Ally Resources - by Lara Hogan. Takeaway: a collection of resources on topics ranging from sponsorship (vs. mentoring) of underrepresented groups, to the impact of diversity work.
Argument Cultures and Unregulated Aggression - by Kate Heddleston. Takeaway: Using arguments as a tool for decision-making hurts creativity and diversity. Unregulated arguments create hostile work environments by promoting a win-at-all-costs attitude.
Atlassian Boosted Its Female Technical Hires By 80% — Here’s How - by First Round Review. Takeaway: Start on inclusion and diversity as early as possible. Get your management board to commit to inclusion and diversity. Evaluate what is causing exclusion and plan how to address the causes. Have clear guidelines for promotions and job roles.
Authenticity at Work Is a Privilege - by Roseanne Malfucci at ThoughtWorks. Takeaway: “Free snacks and a lax dress code do not spell freedom for minoritized technologists like me, who instead spend our days walking many small tightropes, while also trying to do our actual jobs. How can we create a culture where ‘bringing your whole self to work’ is an option for a broader range of people?”
Beginning with Ourselves: Using Data Science to Improve Diversity at Airbnb - by Riley Newman and Elena Grewal. Takeaway: Airbnb managed to increase the number of women in the company from 15% to 30% by analyzing and improving their recruiting practices.
Being an Effective Ally to Women and Non-Binary People - by Toria Gibbs and Ian Malpass. Takeaway: “Relying on members of minority groups to shoulder the burden of diversity issues is just as flawed as expecting one person to do all the work to fix a broken deploy system. You can’t excel at your job when you spend half your time dealing with other stuff. We need ways of spreading the load. We need allies. And we hope that’s why you’re reading this now.”
Bootstrapping Inclusion - by Jason Wong. Takeaway: “If you are a tech leader of a 5 to 30 person engineering organization sitting around a table with your all-male leadership team wondering how you can hire more under represented minorities, this is for you.”
Criticism and Ineffective Feedback - by Kate Heddleston. Takeaway: Research shows that more critisism and negative feedback is given to women. In order to boost people’s performance, it is best to give positive feedback. If we want people to improve or change, it is best to tell them what exactly to do as opposed to what not to do.
Diversity Debt: How Much Does Your Startup Have? - by Andrea Barrica. Takeaway: “In the same way that engineers can accrue “technical debt” when they push out sloppy code, or business owners can accrue “bookkeeping debt” when they procrastinate their financials until tax time, companies can also accrue diversity debt over their life cycle. The more people your company hires until you have a diverse team (meaning an array of genders, LGBT, socio-economic backgrounds, ethnicities, ages, able-bodiedness, etc.) — the more diversity debt your organization has accrued.”
Diversity and Inclusion: Stop Talking and Do Your Homework - by Emma Irwin. Takeaway: 12 ways to increase diversity and inclusion, based on Mozilla’s research.
5 Strategies for Being an Ally to Women in Tech - by Joy Ebertz. Takeaway: 1) Look who does your “housework” tasks; 2) be mindful of the peer feedback you give; 3) help make sure people are credited with their ideas; 4) create space for others in meetings; 5) make sure team-building is inclusive.
For an Inclusive Culture, Try Working Less - by Rich Armstrong. Takeaway: “When our office culture is focused on business rather than socializing, we reduce the number of ways in which we all have to be the same. When we do that, we allow diversity to flourish. If your culture expects people to work long hours or hang out off-hours, the strain on the people who are different, in whatever way, is increased, and your ability to retain a diverse work force is reduced.”
Girl, Wash Your Face - by Rachel Hollis. Takeaway: “The truth? You, and only you, are ultimately responsible for who you become and how happy you are.” This book breaks down the lies that women hear from the world or tell themselves and reshapes the narrative to believe in your self as a strong, capable, worthy woman who can achieve your dreams. A perfect message for women navigating the business of the tech industry.
Hire More Women in Tech - by Karen Schoellkopf. A wealth of information and data about why companies should hire more tech women and why they don’t. Includes lists of reading materials, women in tech groups, and other valuable information.
How Diversity Makes Retrospective Actions Stick - by Ben Linders. Takeaway: “Agile teams are multidisciplinary and to get work done it should be a diverse team. A diverse team is capable to define innovate and lasting solutions to problems, actions that have a higher chance to really solve problems forever.”
