Or … maybe we do have a talent pipeline issue? (Issue #14)
A prominent DEI leader says there are things we’re afraid to talk about. OK, let’s talk about them.
Man, I was excited when “quiet shitting” became a big topic because it made me realize how much I love living alone in my Grinch cave. I can just let it rip at any time of the night or day, no problem. I don’t know how you married people do it, performing all your bodily functions under the same roof. I only have my little doggie, ol’ whatshisname, and he for sure doesn’t care.
Wait, what’s that? It’s actually quiet quitting? So basically like those kids who make those “Day in the Life” Tiks Toks showing how they go to their tech job, do some shots of cucumber water, play ping pong, then go home? I dunno, it seems like if you’re getting away with something, maybe don’t advertise that shit?
Kind of like how tech companies try not to advertise how they don’t hire enough minorities. (They don’t call me the King of the Smooth Segue for nothing.) Regular readers know how I feel about this. We’ve discussed this now-iconic tweet before:
Who’s afraid of an honest conversation?
Alphabet Inc. CEO Sundar Pichai promised to hire enough Black workers and managers to push Google’s numbers to 30% by 2025. Microsoft said it would try to double the number of Black employees in senior and leadership positions during the same time period. Assuming they mean it, what are the obstacles to success?
I watched a video from Natasha Rainey’s podcast in which Dr. Vijay Pendakur, DEI VP at VMware, talks about the pipeline for underrepresented folks. He thinks that in fact there is a problem that DEI leaders aren’t talking about it. Say you’re looking for a full stack engineer with unity experience, whatever that is. It’s super hard to find one, much less one from an underrepresented group. There are maybe 100 in all of San Francisco. They’re even rarer than trombonists!
Pendakur believes this is a conversation we aren't having because there’s a fear of doing nothing. The high stakes are shutting down the conversation. There’s so much pressure on DEI leaders to meet their diversity numbers that there’s no space for honest conversations about the real issues.
How is your Chief Diversity Officer like Drake?
Because if You’re Reading This, It’s Too Late … to keep them from quitting. Even though more companies now than ever now have a Chief Diversity Officer, the position is a revolving door, with an average tenure of three years, according to Onova. What’s driving them out is a combination of unrealistic expectations and inadequate support. The CDO role has become akin to that of a hitting coach: someone to blame when things go wrong.
The broad and intentionally confusing challenge of discrimination and toxic cultures, make it difficult to design and anchor to clear outcomes. Without clearly stated, well-understood goals that are supported at the highest levels of a company, DEI leaders struggle to make progress, or even define what “progress” is.
DEI leaders are squeezed between two forces: those who believe DEI leaders aren’t doing enough, and those who think DEI is a waste of time. Both are waiting for any slip-up to pounce on.
And the tenure of these DEI executives is actually shrinking. A stunning 60% of CDOs at S&P 500 companies quit between 2018 and 2021. In a case of not-so-quiet quitting, Morgan Stanley’s former head of diversity sued the company last month, saying the company wasn’t adequately promoting its employees of color, and that she was fired for trying to address the problem.
Where are the Black folk?
These CDOs—who are often Black women—are often set up to fail, as we’ve talked before. This is from a job description for a DEI leadership role: “Ability to influence others without direct authority to achieve solutions.” Translation: Our executives are not on board. And that will be your problem.
On top of their jobs often being rigged against them, there is that pipeline issue these CDOs are trying to solve, and it’s two-fold: We’re not adequately nurturing the Black talent we already have, and not cultivating Black talent for the jobs of the future.
There’s an existing community of Black technologists. We have to give them the light and shine they deserve. But recruiters somehow don’t know how to find these Black folk even when they are very much out here, existing. They don’t know where they hang, what platforms they use, or the places they avoid (though we should give a shout-out to private companies like Black Tech Pipeline trying to solve this).
Tech as a path to Black liberation?
The tech employment ecosystem in theory has the potential to be a gateless, permissionless wonderland of liberation. All you need is a laptop, Wi-Fi, and the ability to write some code or create some type of media, and you can change the trajectory of your life forever.
We’re promoting tech like it’s the promised land, the magic potion of economic mobility that education used to be. And it’s supposed to be a land with more accessible paths than stodgy old-school employment sectors like finance.
Those alternative pathways include self-taught, tech boot camps, and apprenticeships, yet the same old problems of anti-Blackness, exclusion, and inequitable outcomes for Black talent have been replicated in these pathways.
