This is the real reason Apple's senior leadership lacks diversity
Apple should be working faster. Not on building the next iPhone, or even creating the next hit TV show, but rather, on increasing the diversity at the company.
That's what a small group of shareholders, led by vocal investor Tony Maldonado, have been pushing. Later this month, Apple shareholders will vote on a proposal to increase the racial diversity of executives and board members through an "accelerated recruitment policy."
Apple's advised shareholders to vote against the new proposal, stating that it has programs to address the issue throughout the company.
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But one point that Apple doesn't emphasize—and one reason for its current lack of racial diversity at the top—is how hiring works within Apple. To become a senior-level VP or a C-suite exec at Apple, you most likely have worked at the company for decades. And decades ago, diversity hiring practices weren't nearly as important or scrutinized as they are right now. Therefore, if you have seniority at Apple, odds are, you're a white male.
And Maldonado's specific accusation is, uh, spot-on: Apple's senior leadership? All-white.
To be sure, Apple's diversity numbers overall are actually some of the best in the tech industry, especially when you look at the percent of new hires who are women and underrepresented minorities. The proposal specifically addresses racial diversity in senior leadership, but Apple also has unique cred in diversity: Tim Cook was the first openly gay CEO of a Fortune 500 company.
It isn't the first time the call for racial diversity at the top has been made. A similar proposal was considered at Apple's 2016 shareholders' meeting, and received 5.1 percent of the vote—not enough to be accepted but enough to be reconsidered.
"Tim Cook was very defensive, and he presented the two black people on their leadership—but not senior leadership—as a sign of their diversity," Maldonado told The Verge. "Personally, I took it as an insult. They were put on the spotlight as 'here's tokenism,' and he didn't seem to accept that."
Out of the 11 people who in a C-level position or a senior vice president, all are white, and there's only one woman.
Apple's board of directors has eight members. Two are female. One of those women is Asian, and the other's white. One member, James A. Bell, is a black man. The other five members, or 62.5 percent, are white men.
"Apple has rarely ever had many people of ethnic or racial diversity within their board or senior leadership," he told The Verge. For a 40-year-old company “that’s laughable. That's racism plain and simple. That's all it is. There has to be plenty of people with sufficient qualifications.”
Maldonado does have point. There are definitely people in this world with sufficient qualifications who could serve on Apple's leadership. But a reason for why diversity is low among those top ranks relates how Apple's senior hiring process works.
The vast majority of Apple's senior leadership positions are made via promotions at the company, rather than external hires. Let's look deeper:
Tim Cook, CEO* -- 1998, joined as SVP of operations
Angela Ahrendts* -- 2014, joined as SVP of retail
Eddy Cue -- 1989, content stores
Craig Federigh -- 1996, from NeXt
Jonathan Ive -- 1992, designer
Luca Maestri -- 2013, control controller and vice president of finance
Dan Riccio -- 1998, VP of product design
Philip W. Schiller -- 1987, marketing
Bruce Sewell* -- 2009, joined as general counsel
Johny Srouji -- 2008, senior director of handheld chips
Jeff Williams -- 1998, head of worldwide procurement
So, three of Apple's 11 members of senior leadership joined at that level.
Things look slightly better when you take a step down the ladder:
Apple's seven VPs include two women, both of whom also bring underrepresented minority representation to the team.
If Apple sticks to its habit of promoting from within, the diversity picture at the top of the company might soon start shaping up.
Apple reported 32 percent of its current employees are women, 9 percent are black and 12 percent are Hispanic and over the last year 54 percent of new hires are minorities:
Meanwhile, there are other tech companies that refuse to release any data on diversity, whether it be hires or current employee count.
Snapchat soon to become a publicly-traded company has not shared any diversity statistics about its 1,859 employees. Uber has more than 9,000 office employees and has not met diversity advocate Jesse Jackson's request for a report by mid-February.
This post was updated with more insight on the specific claims of Maldonado's case.
Kerry Flynn is a business reporter for Mashable covering the tech industry. She previously reported on social media companies, mobile apps and startups for International Business Times. She has also written for The Huffington Post, Forbes and Money magazine. Kerry studied environmental science and economics at Harvard College, where she led The Harvard Crimson's metro news and design teams and played mellophone in the Band. When not listening to startup pitches, she runs half-marathons, plays with puppies and pretends to like craft beer.
