About 69% of Google’s employees last year were men, down 1 percentage point from 2014, the company said. The portion of Google’s workforce that is white or Asian has remained at 91% since 2014.
Google recruiters are responsible for identifying candidates, but hiring decisions are ultimately up to hiring committees, according to Google. YouTube has about 23,000 employees, according to an estimate by networking site LinkedIn Corp. Alphabet had 80,110 full-time employees at year-end, according to a company filing.
YouTube has its own group of roughly 20 recruiters, with a separate Google team overseeing all operations, according to the complaint and people familiar with YouTube’s and Google’s hiring practices.
The lawsuit filed by Mr. Wilberg and people familiar with the hiring practices allege that since at least 2016, YouTube recruiters had hiring quotas or targets for “diversity candidates,” including black, Hispanic and female candidates. For example, in the first quarter of 2016, recruiters were expected to hire five new employees each, all of them from underrepresented groups, the lawsuit alleges.
Recruiters used what was known internally as a “diversity tracker,” to track minority hiring, the people familiar with hiring practices at YouTube and Google said. For the week of March 20, 2017, for example, the team tracked a year-to-date goal of 21 African-American hires, with one actually hired in that period, according to an internal YouTube email attached as an exhibit to the lawsuit.
Mr. Wilberg alleges his performance reviews suffered after he declined to adhere to YouTube’s diversity hiring goals.
In the spring of 2016, Google’s human-resources department launched an investigation into YouTube’s hiring practices, interviewing each recruiter, the lawsuit alleges. The investigation appeared to be ongoing through the end of 2017, the lawsuit alleged.