How to fix gender equality issues in tech, while others are just talking about it

A lot has been said about diversity in past years. Here are 5 things you, as a senior manager, can do to help fix it. The above title is exaggerated click bait but I hope this Silicon Valley perspective helps.

1 - Get the facts, avoid the labeling, deescalate

Did the dismissal of James Damore, after his publication of an article about diversity at Google in august '17, serve a purpose? No - it just polarized the debate, towards ‘good vs evil’, and did not help the cause of bringing much needed human balance in Silicon Valley. Its capital city is San Jose, often referred to as Man Jose, for a reason. You can’t fix that by having a yelling contest and a mob lynching as climax.

Question: Who has actually read the article that Damore wrote? I did. It is not badly written nor is it baseless. After reading, my take on it is that the text has been constructed to support an existing conservative viewpoint and there is an element of frustration in it. And that is fine. It is not important whether you and I agree with it or not. But definitely not a reason to be fired nor reason for tons of company execs to label him anything from an alt-right sexist to a racist.

Why not?

Because it does not help you to build and manage a diverse workforce. Your job is to do so while respecting opinions, with having a thoughtful conversation, and still deliver the numbers. You are not here to be the moral knight on a high horse. By crucifying criticism, you destroy unity among your staff. The US-centric simplification and polarization of any debate is what got you a paralyzed Congress – and your latest president elected. Hope you’re happy with that. The complete absence of nuance and consensus in the discussion this past week, coming from all sides, is contra productive. The exchange of platitudes lacks the reasonable tone that would help people agree on what is necessary to be done to fix the gender equality issues. Instead it makes people dig in their heels and choose the usual behaviors of fight or flight. So, while Google continues to rub in this stain as they have been doing for years, do the opposite in your company! Get the facts, avoid the labeling, have a short and moderated discussion. Then focus on doing the right thing by deescalating and define the road map to success.

2 - It’s the tone from the top

Everything starts with “walk it like you talk it” CEOs can’t appoint a ‘Diversity Officer’ with no hierarchical power and keep on doing wrong what they always have been doing wrong. That is what happens in many big companies today. CEOs and boards are more worried about their public image than about actually fixing the gender stereotype issues, that is what this implies. They keep on paying women less while lecturing others. Instead of having all kind of fluffy programs with no measurable outcome, and indirectly telling staff how they are sexist, racist and wrong, just focus on doing things at least directionally correct. By hiring towards the correct profile mix in terms of gender and race, yet avoid to constantly focus the narrative on differences. Less talking, more doing. Set goals to eliminate gender stereotype based behavior and hiring, and achieve those.

Do you want to be remembered as the panic CEO that always responded to incidents with more drama, or the one that achieved goals and closed the gender gap?

3 - Improve the world, start with yourself

A little Gandhi quoting goes a long way. ‘You must be the change you want to see in the world’. The issue of under representation of women in Silicon Valley has a complex series of causes. You, alone today, cannot solve the issue of girls not choosing to become software coders. Nor can you make math or beta science more popular among female college kids. But you can be the parent, coach, mentor and hiring manager that does the right thing. Instead of getting wound up about controversial cliché’s (“Men like things, women like people”), here are a few practical things that do the trick. They actually worked for me. 

Tell your recruiters to bring you 50% female resumes. If they say that can’t be done, get rid of them and get new ones. There may be a lack of women in tech, but there is for sure no lack of recruiters!

If they bring you 100% white male candidates, ask them if they are from Vermont or if they actually live in San Jose. Address it, improve it, don’t leave it undiscussed. This is exactly the opportunity to influence the debate.

Yet If they bring you a female candidate that is smart and talented, but less experienced and a bit shy, take the risk. Hire them, coach them and fasttrack them. They probably had to overcome a fair amount of trouble already, just because they are female, that compensates a few years less experience.

Set a salary for the job, not for a specific candidate, and do that before you start recruiting. Remove the bias before it can occur. There is far more you can do here than just obey the labor laws around equality.

Another initiative is to create an intern pool and make sure to get as much diversity in there as possible. Let’s say your company suffers from having the most obvious first- or second job talent on the market being snapped up by tech giants, and therefore there is a shortage of hiring potential available to your recruiting needs. Often the 25-35 yr old white males over index in such a big tech hiring spree, which is biased as we know, with Google again as a fine example. A possible solution is to create a talent bank with younger people from a more diverse background. Be there first; cradle robbing for the win!

Establish more female leadership in projects, big or small. It helps to remind team members who is leading a certain effort, and again it sets women up for success

4 - But wait, there’s more!

More as in: more that you can do to help bridge the gender gap. Like volunteer to be a mentor for female high potentials. That is a proven way to not only help women advance their careers in tech, it also helps you become a better people manager and keep the ‘women in tech’ top of mind. If you don’t want to do that in your own company, go volunteer somewhere else. It will only cost you an hour per 2 to 3 weeks so no excuses. You can apply at Everwise online for example, it is not hard to accomplish.

