Sophie Alpert wrote in January on Workplace, Facebook's internal social network, that she faced harassment from co-workers after she took the company to task for its lack of diversity. CNBC was able to view the post.
"Facebook is good for many people, but it's not the right place for me right now," wrote Alpert, who identifies as transgender. "I want to spend my time at a place willing to push further on diversity and inclusion. One where it's not OK to write on Workplace that white privilege doesn't exist. One where if I call out that our board has too many white men, I don't get harassed by other employees on Blind with transphobic messages saying I should be fired." Blind is an anonymous workplace app.
Of Facebook's more than 30,000 employees, 36% are women, according to the firm's 2018 diversity report. That is up from 31% in 2014. Black workers represent only 4%.
Facebook says the number of employees who identify as LGBTQ went up for the third straight year to 8%. Anthony Harrison, a spokesman for Facebook, released a statement that the firm does not put up with harassment of its employees.
"Sophie is very aware of how serious we took her concerns given she spent significant time with members of our human resources team who worked in earnest to address the issues on Blind," Harrison said. "Because the comments in question were made anonymously there we weren't able to find out who posted them."