Adweek published a perspective titled, “How Advertisers Can Make Their Brand Message More Inclusive,” by Google CMO Lorraine Twohill. Really? Whatever Twohill hoped to communicate is negated by the anti-inclusivity of Google and its corporate shareholders calling the shots.
Reuters reported Alphabet shareholders shot down proposals to tie diversity goals to compensation at Google. But the shareholders probably applauded the hypocritical continuation of Google Doodles saluting civil rights icons and celebrating multicultural figures. Then again, a Google search for “least-diverse workplaces” would still list Madison Avenue ahead of Silicon Valley.
Alphabet shareholders vote down diversity proposals
By Reuters
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Alphabet’s shareholders, including top executives, voted down several proposals on Wednesday, defeating campaigns to tie pay to diversity goals and to get the Google parent to provide more data about efforts to moderate user-generated content.
Alphabet management, which effectively has voting control of the company, had moved against the proposals.
Shareholders and employees said Wednesday that a gender pay gap and lack of diversity could make it difficult for the company to hire and retain workers, posing a long-term risk to its ability to innovate.
“At Alphabet, diversity and inclusion activities by individual contributors have been met with a disorganized array of responses, including formal reprimand,” Google software engineer Irene Knapp said during the shareholder meeting. “The chilling effect … has impaired company culture.”
Eileen Naughton, who leads Google’s HR operations, said the company remains committed to an internal goal to reach “market supply” representation of women and minorities by 2020, which could help bring hiring in line with the diversity of the candidate pool.
Reuters reported in March that several hundred employees formed an organized effort asking Google to adopt several measures, including human resources guidelines that specify protections for anyone involved in an internal HR investigation.
Campaign reported Google is being slapped with accusations of gender discrimination in a U.S. lawsuit—ultimately proving the power of diverted diversity. After all, the tech company admits that women account for only 31% of the workforce; however, Latinos represent 4% and Blacks represent 2%. So where’s the lawsuit for people of color? Sorry, racial and ethnic minorities, but you’ll have to get in line behind all the angry White women.
Google accused of sex discrimination in US lawsuit
Google is being sued by three female former employees, who are claiming that it discriminates against women, paying them less and favouring men for promotion.
By Ben Bold
The three women have filed a lawsuit that claims that the technology giant while aware of the situation has done nothing to remedy it.
The suit has been filed in a San Francisco court; it argues that Google discriminates against female staff with lower pay and limited opportunities for promotion compared with men.
One of the trio, Kelly Ellis, a former Google software engineer, tweeted that she hoped to “force not only Google, but other companies to change their practices”.
Ellis joined Google in 2010 and despite her four years’ experience was given a role typically given to graduates. A male colleague with a similar level of experience was given a higher-ranking role, she said. She resigned four years later due to the “sexist culture”.
The plaintiffs are seeking class-action that would cover women who had worked at the company in the past four years, demanding unpaid wages.
Google spokeswoman Gina Scigliano said in a statement: “Job levels and promotions are determined through rigorous hiring and promotion committees, and must pass multiple levels of review, including checks to make sure there is no gender bias in these decisions.
The majority (70%) of Google staff are men, with 80% of tech staff male and 75% of leadership positions.
The news follows a row that broke out last month at Google over an engineer’s memo criticizing its diversity initiatives, arguing that “psychological differences” explain why women are underrepresented in tech.
The 10-page memo, “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber,” argued that “we need to stop assuming that gender gaps imply sexism”.
Google is also under investigation by the US Department of Labor over its pay practices.
Advertising Age published a Bloomberg News story about how conservatives in the tech industry feel “more isolated than ever”—especially after the backlash inspired by former Google employee James Damore’s notorious rant. The career-based isolationists should connect with Carl Warner for a tech-advertising pity party. It’s interesting that two fields where exclusivity is a major problem also allegedly discriminate against conservatives. Hell, it’s quite probable that each industry features a strong representation of culturally clueless conservative people at all levels. If these conservatives feel marginalized, well, they’ll have to get in line—plus, realize they still receive far more privileges than the average person of color.
Conservatives in Tech Say They’re More Isolated Than Ever
Shashi Ramchandani, who manages a team of engineers at Google, has never been shy about being a conservative working in Silicon Valley. He showed coworkers emails he exchanged with Ivanka Trump after he mailed her photos he took at the Republican convention, and on election night, he texted colleagues snapshots from the floor of Trump’s victory party in New York City. “They saw me first as a Googler, then as a conservative,” Ramchandani says.
In his 14 years at the company, he says he hasn’t felt like he had to keep his mouth shut—until last month when Google fired an engineer who penned a memo saying biological differences partly explain why more men work in tech than women.
Politics often don’t mix easily at work, but it’s particularly fraught in tech, where free thinking is prized yet the workforce is predominantly liberal. Now, as President Trump stirs up the culture wars at the same time as Silicon Valley faces a backlash for being so white and so male, conservatives in tech have their guards up like never before.
Ramchandani, whose parents came to the U.S. from India, wasn’t a fan of the memo. He particularly objected to its assumption that Google’s hiring favors women and minorities, which ran counter to his experience as a hiring manager. But he was also “extremely disappointed” Google fired the engineer. Ramchandani felt, for the first time, that he had to reconcile his love of Google with his conservative support for free speech and distaste for bureaucracy.
