Let's kick the fad diets

I've been a yo-yo dieter for most of my adult life. Managing my weight is hard. I believe my approach to weight loss over the years parallels the tech industry's approach to diversity equity and inclusion. As my trainer would say "You spent years adding the pounds and it's going to take years to shed them." But I'm not willing to change habits easily. I am comforted by food although I know it is super unhealthy. But just like me, Tech needs to settle into a lifestyle change to address DEI and not keep trying cheap fad diets.

I want to share two examples that I see that could be considered "fad diets" in Tech. There are many more than these two and the signals are always the same. The red flag is when a company is trying to put in short-term work (and/or money) but expects to get amazing results.

Investment without intention is not going to work.

Example one, an idea that makes sense on paper:

Two-sided employer/talent websites. This idea doesn't work, the problem is far to large for a marketplace alone. Please stop investing in them and presenting them as a way to solve this problem in tech at scale. I've had dozens of conversations with really smart people that are convinced if they build "it" people will come. But, if a website and marketing team could fix this problem, Google would have already done it. Right?

The problem is NOT matching talent to jobs, the problems are: how do we help more people afford to gain the skills employers need. How do we get companies to shift their hiring practices to align with the skills that are actually needed to do the work? The problems are complex, so we should be more intentional about solutions.

A two-sided marketplace is not enough to drive change within organizations. While I agree it may help companies write more inclusive job descriptions and help with removing some bias in vetting candidates. Too little of this exists in most of these websites I see going up. These products largely become yet another place where recruiters DON'T WANT to post jobs.

If you ask any recruiter, they will tell you they hate posing and managing job listings. How exactly are job listings going to magically cause companies to hit DEI goals if they don't even want to be posting them?

Easy and inefficient solution number two:

Internships, hackathons, and contests. The short shot gun approach. These are amazingly effective at bringing people into the tent and helping them discover new collar careers in tech, but they alone are not sufficient to make change happen.

We can and must do better if we want to create more engineering teams that are more reflective of the consumers of tech. I think that tech apprenticeship programs are one way that we can do that.

I believe if we focus more time and energy on hiring STARs, those folks that are Skilled Through Alternative Routes, we can and will change the face of tech.

Companies will need to commit to long-term initiatives (tech apprenticeships) that create a more inclusive environment and culture within their organizations. This also includes actions like unconscious bias training and investing in career discovery programs that encourage women and minorities to pursue careers in tech. Only by taking these kinds of concerted and sustained efforts will the tech industry be able to address its diversity problem in a meaningful way.

What are some other "fad diets" in Tech we should kick? Leave a comment below.