How Google is addressing the tech industry’s diversity problem

Photo by David Paul Morris/Bloomberg/Getty Images

KARLA MURTHY: How did you get interested in the tech field?

MARCUS MITCHELL, Senior Engineering Director at Google: I got interested in college. I started college thinking that I wanted to be a physics major. But I took a course on artificial intelligence, and I took that course at the same time that I took a course on linguistics.

The combination of the two — the prospect of trying to figure out ways to get computers to do interesting things that you usually associate with only humans and human intelligence, that was really interesting to me.

KM: How would you describe the amount of diversity you’ve personally seen in the tech industry over the years?

MM: In the areas where I’ve worked, you see few women, few Hispanics, few blacks. This was true when I was in graduate school at Cal Tech. This was true when I was working at a tiny startup. This was true when I was working at a medium-sized startup. And it’s true working at Google as a big company.

One of the things that’s nice now is that there’s a lot more data and people are starting to get comfortable talking about it, so you can have a little more of a conversation about where you want to change things. But we have a long way to go.

As somebody who’s worked at a range of company sizes, you know, one of the biggest things that we think about and care about is talent and how you get more of it and how you motivate people, how you inspire them to work on hard problems and to be more productive.

And so I think, to me, the driving interest is in getting more, digging deeper into the talent pool that’s out there. For groups that are underrepresented in technology, I view those groups as places where I can find more talent that’s not being used.


Mitchell Photo by NewsHour.

KM: So do you see it more as a pipeline problem, that we’re not bringing in enough people, or not looking at where the candidates could possibly come from?

MM: It’s too simplistic to think of it as just a pipeline problem, and a lot of the press focuses on that aspect. There is partially a pipeline problem.

There’s also questions of how you retain folks in the workplace, how you make sure that you have a fair and inclusive workplace, so that people feel comfortable. Some of the kinds of work on looking at high performing teams at Google has shown that one of the number one characteristics of a high performing team is that the team members feel comfortable and safe, and they’re able to trust the people around them. They’re able to feel like they can be themselves.

And so that’s something that really benefits everybody when you can create an environment like that. So it’s not just a pipeline problem, although increasing the size of the pipeline is an important part of what we need to do.

KM: What has it been like for you personally as a black man in this industry?

MM: It’s been a lot of luck and support by key people, starting with my parents, both retired now. My dad was an architect, my mom was a scientist for the Food and Drug Administration, so I was kind of in an environment that really encouraged thinking about math and science.

But I’ve just had enough experience with it that I’m used to it, used to being, let’s say, the only black person or one of the few black people in a certain environment, and at Google.

And, you know, it’s something that you can adapt to, like so many other situations. I’ve adapted.



KM: A company like Google has been hugely successful and innovative, up to this point at least, without being very diverse. How do you explain that?

MM: Well, I mean this is where I think my personal take and motivations on this maybe diverge from some of the standard narrative. So I’m interested in the research that says that diverse teams perform better.

And I think that it’s an important pillar of what companies like Google and other companies should be thinking about. But, like I said before, I’m interested in finding talent and channeling it into areas that I’m interested in that either wouldn’t ordinarily be found or might go into other other places. That’s the key thing.

So we look at a company like Google that’s been very successful without being diverse. And why? Because it’s had a number of very talented people who were in the right place at the right time and had the right combination of preparation and creativity that they brought to the table with the opportunities that were afforded them, and they were able to do incredible things.