Ousted
Tech has seen ousters for unpopular political or cultural views before, like when the chief technology officer at Business Insider was forced out in 2013 over old racist and homophobic tweets, and the next year when the CEO of Mozilla stepped down after facing criticism for a $1,000 donation he’d made to a group that opposed gay marriage. But those were executives. The Google memo, which exposed a rank-and-file engineer exposed in a public way, hit closer to home for many conservatives, who say the current environment is more hostile than ever before. “Before it was, ‘I don’t agree with you,’ but now it has evolved into this new thing that is much more aggressive, ‘don’t even say something that is counter to what I believe,’” says Aaron Ginn, co-founder of Lincoln Network, which looks to connect conservative techies with government and political work.
Some fear losing their jobs while others worry they’ll be ostracized by colleagues. (That’s in a sector where 76% of technical jobs are held by men, and blacks and Latinos make up only 5% of the workforce.) Adding to the stress is Silicon Valley’s penchant for open floor plans, which make it hard to tune out an officemate on a rant, and the way companies encourage workers to socialize and bring their whole selves to their job. Several tech workers say they don’t post about politics on Facebook, where they’re friends with many coworkers. “My wife is very paranoid about me sharing my opinion, even on private WhatsApp groups with my friends,” said a former Amazon engineer who now works at Oracle. Most employees who spoke asked not to be identified because they worried about their job security.
An engineer at Microsoft first realized just how in the minority his political views were back in 2004, when George W. Bush was up for re-election. At lunch one day, his coworkers one by one slammed the Republican candidate. The engineer, just a few years out of college, recalls saying, “I’m probably going to vote for him.” He wasn’t prepared for the response. “They says, ‘You stupid person. How can you think about that?’” Things got so heated, he says, his manager sent a memo to his 100-person team, that said, in essence, “Hey, cool it. We have engineering tasks we have to focus on.”
Affecting the product
As contentious as 2004 may have been, it’s nothing compared to the polarizing election and presidency of Trump. The Microsoft engineer says now it’s even harder to have a productive political conversation, as colleagues lump him with a president whom he said doesn’t represent his conservative values, threatening the ability to do his job well. “Thirty years ago, there was somebody in their garage doing something amazing,” he says. “Now these projects have thousands of people on them. People have to work with you and like you. If you get labeled as a bad person because you voted the wrong way and start getting ostracized, it will impede on your job because most people can’t flip modes. They can’t have a heated political debate with you and then flip modes and have a heated technical debate with you.”
Google’s office felt like a funeral the day after Trump was elected, according to an employee who describes himself as libertarian. “A lot of people didn’t come,” he says. “The people who did were very quiet, almost like their aunt died.”
This Google employee believes the now infamous memo was relatively well-reasoned and that Silicon Valley’s diversity initiatives ignore data that conflict with their ideology. He’s regularly reminded of what he refers to as the company’s “social justice agenda,” like when he gets corporate email touting a donation to a non-profit that supports minorities, or hears an executive talk about hoping to have half of his leadership team be female, which he believes shows the company prioritizes some groups over others. He worries that the company is under pressure to reach 50-50 gender equity too fast, and it will impede the promotion opportunities for men. “Just do the math,” he says.
The Oracle engineer says the bro culture in tech is real and knows of female colleagues who face sexism, but with women making up fewer than a fifth of computer science graduates, the goal of reaching anything close to a 50-50 split feels “misguided” in the near term. “Some people are better than others, and when I work with a woman who is below average, I always have a thought that maybe she is a diversity hire, and I don’t think that’s healthy,” he says. He bristles slightly when he hears about female colleagues being heavily recruited by top firms.
Some confide in colleagues they consider friends. One liberal Google product manager says a conservative teammate who used to work at Goldman Sachs told him the environment now reminds him of his time in banking during the Occupy Wall Street protests, when he tried to lay low.
Ramchandani, who said he’s fiscally conservative but socially liberal, says the pressure on conservatives is “less of a Google thing than a Silicon Valley thing.” In the suburban Bay Area at large, he says, “I had more trouble coming out as a conservative than I did with my race or orientation or any other minority status.” He believes Google should recognize his fellow conservatives more but is nervous that conservatives are becoming more polarized themselves in recent weeks. He says on internal Google employee email groups for conservatives, he notices “a few loud voices” stoking an “us versus them” mentality, for example contemplating legal action against the company. “I found that distasteful because it’s biting the hand that feeds you,” he says. “We are here to do a job, not expound political values.”
The Oracle engineer, like some others, have opted to lay low during this tense time. “Work is work, and not everything needs to be about politics,” he says. While he sees liberal colleagues who sit nearby don’t seemingly need to filter their comments, he’s decided it’s not worth engaging, adding “I don’t want to be known as that guy who wants to argue with everybody.”
—Bloomberg News
Campaign published diverted diversity dumbness from JWT’s The Innovation Group European Director Marie Stafford, who griped the tech industry continues to have a diversity problem. Of course, Stafford only defines diversity as a matter of gender equality. The White woman ought to put things into perspective. For example, while Google admits that females make up a mere 31 percent of its global workforce, Blacks account for a whopping 2 percent of its U.S. workforce. Plus, women lead the new hires and leadership positions versus racial and ethnic minorities by an extra-super-wide margin. It’s also baffling that Stafford would bash the tech industry when she’s a member of a field that is arguably worse in the diversity area, especially considering the many decades that adland has steadfastly refused to embrace inclusion. Oh, and the JWT Commodore Crew is not exactly offering safe harbor to women.