You’re not even supposed to need a degree anyway. The most in-demand tech jobs don’t require a traditional education. Yet many of these roles are hard to fill for want of qualified candidates.
So while it’s easy to point at big tech corporations as the most obvious keepers of the gates to that opportunity what we’re up against is far more complex than that. As Meek Mill would say, there are levels to this shit!
Generational levels
It’s not just about getting in the door. Black folks face persistent issues at every point of the funnel. Silicon Valley might be the world's greatest wealth-generating machine, but even if Black folk equip themselves with the tech skills, generational and systemic challenges still only allow us to get only thinnest slice of that giant money pie.
In an interview with Techcrunch, Michael Seibel the Managing Director for Y Combinator was asked about the lack of diverse tech representation. For context, Y Combinator is the most prestigious tech accelerator in Silicon Valley, responsible for companies like Airbnb, Coinbase, DoorDash, Instacar, Stripe, and plenty more. They’ve made a lot of money for a lot of people.
With a 3% acceptance rate, Y Combinator is notorious for being harder to get into than Harvard. Pretty damn close to getting a winning lottery ticket. Michael said the challenge in trying to recruit potential Black founders is economic, and related to the responsibility of supporting your loved ones and community. It’s hard to tell a Black software engineer making $375K at a big tech firm to quit their job and build a startup when they’re the safety net for their entire immediate and extended family.
The detractors who just want the fruit
Snowflake Inc. Chief Executive Officer Frank Slootman recently said his company needs to focus more on merit when hiring and promoting rather than diversity goals: “We’re actually highly sympathetic to diversity but we just don’t want that to override merit. If I start doing that, I start compromising the company’s mission literally.” He added that he’s just saying what other CEOs also feel, but are reluctant to say publicly, and that we need a more “moderated” approach to diversity.
We’ve discussed in previous Diversity Grinch issues that merit vs diversity fallacy is a great excuse to do nothing. We’ve also conceded that the speed of business does make it difficult to devote sufficient time and intentionality to achieve DEI initiatives goals.
The underlying issue is that companies want the fruit of the tree, but don’t want to water it. We must nurture the soil. DEI can only be successful in coordination with social impact investments that support and cultivate Black talent at every stage. And that ain’t happening.
Black students lack access to broadband, introductory and advanced computer science courses, qualified teachers from diverse backgrounds, and the culturally responsive pedagogy and curriculum needed to enter the computing pipeline at the same rates as their white and Asian peers.
This article in The Plug lays out a convincing case—a case of the “data-driven” kind that the tech world loves so much—that the Black tech pipeline isn’t merely inadequate, it’s actively getting worse, and that this is a failure that goes far beyond jobs. The share of Black talent in technical roles has increased just 0.6 percent since 2018, and fewer Black students are earning computer science degrees than six years ago.
The Kapor Center report the article is based on calls for specific actions tech leaders need to take, including increasing access to computer science courses; investments in community colleges, HBCUs, and alternative pathways; making salaries transparent; using external accountability mechanisms, and not being so fucking racist in recruiting practices.
The digital divide’s biggest consequence is how it doesn’t prepare underserved folks for jobs of the future. Technology is supposed to present new solutions, but new solutions with no reflection on past inequities keep reproducing the same old glitches. That's why Black and Brown folks have to be in the room where these solutions are being designed.
What we’re really afraid of
Dr. Vijay Pendakur says we’re afraid to talk about the pipeline issue. Maybe the specific fear is that by acknowledging that there’s a problem, we’ll validate the racist assumptions that so often underlie DEI conversations.
To have the honest conversation we need, let’s start by making it clear that any real solution must be aimed at fixing the system and not the people doing their best to thrive in that system. And in order to fix the system, we’re gonna have to address the c-suite who have quietly shit, excuse me, quit on DEI issues.
This is an awesome read and puts a lot of things into prospective! I wholeheartedly believe most employers do not have leadership in place that’s interested in cultivating talent, especially black talent. Often times, “talent development” items assigned by employers are just check the box activities. Tasked with meetings on top of meetings, leadership neglect the fact that there is a level of nurturing that needs to be provided in order to help professionals/employees grow. Moreover, an employee can only do but so much networking and personal self development activities to grow professionally. Therefore, there needs to be a shift in mentality to truly understand the necessary steps to deploy solutions for DEI issues.