硅谷夠不夠多元 讓數據說話

SAN FRANCISCO — Ellen Pao spent the last few years spotlighting the technology industry’s lack of diversity, in court and beyond. Erica Baker caused a stir at Google when she started a spreadsheet last year for employees to share their salaries, highlighting the pay disparities between those of different genders doing the same job. Laura I. Gómez founded a start-up focused on improving diversity in the hiring process.

舊金山——鮑康如(Ellen Pao)這幾年來一直致力於揭露科技行業缺乏多樣性的情況，不論是在法庭上還是法庭外。埃裏卡·貝克(Erica Baker)去年創建的一個讓員工曬薪水的電子表格在谷歌(Google)引起了轟動，突顯了工作內容相同但性別不同的員工之間的收入差距。勞拉·I·戈麥斯(Laura I. Gómez)辦了一家初創公司，專注於提高招聘過程中的多樣性。

Now the three — along with five other prominent Silicon Valley women from companies including Pinterest, Stripe and Slack — are starting an effort to collect and share data to help diversify the rank-and-file employees who make up tech companies. The nonprofit venture, called Project Include, was unveiled on Tuesday.

現在，上述三人和另外五名來自Pinterest、Stripe、Slack等公司的知名硅谷女性，正着手蒐集和分享數據，旨在促進科技公司普通員工隊伍的多元化。她們的非盈利組織“容納計劃”(Project Include)於上週二亮相。

“The standard mantra for every company on diversity statistics is, ‘We’re not doing well, but we’re working on it,’” said Ms. Pao, a former venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, who sued the firm for accusations of gender discrimination and lost. “People don’t learn anything from that. Can you tell us what are you actually doing?”

“每家公司關於員工多元化統計數據的標配口頭禪都是，‘我們做得不好，但我們正努力做好’。”曾經起訴前僱主風險投資公司凱鵬華盈(Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers)性別歧視，但卻敗訴的鮑康如說。“這句話沒有任何內容。你能說說你們到底正在做什麼嗎？”

The group’s push is one of the more visible diversity efforts to come from women in Silicon Valley as tech companies grapple with criticism over the makeup of their work forces, which skew white and male. Over the last few years, tech entrepreneurs like Kimberly Bryant of Black Girls Code and Laura Weidman Powers of Code 2040 have promoted the inclusion of young women and minorities in early computer science education programs with their start-ups.

當偏愛白人和男性的硅谷公司忙於應付對員工構成展開的批評之際，許多更爲引人注目的推動多元化的努力，都由該地區的女性主導，“容納計劃”正在做的事情只是其中一例。過去幾年間，科技行業的一些創業者，比如“黑姑娘編程”(Black Girls Code)的金柏莉·布萊恩特(Kimberly Bryant)和Code 2040的勞拉·韋德曼·鮑爾斯(Laura Weidman Powers)，已經與其所在的初創組織或初創公司一起，推出旨在推動年輕女性和少數族裔接受計算機科學早期教育的項目。

Project Include stands out because of the number of well-known tech women in the group who have championed diversity and are now banding together. Ms. Pao, for one, was in the headlines last year for her court case against Kleiner Perkins, as well as her ouster as interim chief executive of Reddit, the online message board. Tracy Chou, a software engineer at Pinterest who is also a founding member of Project Include, has been one of the most vocal engineers concerning the lack of female peers.

“容納計劃”的搶眼之處在於，它聚集了科技行業裏一直在倡導多元化的多位知名女性。例如鮑康如，由於和凱鵬華盈打官司，以及短暫出任網上討論區Reddit首席執行官後遭到解僱，她在去年是新聞人物。“容納計劃”的另一名聯合創始人是Pinterest的軟件工程師周怡君(Tracy Chou)，她向來是工程師羣體中對缺乏女性同行的問題最直言不諱的人之一。

Project Include’s other founders are Freada Kapor Klein, a partner at the Kapor Center and a longtime proponent of inclusion in tech, Susan Wu of the mobile payments start-up Stripe, Y-Vonne Hutchinson of the diversity consulting firm ReadySet and Bethanye McKinney Blount, a former executive at Reddit.

