twitter
Workplace

Twitter's staff is 43% women. They only net 37% of compensation.

Twitter's latest diversity report showed gains in representation at the technical and leadership levels. But it's still facing a pay gap.

Twitter's staff is 43% women. They only net 37% of compensation.

Twitter

Photo: Sara Kurfeß/Unsplash

Twitter released its second quarter diversity report Thursday, which reflected growing numbers of women and underrepresented minorities in technical and leadership roles. But the company still faces gaps in representation and pay equity: In the last quarter of 2020, it found that while women make up about 43% of Twitter's staff, they only take home about 37% of the company's overall compensation.

The gap also existed for underrepresented minorities at Twitter. "In the US, 6.3% identified as Black and netted 4.7% of total compensation, and 5.8% identified as Latinx and netted 4.8% of total compensation," the company's 2020 annual report reads.

This type of pay equity analysis is relatively unique because it looks beyond whether women and underrepresented minorities in a certain role make as much as their white or male counterparts. That's a metric Twitter has been studying for a while now, and according to the 2020 report, women at Twitter earned 100% of what their equivalent male peers earn. The same goes for underrepresented minorities and their white peers.

But the study looking at overall share of compensation gets at a deeper question: Are women and underrepresented minorities holding as many high-paid positions as their male and white peers? The answer appears to be: Not yet.

Twitter attributed this discrepancy to the fact that there are fewer women and underrepresented minorities in leadership and senior technical roles. "These insights underscore the urgency with which we must accelerate efforts already underway to increase representation and retention of women and [underrepresented minorities] in leadership and technical positions via our hiring, talent development and promotion practices," the report read.

The company's latest diversity report for the second quarter of 2021 shows it's making some progress on that front. The percentage of Black employees in technical roles has nearly tripled since Twitter started reporting these stats in 2017, and the percentage of Black employees in leadership roles has nearly doubled. Latinx representation in technical roles has also tripled. All of those numbers, though, still hover in the single digits. The percentage of women in technical roles also increased to about 29% last year, up more than 10 percentage points since 2017, while the number of women in leadership stayed roughly the same.

Along with its diversity stats, Twitter also shared details about its business resource groups, which are communities for employees from different backgrounds and demographics. In 2020, the company began paying leaders of these groups, recognizing that for some, leading the groups came with a heavy workload that went unrecognized by their managers. "The work they are responsible for driving is central to our journey to becoming the world's most diverse, inclusive, and accessible tech company," read a company blog post by Twitter's vice president of people experience, Dalana Brand.

Correction: This story has been updated throughout with Twitter's Q2 numbers. An earlier version included Twitter's 2020 stats.

Issie Lapowsky

Issie Lapowsky ( @issielapowsky) is Protocol's chief correspondent, covering the intersection of technology, politics, and national affairs. She also oversees Protocol's fellowship program. Previously, she was a senior writer at Wired, where she covered the 2016 election and the Facebook beat in its aftermath. Prior to that, Issie worked as a staff writer for Inc. magazine, writing about small business and entrepreneurship. She has also worked as an on-air contributor for CBS News and taught a graduate-level course at New York University's Center for Publishing on how tech giants have affected publishing.

diversity and inclusiontwitter
Fintech

Judge Zia Faruqui is trying to teach you crypto, one ‘SNL’ reference at a time

His decisions on major cryptocurrency cases have quoted "The Big Lebowski," "SNL," and "Dr. Strangelove." That’s because he wants you — yes, you — to read them.

The ways Zia Faruqui (right) has weighed on cases that have come before him can give lawyers clues as to what legal frameworks will pass muster.

Photo: Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post via Getty Images

“Cryptocurrency and related software analytics tools are ‘The wave of the future, Dude. One hundred percent electronic.’”

That’s not a quote from "The Big Lebowski" — at least, not directly. It’s a quote from a Washington, D.C., district court memorandum opinion on the role cryptocurrency analytics tools can play in government investigations. The author is Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui.

Keep ReadingShow less
Veronica Irwin

Veronica Irwin (@vronirwin) is a San Francisco-based reporter at Protocol covering fintech. Previously she was at the San Francisco Examiner, covering tech from a hyper-local angle. Before that, her byline was featured in SF Weekly, The Nation, Techworker, Ms. Magazine and The Frisc.

cryptocurrencyblockchainbitcoinlawsuit
sponsored content
Sponsored Content

How is technological innovation breaking down barriers and increasing access to financial services?

