A first-of-its-kind study has found that people of color and women are being driven away from the tech industry, citing racism, sexism and a toxic work environment as the reasons they left.

The Kapor Center for Social Impact and Harris Poll surveyed 2,000 adults that have left the tech industry over the last three years. Their findings will result in more opprobrium heaped upon the industry and its diversity and discrimination issues, following numerous reports of race and gender inequality.

The study found that one in 10 women had experienced unwanted sexual attention, while lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people had complained of bullying and humiliation. In what some respondents said was a “toxic” work culture, people said they were racially stereotyped and even passed-over for promotions because they weren’t willing to participate in a “jock culture.”

Uber Technologies Inc. is perhaps the most infamous of late, charged with encouraging a toxic “bro” culture, but even Google Inc. has faced charges of extreme pay inequality. But as tech companies scramble to rescue themselves from similar reports, the large turnover of disgruntled employees could be costing the tech industry too — as much as $16 billion a year, according to the report.

On the whole, 78 percent of the employees surveyed said they left their job because of matters relating to unfairness and humiliation. Two-thirds of the tech “leavers” said they would have stayed if their company had “fixed its culture.” One large company alone, states the survey, could be losing up to $27 million a year due to this broken work culture.

While skeptical of the findings, the U.K.-based think tank Adam Smith Institute said it believes “nerdity” that is at the forefront of innovation is also one of the reasons for gaucheness, hostility and even criminality at the office. “Why is anyone surprised that when we collect all of the uber-nerds from around the world we end up with organizations which lack a certain politesse?” the institute said.

Others have denied the accusation that the tech industry deifies “horrible frat-boy brogrammer assholes,” saying the industry’s shortcomings are only representative of wider social issues and that the tech industry isn’t as bad as the media might suggest, with regard to sexism at least.

Ellen Pao, former Reddit chief executive and investment partner at Kapor Capital, would disagree. Pao has been vocal for years concerning what she considers to be rampant discrimination in the tech industry. Following the release of the study, she told The Guardian, “As someone who has been working in the tech industry since 1998, I know it’s prevalent, and now we have the data so people can understand the scale.”

Image: Chrisena Allen via Flickr