“容納計劃”的其他創始人分別爲卡普爾中心(Kapor Center)合夥人、一直倡導把科技行業變得更具包容性的弗裏德·卡普爾·克萊因(Freada Kapor Klein)，移動支付初創公司Stripe的蘇珊·吳(Susan Wu)， 多樣性諮詢公司ReadySet的伊馮娜·哈欽森(Y-Vonne Hutchinson)，Reddit前高管貝薩耶·麥金尼·布朗特(Bethanye McKinney Blount)。

All of them are working on Project Include outside of their respective workplaces, on their own time.

她們都會根據自己的時間，在各自的工作之餘爲“容納計劃”做事。

As part of Project Include, the group plans to extract commitments from tech companies to track the diversity of their work forces over time and eventually share that data with other start-ups. The effort will focus on start-ups that employ 25 to 1,000 workers, in the hope of spurring the companies to think about equality sooner rather than later. The project will also ask for participation from venture capital firms that advise and mentor the start-ups.

“容納計劃”的工作之一是讓一些科技企業承諾在一段時間內追蹤自身員工構成的多樣性，然後將相關數據與其他初創企業分享。這一計劃將聚焦僱員人數爲25人到1000人的初創企業，希望能夠推動它們及早考慮平等問題。該計劃還會邀請爲初創企業提供諮詢和指導的風險投資公司參與其中。

Project Include aims to have 18 companies as part of its first cohort; a few have already signed up. The group will meet regularly for seven months to define and track specific metrics. At the end of that period, the group will publish an anonymized set of results to show the progress — or lack thereof — that the start-ups have made around diversity.

“容納計劃”當前的目標是說服18家企業作爲第一批合作者加入進來；有幾家已經簽約。該組織會在七個月的時間裏定期組織會議，定義和追蹤具體指標。七個月過後，該組織會發布一份匿名的情況彙編，來展示這些公司在推動多樣性方面取得——或者缺乏——進展的情況。

“If companies start early with diversity and inclusion, they don’t have to bolt it on later, which is much harder,” said Ms. Baker, the former Google engineer, who now works at Slack, a workplace collaboration software start-up.

“如果企業在創辦之初就關注多樣性和包容性問題，就不必等到日後更困難的時候再去解決了，”谷歌前工程師貝克說。她目前任職於企業協同辦公軟件初創企業Slack。

The group’s push is intended to cut through tech’s slow pace of change on diversity. Large companies, including Google, Facebook and Microsoft, have openly admitted their failings in creating diverse work forces, and some have started programs to move the needle. But that has not seemed to spur much movement in views on the issue.

“容納計劃”做這件事的目的，是快速推動進展一直頗爲緩慢的科技行業人員構成多元化的進程。谷歌、Facebook 、微軟(Microsoft)等大公司已經公開承認自己沒能讓員工隊伍變得更爲多元，一些公司已經啓動了旨在促成改變的計劃。但這似乎沒能讓人們看待這一問題的觀念有太多進步。

In December, for instance, Michael Moritz, a partner at the venture capital firm Sequoia Capital, made headlines when he said in an interview that his firm — which had no female investment partners in the United States — would focus on hiring women but would not “lower its standards” to do so. He also said the firm was blind to gender and race.

例如，去年12月，風險投資公司紅杉資本(Sequoia Capital)合夥人邁克爾·莫里茨(Michael Moritz)因爲採訪中的一番話而登上了媒體頭條，他說公司——在美國沒有女性投資合夥人——會致力於聘用女性，但不會爲此“降低標準”。他還說他的公司無視性別和種族的界線。

“It is this incredibly self-serving mythology that we are the best and the brightest, and that the best ideas rise to the top and will get funded,” said Ms. Kapor Klein, noting there is plenty of data to show that minority access to tech programs and networks is worse than that of white males. “Despite an avalanche of rigorous data to the contrary, the belief in pure meritocracy persists.”

“就是這種極端自利的謬論，以爲我們是最好、最聰明的，以爲最佳的想法會脫穎而出，並得到資金，”卡普爾·克萊因說。她還指出，大量數據顯示，少數族裔獲取科技項目和人脈的渠道要比白人男性差。“對純粹精英主義的信奉依然存在，儘管大量嚴謹的數據顯示事實恰恰相反。”