Diversity Equity Inclusion Report 2022

I am pleased to share our second annual Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) Report, which highlights our 2021 workforce data and outlines our progress against our DEIB goals. One of DigitalOcean’s core values is our community is bigger than just us, and we are committed to building a diverse workforce that understands the needs of our global customer base and broader community. We strive to achieve this through our DEIB goals, which are:

• By 2025 we aim to at least be representative of the population of underrepresented groups in the areas that we operate, using the U.S. census and other data sources as indicators.
• Globally, we aim to have a zero differential in sentiment across all employees regardless of gender or ethnicity when conducting our annual TIDE employee survey.
• In evaluating internal equity, we will continue to ensure equal total rewards opportunities for all employees regardless of gender identity, ethnicity, location, sexual orientation, disability status, and more.

Our 2021 workforce data demonstrates progress against some of these goals and identified areas for continued improvement. Our new hires in the United States are more diverse than employees hired prior to 2021, and importantly, a higher percentage of employees self-identified in 2021 than 2020, demonstrating that employees are comfortable sharing information about their identities. However, attrition among females was higher than males in 2021, and as we see an increasingly competitive job market for female talent we will look to create even more opportunities for women.

In the past year, we have also expanded our internal efforts to meet our DEIB goals, ensuring employees at all levels of the company are accountable to deliver on our commitments. We have hired a diversity program manager, expanded our recruiting efforts, and updated our interviewing guidelines and training. All executives including myself have specific goals around DEIB for 2022. Finally, I have been pleased to see the progress of our employee resource groups (ERGs). These groups have hosted multiple events in the past year, including programs surrounding Pride, salary equity discussions, volunteering events, and more.

To reach our full potential as a company, we must have a transparent workplace that values diverse people and viewpoints. We recognize that our DEIB goals are aggressive and know we have a long way to go to achieve them, but strongly believe that progress isn’t made without ambitious goals. I look forward to updating you again next year.

-Yancey Spruill
CEO, DigitalOcean

Welcome to DigitalOcean’s annual Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging Report. In this report, you will find DigitalOcean’s Mission Statement regarding our commitment to diversity, our 2021 employee metrics, and information on the initiatives we are taking to ensure we create and foster a diverse, equitable, and inclusive environment.

DEIB Mission Statement

At DigitalOcean, we believe our community is bigger than just us. We are committed to creating and serving a diverse, equitable, and inclusive environment that supports and elevates all employees, especially those who are often the most underrepresented and historically marginalized in our communities. We believe in speaking up when we have something to say and listening when others do, which means fostering a curious and accountable culture in which we can all bring our full and best selves to work.

Focus Areas

To focus on, support, and accomplish our goals of making DO a more diverse and inclusive community, we hold our entire company accountable to our DEIB efforts. With our Chief People Officer as executive sponsor, a cross-functional group of passionate employees has rallied to focus on three key areas of the business related to DEIB:

• Metrics & Reporting
• Recruitment & Onboarding
• Development & Mentoring

By focusing on these core areas of opportunity, we will continue to better DigitalOcean’s DEIB ecosystem by attaining and retaining diverse talent, providing guidance and internal connections for employees, as well as continuing measurement to gauge success or opportunities for growth.

Below, we outline our progress and initiatives in these core focus areas, starting by presenting our 2021 employee data. We are also pleased to share information and progress on additional initiatives related to DEIB.

We strongly believe in taking a data-driven approach to informing and measuring our DEIB strategy. By leveraging our internal data as the north star of our action planning, we can ensure we are assessing our progress against key metrics while identifying and addressing gaps within the organization. To accomplish this, we measure and report against a number of metrics on a regular basis. Our 2021 data includes the demographic makeup of our employees and new hires, results from our annual employee sentiment survey, and attrition rates examined by gender and ethnicity/race.

We are committed to transparency with both our employees and the community in the sharing of this data. Given its sensitive nature, we take all necessary steps to ensure this data is protected, and presented in an aggregated, anonymized fashion.

We do not distinguish between technical and non-technical populations due to the high level of technical competencies embedded within many of our traditionally non-technical functions such as ​​ Revenue Operations, Product Marketing, and Sales & Partnerships.

As our developer, startup, and SMB communities continue to evolve, we aim to evolve with them. We will continue to measure our own demographic makeup against that of the communities we serve—and specifically, we intend on tracking our U.S. population against that of the U.S. Census report on a quarterly basis. Hiring is a crucial part of the diversity and inclusion conversation.

2021 Overall Employee and New Hire Metrics

Our overall employee metrics show the makeup of our employees by gender, and our U.S. employees by ethnicity/race at the end of 2020 and 2021, compared with that of the 2021 U.S. Census. Additionally, we recognize that hiring is a crucial part of the diversity and inclusion conversation, and therefore have also examined the makeup of our new hires by gender and ethnicity/race (U.S.).

While we have made improvements since 2020 in terms of ethnicity in the United States, our percentage of female employees has decreased slightly since 2020, which is an area we intend to focus on for improvement.

We are encouraged by the growth in the percent of total employees identifying as Asian, Black or African American, Hispanic or Latino, and Two or More Races from 2020 to 2021, and have seen continued acceleration in several of these groups in the first half of 2022. In addition, our new hires in 2021 outpace the DO overall percentages across the following groups:  Asian, Black or African American, Hispanic or Latino, and Two or More Races.

Our female population has decreased by less than 1% from 2020 to 2021. While female employees are slightly more represented in management positions than in the overall DigitalOcean population, our new hires continue to be over 70%  male, although our new hire pool is also slightly more female than our overall population. These trends are influenced by higher attrition rates amongst females, and we have found that year to date in 2022 female attrition is down from 2021.

