MOUNTAIN VIEW — Howard Sueing has found a place in an
industry that’s largely closed off to people like him. A black employee
at Google, raised on food stamps in Section 8 housing, he’s a relative
rarity in a company and a sector where African Americans make up a very
small percentage of the workforce.
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Howard Sueing |
And now he’s doing his best, as a software engineer and
instructor in Google’s new “Howard West” computer science program for
students from historically black colleges, to make his company more
diverse and inclusive to people of color.
Howard West takes its name — and for now its students — from
Washington, D.C.’s historically black Howard University. The 12-week
program puts students through courses in software engineering,
algorithms, machine learning and mobile app development. The initiative
was unveiled earlier this month in a two-story building near Google’s
headquarters complex in Mountain View.
Each class is co-taught by a Google employee and a Howard
University computer science professor. Students receive course credits
toward graduation from Howard. Google plans to involve other
historically black colleges in the future, and expand the student cohort
beyond the current number of 26.
Sueing sat down with this newspaper at Howard West to
discuss the program and his work. His comments have been edited for
length and clarity.
Q: Google is 2 percent black overall and in leadership roles, only 1 percent in tech jobs — what causes these low diversity rates?