Time for tech industry to end its bro-culture
By Marie Stafford
The European director for J Walter Thompson’s The Innovation Group highlights the lack of diversity at Mobile World Congress.
There’s an inside joke in Silicon Valley called the “Dave rule”: if your team has as many women as it does men called Dave, then gender balance has been achieved.
At Mobile World Congress this year, diversity was no joke: just 23 percent of this year’s attendees were women.
Inclusion is clearly top of mind for organizers; this year the GSMA also hosted the Women4Tech Summit, a one-day program of panels, speakers and presentations aiming to promote gender diversity in telecoms and tech.
The wider technology sector has been wrestling with this issue for years. Despite being avid users of tech, women are dramatically underrepresented in the industry.
In the US, women fill just over a quarter of the jobs in the IT sector, a figure that is actually in decline, down from a peak of 37 percent in the 1990s. The picture is yet bleaker in the UK, where women account for just 17 percent of IT specialists.
The upshot is that many women feel excluded; JWT’s Female Tribes study found that 40 percent of women in the UK feel that most technology is made for men, by men.
Disappointing, yet hardly surprising when a flurry of reports from Silicon Valley paint a picture of a workplace culture that could dissuade even the most enthusiastic girl coder. This year alone, ex-employees have shared hair-raising allegations of sexism and harassment at Uber, Tesla and Magic Leap to name but a few.
A 2016 survey would suggest that such tales are not atypical; a whopping 60 percent of senior women in Silicon Valley report enduring unwanted advances from male colleagues, according to the Elephant in the Valley study released in 2016. In 2012, Bloomberg chronicled the emergence of a testosterone-powered culture, particularly in start-ups, which was dominated by a new breed of young, well-educated white male ‘brogrammers.’
Diversity isn’t just a nice to have, it’s good business sense. So says, Bob Sell, group chief managing director of the Communication, Media and Technology practice at Accenture who opened the Women4Tech Summit. “Diversity drives innovation,” Sell said, pointing to research from the Peterson Institute which has found a strong correlation between gender diversity and profitability.
So how to achieve the right balance? Expanding the pool of potential female talent is essential so encouraging more girls to take up relevant subjects will be key. On both sides of the Atlantic, eight out of ten computer science graduates are men.
Google Spain chief Fuencisla Clemares told the Summit that influencing perceptions of computer science and getting more girls coding is critical. Google is also expanding their talent search to a wider pool of schools and universities and offering work experience. “We’ve built an internship program to expose students from different backgrounds to what life is like in a tech company,” Clemares added.
Visibility matters too. Women and girls need to be inspired by a new generation of Ada Lovelaces, and the earlier the better according to Facebook vice-president Nicola Mendelsohn. “The impact that role models have starts at a really early age,” Mendelsohn said. It’s advice that the event itself would do well to heed: only five of the 45 keynote speeches at MWC this year were delivered by women.
Neatly, it seems technology itself could prove a useful ally for the industry, helping to eliminate unconscious bias from key decisions on who to hire or promote.
“Imagine using machine learning and artificial intelligence to disrupt those key decisions,” according to Dr. Patti Fletcher, leadership futurist at software firm SAP, “Talk about levelling the playing field and creating this amazing culture of inclusion. All of a sudden you’re just focusing on the facts instead of your hunches.”
Retention is another crucial area of focus, and a tough challenge in a sphere where female attrition is a major issue. A US report from 2016 found that women leave the tech industry at twice the rate of men.
Bob Sell urged employers to be more balanced in their approach to talent management. “What about performance proportionality, what about promotion proportionality?” he asked. “What about asking our leaders, if 30 percent of men get promoted this year, did 30 percent of women get promoted this year? That’s not a quota system, that’s a question about how you’re running your business.”
Fittingly, some cheer comes from MWC’s host country. Fuencisla Clemares revealed that not one, not two, but six major tech firms in Spain are led by women, including Facebook, IBM, Microsoft and her own Google. Pause for thought for the bro-grammers of Silicon Valley.
But alongside all these great ideas, the tech industry must shoulder responsibility for the workplace culture it fosters. The best recruiting and retention strategies will falter if companies can’t make women feel welcome.
Marie Stafford is European director for J Walter Thompson’s The Innovation Group
Adweek reported on the latest diverted diversity darling—Dot—created by Randi Zuckerberg. The cartoon character inadvertently yet ultimately combines diverted diversity with nepotism.
Randi Zuckerberg Hopes to Battle Inequality in Silicon Valley With Her New Kids Show
Dot will air on NBCU’s Sprout network
By Sami Main
“I’ve spent a decade in Silicon Valley,” said Randi Zuckerberg. “Innovation is everywhere. It’s supposed to be the center of forward thinking. [So] why can I count the number of women executives on one hand? Or people of color?”
At Thursday’s premiere event for Zuckerberg’s new television show Dot, based on her children’s book of the same name, she discussed everything from inequality in the industry to the right way for kids to use new technology.
Press were invited to bring their children to the event. As a result, there were milkshakes dripping and mini burgers in hand as Zuckerberg streamed an episode of the show. Attendees could also don wigs for a GIF photobooth, or pose for a snap on the pink carpet. Coloring books, and tablets loaded with coloring book technology, were also provided for the kids to play with.
Dot, in the book and now as a TV character, is a tech-savvy young girl. She taps and types, shares and swipes, and carries her tablet everywhere. She’s the perfect way to help parents teach their kids about the technology surrounding them today.
