Diversity Idiocracy in R&D

Diversity Idiocracy in Software Engineering

Many companies are advertising they want a more diverse engineering organization.??

Here’s an example:

I left off the remaining dribble in the statement to protect the identity of the innocent. As you can imagine it continues on describing how important diversity is to this company.

But when I actually look at R&D job postings and the people these same companies have on staff I see a different story:

• Most, or all job postings are for Lead & Sr. Software Engineers
• Their existing engineering teams look to be comprised of virtually all Sr./Lead/Staff Software Engineers
• A Bachelors Degree in computer science or equivalent experience is often required

The screenshot below is taken from LinkedIn Sales Navigator and corresponds to the engineering staff at the same tech company as the screenshot above from their career page:

Here is the most important part zoomed in:

If you really want to attract "Diversity candidates" don't you need to hire entry and mid-level positions too? See what I mean?

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think the leadership at these companies is disingenuous in their statements on their career page. Well maybe some of them are, but not in the case of the example I'm showing. I actually know them, and they are sincere.? I think many or even most tech companies are just making an innocent mistake in how they run their R&D organizations and need a little help.

It’s a Mistake to Build Teams Full of Sr. Devs

I think this is a very common but significant mistake, to build teams packed with Sr. Software Engineers. Smaller startups and garage projects are totally exempt.??I'm talking about engineering organizations greater than 50 or certainly 100 staff.

Here’s why:

• Diverse candidates these companies claim they are after are perhaps new to the career and won’t even apply.
• How can anyone, especially "Diversity candidates", have a chance at becoming a software engineer if they are constantly required to have 5-7+ years of experience?
• Part of the job description of a Sr. Software Engineer is the “ability to lead and mentor other engineers”.? How can they lead and mentor other engineers if they are all peers with the same level of experience?
• Sr. devs like minions to mentor that can do lower-skilled tasks they find boring. Allowing this leads to happier Sr. engineers.
• Increases R&D cost. Experience has a price.
• Provides no career path.? If all developers are Sr. or Level III how can they possibly be promoted???

Also, hiring most or all Sr. and Lead Software Engineers leads to negative Glass Door reviews with complaints about career-path and promotions. It increases your cost. And you will miss out on one of the best feelings in engineering leadership: helping people grow their careers, and fully adopt your engineering culture and way of doing things. Don’t miss out on this, it’s fun and feels good!

Why Do Engineering Managers Like to Hire Sr. Engineers?

With the exception of small organizations and early-stage startups, I believe it's out of laziness on behalf of the engineering management:?

• It’s true that it's easier for the engineering manager to onboard a Sr. developer than a Jr. or middle.
• Experienced engineers make fewer mistakes and gaps in best practices and culture are less noticed, particularly in areas such as sprint planning, pull requests, code reviews, brilliant jerks, time zone issues, and communication problems.
• If less experienced engineers work on a product then gaps in quality engineering become more visible such as unit tests, test case documentation, test automation, and integration tests.
• It's always more comfortable to hire people that look like yourself and have similar levels of experience. This practice should be actively discouraged.

While all of these reasons are true, they are poor excuses and point to lazy shortsighted R&D management. Don’t let your engineering managers get away with this, require teams to be well-balanced and you will ultimately achieve better results for lower cost.

Requiring a Computer Science Degree for Software Engineering is a Mistake

Some of the best software engineers I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with didn’t attend or didn’t complete university.? If diversity is a goal and the focus is on skillset then how does requiring a college degree open the role up to the most diverse pool of candidates?

I seriously came very close to dropping out of my university while pursuing computer science and engineering several times.

The reason?

It’s hard to justify paying many precious $thousands for 300 and 400-level computer science courses when often (but not always) you know more about the topic than your professor.?It's especially upsetting after spending your first two years paying for 200-level general requirements only to be forced to learn about social psychology through studying schizophrenia in rural Ireland and writing persuasive essays on environmental psychology.? While I found them mildly interesting topics, in my opinion, they're not worth the investment, and easily studied with a library card.?

You are then confronted with the fact you are paying for a piece of paper, nothing more. I was so disenfranchised by the experience I didn’t even attend my graduation.? I was too busy working on my tech startup and was happy to receive the sheepskin in the mail. And I was fortunate enough to attend a good ACM-accredited computer science program with some professors coming freshly from what was at the time top tech companies (e.g. Microsoft and AMD).

What you learn in Computer Science is Skimming the Surface

I had some of my classmates ask me for a job when we graduated because the company I founded was hiring software engineers and my answer was a very polite no thank you.? They didn’t have any real skills and weren’t willing to put their own time into learning and developing them.??I'll take a hungry up-and-coming self-taught developer willing to do whatever it takes to be the best software engineer any day over someone with a master's degree in computer science.

How Do I Measure Up?

To be fair, here is the same LinkedIn Sales Navigator search but for my organization. You can see a significant difference, and I think we still hire too many Sr. Developers!