Lead engineer at Twitter apologizes over diversity issues

Alex Roetter is a lead engineer at Twitter, who was recently called out for a post he made about diversity issues. He was questioned about suggesting to use job applicants’ names to determine their ethnicity. He planned on using this information to determine why some minorities weren’t hired as much.

Leslie Miley, a former engineer, and the one who singled Rotter out said:

“What I also found disconcerting is this otherwise highly sophisticated thinker could posit that an issue this complex could be addressed by name analysis,”

Roetter responded by saying he did a poor job at communicating his ideas.

“I realize that we have blind spots, myself included. One of mine is that I have a tendency to default to engineering-driven, quantitative solutions. The issues Leslie raise require so much more than that.”

Twitter has been trying to add more diversity amongst it’s staff recently. They have been using things like “inclusion training” and resource groups for minority employees. Roetter also said he wants Twitter to change so it can be a place where all the employees feel comfortable.

Source: Alex Roetter (Medium)
Via: Recode

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