“Dot and her group of friends don’t look like your typical cast of characters,” Zuckerberg said. “I wanted them to reflect all levels of diversity.”
“I loved working in Silicon Valley, but at the same time I hated the fact that there were no women in the room,” she said. “We need to start challenging people on the notion of what an entrepreneur in America looks like, and it needs to happen early on.”
Kids today are starting to use technology earlier and earlier in life. And that, Zuckerberg thinks, can create some fear or anxiety for parents.
“No matter what their level of expertise in their job, every parent is an amateur at parenting when they first start,” said Zuckerberg. “Especially with this very digital group.”
Dot will air at 11 a.m. ET Saturdays on Sprout, a network just for children which launched in 2005 and is now owned by NBCUniversal. Zuckerberg considers it another type of startup.
“It felt like we came together at a really critical moment for both of us,” she said. “I needed Sprout as much as they needed me. I knew they’d give this program the love it deserved.”
Zuckerberg wants her sons, Asher and Simi, who are both under six years old, to grow up in a “different world” than what she experienced in Silicon Valley.
“Dot is about finding a balance in a high-tech world through the waters of modern childhood,” said Zuckerberg.
“Dot is inquisitive,” said Amy Friedman, Sprout’s head of development. “We want to give kids the tools and role models that will help them show up in the world.”
Sprout’s motto, after all, is ‘Free to grow.’
“When parents see the Dot logo or book or show, I want them to know that it’s safe and appropriate,” said Zuckerberg. “I’d love to see a Dot iPad, designed specifically for kids, one day. I want parents to know how technology can add to your household. It doesn’t have to detract.”
Steve Jobs really highlighted the dearth of diversity in the tech industry. The movie depicted images of Muhammad Ali and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. from the Think Different campaign—which, appropriately enough, was created by White advertising agency Chiat Day. And there was a single scene in the film where Jobs walked past a Black person (an Apple employee?) and briefly acknowledged the man. But besides those three instances, the only thing Black was Jobs’ t-shirt.
The Google Doodle above salutes Ida B. Wells on the civil rights advocate’s 153rd birthday. Would Wells be comfortable receiving this tribute from a company failing to embrace diversity? Most outrageous is the positive press Google garners from such stunts. Rather than link these hypocritical Google Doodles to Wikipedia pages, it would be more honorable for Google to link to content like this, this, this and this.
Adweek reported on the launch of the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG), a collective of top brands, White advertising agencies, Internet and ad tech companies out to save the world from industry-wide ad fraud. First of all, ad fraud sounds redundant. Is Deutsch LA a TAG member or TAG target? Secondly, expecting adpeople to combat ad fraud is like asking the Ku Klux Klan to honor Black History Month. This leads to a nice segue, in that adland has blatantly practiced fraud in its alleged commitment to diversity—keeping it a dream deferred and denied for decades. Of course, digital ad fraud trumps diversity.
Ad Industry Launches Effort to Combat Rampant Fraud
Facebook, Google and AOL join the Trustworthy Accountability Group
By Garett Sloane
A new group designed to combat industry-wide ad fraud is up and running with a host of big-name companies on its board. Top brands, agencies, Internet and ad tech companies have officially signed on with the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG), which is going after one of the most pressing problems facing CMOs.
The 24-member board includes executives from Mondelez International, JCPenney, Omnicom, Motorola, Google, Facebook, AOL and Brightroll among other industry players. Mike Zaneis, evp and general counsel for the Interactive Advertising Bureau, will lead TAG as interim CEO.
The group was conceived last year to stem ad fraud, identify criminal behavior and share policing resources among members, as well as define standards and communicate as a united front. Ad fraud is a persistent problem that some say might amount to $7 billion in wasteful ad spending a year.
“What we’re trying to do is put trust in the digital supply chain,” Zaneis said in an interview this week. “There are serious challenges.”
Zaneis described a worrisome cycle of fraud. Bad actors are establishing websites with pirated content, delivering malicious ads over networks, taking over computers with these ads, driving traffic to their pirated sites and selling ads that only get seen by these zombified computers.
“Marketers need to make sure they know what they’re buying, that it’s high quality and not supporting criminal activity,” Zaneis said.
TAG will focus on four categories of problems—piracy, fraud, malware and transparency, Zaneis added.
Advertising Age published, “How Adland Is Replacing Steady Stream of Talent Leaving for Greener Pastures,” highlighting the ways White advertising agencies are wooing candidates and competing for staffers with tech companies. Nowhere in the article is any mention of diversity, as it doesn’t really concern ad agencies—or tech companies, for that matter. The story featured the illustration above, which should have been rendered with manure.
The Huge Diversity Disparity in Tech
While many of the major players are admitting to the issue, more need to make efforts around it.
By Rebecca Strong — Staff Writer
It started with Google: After the company decided to release its employee diversity statistics last May, some nudging from activist groups helped led a slew of other tech giants to follow. Before long, Apple, Facebook, Twitter and others were all giving a look at their diversity—or rather, lack of diversity.
But there’s a big difference between admitting the problem exists and fixing it.
With one glance at GigaOm’s chart of company diversity data (above), you can see that it’s going to take some serious effort to resolve the disparity, particularly in terms of the percentage of black employees. The chart compares the ethnicity demographics of the U.S. population to those at top tech companies. (Hispanic is not a separate category for U.S. labor statistics.)
