AD: I’ve found it becomes a battle unless a business has buy-in from the top to the bottom for increasing diversity. The approach I use with companies has them evaluate and alter their internal culture before even trying to bring in new people.

Next they change the way they do their recruiting, interviewing, hiring, and on-boarding to ensure they remove as much bias as possible while reaching the widest possible set of candidates. Then we spend time working on their image in the community: How and where they do outreach, what events they sponsor and volunteer at, and how their company values are being made visible.

There’re always going to be people who don’t realize the amount of time and effort it takes to undo years of bias. It’s emotionally difficult work and takes more focus than some businesses are willing to dedicate. Additionally, I’ve seen many companies assign the job of “diversity” to only their marginalized employees.

This means that on top of the other
work they’re doing—and likely not being
compensated equally to their colleagues
for—they are now tasked with a huge, hard
problem. If and when it fails, it becomes
their personal failure, which makes them
more likely to leave the company, leaving
them worse off than when they started.

EC: What should a candidate look for in an employer to ensure that they will provide a productive and diverse working environment? What questions should we ask at the interview?

AD: I tell companies that the first thing I look at is their “About Us” page. Are there any faces that look like mine in similar roles to the one I’d intervie w for? Are there any people of color or women at senior or executive-level positions? Then you should ask what their career goal attainment plans look like internally. How do they help people learn and grow? What are they doing to ensure that people are compensated equally?

To learn more about the lack of diversity in tech and what we can do about it, check out Ashe’s blog at http://www.ashedryden.com/.

Biography

Erin Carson is a Ph. D. candidate in the EECS Department at the University of California at Berkeley. Her research centers on the design and analysis of high performance iterative algorithms for scientific computing. Erin has been an editor for XRDS since 2009.

Copyright held by Owner(s)/Author(s).

Publication rights licensed to ACM. $15.00

EC: What does it mean to have privilege in the tech world? How can those who have privilege use it to create positive change?

AD: The range of privileges is pretty wide— compare those who work in safe, clean offices versus those who work in dangerous factories where they aren’t compensated equally. Often when we talk about diversity and privilege in tech, we focus on those at the top, who are already overprivileged compared to those at the supply end of things. That’s generally because it’s “in our backyard,” it’s more visible, and we are much more personally affected.

As people with privilege, we can educate ourselves about the experiences of others, do what we can to minimize how we add to those issues, and speak up so that marginalized people don’t always feel burdened with the responsibility.

EC: Your recent book, The Diverse
Team: Healthy Companies, Progressive
Practices, discusses your experiences
working with companies to improve
the diversity of their teams and their
candidate pool. What strategies were the
most successful? Were there any that
were not successful or had unintended
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