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Running Head: A GOOGOL OF TROUBLING DIVERSITY TECH TRENDS

Google: A Googol of Troubling Diversity Tech Trends

University of Alaska Fairbanks

Professor Cundiff

MBA 617 Organizational Theory for Managers

November 7th, 2017

A GOOGOL OF TROUBLING DIVERSITY TECH TRENDS

Organizational Description

In 1996, Larry Page and Sergey Brin were classmates at Stanford University where

Sergey was a graduate student and Larry Page was enrolled in the PhD program in the Computer

Science Department. After deciding to look into the World Wide Web for his doctorate thesis,

Page began investigating its mathematical properties. What he found stimulating, was trying to

figure out a way to get meaningful data out of the enormous amount of data that was

accumulating on the internet (William L. Hosch, 2017). Page did not begin by looking into how

to create a search engine, he began his research by looking into how the web was linked together.

Whether or not research is relevant is based on two things outside of its original content, and that

is whether or not other relevant research has used the publication and cited its work and how

many publications it has cited as proof. Larry Page used the idea of how works cited, and

relevant research, relates to each other for the foundation of his research into how the World

Wide Web is linked together. He then created backlinks. Page and Sergey Brin came up with a

brilliant plan to create relevance to the data links. They came up with an algorithm that would

count the amount of links to a visited site and thereby create a ranking system (Batelle, 2005).

Two students began a research project to study the World Wide Web by analyzing links

and the next thing that happened was a tech giant was born. Brin and Page had figured out a way

to organize the data on the World Wide Web so that it had relevance, and it was usable. After

realizing that they could use their algorithm as a search engine, they understood that the search

engine would only get better with time as the internet grew. The more data and pages that

entered the web, the more links. The more links, the more ranks of importance and relevance.

The more ranks of importance, the better the search engine. The amount of data analyzed would


get bigger and bigger and a Google would eventually have the ability to analyze a googol of

information. One misspelled word and Google was born.

Google went public August 18, 2004. In August of 2015, Google announced a re-

structure where it created a holding company called Alphabet. Alphabet is run by Sergey Brin as

president and Larry Page as CEO. Alphabet would also be the holding company for all of the

subsidiaries Google has acquired over the years including Android, Blogger, Drive, Images,

Maps, Nexus, Translate, Wear, and YouTube to name a few (Mike Murphy, 2015). These

products included development tools, operating systems, desktop applications, mobile

applications, hardware and services.

Google’s mission is to “organize the world’s information, and make it universally

accessible and useable.” Google is the most popularly used search engine today with over 77%

of the global market. To put this into perspective, people all over the world search 4,464,000,000

per day on Google. Bing has 873,964,000 searches per day. Baidu, a Chinese web search

company 583,520,803. Yahoo has 536,101,505 searches, and all other search engines combined

have 128,427,264 searches per day (Allen, 2017).

(Allen, 2017).


In 2016, Google had 72,053 full time employees (Statista, 2017). It has locations in

twenty-five cities in the United States, twenty-one cities in Europe, six cities in Latin America,

sixteen cities in Asia-Pacific and five cities in Africa and the Middle East. The organizational

design of the company is organic in nature. Google has a cross-functional organizational

structure that is defined by whether it is function based or product based. Google has three

different levels. Administrative Google, Executive Google, and Operational Google, which each

a number of different levels within its hierarchy. In each of these levels there is a hierarchy

determined by level of power. Google’s organizational structure focuses on teamwork and

hierarchies that are flat. Google teams are allowed to make their own decisions. Google utilizes a

team environment. The teams can bypass middle management which also makes it flat in

organizational complexity (Smithson, 2018). They have also found that the most successful

teams establish “psychological safety”, says Business Insider Richmond Feloni (Feloni, 2015).

“It’s a term that Harvard Business School Professor Amy Edmondson defines as “a shared

belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking.”

Google is continuously searching for better answers and continued innovation to meet

their vision of providing “access to the world’s information in one click. (Thompson, 2017).”

