Here's why women, blacks and Hispanics are leaving tech

-Nearly one-third of underrepresented women of color were passed over for promotion, more than any other group. 

-LGBT employees were the most likely to be bullied (20%) and experience public humiliation (24%) and 64% said it contributed to their decision to leave.

-Men from underrepresented groups, such as African Americans, Latinos and Native Americans, were most likely to leave due to unfairness (40%).

-Underrepresented women of color were significantly more likely to cite unfairness as a reason for leaving than white and Asian women (36% versus 28%).

-Nearly a quarter of underrepresented men and women experienced stereotyping in their previous job and at almost twice the rate of white and Asian men and women.

-Employees in tech companies were significantly more likely to leave due to unfairness than technical employees in other industries (42% versus 32%).

Ellen Pao, who brought an women, African Americans and Hispanics.

Diversity experts say the percentage of each demographic group that remains with a company each year could be the most telling data with which to gauge how inclusive a workplace is. Retention rates naturally vary year to year but should not vary greatly across demographic groups, they say. In the study, why underrepresented groups left their jobs "is where we see differences," Dr. Scott said. "All groups left due to unfairness but for different types of unfairness."

Former Uber software engineer Susan Fowler, who made in a post on her personal blog that led to an internal investigation, said her request to transfer to another team to avoid her harasser was rejected because of retention concerns.

"It turned out that keeping me on the team made my manager look good, and I overheard him boasting to the rest of the team that even though the rest of the teams were losing their women engineers left and right, he still had some on his team," wrote Fowler who left Uber in December.

So Fowler calculated the retention rate for her department. She says it had slipped from being about a quarter female to 6% in a year.  "Women were transferring out of the organization, and those who couldn't transfer were quitting or preparing to quit," she said.

$16 billion cost

According to the Kapor Center, a black man responded to the survey that he observed several people being passed over for salary raises and promotions because they didn't fall in line with the "jock culture." "Gross generalizations were made of groups of people," he wrote. "I was offended by the liberal use of stereotypes and the insistence on making a 'welcoming culture' that truly focused on only improving work life for a single demographic.”

Women, African Americans and Hispanics are underrepresented in all occupations within the tech sector when compared to the U.S. population and the private sector as a whole. Among the top-grossing tech companies such as Apple, Facebook and Google, black and Latino employees combined represent 3% to 5% of employees, numbers that have not budged in three years, Kapor Center found.

Since first going public with their diversity problem in 2014, tech companies have spent hundreds of millions on diversity initiatives, many of which focus on recruitment, hiring and programs such as unconscious bias training.

The tech industry frequently blames the "pipeline" for not delivering enough qualified candidates from underrepresented backgrounds. But Kapor Center co-chair Freada Kapor Klein says the more nuanced and accurate way to frame the issue is to look at the complex set of biases and barriers that begin in preschool and persist in the workplace that have kept women and people of color from gaining access to some of the nation's highest-paying jobs in one of its most sought after economic sectors. 

She believes how those underrepresented groups are treated once inside these companies goes a long way toward explaining why tech companies can't get their diversity numbers to budge.

Intel is outside the norm

Intel is one of the only tech companies to release its retention data. Retention became a key focus after the tech giant realized underrepresented groups were leaving at higher rates. In February, Intel said it had reduced those rates, achieving a 15% exit rate for women and people of color compared to a 15.5% exit rate for white and Asian men and women.

The semiconductor giant had plenty of incentive to focus on retention, according to the Kapor study.

The industry is shelling out an estimated $16 billion a year to replace employees who leave as a result of unfair treatment. Individual tech companies are also taking an incalculable hit to their corporate reputations, the study found. More than a third of disaffected employees in the study said their experiences would make them less likely to refer others to seek jobs at their former employers and a quarter said they would be less likely to recommend others buy or use products from their former employer.

Perez is now chief product officer at HealthSherpa, where she says she can bring her "authentic self" to work. She says she and fellow executives think of and treat new employees as co-founders. If she tells the CEO about a feminist book she's reading, he pops it into his Amazon cart. The 20-person start-up, funded by Kapor Capital, has taken the venture capital firm's @jguynn

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