“How Do We Hire More Women?” - by Kate Heddleston. Takeaway: The question you should be asking isn’t, “how can we hire more women?” The question you should be asking is: how can we make our company suck less for women and people of color? Or, in more polite terms: how do you create a workplace that is fundamentally better for women and people of color than the ones that exist at tech companies today?”
How Fragile Deployments Hurt Diversity - by Kate Heddleston. Takeaway: “Here are two things that are true: the single most expensive thing on your engineering team is engineers, and fragile teams are terrible places to work. Which means – the biggest problem with fragile deployments isn’t just that your code might break; the real problem is that you will lose your valuable engineers because of bad workplace culture. In the long run, a broken culture can be more costly than outages. It can even kill your business.”
How Men and Women See the Workplace Differently - by Nikki Waller. A Wall Street Journal article on a study conducted by LeanIn.org and MicKinsey. “Data show that men win more promotions, more challenging assignments and more access to top leaders than women do. Men are more likely than women to feel confident they are en route to an executive role, and feel more strongly that their employer rewards merit.”
How Our Engineering Environments Are Killing Diversity (and How We Can Fix It) (video) - by Kate Heddleston.
How Our Engineering Environments Are Killing Diversity: Introduction - by Kate Heddleston.
How to Move Past the Pipeline Problem to Reach Your Diversity Goals (video/webinar) - by Elizabeth Ames and Laura Mather. Takeaway: “Companies continually hire from a traditional talent pool that is only 35% of the US population, when they should be looking at a much broader swath of the population. There is a qualified, untapped talent pool of women, underrepresented minorities, LGBT, veterans, etc. that comprises more than 65% of the US.”
How to Run Inclusive Meetings - by Franklin Hu. Takeaway: “It’s the meeting moderator’s job to both create a psychologically safe environment and ensure that participants have an equal opportunity to contribute. Shaping the environment that meetings happen in helps to lower the barrier for people to contribute in meetings by hopefully eliminating entire classes of extrinsic factors that may dissuade individuals. Meetings are often highly visible, decision-making and ideation forums. By making sure all participants have an equal opportunity to participate, you are helping to create an inclusive culture.”
If You Can Use a Fork, You’re “Technical” - by April Wensel. Takeaway: “‘Technical’ is not a useful adjective to describe human beings,” because it’s vague; it hides bias in hiring decisions; it blocks technical contributions from “non-technical” employees; and limits potential. “There’s no magic to coding or any other technical skills. People are not ‘technical’ or ‘not technical.’ We all have a variety of skills already and the potential to learn any others that we choose.”
Imposter Syndrome + Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Resources - by Neha. A good collection of resources on Imposter Syndrome and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.
The Maddeningly Simple Way Tech Companies Can Employ More Women - by Katherine Zaleski. Takeaway: “There’s a continuing debate about the reasons for the lack of diversity in the tech sector, including candidate pools that are mostly male, and stubborn, superficial notions of what it means to be a “cultural fit” for an organization — the template for which is often based on young white men. But at least one small component of this problem is immediately solvable: Many companies are alienating the qualified women who want to work for them, and who they want to hire, during the interview process itself.”
Managing Unconscious Bias - by Facebook. A collection of videos to help people identify and manage their unconscious bias.
On Being a Female Program Manager at Microsoft - by Donna Malayeri. Takeaway: The author describes how poor management can stall one’s career. Chaos, lack of empathy, biased feedback (“you’re too aggressive/pushy/complaining”) are all factors the author faced. “…I can’t help feeling that a man would have been treated differently. Perhaps there was unconscious bias at play; perhaps I didn’t act the way women should, and this bothered people. Despite my asking for bigger opportunities, I saw project after project handed to my peers instead of me. Without opportunities to do important work, my career stalled.”
Onboarding and the Cost of Team Debt - by Kate Heddleston. Takeaway: Lack of onboarding hurts mostly those who are different from the rest of the team. Onboarding can improve diversity as new hires will feel more integrated.
The Null Process - by Kate Heddleston. Takeaway: The lack of a clear promotion process creates an informal process for promotions that favors men.
Recommended Reading for Allies - by Toria Gibbs and Ian Malpass. Takeaway: A list of helpful resources on feminism, privilege, allyship, research, and more.
