Snap still isn't very diverse, but its engineers are trying to build a more equitable product

Snap engineers are working to root out racial bias from the company's products, even as improving diverse representation in the company's workforce is slow going.

Snap, Inc. released its second annual diversity report Thursday, containing mixed results. The company has made modest gains in hiring underrepresented racial and ethnic groups, increasing by .5 percentage points to 13.6 percent at the leadership level.

There was notable improvement in hiring Black employees, particularly Black women, (with hiring in the latter group growing from 2 percent to 5 percent of new hires) and elevating women to tech leadership roles. On the other end of the spectrum, retention of Hispanic employees dipped slightly, as did representation of Asian people in leadership roles, to 14.3 percent (which is disproportionately low compared to representation of Asian people across the company as a whole at 34.3 percent). Read more...