A Collection of Concepts on Hiring Women In Tech, and Diversity & Inclusion

Introduction

I have been working in technology since 2001. I thought about spending time here creating a credible, favorable account of my love of games, math and science and how I came to be a proverbial "Woman in Tech". Then I realized that the inclination to do so stems from my underlying fears about fitting in. How ironic, let's move on.

Motivation

In my 20's I organized and partook in various female focused technology groups. In the past decade I have focused more on myself and my own career, leaving much of the research and engagement in these groups behind. Recently I was asked to contribute some ideas on the specific matter of increasing female headcount in a mostly male tech team. My first reaction was one of fear to look further than my own experiences. I am a high empathy individual who avoids conflict in general, and I knew that researching this topic would require that I:

look beyond what I was comfortable with,
be pulled in to other more complex topics,
feel the pain of others,
and face my own ignorance.

You see, every time I pick up this rock and look under it I feel tired, lost, angry, hopeless, and bitter.

But tied up in these feelings is those of gratitude and fortune. If you make it through this post you will find a section on sponsorship. The only reason I have published this collection here is because one of my past sponsors encouraged me to do so. It is a tearful event for me to consider the impact that he and various others had on the momentum of my career in the early days. I'm thankful for them, and so I hope that this collection of information will inspire others to make moves that improve the lives of underrepresented groups of humans in technology.

References

I have some quoted material that I hope is properly attributed. It is not my intention to call anyone else's work here my own, but rather to distill, and share. If I have missed a direct reference to an author please comment and I will adjust.

It all started with a really great 3 part series written by Rachel Thomas on Medium.com:

Additional sources include:

Concepts

These concepts have impact in how women are hired, evaluated, promoted and treated on a day to day basis.
Pattern Matching - Leaders look for people who remind them of themselves. To hire, promote and suggest for interesting projects.
Unconscious Bias - Decisions and judgments are made about people or situations based on unobserved bias.
Status Quo Bias - A preference for the current state of affairs (any change from the status quo is perceived as a loss)
Sponsor(ship) - A person who is influential can have a high positive impact for an underrepresented individual by sponsoring them and their ideas.

Hiring

Understand and eliminate gendered language in job postings to attract more female candidates. Aim to “Form the best team” rather than “to hire the best candidate”

The “Smartest Team” has the following 3 characteristics in a study from MIT

Members contributed more equally rather than letting 1 or 2 people dominate
Members scored higher at reading complex emotional states from people’s faces
Teams had more women

In order to avoid unconscious bias and pattern matching during interviews - Make the interview process:

Resemble actual work the candidate would be doing in their job
Use clear rubrics
Consistent and standardized

Retention

Onboarding

The opposite of structured onboarding is "haphazard, ad-hoc, social onboarding" and is bad for all employees, but even worse for people who differ from existing team members. Without structure, “new team members rely on their existing social structures to learn about their job, their role, their teammates, and the company - as if by osmosis”.
Structured onboarding creates a greater opportunity for new team members to feel welcome and achieve success.

General Culture & Treatment

Sponsorship - when a mentor goes beyond giving advice to using their influence with others to advocate for the mentee. “With a sponsor, women in tech are 70% more likely to have their ideas endorsed, 119% more likely to see their ideas developed, and 200% more likely to see their ideas implemented.”
Upon reflection - I can attest that sponsorship is part of the foundation of my own success.

Why leave? - There are many examples of “women do this and men do the same thing and people listen to men, but not women”. I’m not going to get in to those details. Instead - here’s a list of reasons why women leave tech jobs (sourced from personal interviews, and the various references quoted at the beginning of this post):

Concern for the lack of advancement opportunity
Unfair treatment in pay
Less opportunities to work on high visibility or innovative projects
Suppressed or stolen ideas (by interruption, being talked over, or not given credit)
Vague feedback and personal criticisms
Lateral moves that are not considered advancements or promotions

Management & Performance Reviews

Technical women are “less likely to agree that management decisions were fair, that management trusted their judgement, that performance evaluations were fair, or that it was safe to speak up compared to every other sub group”.
Managers should be trained on the concept of unconscious bias because it impacts how they will write and deliver performance reviews.

Feedback for men contains

Granular details
Actionable advice linked to business outcomes “deepen your knowledge in X”
Constructive criticism on skills they should develop

Feedback for women

Is vague “you had a great year”
Lacks actionable feedback
Contains personality criticism “pay attention to your tone”

Actions

I don't have the answers, but I think some of these things stand out. Keep in mind that diversity and inclusion work, like many things, is never _done_.

Hiring & Retention

Use a tool to spot gendered language in job postings like https://textio.com/
Have postings reviewed by women who work in or near the role.
Review interview processes and come up with standard, skills based evaluation methods before interviews.
Provide unconscious bias training for managers and hiring managers

To hire to form the best team
To give fair and actionable performance reviews

Retention

Review onboarding processes for new hires and new team members. Consider creating some regular onboarding processes that will invite greater inclusion.
Analyze and measure company data on performance reviews, salaries and promotions. Are there differences between groups in performance reviews and promotion rates? Does the feedback given to different genders reflect the behaviors found in the studies? Why?
Create a regular feedback channel where all employees feel they can give confidential feedback on situations relating to diversity and inclusion.
Understand the difference between mentorship and sponsorship. Look for opportunities (structured or unstructured) to create sponsorship opportunities for under-represented groups.

Finally

Learn your biases.

Be kind, humble, empathetic, and curious.

I am not open to hateful or hurtful comments on this topic, none will be tolerated, Mr. Canerican will probably delete them before I see them.

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