Right Here, Right Now: 27 Simple Actions to Support Women in Tech - by Cassie Divine. Takeaway: Includes 27 things one can do to support women, from speaking out when something amiss occurs, to celebrating women colleagues.
The Rolodex - by Jenn Frank. Takeaway: “It isn’t that we actively discriminate against anybody in particular. It’s that we constantly discriminate IN FAVOR of white men.” The article addresses the argument that we should hire for merit, not gender.
Solving the Disappearing Women Problem - by Janine C. Ames and Christina E. Coplen. Takeaway: Companies that keep women signal the importance of gender diversity from the top; remove unconscious bias in assessment; use data, not assumptions, to evaluate culture fit; and provide support for women in leadership roles.
There’s No ‘Silver Bullet’ to Increasing Diversity, But Here’s How We’re Making Progress - by Bhavin Parikh. An honest and personal account of how Magoosh is addressing the topic, and what they’re doing to create a fair hiring/growth culture: providing guidance to candidates, creating a salary framework, stay interviews/check-ins, and more. Their efforts produced noticeable results.
Tracking Compensation and Promotion Inequity - by Lara Hogan. Takeaway: “Plenty of tech companies are attempting to make their pipeline of candidates more diverse. But an organization won’t find much success recruiting a more diverse group of employees unless its leaders are aware of their existing internal inclusion and equity issues. Unless leadership has already started to tackle these issues, it’s likely that these new hires will enter into an environment that they won’t want to stick around in for long.”
Ways Men in Tech Are Unintentionally Sexist - by Kat Hagan. Takeaway: Little, unintentially malicious things people say reinforce stereotypes.
What Does Sponsorship Look Like? - by Lara Hogan. Takeaway: The former Etsy leader and current Kickstarter lead talks about shifting focus from mentoring to sponsoring as a way to change the ratio. “When privileged people begin to see the systems of bias and privilege, their first instinct typically is to mentor those who haven’t benefited from the same privilege. … What members of underrepresented groups in tech often need most is opportunity and visibility, not advice.”
What it Feels Like to Work in a Supportive Environment for Female Engineers - by Christina Thompson. Takeaway: “While reflecting on what makes Artsy a great environment for me and other female engineers, it was clear that the inclusive environment that Artsy provides is embedded in our values and culture as a company. It baffles me when companies make significant efforts to respond to diversity issues with fixes that address the symptoms and not the root of the problem. This fails to truly internalize diversity and people as a value, culturally or otherwise. Those efforts may marginally increase your numbers and get more diverse folks in the door, but they fail to foster a culture of inclusion. It’s one thing to financially invest in an initiative; it’s something entirely different to emotionally invest in it as a core value.”
Why Diverse Teams Are Smarter - by David Rock and Heidi Grant. Takeaway: Studies by McKinsey and others suggest that diversity can positively affect financial returns for companies. Other studies show that diverse teams are more objective, process information more carefully, and become more innovative than homgeneous teams. This seems natural, given that diverse views and backgrounds will lead to a broader range of perspectives as well as debate and refinement of ideas.
Why Diversity Matters - by Vivian Hunt, Dennis Layton, and Sara Prince at McKinsey & Co. Takeaway: “[C]ompanies in the top quartile for gender or racial and ethnic diversity are more likely to have financial returns above their national industry medians. Companies in the bottom quartile in these dimensions are statistically less likely to achieve above-average returns. And diversity is probably a competitive differentiator that shifts market share toward more diverse companies over time.”
Why Men Don’t Believe the Data on Gender Bias in Science - by Alison Coil. Takeaway: “[A] recent paper showed that in fact, male STEM faculty assessed the quality of real research that demonstrated bias against women in STEM as being low; instead the male faculty favored fake research, designed for the purposes of the study in question, which purported to demonstrate that no such bias exists.”
Why the World Needs More Female Leaders - by Alicia Gant. Takeaway: “The underrepresentation of women in the boardroom to politics is a problem that needs to be tackled head on. Having more female leaders is important because female leaders change the perceived conception about who can lead and what qualities are necessary to have in a leadership position.”
Women in Tech: We Need You - by Kristina. A request to women to speak publicly, mentor, and become a role model. “We need to hear your experiences, your lessons, your failures and your successes. We need to hear them because you can never be sure who you’ll influence and whose life you’ll change.”