Still No Lines at the Women's Executive Washroom

A 2014 report by Fenwick and West shows that women hold just 11% of executive positions at Silicon Valley companies. I thought I'd dig in a bit deeper and see what the scores are for some of the most prominent tech companies.

First up, Facebook. Surely The House of LeanIn would be better right? Nope. Although Sheryl Sandberg is the Chief Operating Officer, she stands alone in the C-Suite with four other men. Score: 20%.

How about Twitter? Well, I'm not saying that this is the reason they are floundering right now, but of the 7 members of the Leadership Team, only 2 are women (the CMO and the Chief Counsel). Score: 22%

Apple? Apple splits their Leadership Team into two tiers. The C-level/SVP tier has 11 members, 1 of which is a woman (the SVP of Apple Retail). Tier 2 has 7 members, 2 of which are women (VP of Environment and VP of HR).  Score: 8% in Tier 1, 22% in Tier 2.

Don't even get me started on Intel. They have four tiers of leadership: Executive Office, Executive Vice Presidents, Senior Vice Presidents, and Corporate Vice Presidents. In the two "Executive" tiers, there are 5 men and 0 women. In the SVP tier, we find 13 men and 1 woman. In the CVP tier, women fare a little better -- there are 6. Out of 30. So, in the top 3 tiers, we have 5% women. In the lowest tier of management, we have 20%. Total Score: 14%.

Cisco also has a two-tiered system. The Executive Leadership Team sports 14 people, 5 of which are women. 36%. Not bad (although given that women are 50% of the world, the fact that I'm saying "Not bad" to 36% says something in and of itself). The "Senior Leadership Team" has 46 (!) people. 8 of which are women (21%). Grand total: 21.6%.

Oracle, which inexplicably has two CEOs (one of which *is* a woman, yay!), lists 31 executives on its leadership page, 5 of which are women. Total Score: 16%

eBay has 13 execs, 4 of which are women. 31% makes them the "winner" in my high tech survey.

I've been a VP-level exec for a bit less than a decade now, and this pretty much mirrors my experience working as an executive at Silicon Valley startups.

The company at which I presently work does the best job of any company at which I've worked. We have 11 execs, 4 of which are women, which at 36% makes us even better than eBay. (We also have an out-of-date exec page, which is why I didn't include a link).

My previous company was led by a woman; at our highest point, of the other C-level and VP-level execs, we had 8 men and 2 women, for a total of 27%. After I left, the mix had changed to having 1 woman CEO and 8 C-level and VP-level men -- in essence, no executive women except for the CEO. Total: 11%

Looking back even further in my executive career, I see figures of 12%, 8%, and 14% women. It's sure lonely out here!

How does your company stack up? Let me know in the comments!

*Note, all references are as of February 19, 2016. Maybe by the time you're reading this, things will be better.