Who Heads Tech Sector?
Big tech (the term came into popular use between 2013-2017) is one term for the four or five giants that rule American tech. It consists of Google (now Alphabet), Amazon (which Fortune classifies under the Retail category), Facebook (now Meta), and Apple. These are often called GAFA or The Big Four, or The Four Horsemen. When Microsoft is included, the group is called The Big Five, or GAMAM. These GAMAM corporations were five of the six most valuable publicly traded corporations in the world in 2020.
These five tech behemoths also fared strikingly well during the pandemic. As Shira Ovide of The New York Times reported in October 2021, “In the last year, the five tech superpowers — Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft and Facebook — had combined revenue of more than $1.2 trillion … The pandemic has made the tech giants and their bosses unfathomably rich. (Even more unfathomably rich than they were before.)” In fact, the owners of the biggest Tech firms more than doubled their wealth during the pandemic years.
All of the Big Five are headed by men. And, these CEOs have become household names, as their decisions affect all Americans.
Big Tech (0 of 5 = 0%)
“This combination of 2019-2020 photos shows Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, Evan Vucci, Jeff Chiu, Jens Meyer)”
Fortune 500 Tech:
There are 47 companies in the Fortune 500 classified as “technology companies” by Fortune. They include from companies you’ve probably used in the last five minutes, such as Apple (#3) Alphabet (#9; Google), Microsoft (#15), or Meta (#34; Facebook). These companies have continued to do well during the pandemic. These 47 include everything inside our fast-paced tech: Dell, IBM, Intel, HP, Cisco, Oracle, and Qualcomm. Uber, eBay, Intuit, Motorola, Xerox and NetApp also make the list in this critical sector.
When the digital revolution began, most people thought that programming and high-tech would be the first truly egalitarian and gender-neutral field, as it didn’t require brawn, and was a new field, with all new opportunities. As we now know, it hasn’t turned out that way, and women report both opportunities and obstacles in all areas of tech, from gaming to quantum computing.
Four of the 47 tech companies in the Fortune 500 are headed by women.
(4 out of 47 = 8.5%)
Oracle (#80) is co-led by Safra Catz (formerly CFO) and Mark Hurd (formerly President), who were each named CEO by Larry Ellison in 2014. Though Hurd is the more public face of the duo (Catz is notoriously private and media-averse), Catz is just one of 72 self-made female billionaires in the world, having landed on Forbes billionaires list in 2109.
CDW (#161) is headed by Christine Leahy, who joined the company as General Counsel and has been CEO since January 2019. Advanced Micro Devices (#309), founded in 1969, has been headed by President & CEO Lisa Su (formerly with Texas Instruments and IBM, and a PhD from MIT in silicon-on-insulator technology) since 2014, and Science Applications Int’l (#412) is headed by CEO Nazzic S. Keene.
What will it take for women to get into the Power Percentage of the Technology Sector in America?