversity numbers are similarly terrible
- Google already started trying to improve with Made With Code
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