They have been extremely successful in their ability to innovate, and their organizational culture,

although not traditional, seems to work for them. The culture emphasizes change. The team

structure they use for projects creates a synergistic environment that creates social ties and builds

trust (Smithson, 2018). This creates an environment where coworkers feel comfortable and build

rapport with one another. Teams create an environment where the buildup of trust allows

employees to feel free to share ideas and opinions with each other including CEO Larry Page


(Smithson, 2018). Through trust and sharing of ideas, Google has created a culture that can

respond quickly with new innovations.

Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work for in 2017, ranked Google as number One

(Fortune, 2017). One of the reasons is because of the perks. Laundry, haircuts, food, and support

for diversity initiatives including support for transgender employees, unconscious bias

workshops, and parental leave policies makes Google an attractive place to work, that boosts the

morale in their employees by showing them that they care. With a relaxed atmosphere, teams

that build trust, a flat organization that allows for the free flow of ideas and innovations, Google

is a fun and attractive company to work for.

Google’s main competitors at this time are Facebook and Amazon. Both companies have

a vision of connecting underserved and underprivileged communities to the internet. Google is

also moving towards artificial intelligence and virtual reality (VR) with Google VR. Google

wants to continue its mission of “organizing the world’s information and making it universally

accessible and useable through virtual reality. Their vision is to bring amazing experiences to the

world that everyone can experience through VR no matter where they are. Facebook is also

penetrating the online advertising market and Amazon has already captured a slice of that market

share with Amazon prime and free two day shipping.

Problem Statement

Despite Google being named Fortune’s best company to work for, which was created

mostly from the atmosphere and organizational culture and structure, Google has had some

issues as of late. In July of 2017 this year, James Damore, a Google Engineering employee,

wrote a memo called “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber: How bias clouds our thinking about


diversity and inclusion.” Mr. Damore stated that “differences in distributions of traits between

men and women may in part explain why we don’t have 50% representation of women in tech

and leadership. (Damore, 2017, p. 2).” He then went on to give possible non-bias causes of the

gender gap in technology. Damore (2017) states the following:

These differences aren’t just socially constructed because:

They’re universal across human cultures

They often have clear biological causes and links to prenatal testosterone

Biological males that were castrated at birth and raised as females often still

identify and act like males

The underlying traits are highly heritable

They’re exactly what we would predict from an evolutionary psychology

perspective

According to Damore (2017), personality differences are that women, on average, have

more:

Openness directed towards feelings and aesthetics rather than ideas. Women

generally also have a stronger interest in people rather than things, relative to

men.

Extraversion expressed as gregariousness rather than assertiveness.

Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance.) (p 4)

Finally, he states that top leadership positions “often require long. Stressful hours that

may not be worth it if you want a balanced and fulfilling life” (Damore, 2017 pg. 5).


Google faced a storm immediately, following the leak of the controversial “misogynist

manifesto” went viral. Google fired the employee that wrote this controversial memo and started

their public relations emergency response plan. Google VP of Engineering Ari Balogh wrote

“our words matter”, in an email to Google employees. The new VP of Diversity, Integrity and

Governance, Danielle Brown wrote in her internal response “Like many of you, I found that it

advanced incorrect assumptions about gender” (McGregot, 2017).

The issue that Google now faces is that they now are in a position that they have to prove

they are a diverse and inclusive company to work for. Women make up 50% of the graduates

coming out of the top ten universities that tech companies hire. This is a problem that Google

will have to address not only in the upcoming months but with the companies less than stellar

diversity statistics, the company might face workforce diversity issues if the women in the

company and those looking to work for Google, now feel the company is not actually an equal

employment opportunity company.

Critical Evaluation

Google fired James Damore and some people felt that he has a right to free speech.

Google has been a company that uses teams and creates trust among those teams. Staff have been

encouraged to speak freely and now that one engineering employee spoke his opinion, he was

terminated immediately. This creates an issue of trust among the employees now. Whether they

agreed with his views or not, James Damore was exercising his right to free speech, a trait that

Google has encouraged through teams and training.

Google works in a high velocity environment where decisions are made rapidly.

According to Daft, “when speed matters, a slow decision can be as ineffective as the wrong


decision” (Daft, 2016, p. 497). Google fired James Damore immediately, however one of the

Damore’s statements regarding the harm of Google biases, was regarding how Google sets their

Objectives and Key Results. He stated that the organization sets the level for “increased

representation which can incentivize illegal discrimination. (Damore, 2017, p. 6).