Apple appears to be among the closest to representing the U.S. black population in its employee base. But as GigaOm pointed out, that’s at least partly because it includes retail store staff. Apple and eBay tie for the highest percentage of black employees on staff, at 7 percent.
Locally, Groupon’s statistics reflected this national trend, with its domestic workforce at 71% white, 15% Asian, 5% Hispanic and 4% African-American. Following the release of this data, the company said that “Like many of our tech industry peers, we recognize that there is more we can do. As a company that is just six years old, our inclusion and diversity programs are evolving alongside our business.”
A faulty pipeline
Clearly, a major source of the problem for tech companies attempting to achieve a more diverse staff is that there are a limited number of black and Hispanic graduates emerging from computer science programs. According to GigaOm’s reporting, 6.5 percent of recent computer-science bachelor grads with this degree were Hispanic and 4.5 percent were black. Meanwhile, 61 percent were white and 19 percent were Asian.
In Chicago, there are a number of organizations working to address this pipeline issue.
For example, Teamwork Englewood increases digital access and use by families and businesses in the community by providing technology classes, computer literacy classes, and Englewood Portal trainings. Englewood Codes, an initiative under the Teamwork Englewood umbrella, is a 10-week summer intensive where kids and young adults learn how to design, build and maintain their own websites.
Blue 1647 is a Pilsen-based tech and innovation center that’s focused on education, offering a variety of classes and workshops to neighborhood residents. Last August, its CEO announced that they’ll be launching a new Blue 1647 shared-space in Englewood in 2015.
A third, I.C. Stars, provides tech-based workforce development to low-income individuals, emphasizing the fact that “the fundamentals necessary to succeed in tech are the same as those necessary for community leadership.” So, not only is I.C. Stars preparing people for a career in tech, they’re also training future community influencers.
Tech industry efforts
Some companies have also been making efforts, but more need to follow suit.
At CES this month, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich announced that the firm is investing $300 million to improve its diversity. He also set a goal to have the country’s demographics fully represented in the Intel workforce and management by 2020, and announced that managers’ pay will be tied to achieving the diversity goal.
Krzanich challenged the entire industry to make similar efforts.
“This isn’t just good business,” he said. “It’s the right thing to do. When we all come together and commit, we can make the impossible possible.”
Google saluted Langston Hughes’ 113th Birthday with an animated video featuring “I Dream a World.” Um, did anyone at Google bother to read the poem? Just asking.
Wayne Sutton: Why black leaders matter in technology
By Wayne Sutton, Special for USA TODAY
SAN FRANCISCO — It’s hard to believe that on the eve of 2015, instead of ringing in the new year, minority communities are marching across the country to send the message that black lives matter.
As a black man working hard to make a difference, it is sad that we have to start there: at life. Because life is just the beginning. What about quality of life? Creation of wealth? Contributing to an innovative society?
I ask myself: How do we change how America views African-American men? And how do we create more opportunity for African-American men?
The key: The technology industry, and bringing up a new generation of black technology leaders.
Over the past decade, the African-American community has been mobilized by technology.
We spend the most time on social media services. We are avid smartphone consumers and we are the No. 1 demographic on services such as Twitter and Instagram.
You can see the power and influence of African Americans in the response to the police deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. They have used these services to organize protests and create national awareness campaigns. To put it in perspective, the March on Washington in 1963 was attended by 250,000 people. With social media today, you can reach millions of people per tweet, Google+ post or Facebook status with hashtags such as #handsupdontshoot and #blacklivesmatter.
Yet few African-Americans benefit from jobs and wealth inside these social media hubs — let alone having a place in the leadership, on the board of directors or are founders of a start-up that goes on to become a household name.
There is a notable exception. Omar Wasow might not be a household name, nor is he credited with starting the revolution in social networking. But he founded BlackPlanet in 1999 long before MySpace, Facebook and Twitter, and he scaled the platform to millions of users before selling it for $38 million to Radio One in 2008.
There’s a saying in African-American culture: “Often we forget those who have paved the way for many.” As part of the diversity “Oorah” cry to create monetary role models, we keep saying we’re looking for a “black Mark Zuckerberg.” We should be looking for the next Wasow.
Mentoring is a simple yet effective way to do that. Shared experiences can help an individual save time, avoid making the same mistakes and open wide the doors of opportunity.
So I asked black male leaders in technology: “What advice did your mentor provide to help you become successful today?” This is what they told me.
Michael Seibel
Partner, Y Combinator
One of my mentors was our first lawyer at Justin.tv. His name is Carlos Ellerbe. What he told me is that it takes seven to 10 years to make a start-up into a billion-dollar company. He was right. It made me understand how important it is to start with a good team because we are going to be working together a building for a long time.
Justin Washington
QA Engineer, Snapchat
Take the time to build valuable, meaningful relationships versus attempting to connect with any and everyone in a seemingly glamorous position. Integrity beats titles any day!
Brian Dixon
Investment associate, Kapor Capital
It’s not just about having a seat at the table; it’s about having a voice. It’s also not just about you “making it;” it’s about you leaving the door open for the next generation.
Jon Gosier
Founder and general partner, Cross Valley Capital
I never really had a mentor and that was, ironically, the best advice I guess I (never) got.
It was like being a young boy growing up with my father not around. The parent may overlook his or her importance to the child, but the child never forgets. So the lesson I learned was the responsibility to do the opposite for someone else. So now I go out of my way to mentor and advise others. It’s more important to me than my own success.
