Pinterest fails to meet hiring goals for female engineers

Pinterest says it failed to meet its hiring goals for female engineers in 2016.

The San Francisco-based company had set out to make 30 percent of its engineering hires women last year but only hit a 22 percent mark.

“One reason we missed is because we decided to prioritize hiring senior women engineers, and senior hires take longer,” Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann wrote in a blog post detailing the numbers.

The company is lowering its 2017 hiring goal to 25 percent, but insists its still committed to its initial target.

“We still aspire to 30%—but realize it’s likely going to take more than 12 months to get there,” said Silbermann.

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The company, though, says it made strides in improving its racial diversity. In 2016, Pinterest increased its hiring of minorities in engineering jobs from 1 percent to 9 percent.

“We put the processes in place to make the company focus on our new goals, but we would’ve made faster progress if we made sure every hiring manager understood how a diverse company advances our goal of building world class products,” Silbermann wrote.

Silicon Valley has been under pressure to improve gender and racial diversity in its ranks, with critics saying industry-wide tech companies have fared poorly.

But despite lowering their hiring goals, the Verge notes, Pinterest is still ahead of many of its peers.

Many tech companies have not publicly set diversity hiring goals.