[nzoschke]

You can shift your notions of "qualified".

You can hire junior engineers and mentor and train them to be successful.

Then you can proactively advertise your positions to programs and organizations that have more minority participation.

Of course this takes more work for you, the hiring manager, in sourcing and on boarding. But there should be a burden on every hiring manager to correct the systemic diversity problems.

A success will be extremely impactful for the individuals you hire and for the overall health of the team.

[sokoloff]

"Qualified" will always mean "can make a computer do things we need done" and that's not negotiable.

We do hire at all experience levels and several of our successful squad leads are original college hires (having only worked with us), so we have some demonstrated track record of mentoring and retention.

Even in college recruiting (where I'd expect the greatest diversity of candidates), I can't recall any recent black applicants, and except for a somewhat higher ratio of women to men than the industry average, the ratios of college grads seem to track the industry ratios reasonably closely.

I concede that there is a bias towards college grads in industry and stated above, and that nothing is legally barring me from crafting some kind of Cinderella program to seek out possibly qualified candidates who avoided college or who failed to graduate. There would no doubt be some successful candidates that emerged from such a program.

The practical bar to that is my belief that any such single-company program would be utterly uncompetitive versus other efforts I could make in staffing. Opening an out of country office, while hard, is probably much less work per successful candidate, has a higher success rate, and often presents much more compelling economics.

If the above is remotely true, the shortest path to better prospects for minorities is to increase their college attendance, STEM majors, and graduation rates. It also has the practical advantage of having a high level of self-determination and influence; rather than waiting for me to fix their problem (where I necessarily have many competing priorities), they can take initiative to address their problem (where they naturally have more focus and vested interest in the specific outcome).

There is unlikely to emerge a single-company Cinderella type program that will markedly change the industry. The overhead costs are too much and the successes too few. A regional (or even national) charitable or educational institution may be able to move the needle (but even there, the shorter path might well be "encourage college and STEM participation rates")

[nzoschke]

Be careful with the term "Cinderella program".

My direct experience here is working with Hackbright Academy to meet more women than I was getting through the standard job application channels.

Hackbright works attracts women from all backgrounds, science but no computer science, college drop outs, and junior CS. It teaches practical programming skills in the 3 months class, then helps connect the women to companies.

The program works. Smart women can learn programming and be successful at any subsequent job in the industry with adequate time, mentorship and training.

This is of course true for people of all genders, race and college background.

There are many similar programs that cater to diverse hiring pipelines. Dev Bootcamp for first time web developers, Jopwell for black, latino, hispanic and native american candidates.

But all these still depend on a hiring manager valuing mentorship over "pre-qualified".

Of all the things in my career, I am most proud of helping engineers be successful at tasks that they weren't "qualified" to do. This has been hiring junior candidates for roles beyond their current experience (with clear discussions on both sides about how it will be challenging), and rotating and promoting engineers into new roles and responsibilities.

[sokoloff]

I was using Cinderella with the Bill Murrary Caddyshack scene in mind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbQTXFJL8lo (implying a non-traditional background experiencing uncommon success, as in the fairy tale).

Until you pointed it out, I hadn't even considered the gender-specificity of Cinderella herself. Thanks and upvoted for pointing that out; it's obvious in retrospect, but wasn't intended.

[peterwwillis]

Did I just read that your company doesn't try harder to hire black people because it would make your company less competitive?

I could be wrong, but i'm pretty sure I just read that your company intentionally avoids hiring disadvantaged black people in your own country because hiring minorities overseas is cheaper and easier.

[sokoloff]

I did not intend to say any such thing, do not believe that is true, and IMO, it takes a fairly tortured reading of my words to reach your conclusion.