Immediately following Google’s VP of Diversity, Danielle Brown’s internal memo

stating “We are unequivocal in our belief that diversity and inclusion are critical to our success

as a company” and Ari Balogh Stating that “building an open inclusive environment is core to

who we are, and the right thing to do,” and added “Nuff said”, the truth about the diversity

statistics at Google came out. Google workforce makeup is 69% male and 31% female overall.

75% of the leadership positions are held by men with only 25% by women. 56% of the entire

workforce is white and only 2% African American. Leadership positions are held by 68% white

and 2% black (Google, 2017). 80% of tech jobs are held by men 20% of tech jobs are held by

women. These figures tell a different story about diversity and inclusion. (Wong, 2017).

Apple's VP of Diversity made a similar mistake just two months after the Google

manifesto. Denise Young Smith made a statement at an event fighting racial injustice that “There

can be 12 white, blue-eyed, blond men in a room and they’re going to be diverse too, because

they’re going to bring a different life experience and life perspective to the conversation

(Williams, 2017)

Google is also under investigation by the US Department of Labor. In January of 2017,

The US department of Labor filed a lawsuit against Google for not complying with providing

compensation history, names, contact information and job history as obligated by law since they

have a government contract. (Fiegerman, 2017).


Currently level one salaries for women are $ 40,300 and for men $ 55,900 (Wakabayashi,

2017). The trend continues through levels two through six of the Google salary compensation

plan. If we factor in, the course of a ten year career at Google without promotion, the male

employee has made $ 156,000 more than his female counterpart in that time period. Men’s

bonuses are equally higher. Level one women average $ 3,600 bonuses while level one men

average $ 6,900 bonuses. Add this annual bonus over that same ten years and now the men make

an average of $ 189,000 more over the same time period. If we take those same amounts and

calculate them on a monthly basis with compounded interest, the difference grows to $ 225,683.

The argument made by tech giants who employ only 2% of African Americans in tech

positions, argue that they cannot find more African Americans. Washington DC employs 35,000

African Americans compared to the 5,000 in Silicon Valley. California has a heavily populated

Latino workforce. 37% of the total population is Latino but only 6% of the technology positions

are held by Latinos (Suburban Stats, 2017).

The top ten universities that send the most graduates to tech firms such as Google, Apple,

Amazon and Facebook include Stanford, Carnegie Melon, Georgia Tech, University of Texas

Austin, and USC and USC Berkeley. These universities all had two things in common. The first

was that the student population was close to 50/50 ratio of male to female student bodies. The

student body had a very similar percentage makeup of white versus African American. Google

has a 2% African American workforce in tech positions and Georgia tech has a 2% total African

American student body.

Tech firms believe that it is a pipeline problem. The stream of students with computer

science degrees that are African American are in the minority. The above statistics would back

that up to some degree. Julie Wong States that there is a flaw with that argument. “In 2014, black


students received 9.7% of the bachelor degrees in computer science but only 2% of the tech jobs

at the big tech companies. (Wong, 2017).

Recommendations

Companies are now starting to look at cognitive diversity as a form of achieving diversity

in the workplace. Based on what Apple's Denise Young Smith said about the 12, white, blue-

eyed men, there seems to be a need to focus on what is Cognitive Diversity and what is

Workplace Diversity and its differences. Ms. Smith believing that 12 white men in the room

represent cognitive diversity, would only be as deep as what their experiences may be. The

difference in the life of a group of white men is far different than the difference in life of the one

woman or African American added to the group. Understanding that groups and teams are

generally more effective the more diverse they are, can be helpful in bringing teams together.

Google has been extremely successful with the lack of diversity and mostly unchanged

demographics of their workforce, but research into the effectiveness of some of their more

diverse teams would be interesting.

Google did a study on what makes the perfect team several years back. What they found was

Psychological Safety was the most important trait of a successful team (Duhigg, 2016). Without

trust in each other, and trust in the group and the team, the teams were not successful. No matter

what the makeup of the team was, there were no patterns of success other than psychological

safety. Google has measured psychological safety in its teams before, and assessing where the

teams and the current workforce is now to get a snapshot through a psychological safety

assessment would be a useful tool after the manifesto and the firing of James Damore in regards

to trust.


Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs suggests that there are five human needs, psychological, safety,

belonging, esteem, and self-actualization. When we refer to W.L. Gore and the culture of

Innovation, Gore believed in a culture where there was power in small teams. Terry Kelly at

Gore was quoted as saying "I spend a significant amount of time focusing on the environment at

Gore. I'm a firm believer that if you get the environment right, the business stuff is easy" (Daft,

2016, p. 557). Google's culture, much like at Gore, is to encourage the entrepreneurial spirit, live

the culture, and offer diverse perspectives. Gore was a flat lattice organization and Larry Page is

bringing some of the flatness back to Google by holding town meetings in public places at

Google to allow anyone to offer suggestions and give input.

Google needs to implement a psychological safety and team development training to

educate the employees that without trust, teams will not innovate and without innovation, there is

no Google. Larry Page is doing just that.

My second recommendation is to expand the hiring practices to actively recruit more

diverse candidates. The top twenty-five schools that tech companies hire from all have the same

thing in common. The majority of the student body is made up of white students. Julie Wong

pointed out that in Washington DC, African Americans make up 17.4% of the jobs in 12

computing occupations. Metro DC is approximately 25% African American while Silicon Valley

is about 6.5% (Wong, 2017). One recommendation would be for Google to start aggressively

recruiting outside of California. A tech giant with the greatest search engine on the planet that

has 77% of the market share on search engines, can figure out how to use its own search engine

to recruit a more diverse workforce.


A final recommendation would be to review and update the salary compensation plan.

Employees at Google completed a snapshot and found that based on the 2% of employees in the

company they surveyed, Google pays women well below the men in entry level positions and it

continues with bonuses and higher level positions.

Google should complete a comprehensive study of the salaries at all levels while simultaneously

reviewing the compensation plan. Google could roll out a diversity initiative for recruitment

while introducing their salary compensation plan to the employees with their comprehensive

study. They should roll out a five year plan to make all salaries at google equal and complete an

annual review to keep track of progress and to meet the goal of 100% equity by 2022.

According to IWPR, The Institute for Women's Policy Research, an annual $ 447.6 billion gain

would be made for women and their families (NOW, 2017). Google could make a significant

impact on women's lives as well as their families. Google has roughly 22,336 female employees.

If the average of all those employees was equal to the gender gap of the 2% Google employees

already surveyed, the increase in income for those women would be $ 80,411,148 in one year. In

five years it would equal more than half a billion dollars worldwide for the women at google and

in 10 years it would equal over one billion dollars for the women at google. Now that's a

statement for equity, diversity, and inclusion!

Managerial Implications

The above three recommendations are feasible and with a little planning, can be

accomplished by 2022. The first is training in Cognitive Diversity and Psychological Safety in

teams. Google already has team training and has teams set up with systems in place.


Management needs to do a survey and find out where the culture currently stands after the recent

events of 2017. Based on the survey, Google can continue with the current system and add

Cognitive Training to its team training basics.

Expanding the hiring practices to be more inclusive would be led by Human Resources.

Current recruiting efforts can be expanded to actively go after more diverse areas of the country

and to hire from a more diverse group of universities.

Finally the gender based bias in compensation would need the most effort from the

managerial team. Alphabet's profit grew 26 billion year over year 2016-2017 and Google beat

expectations despite a $2.7 billion fine (Townsend, 2017). If Google can take a 2.7 billion dollar

fine in one year, it certainly has the ability to take a half billion dollar increase in expense for pay

equity, over a five year period, and a one billion dollar increase in salary expense over ten years.

Google has the ability to be a leader in diversity and can become the first company to not

only implement gender based pay equity, but be able to statistically prove it. Google has been

ranked the best company to work for six years in a row, and they have the ability to make it

another ten years by implementing these recommendations.


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Wong, J. C. (2017, August 7). Segregated Valley: the ugly truth about Google and diversity in tech. The Guardian. Retrieved November 4, 2017, from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/07/silicon-valley-google-diversity-black-women-workers


Appendix A

Organizational Structure

(Heirarchy Structure, 2017)

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