Brandon Andrews
Director of IMPACT, co-founder of SkillTarget
“Write it down.”
This is a very simple piece of advice that has been incredibly helpful. Writing life goals, drafting legislative outlines, writing organizational plans, writing ideas, drawing wireframes, and writing code all start with putting pen to paper; or fingers to keys.
Effectively and frequently taking the ideas swirling around in my head and translating them into prose and points has been integral to any success I have had.
Diishan Imira
CEO, Mayvenn
A mentor told me to “stop focusing on how I can make money and become focused on how I can make others money.”
Brian Clark
CEO and co-founder, VUE
Two things I’ve found that work are 1) Focus on solving a problem and test it quickly by either getting people to use it repeatedly or pay immediately; and 2) Don’t give up too soon. There’s truth to pivoting but sometimes it can take a couple years until you really start hitting on the pain point, don’t die on your way.
Paul Carrick Brunson
Founder and CEO of Brunson Holdings
Invest in yourself. This is a very simple concept, but incredibly important. I was taught to spend a significant amount of my time dedicated to self-development (whether it be a new language, exercise, computer programming classes, etc.). The moment you stop investing in yourself is the moment you have written off future dividends in life.
Kanyi Maqubela
Partner, Collaborative Fund
My mentors told me that the best way to “get lucky” is to maximize opportunities for luck. More specifically: to meet and know every talented person available to me, because great people are the source of opportunity.
Hajj Flemings
CEO of Brand Camp University
As a community we consume everything and own nothing. It is time design the future versus buying what someone else creates.
Anthony Frasier
Co-founder of The Phat Startup
Advice I received was not from a personal mentor but from Jim Rohn. I saw an old YouTube video from the 70’s where he repeated advice from his own mentor:
“It is the set of the sails, not the direction of the wind that determines which way we will go.”
Learning how to change the way I perceived a challenge or even a victory has helped me tremendously. It’s key not to put too much focus on things you can’t control.
Wayne Sutton is a serial entrepreneur and general partner at BUILDUP.vc. He has more than 14 years of experience in technology, design and business development.
Survey: Few blacks, Hispanics among top tech executives
By Jessica Guynn, USATODAY
SAN FRANCISCO — Missing on the management teams of major technology companies: Blacks and Hispanics.
That’s according to a new survey from the Rainbow PUSH Coalition.
Of the 307 top executives at 22 companies, six are black and three are Hispanic, the survey found. That’s less than 3%.
Seven of the companies, including Amazon.com and Facebook, have no blacks or Hispanics among the top executives.
Rainbow PUSH Coalition defined top leadership by the executives that the companies list on their websites.
Of the major tech companies, Apple has two black executives: Lisa Jackson, vice president of environmental initiatives; and Denise Young Smith, vice president of worldwide human resources.
Google has one: David Drummond, senior vice president of corporate development and chief legal officer. And Hewlett-Packard has one Hispanic executive: Henry Gomez, executive vice president, and chief marketing and communications officer.
Rev. Jesse Jackson says the numbers reflect an entrenched pattern of exclusion in the high-tech industry, which mostly employs white and Asian men.
“Tech companies cannot afford to continue to lock out blacks, Latinos and women who comprise the consumer base companies depend upon to win,” Jackson said. “Their C-suites, boards of directors, supplier and vendor base, and workforce must look like America.”
Major tech companies have begun owning up to the fact that blacks and Hispanics are vastly underrepresented in their ranks.
In recent months, they have made public the racial and gender make up of their work forces.
The reports have confirmed what many had suspected: Staffers are mostly white, Asian and male, and blacks and Hispanics make up a tiny percentage of workers, whether they’re in technical or non-technical roles or in management.
For example, according to figures Facebook released in June, 74% of its senior-level employees in the U.S. are white and 19% are Asian. Hispanics account for 4% and African Americans for 2% of employees in management.
At Amazon.com, 71% of U.S. managers are white and 18% are Asian. Hispanics and blacks each account for 4% of managers.
Last month another Rainbow PUSH Coalition survey found that three blacks and one Hispanic sit on the boards of directors of 20 major technology companies.
In all, four out of 189 directors are black or Hispanic, the survey found.
Eleven of the 20 companies — including Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, eBay and Google— have no one of color on their boards.
Just three companies — Microsoft, Oracle and Salesforce.com — have a black or Hispanic on their boards, according to the survey.
That means 1.6% of board members at major high-tech companies are black and .5% are Hispanic.
By way of comparison, blacks hold 7.4% and Hispanics hold 3.3% of board seats in the Fortune 500, according to the Alliance for Board Diversity.
Tech execs acknowledge diversity gap. So, what’s next?
By Jon Swartz, Jessica Guynn and Marco della Cava, USA TODAY
SAN FRANCISCO — For years, technology companies did worse than simply shrug off the issue of diversity in their workforce.
Some sued to keep that information private from inquiring media outlets and social activists, arguing that divulging such data compromised their competitive advantage.
Given that decades-long mind-set, the USA TODAY/Stanford Diversity in Tech summit meeting Thursday night between Rev. Jesse Jackson, executives from Google and Facebook was nothing less than a breakthrough on an issue that has vexed the nation since slavery was abolished: minority access to employment and capital.
“Bringing people together to talk about these issues is historic,” said Carol Lynn McKibben, a Stanford lecturer who is writing a biography of Jackson. “These things are usually discussed behind closed doors. This was a really important moment to talk about these things in a public forum.”
