Diversity and Inclusion in the Tech Industry

Diversity is matters in the tech industry for the following reasons:

Diverse teams are smarter and more creative: Diverse groups of people bring to organizations more and different ways of seeing a problem and, thus, faster/better ways of solving it.
Diverse companies perform better: In a 2011 study of diversity in the top firms in Standard & Poor’s Composite 1500 list, researchers found “female representation in top management leads to an increase of $42 million in firm value.”
Companies are losing out on great talent: Failing to attract and hire employees from underrepresented backgrounds leads companies to miss out on incredible talent
Diverse companies can better serve a diverse user base : When the employees of an organization better represent their users and desired users, they will build more effectively for those groups. When YouTube’s almost entirely right-handed developer team built the iOS app without considering how left-handed people would use it, for example, 5% to 10% of videos were uploaded upside down as a result.
It’s the right thing to do: While diversity and inclusion efforts are most often driven by business rationales, we’ve spoken with a few CEOs who are motivated primarily by a belief that cultivating an inclusive tech community is simply the right thing to do.