It's key to eliminate pay differences between people with similar background doing the same job. That requires having some structure but hey, that is a good thing. You can’t be running the shop forever like it is a startup. This requires focus and the will to fix it.

Set team collaboration goals, be transparent about people’s MBOs so there is no misunderstanding. The key to a more productive team is to foster collaboration and that needs a little extra TLC when the team is diverse. It is what it is. Forcing people to work together makes people understand each other better, which is crucial when you want to create a diverse workforce. The US office culture of coin-operated individualism and locking people up in cubicles does not help. Gotta rethink that as well if you want a new and diverse generation thrive in your gray concrete building from the seventies.

The fact that engineers often are not exactly getting recruited for their smooth social skills creates an extra resistance layer. Yes, there is some long staring at females and other random awkwardness. Some engineers come from very traditional cultures where the roles of men vs women are, well, a bit over defined. Not a guarantee for integration success, if you don’t manage the expectations. That is why there needs to be a short set of rules of engagement and coaching of people who have trouble treating others equally. If that ends up being an intelligence-insulting online video course with multiple-choice questions and a lot of stock photos, you have probably not solved this issue. “Peter asks Mary to kiss him in return for a raise. Can Peter do that?” If that is the kind of course mandatory at your workplace, you may have ticked that HR box for yourself, but it does not work. That is just called ‘denial’. A real series of conversations help. I know, that costs time and effort. Just Do It.

 5- So, what is the message?

In a 1:1 meeting with female staff members, I noticed I often have to focus on helping women to overcome resistance and start to lead. I say things like: Speak up, don’t be afraid of resistance. Avoid only managing the details but take the bigger issues head on. Be visible. Take a stance and feel supported by your manager. Identify what is important rather than just urgent. Don’t be pushed down into the lower half of your job. Be vocal about your opinions, goals, ambition and needs. Whatever happens - don’t be a quiet doormat even if the opposite makes you feel uncomfortable. In meetings, as long as I can remember, I always have to make sure I get female staff members to speak up their fair share and shut down people that are interrupting and talk over others. Women have to use persistence and influencing techniques, more than men, to achieve what they want. Particularly with peers. It is better once they get into a top-down hierarchical situation, or where they train people themselves. As a manager, training and coaching women on these skills is helping them today and tomorrow.

Women from traditional cultures have more problems with that than women that come from an area where there have been multiple generations of women in a more equal constellation. A military crisis does that to an old culture. Like in Israel or Russia, or England in the late 40s. Or plain emancipation: in countries where women have been playing a more prominent role in politics and society. It's all about role models. I am not talking about matriarchal versus patriarchal history, but more about the last 50-70 years.

So if that works, creating role models in education and at work might also benefit new generations. Championing the right women is effective.

Telling someone “just don’t be shy” does not work. But sending shy women on a presentation training or help them achieve a certain degree in a specialism definitely works. Or let them experience initial small successes rather than just throwing them in the pool and figure it out. Because confidence is key to turn this vicious circle around. Your mentor messaging should be constructed in a way that creates confidence, without naming it specifically. That goes for many coaching conversations but especially when dealing with women who are new and overwhelmed in a male dominated environment.

Youtube CEO Susan Wojcicki wrote an article on Fortune.com, in which she said that her daughter asked her: “Mom, is it true that there are biological reasons why there are fewer women in tech and leadership?” After quoting Google’s official stance on the James Damor memo, she ends with her reply “No, that is not true”. Well – that is a bit too easy. To my own daughter I will say, instead of just yes/no, a little bit more, in order to have a nuanced discussion: “I don’t know. There are fewer women in tech and in leadership, that is true. And it is absolutely a bad thing. But there are multiple reasons why, and apart from discrimination and prejudice, biological reasons could be playing a part as well. There are studies pointing at different elements - you can’t just say it is just sexism, or it is just biology. I think t is caused by a combo of nurture and nature"

Yet establishing that is still not the point: It’s never about how you get sick, it’s about how you get better. The question should be: how to get more women in tech and leadership roles?”

The crux of the matter is that the above, plus a little less extremity in how we encapsulate engineers and senior leaders (type casting) can help overcome the gender gap for a large part. That is far more useful to strive for than the debate of enlargement versus denial of biological differences.

A practical can-do mentality is what made Silicon Valley thrive, and it will solve this issue as well. Megan McArdle wrote about this in a tone I like a lot, a while ago on Bloomberg.com: “Girls can code. Maybe fewer will choose to do so”. And that’s OK, as long as we know there is an equal opportunity.

I volunteer as a mentor for ambitious women in Silicon Valley. Here is a slide deck I put together for a presentation on 'how to get promoted': https://www.slideshare.net/richardjonker1/how-to-get-promoted-by-richard-jonker

Do the right thing. 

Richard Jonker