She said she was impressed that the audience included “Stanford students who will be applying for jobs with these companies, (as well as) people who have themselves experienced discrimination or who as minorities have worked in these white-majority companies. I hope it is not the end but the beginning of the discussion.”
Some of the biggest players in Silicon Valley readily acknowledged the diversity gap in the nearly two-hour panel, punctuating a months-long push by Jackson to bolster low single-digit representation of blacks and Hispanics at tech companies.
Jackson and his Rainbow/PUSH coalition have been raising awareness of the divide in Silicon Valley, where the percentage of employees who are black or Hispanic are in the single digits compared with 12% and 16% of the U.S. workforce, respectively.
For decades, the issue has been a non-starter in the predominantly white-male tech industry that either overlooked or ignored it.
But as the composition of their customers becomes more diverse, those companies have no choice but to hire people who reflect their customer base and to build more inclusive workplaces.
“We don’t have a choice at Facebook. It’s not like we are creating something for use in a local market. It is a truly global market. More than 80% of Facebook users do not live in North America. We can’t afford to exclude anyone,” Williams said. “It is a question of survival.”
Tristan Walker, an African-American entrepreneur, has a Palo Alto start-up — Walker & Co. — which he has deliberately staffed with almost exclusively women and minorities.
He says tech companies are waking up to the growing consumer power of blacks and Hispanics in this country and to the realities of operating in a global marketplace. Studies show that companies with gender and ethnic diversity are more creative and more profitable, he points out.
“As long as they are talking about it but not acting on it, I have a comparative advantage,” Walker said.
Jackson urged representatives from Facebook and Google to increase their minority outreach programs and provide measurable results. Those executives in turn responded that they were keen to have their staffs better reflect the national demographic, but that short-term solutions weren’t likely.
Overt bigotry doesn’t play a major role in this issue, which in fact makes it a more difficult problem to root out, said panelist Richard Thompson Ford, Stanford law professor and author of The Race Card.
“Bias (in tech) is more readily concealed,” he said. “Most of the problems will be resolved by trying to engage hiring managers to see diversity as a positive goal that they are on board with. In many ways, that’s a harder problem to solve than unrepentant bigots.”
Ford said universities need to pay more attention to not only who they’re recruiting for engineering degrees but also the environment in which they are sending those minority recruits.
“Will you find racists in the computer science department? No, but you may find people with preconceived ideas of who will be good or not. There’s a culture that exists in those departments, one of who helps who. And maybe you then go, I could do something else, I’ve got options,” he said.
DIVERSITY ROAD MAP
So what exactly is the road map for diversifying Silicon Valley’s largely white male profile?
Education is a major building component, beginning with science and technology courses in elementary school that widen the pool, the panel agreed.
Nancy Lee, Google’s director of diversity and inclusion, said the search-engine giant will cast a wider net by recruiting from non-elite schools and placing a Googler in Residence at traditionally black colleges with a mission to bring computer-science programs up to Google’s hiring standards.
“We may not have seen tech’s best days because we haven’t seen all its best players,” Jackson said, drawing an analogy to the breaking of the color barrier in Major League Baseball in 1947, which presaged a golden era of breathtaking talent in the sport.
Yet some of the approximately 200 people in attendance want more than talk. They want results.
“It’s good to have conversations. But this topic has been talked to death, and nothing gets done,” said Anthony Kinslow II, 24, a graduate student in Stanford’s civil engineering program. “When I was an undergrad (at North Carolina A&T State University, the historically black college that Jackson attended), no tech recruiters visited. None.”
“Diversity goes hand-in-hand with innovation and ideas,” Kinslow said, pointing out that just 1% of Stanford’s graduate school of engineering students are black. “Wouldn’t it make more sense for tech companies to be more diverse?”
The panel was “clearly a first step” in tackling a longtime problem, says Anita Gardyne, CEO of SafetySitters, a start-up that offers in-house care and babysitting services through a mobile app and website. Gardyne, who is black, said Jackson’s persistence has forced tech companies to disclose their hiring numbers and address the problem.
“I just want an opportunity to compete,” said Gardyne, 52, who says it is daunting to pitch her company to prospective investors.
“Do I see something changing? Yes, I do,” Gardyne said. “Rev. Jackson has lifted the discussion. These are the first steps in a long journey.”
In his recent USA TODAY interview, Silicon Valley Pioneer Ken Coleman wondered, “The real question is, what might I have done or been if I had been White?” Madison Avenue Pioneer Roy Eaton was told at his first interview, “If you were White, I’d hire you immediately.”
Another question to consider: “What if all of Coleman’s and/or Eaton’s White peers had been Black (or held to the standards placed upon Blacks)?” Imagine how some of the Whites might have fared if they had been restricted, scrutinized and judged—and expected to perform at the same ultra-extraordinary levels as Black executives of the times.
Stereotypical gripes surrounding diversity include the concern that hiring minorities would lessen the quality of the overall workforce. This belief is pure bullshit. Eaton, for example, was far more than a jingle writer—he was a renowned, classically trained composer and musician. His mother inspired him with the notion of doing 200% to get credit for 100%. If White candidates had been required to match Eaton’s credentials and qualifications—and consistently deliver 200% for 100% credit—just think of how high the quality of the overall workforce would have risen.
Perhaps the question should simply be, “What might I have done or been if I had not faced institutionalized discrimination and racism from Whites?”
