Diversity at Triplebyte

Celebrating diversity, increasing equity,
and growing opportunities in tech

Triplebyte's Mission

"Create a more just tech industry by fixing hiring
for software engineers."

The Background

Diversity and the tech industry

Our mission at Triplebyte is big and optimistic, but it all boils down to creating access to opportunity. We know that ability and potential are uniformly distributed across all people. However, a history of systemic inequity means that opportunity to develop and apply that ability is not. This is particularly evident in the tech industry, which employs more white, Asian and male workers, and fewer Black, Hispanic, and female workers, than overall private industry 1 . And it’s improving only incrementally over time. More specifically,

  • Women make up half the U.S. population and more than half of the total U.S. workforce, yet they hold only a quarter of the professional computing jobs. Women CS graduates have decreased by 43% over the past 35 years 2 .
  • Over 30% of the U.S. population identifies as Black/Hispanic/Latinx 3 . However only 5.1% of technical employees at Google identified as Black or Latinx in 2014, and that number is just 8.2% today in 2021 4 . Other Silicon Valley big tech firms display similar stats 5 .
  • Asian workers are overrepresented in tech vs. their percentage of the U.S. population, but only in lower-level IC roles. They are excluded from Silicon Valley management and executive roles at a rate even higher than Black and Hispanic technologists 6 .

From our economy and society, to our health and the environment, tech touches every aspect of how we live. However, this industry-wide inequity has led to a vast imbalance when it comes to who is building what for whom.

At Triplebyte, we are in the unique position to actually do something about this imbalance.

The Foundation

Removing bias...

...through our platform: Building a skills-first hiring standard

Access to opportunity comes both from breaking down systemic barriers and from building new connections. Over the past few decades, we’ve seen software engineering become an overly-homogenized industry, partially due to its strict gatekeepers. Which school you went to, the internships and companies on your resume, who you know... these imperfect signals systematically disadvantage particular groups. None of these attributes actually determine whether someone can do the job, but they certainly work to exclude plenty of talented engineers.

We’ve worked hard to create reliable, data-driven, background-blind assessments that remove those sources of bias from the hiring process. Removing bias simultaneously breaks down historical barriers and creates new pathways into tech for those from untraditional backgrounds. For engineers who are Black, Latinx, women, LGBTQ+, or members of other groups historically underrepresented in tech (URT), our process puts the focus where it belongs: on an engineer’s skills, not their background or who they know.

...and throughout the industry: Sharing our tools freely

Hundreds of companies have hired thousands of engineers based on actual skills through our platform. The number of connections between companies and engineers is growing every week. We’re of course happy that our product works for our users, but that’s only a small portion of companies looking to hire engineers. We want to see big, industry-wide changes come much faster than the current pace. That’s why our assessments are free to use for startups that want to reduce hiring bias in their process. As both a member of the tech industry and a facilitator of the job market, we’ll continue working to make bias-free hiring the standard protocol, not the edge case, in tech.

The Future

Making long-term investments in industry-wide equity

We’re proud of our past and continuing work to reduce hiring bias in tech. But we won’t just work to remove bias, we will also prioritize tools that specifically help connect URT engineers with great companies.

However, we believe that connecting existing software engineers and currently hiring companies is a great foundation, not the finish line.

If we really want to improve inequity in tech, we must invest in it the same way as everything else — with budget, resources, time, and devoted strategy. It's a bit cliche at this point, but we really are trying to disrupt the technical hiring industry. As an agile, focused, and motivated startup, we're willing to make big, long-term bets that larger companies aren't willing to risk.

That’s why we incubated ColorStack, a nonprofit focused on growing and retaining Black, Latinx, and Native American students in CS programs, and helping them build long-term careers in tech. We funded ColorStack for two years so they could focus on launching and executing, not on fundraising. Beyond funding, our founders and board provided advice, mentorship, and industry connections, and we’re excited to announce that they’re now pursuing their mission independently.

Through a multiplicative effect, incubation partnerships like these can make significant gains toward the more just tech industry we want to help build. Companies like ColorStack grow the numbers of talented URT engineers, and Triplebyte helps them overcome credential bias and connect with companies. We’d love to hear from you with suggestions for future partnerships to help move this needle.

Working together as an intersectional, inclusive team

We strongly believe in the power of diverse and balanced teams. We’ve assembled a group of people from all sorts of backgrounds here at Triplebyte. And we work hard to foster an inclusive environment where every member of our diverse team feels like they belong.

53

people at Triplebyte

45%

are women

40%

are people of color

18%

identify as LGBTQ+

16

engineers at Triplebyte

25%

women on our engineering team

33%

people of color on our engineering team

33%

identify as LGBTQ+ on our engineering team

We’re happy to share these numbers 7 , but we also recognize that diversity stats are often just table stakes numbers that don’t truly reflect who our teammates are. We are people of different races, genders, sexual orientations, neurodivergences, cultures, religions, political and philosophical traditions, socioeconomic and educational backgrounds, and more. We’ve joined together with a shared optimism that we can help build a better, more just, tech industry. We hope you’ll join us.

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References & Notes

  1. U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. (2014). Diversity in High Tech. https://www.eeoc.gov/special-report/diversity-high-tech.
  2. National Center for Women & Information Technology. (2020, July 23). Women and Information Technology By the Numbers. https://www.ncwit.org/sites/default/files/resources/ncwit_btn_07232020.pdf.
  3. U.S. Department of Commerce. (2019). U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts: United States. https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/IPE120219..
  4. Google. (2021). Google Annual Diversity Report. https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/diversity.google/en//annual-report/static/pdfs/google_2021_diversity_annual_report.pdf?cachebust=2e13d07.
  5. Banjo, S., & King, I. (2020, June 23). From Apple to Facebook, Tech’s New Diversity Pledges Follow Years of Failure. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-23/apple-amazon-facebook-google-microsoft-data-on-black-hiring.
  6. Gee, B., & Denise, P. (2015). The Illusion of Asian Success: Scant Progress for Minorities in Cracking the Glass Ceiling from 2007-2015. Ascend Pan-Asian Leaders. https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.ascendleadership.org/resource/resmgr/research/TheIllusionofAsianSuccess.pdf.
  7. Triplebyte employee demographics survey. (October 2020). Survey was anonymous, self-reported, and optional with a 75% overall employee response rate.