The financial technology transformation is driving competition, creating consumer choice, and shaping the future of finance. Hear from seven fintech leaders who are reshaping the future of finance, and join the inaugural Financial Technology Association Fintech Summit to learn more.

Keep ReadingShow less
FTA
The Financial Technology Association (FTA) represents industry leaders shaping the future of finance. We champion the power of technology-centered financial services and advocate for the modernization of financial regulation to support inclusion and responsible innovation.
sponsoredsponsored content
amazon web services
Enterprise

AWS CEO: The cloud isn’t just about technology

As AWS preps for its annual re:Invent conference, Adam Selipsky talks product strategy, support for hybrid environments, and the value of the cloud in uncertain economic times.

Photo: Noah Berger/Getty Images for Amazon Web Services

AWS is gearing up for re:Invent, its annual cloud computing conference where announcements this year are expected to focus on its end-to-end data strategy and delivering new industry-specific services.

It will be the second re:Invent with CEO Adam Selipsky as leader of the industry’s largest cloud provider after his return last year to AWS from data visualization company Tableau Software.

Keep ReadingShow less
Donna Goodison

Donna Goodison (@dgoodison) is Protocol's senior reporter focusing on enterprise infrastructure technology, from the 'Big 3' cloud computing providers to data centers. She previously covered the public cloud at CRN after 15 years as a business reporter for the Boston Herald. Based in Massachusetts, she also has worked as a Boston Globe freelancer, business reporter at the Boston Business Journal and real estate reporter at Banker & Tradesman after toiling at weekly newspapers.

awsamazon web servicescloud computinganalyticsdata analyticsadam selipsky

Farewell from Protocol

Image: Protocol

We launched Protocol in February 2020 to cover the evolving power center of tech. It is with deep sadness that just under three years later, we are winding down the publication.

As of today, we will not publish any more stories. All of our newsletters, apart from our flagship, Source Code, will no longer be sent. Source Code will be published and sent for the next few weeks, but it will also close down in December.

Keep ReadingShow less
Bennett Richardson

Bennett Richardson ( @bennettrich) is the president of Protocol. Prior to joining Protocol in 2019, Bennett was executive director of global strategic partnerships at POLITICO, where he led strategic growth efforts including POLITICO's European expansion in Brussels and POLITICO's creative agency POLITICO Focus during his six years with the company. Prior to POLITICO, Bennett was co-founder and CMO of Hinge, the mobile dating company recently acquired by Match Group. Bennett began his career in digital and social brand marketing working with major brands across tech, energy, and health care at leading marketing and communications agencies including Edelman and GMMB. Bennett is originally from Portland, Maine, and received his bachelor's degree from Colgate University.

machine learning
Enterprise

Why large enterprises struggle to find suitable platforms for MLops

As companies expand their use of AI beyond running just a few machine learning models, and as larger enterprises go from deploying hundreds of models to thousands and even millions of models, ML practitioners say that they have yet to find what they need from prepackaged MLops systems.

As companies expand their use of AI beyond running just a few machine learning models, ML practitioners say that they have yet to find what they need from prepackaged MLops systems.

Photo: artpartner-images via Getty Images

On any given day, Lily AI runs hundreds of machine learning models using computer vision and natural language processing that are customized for its retail and ecommerce clients to make website product recommendations, forecast demand, and plan merchandising. But this spring when the company was in the market for a machine learning operations platform to manage its expanding model roster, it wasn’t easy to find a suitable off-the-shelf system that could handle such a large number of models in deployment while also meeting other criteria.

Some MLops platforms are not well-suited for maintaining even more than 10 machine learning models when it comes to keeping track of data, navigating their user interfaces, or reporting capabilities, Matthew Nokleby, machine learning manager for Lily AI’s product intelligence team, told Protocol earlier this year. “The duct tape starts to show,” he said.

Keep ReadingShow less
Kate Kaye

Kate Kaye is an award-winning multimedia reporter digging deep and telling print, digital and audio stories. She covers AI and data for Protocol. Her reporting on AI and tech ethics issues has been published in OneZero, Fast Company, MIT Technology Review, CityLab, Ad Age and Digiday and heard on NPR. Kate is the creator of RedTailMedia.org and is the author of "Campaign '08: A Turning Point for Digital Media," a book about how the 2008 presidential campaigns used digital media and data.

mlopsaimachine learning
Latest Stories
Bulletins