[predaking]

Guess the experiences here are pretty diverse. I’ve not had a problem hiring or competing with FAANG for excellent+qualified female / non-white talent.

What’s the current gender makeup % of your engineering team, if I can ask? As well, what’s the non white makeup of the engineering leadership and overall leadership team? I found it got easier the less that ratio skewed towards 100%M engineering team and 100% white leadership team :)

[JPKab]

Current engineering team is 2 women, 2 men. 2 over 50, 2 under 40. All white.

Leadership team is mostly female, only 1 male, who is CTO. 1 is Latina, others white.

In the past, I joined a company where entire leadership team was Indian and male. I never would have thought to not work there because they didn't share my race. That would have been bigoted.

[predaking]

I elaborated on this more in my other response but:

“ I never would have thought to not work there because they didn't share my race. That would have been bigoted.”

There’s a wealth of factors that go into a choice to work somewhere, and someone not choosing to work at your company because they don’t see themselves represented isn’t necessarily bigotry, but then also wanting an assurance of a safe space and not always knowing whether it will be. I wish I could tell you otherwise but I’ve had these conversations with a wealth of marginalized groups over my career and the teams I’ve built, so it’s not unusual. It’s not a “oh I don’t want to work with these people because I’m [x] and they’re [y]” matter the majority of the time. It’s more often “man, I’m going to be the only [x] on a team of 30 [y]s” which is often culturally uncomfortable for a lot of people.

And yes sometimes on occasion it is “man, I don’t want to be working with a company of 10 [y]s where I’m the only [x]” or “if the executive team is all or majority [y]s, do I know for sure there’s career advancement opportunities here?”

We do have a rampant amount of sexism, racism, etc in our field (just like many others) and so that is something unfortunately people sometimes suspect. I’m not at all saying that this is the situation at your company - far from it - just saying the choices for people are most often verrrrrry far from bigotry.

Not sure of your background but it’s also not too hard for a CIS white male to not sweat working on any other team composition (say, all Indian) vs the reverse, because hey - even if you’re paying a pioneer tax, you’re probably not paying it for long. There’s a lot of advantages that group has that are often taken for granted. :)

[predaking]

Just a note that I’m astounded that a remark saying “hey, I’ve hired a diverse team, here are some structural things I’ve found that helped - tell me more about your team makeup” is something that garnered any downvotes at all. Are there seriously people here who believe this is a bad idea? I’d love to hear more about why you do!

[JPKab]

I didn't have a problem with the statement.

I disagree with catering to candidates own biases though.

If a candidate assumes my startup is bigoted because it's all white, despite talking to us, I don't want them here. Stereotypes are stupid, useless, and immoral, no matter who they are directed at. Imagine if I had a problem with all but 1 of my leadership team being female? That would be me making decisions about them based on their immutable characteristics. Fuck that.

[predaking]

Actually that’s not at all why I brought it up. There’s a concept called “the pioneer tax” where being the first X of anything means you’re the pioneer. For example, the first female in a team of 3 engineers pays a much lower pioneer tax than the first female engineer in a team of 20 engineers. Replace female with black or Latina. It’s the same thing there. Career choices are a huge choice; why wouldn’t you choose to work where you’d feel most comfortable with the culture?

Ideally the earlier you can intentionally focus on diversity the better. This also goes for leadership too - both for hiring other leaders and it’s an easy demonstration that the company’s commitment to diversity isn’t just for token representation purposes.

Anyway...yeah, nothing about catering to candidates biases or people judging you as bigots. I sense the anger here at that but hopefully you can see that’s not where I’m approaching it from.

[JPKab]

I really appreciate your extremely informative response.

I think you hit a very good point with the pioneer attacks and it's a higher cost as the team gets larger.

Funny enough I experienced the pioneer tax myself one time but for a different reason than ethnicity or sexuality: Socioeconomic status. People can't tell by looking at me but within about two sentences they can very accurately HEAR via my speech patterns that I grew up in a lower socioeconomic class than 99% of US born programmers in the industry. I have a very rural dialect but I do work hard to have excellent grammar when I speak. Over the years I've worked hard to suppress the accent while at work and I'm sad to say that it's been very effective in reducing people's biases toward me. Of course that's just anecdotal it's not like somebody was scientifically measuring anything. And I'm fully aware it's a huge luxury to be able to hide what makes you different from people, as opposed to race/gender/etc.

[predaking]

Appreciate you too!