Twitter engineer quits after criticising site’s lack of diversity

Now Twitter is weighing in via its own blog post from top engineering exec, Alex Roetter, who was called out in the post for how he handled diversity issues among his reports. He noted this instance as a clear “blind spot” in understanding diversity.

Upon his departure, he was offered a severance package that included a non-disparagement clause, but he declined it in order to be able to speak out about his time at the company.

Twitter is a platform that’s amplified voices of underrepresented groups, from #Ferguson to #BlackLivesMatter to #ILookLikeAnEngineer. In fact, a higher percentage of black Internet users rely on Twitter than do white Internet users, at 27 percent to 21 percent, respectively, according to the Pew Research Center. However, he hopes that the return of Jack Dorsey as the CEO will likely solve all the diversity issues. And the company, like many of its rivals, has vowed to improve diversity. In leadership positions, that percent is zero. In his post, he says his reasons for leaving have everything to do with the way Twitter is addressing diversity and inclusion.

Twitter’s issues with growth and engagement and the issues with internal diversity are somewhat related.

“This commitment includes the expansion of our inclusion and diversity programs, diversity recruiting, employee development, and resource group-led initiatives”, the San Francisco-based company said.

It’s an approach that befits an engineer, said Miley, but it uncovered large gaps in the way Twitter’s senior leadership thought about race and ethnicity, which isn’t easily captured by surnames alone.

Before joining Twitter, Miley spent time at tech giants like Apple, Google and Yahoo. “In comparison, when Hillary Clinton and Mellody Hobson visited, the Twitter Women Engineering resource group was notified and given an opportunity to meet privately”. In it, he described an interaction he had with Roetter at a leadership meeting, in which Roetter said, “diversity is important, but we won’t lower the bar”. “Needless to say, the majority of them performed well”, he writes. “What I also found disconcerting is this otherwise highly sophisticated thinker could posit that an issue this complex could be addressed by name analysis”, wrote Miley.

“I had self-identified visionaries tell me “we’re doing fine” on diversity when they had only one black employee out of 100″, wrote another.

On average, just 2% of technology workers at seven Silicon Valley companies that have released staffing numbers are black; 3% are Hispanic.

Twitter’s recent lay-offs have disproportionately affected African-Americans and Hispanics, believes Rev. Jesse Jackson. In his response, Roetter said his comments were not accurately portrayed nor what he actually intended, but that nonetheless he “did a poor job communicating”. “Because she is in front of you despite the obstacles that have been put in front of her”. “Anecdotally you start correlating that with, ‘Hey this is a diverse candidate, or this is a woman, ‘” he said.

When Twitter did make an effort to find non-white talent, it derailed itself by taking a painfully dense data-centric approach, rather than just trying to act like humans. But a black engineering manager who left Twitter last week is speaking up about how that might be hard.

In his post Tuesday, Miley wrote: “There was very little diversity in thought and nearly no diversity in action [at Twitter]”. Twitter, for its part, denied that assertion, but did not release any specific data. The spokeswoman would not comment on Dorsey’s vision or plans to diversify the company.

While diversity at Twitter might be lacking, among its users it is not.