Employee Level Data

Ensuring equal opportunities for advancement is an important part of DEIB, and so we analyze our manager population against our individual contributor population, both through the lens of gender (globally) and ethnicity/race (U.S. only). While there are some differences between our individual contributor and manager populations, note that the intersectional nature of this data can make it challenging to measure, and we aim for a more even split over time as our overall population also becomes more diverse.

*Does not reflect international population

TIDE Survey Data

In addition to analyzing employee demographic data, we leverage our annual engagement survey, the DO TIDE, to measure employee sentiment and favorability across a number of categories. This analysis includes reviewing engagement results for our employees based on gender, ethnicity, location, tenure, and more.

Our 2021 engagement survey demonstrated that across the company as a whole, favorability towards the DEIB survey questions increased 9% to 86% from 2020. While the overall DEI score decreased slightly in 2022 (3%), there was an 88% favorability rating on the statement “DigitalOcean values diversity and equality amongst it’s employees.”

Attrition Data

While our engagement survey is a strong indicator of sentiment towards inclusion at DO, we also study our attrition rates to inform our engagement and retention strategies.

In 2020, voluntary attrition rates for our POC and white populations were within 0.5% of one another, indicating that ethnicity is not a factor in those choosing to leave DigitalOcean.  There was, however, a gap in voluntary attrition by gender in 2021 based on average headcount, which was validated by statistical significance testing. In 2021, voluntary attrition of the female population was slightly higher than that of the male population, while 2022 has indicated the opposite to be true. Year to date in 2022, the male population is opting out of DO at higher rates than their female counterparts. This is an area we will continue to monitor and improve upon through thoughtful retention and career development strategies.

In support of our wider DEIB mission, we are working on the following initiatives, which range from partnerships to ensure we are recruiting from a diverse talent pool to community outreach initiatives in line with our commitment to diversity and inclusion both inside and outside DO.

Recruiting and Onboarding

We work hard to ensure that DigitalOcean is recruiting from a diverse talent pool and bringing in candidates from underrepresented communities. This year, we are proud to be engaged with several trailblazers in the industry, including Trabaja, Out in Tech, and AfroTech via Blavity. We continue to diligently identify opportunities to partner and engage with organizations and universities that will help us to increase diversity across the company.  Forging and strengthening relationships with external DEIB partners is essential to our diversity strategy at DO, and we are excited to continue to establish and build relationships to expand our reach.

Development and Mentorship

We are committed to providing ongoing education and development opportunities to raise awareness of DEIB in the workplace, cultivate an inclusive environment, and build a culture of allyship. From developing and delivering DEIB managerial and leadership training to supporting employee-led initiatives, we are dedicated to listening to our DigitalOcean employees and action planning around their feedback to create a culture of inclusivity.

As part of our development and mentorship efforts, DigitalOcean is proud to now have five Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) at the company aimed to support women, early career professionals, military and veterans, the LGBTQIA+ community, and the Black community. ERGs are employee-led, voluntary groups that are given the financial means to support professional development, strengthen our business, and advance our commitment to a diverse and inclusive workplace. DO’s ERGs aim to create a safe space for employees by fostering a diverse and inclusive environment where all are welcomed, valued, and respected.

Our ERG’s will continue to evolve and we’re excited to continue to add more ERGs and support our ERGs’ missions. Additionally, some of the recent DEIB focused initiatives we have launched include:

• Annual company wide DEIB training which focuses on understanding our unconscious biases and how to avoid them in decision making and interactions.
• Quarterly newsletter to the company that shares inclusive and diverse milestones, holidays, and heritage months.

Compensation - Internal Equity

While DO’s compensation practice has evolved substantially in recent years, a key principle of our compensation philosophy has always been, and will always be, ensuring fair pay and development opportunities for all employees regardless of gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability status, and more. As part of our commitment to a fair and unbiased compensation practice, we conduct deep analyses before, during, and after all compensation cycles at the company.

We conduct disparate impact analyses on all compensation and rewards offerings including, but not limited to, year-end bonus payouts, merit increases, equity awards, and promotions. Through these analyses, we ensure that we are paying all employees fairly, equitably and without bias.  Additionally, we also evaluate employee pay against third party published compensation data to ensure all employees sit at similar placements in their respective salary ranges, relative to the external market midpoint(s) available.

DO in the Community

Here at DigitalOcean, we acknowledge that our community is bigger than just us. We foster the global developer and entrepreneurial communities because they are the source of our ideas and innovation and are essential to our sustained growth. We are proud to support our community, and have funded several programs to amplify the important work needed to support underserved communities.

DO Impact

In 2022 we were excited to launch DO Impact, our expanded social impact program, through which we have committed $50 million to social impact programs over the next 10 years. DigitalOcean’s social impact efforts empower changemakers around the globe through our products and philanthropy, enable our people to do good in their communities, and ensure our footprint is sustainable. We believe that our social impact efforts are a big lever in promoting diversity and inclusion around the world, by helping bring people who traditionally haven’t been involved into the opportunities that the technology economy enables.

Our social impact programs include Hollie’s Hub for Good, which provides nonprofit organizations with infrastructure credits to build impactful projects on DigitalOcean. We also provide organizations with philanthropic donations and encourage employee giving through our matching donations. Finally, we are committed to measuring our carbon footprint and identifying key environmental,  social, and governance focus areas.

We recognize that we are early in executing against the initiatives we have put in place to reach our longer term demographic targets. As part of this report, we are committed to keep striving to influence positive change, inside and outside of DigitalOcean.

Interested in joining DigitalOcean to help us move the needle on our efforts? Check out our careers page at do.co/careers.