Facebook: leaking info about gender bias damages our 'recruiting brand'

Tech company is disputing analysis that female engineers have code rejected 35% more than male engineers and said such leaks make it harder to hire women

Facebook is disputing a former employee's analysis that female engineers have their code rejected 35% more than male engineers, telling employees internally that leaking such information damages its "recruiting brand" and makes it harder for the company to hire women.

The original analysis, first reported by the Wall Street Journal and independently confirmed by the Guardian, was conducted by a longtime Facebook software engineer last year. The engineer studied the company's code review process, looking at the number of times code was rejected, commented upon, or updated; how long it took for code to be accepted; and demographic data about the coder, such as gender and length of employment.