Part 2: It’s Time to Address the Racism in Hiring for Tech

“There are two schools of thought: either you believe that your organization functions better with a diverse team, or you don’t,” said Eric Swanson, Happiness Engineer at the Omaha-based WordPress-hosting site Flywheel. “It’s been proven time and time again that, almost unanimously, more diverse teams do better work.” Research backs him up. A report from…

“There are two schools of thought: either you believe that your organization functions better with a diverse team, or you don’t,” said Eric Swanson, Happiness Engineer at the Omaha-based WordPress-hosting site Flywheel. “It’s been proven time and time again that, almost unanimously, more diverse teams do better work.”

Research backs him up. A report from the nonprofit Open MIC finds relays some striking information about diversity and the bottom-line: “McKinsey & Company has reported companies in the top quartile in terms of racial diversity are 35 percent more likely to have financial returns higher than the national median in their industry.”  

It can be difficult to find programmers of color due to underrepresentation in the workforce, inequities in tech education, and a host of systemic factors that lie beyond the scope of this article. But some companies make it even harder on themselves by unwittingly self-sabotaging their own efforts to diversify their teams.

Culture-Add vs. Culture-Fit

In the hiring process, companies could be overlooking talent that clashes with their preconceived notion of what talent looks like. This is often the result of what Swanson calls a “culture-fit” mentality.

“Before, I would hear a million times, ‘Yeah, we interviewed so-and-so, but they weren’t really a culture-fit,’” Swanson told SPN. “‘Culture-fit’ is such a kind of dog whistle, though. And it implies adding to what you already have rather than enhancing it.”

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Worse, since people of color are historically underrepresented in tech, the culture-fit mentality may perpetuate unconscious bias against programmers of color.

Instead, companies should change their mindset with a simple reframing device, Swanson said.

“You have to look at hiring as not a ‘culture-fit’ but a ‘culture-add.’ And as soon as you reframe it along those lines, it opens up a wealth of possibilities.”

A Conversation on Racism in Hiring for Tech

Recently, Silicon Prairie News brought you some highlights from a conversation with two programmers of color about the racism they’d faced in tech education. Now we are bringing you part two of their conversation, which concerns the barriers they have faced in the hiring process.

Mary* works in data science for an area nonprofit. Gerald* interns in management operations for a local company with a national presence. (*Names have been changed, and jobs obscured, at the subjects’ requests. Each worried they would face backlash for speaking honestly about their experiences.)

Gerald: There’s been studies on it, and I’ve experienced it, that people who come from a similar background as you tend to treat you in a manner that they believe that you can achieve more. Somebody who comes from a dissimilar background or doesn’t look like you, most of them tend to think that you may know nothing. It’s portrayed as—

Mary: The expectations are a lot lower.

Gerald: Yeah. What they see a lot of in the media is what they think of you as.

Mary: I interviewed with a man that was into data and really good at placing people in data jobs. For the majority of our conversation, he’s talking about, ‘So I have these people working on this project, these people working in the agriculture industry doing this tech thing, and these people are working over here…’ And then at the end of this conversation, after I’ve told him about all the projects that I’ve worked on, and all my interests, he asks me if I would like to teach a statistics course. After being very adamant about ‘I want to be hands-on, I want to work on projects, I want to create things, I like solving problems.’ I feel like that’s indicative of anywhere I go, everyone asks me if I want to be a teacher. I never heard that happen with any of my classmates. They go out to interviews and employers are asking them to do actual work. But I show up and they’re like, ‘Would you like to teach?’ No. I want to work. I want to do what everyone else is doing.

Gerald: I think I sent out around 300 applications before I got 10 interviews. Of those 10 interviews, I got 1 offer to work with a major corporation. After getting the offer from them, I had a partner on one of my group projects hear about the offer and got me an interview at the place I am now—which I had applied to 30 times over the last half of a year and didn’t hear anything back.

Mary: I’ve never gotten a job any place where I didn’t already know someone there. But I’ve had classmates who I know don’t know how to do the things nearly as well—because they’re sitting behind me whispering ‘Hey Mary, how do you do this’— and they’re getting callbacks for interviews to places where we both applied. It doesn’t make any sense. When I have talked about my credentials, even with people that I knew, like I start talking, and I keep talking, and they’re like, ‘Oh, I didn’t know that you did all these things,’ and I go, ‘It’s on the resume right in front of you.’ It’s like they don’t believe you’ve actually done all these things or could be capable of doing them.

Gerald: I will say that Milwaukee is at least trying but has a similar issue. At least with them, they have a specific, sponsored group that tries to get all POC interns in that entire city together. But I don’t think there’s anything here that tries to do that.

Mary: And so, to be a person of color, especially a black person with a black name looking for jobs in tech in this city, you have to know somebody.

Gerald: There are so many things that need to be done, but I don’t know what helps more. It’s a systemic issue. Do you start with education first, for people going into the field? I mean, something needs to be done immediately with people in positions of power.

Mary: At the company level, I feel like there needs to be a personal inventory of cultural humility where you’re just being aware of your biases, and then also an organizational inventory of “Where are we? Where do we need to be?” And then some task force formed to make sure that it happens. That could easily be part of an employment engagement committee. How do we make people feel welcome and not “racism’d” upon? And that goes for all the ways in which employees are different, their abilities or disabilities—whether they’re visible or not so visible—being trauma-informed and aware of people’s biases when it comes to ageism—whether it’s for young people or older people—and the language that we use when we’re talking about people. It needs to be an organizational effort.

This story is part of the AIM Archive

This story is part of the AIM Institute Archive on Silicon Prairie News. AIM gifted SPN to the Nebraska Journalism Trust in January 2023. Learn more about SPN’s origin »

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