Black Lives Matter.

Most of you will have seen the news coming out of the USA, about the sickening racist violence currently being perpetrated there by members of law enforcement and others. Things are no better here in the UK, a nation whose wealth was built through the exploitation of others’, a violent history that is all but hand waved away in our schools.

It’s said that silence is complicity, that it’s not enough to be quietly non-racist. Here, I offer my voice.

Black lives matter.

Discrimination against people based on their race is wholly unacceptable.

When I originally set out to write this post, I did so with the intention of sharing some of the anti-racists steps we take at The Scale Factory, but honestly on reflection, it’s really very clear we’re not doing enough. When we've considered diversity and inclusivity, it's often been from the perspective of gender, not race.

We have some checks and balances in our hiring and career progression frameworks which attempt to remove systemic bias, but we can probably go further with those.

We’ve given financial and other support to organisations that support under-represented groups in their technology careers, but not in any regular or consistent manner.

So here’s what we’re going to do from here. It doesn't feel like much, in the grand scheme of things, but I hope it helps:

For charities and non-profit organisations:

We’re donating money to The Stephen Lawrence Trust, Black Lives Matter UK, and Black Minds Matter. We’re doing that now, and will continue to make charitable donations quarterly, with the size of that donation being informed by our profits in that quarter.

We’ll be offering our Scale Factory Academy training courses free of charge to non-profit organisations who provide opportunities for people from BAME backgrounds to learn technology - starting with a workshop at the end of the month for Coding Black Females.

For businesses with founders from BAME backgrounds:

We’ll be offering consultancy packages, free of charge, covering everything you need to know to succeed as you start to build your solution in AWS. We’ll help you get access to the funding programs you’re entitled to.

We’ll offer you discounted Support & Learning services, to ensure you have access to our expertise when you need it, and to keep your teams trained.

We’ll make sure you’re included, and represented when we run our events for founders, and we will ensure your voice is heard.

For potential future employees:

We’ll look critically at our hiring pipeline, and take further steps to remove bias, learning from other organisations who’ve invested resources successfully in this area.

We commit to hiring, training, and mentoring more underrepresented people as we grow.

For our existing colleagues:

We commit to supporting you through your career with The Scale Factory, providing an environment where you can succeed and thrive as your whole self, and we will make the resources you need available to do that.

We’re listening to you: we invite you to talk to us in the event that you’re made to feel unwelcome, uncomfortable, or unsafe - whether at work, in the wider industry (such as at conference or other events), or in your non-work life, as much as you feel able to share.

We will not tolerate discrimination of you by others, and we will take action against those who harm you. We will hold ourselves accountable when we inevitably make mistakes in this area.

Finally, we will continue to listen, and to learn. I regret that it has taken sustained global protest for us to take even this modest action, but I promise that we will continue our support beyond these urgent days.