Black engineer says he wasn't invited to ex-NAACP leader's talk when he was at Twitter for a strange reason (TWTR)

Leslie Miley is an engineer who spent 3 years at Twitter before joining Slack as its director of engineeringin March.At Twitter, Miley wasn't too happy with the way the company handled itsdiversity issues. He famously wrote a blog post when he left Twitter, slamming the company for its lack of diversityand also passed on his severance package so he could speak out about the company's problemsin public.One of those moments came last week when he spoke with Ars Technica's Cyrus Farivar.Mileysays, when he was at Twitter, he wasn't invited to a company-hosted event featuring ex-NAACP head Ben Jealous. The rest of the company seemed to know about the event, sohe asked Twitter'shead of diversity and inclusion about why he never received an invitation. The answer he heard wassimply because Twitterdidn't thinkit would"have enough room to invite all the black people at Twitter," he says, even though black employees only accounted for about 1% of the total workforce.Miley continued:"It boggles my mind that a company and an individual at a company could actually think that something like thats OK. You will not invite Hillary Clinton and not invite women to go see her. You would not invite the Pope and not invite Catholic people.And it happened at an organization and a company that gives voice to black Twitter. That gave rise to the 'Black Lives Matter' movement. That sticks out more than anything. And it sticks out more than anything because someone justified at that organization that it was OK not to invite people of color."Miley says his current company, Slack, is much more supportive about diversity issues. Slack's CEO Stewart Butterfield is one of the most vocal leaders in tech about hiring under-represented minorities. For example, at this year's Crunchies Award, Butterfield sent four femaleminority engineers on stage to receive the award. The company also runs a blind testing to hire engineers from diverse backgrounds, Miley points out. About 5% of Slack's total employees are black.Miley says there's a lot of ways to fix tech's diversity issue, butjust focusing on thepipeline is not one of them. He says companies need to more actively hire people already in the pipeline."The problem isnt that we need to fill in the pipeline. The problem is the pipeline out there right now is not being tapped. And its not being tapped because companies that build the products that we use and build the next entrepreneurs and seed them with money dont value people of color, dont value women in the same way," he says.Twitter declined to comment on this article.SEE ALSO:Slack's engineering director explains why the company is better at hiring minority staff than Google or FacebookJoin the conversation about this storyNOW WATCH: This animated map shows the most probable path to a Trump victory
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