Tech pioneer Ken Coleman talks diversity
By Marco della Cava, USA TODAY
PALO ALTO, Calif. – As a pioneering African-American in the land of tech, Ken Coleman has earned the respect of venture capitalists and the friendship of presidents.
And yet as a black man in America, Coleman shudders when police lights flash.
“When I’m stopped I want to say, ‘I’m not what you think, I’ve got an MBA, I live in Los Altos Hills, I own a home in Maui.’ I want to say that,” says Coleman, 69. “Because I know through experience that person might have an image of what I might be and view me as dangerous. And to not feel that way would be foolish.”
The duality of such an existence would enrage many. But Coleman has guided his personal and professional life with a simple philosophy: “You will experience lots of racism and prejudice. But you can’t look under the bed for it, because then it becomes an obstacle to your success.”
That mantra saw the son of a Centralia, Ill., maid and a heater-factory laborer graduate from Ohio State University and become one of the first African-Americans in Silicon Valley when he joined Hewlett-Packard in the ‘70s as a human resources exec.
Leadership roles at Silicon Graphics followed, where Coleman hired a summer intern by the name of Ben Horowitz, co-founder of VC powerhouse Andreessen Horowitz. The firm recently named Coleman as a special adviser with a mission to both counsel young tech company founders and spearhead a networking effort aimed at increasing the ranks of minorities in tech.
In a blog post noting Coleman’s appointment, Horowitz called Coleman his “personal guardian angel.” But Coleman’s wingspan will need to expand as Silicon Valley grapples with the pressing issue of employee diversity. In recent months, furor over the topic has grown as firms such as Yahoo, Google and Apple divulge staffing numbers with glaring minority under-representation.
USA TODAY’s ongoing coverage of this topic has reported marked pay gaps in tech, where Hispanic, Asian and black programmers often earn $16,000, $8,000 and $4,000 less, respectively, than white counterparts, according to the American Institute for Economic Research.
A recent guest columnist, Charles Hudson, an 18-year Silicon Valley veteran and a partner at SoftTechVC, noted that he is such a rare bird that “I’ve often been confused for everyone from Google’s (chief legal officer) David Drummond to MC Hammer.”
But as one of around 500 leading African-Americans in tech today, Hudson is positively surrounded by peers when compared to Coleman’s debut decades ago. Joining HP after a stint in Korea with the Air Force, where he worked on early computers, Coleman was determined early on to increase the ranks of blacks in tech.
“We had a very aggressive recruiting program (at HP) at the collegiate level, and we did a good job of eliminating the risk concerns many people had,” he says, noting that the advice he still dispenses to any founder who asks is make sure your HR department is staffed by the very minorities you’re trying to recruit.
“Diversity doesn’t happen naturally,” he says. “Social systems, which a company is, want to reproduce themselves. If a founder went to Harvard, they’ll want to replicate that.” He adds that the argument for breaking that habit is dollars and cents.
“I don’t think diversity should be a deficit model,” he says. “It’s an opportunity model. If I know something you don’t know about the marketplace because of my staff, I will beat you. And that’s something every company out there should be concerned about.”
‘DONE WELL BY ANY MEASURE’
Coleman is the first to say he’s “done well by any measure” thanks to his career in tech, which saw him serve as COO of early Web giant Silicon Graphics and today finds him chairman of data analytics firm Saama Technologies. And yet in his mind a notable asterisk accompanies those laurels.
“The real question is, what might I have done or been if I had been white?” he says, not bitterly but rather with his ever-present smile and deep laugh. He recounts how white HP peers were asked to join company boards far earlier than he was.
Coleman’s solution? He accepted the numerous requests that came his way to join non-profit boards eager for diversity, “and then just worked it hard to show people how I could be helpful as an adviser to a company. There was no other option.”
“Ken has been a pioneering figure in Silicon Valley, but what most don’t realize is how many careers he has helped, pulling people up even if they never knew it,” says Price Cobbs, a longtime Coleman friend and corporate consultant who wrote Black Rage, a seminal ‘60s text that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
“What Ferguson (the August fury over the death of black teen Michael Brown) reawakened particularly in Ken and my generation is a desire to reconnect with communities we’re no longer in,” says Cobbs.
For Coleman, that means putting a greater emphasis on reading and STEM subjects that are gateways to jobs in the tech industry. Coleman also is quick to stress that “more than 50% of jobs in technology don’t require technology skills,” adding that his current advisor, Pinterest CEO Ben Silberman, has a graphics background.
“Look, he says, “I don’t believe white hiring managers lie in bed thinking of ways not to hire black people. The issue is, most hiring managers are trying to reduce risk. And sometimes your instinct is, ‘You’re different than me, so that’s risky.’ But that’s not the right way to think about things.”
Today, America is a nation of 320 million that is roughly 70% white, 15% Hispanic, 11% African American and 4% Asian. Someday soon, Coleman believes, this country’s technology workforce can and should break down along similar lines, compared to the current 2% of blacks and Hispanics in tech.
“Do I believe this is critical to the country? Yes,” says Coleman. “I know that if the tech companies in this valley put their mind to it, they can put a dent in it. We have some of the smartest minds around. And my avocation is simply to have whatever impact on this issue that I can.”
Analysis: Boards reflect male-dominated tech world
By Jon Swartz, USA TODAY
SAN FRANCISCO – We know big-name tech CEOs want no part of the diversity debate.
But at least we know who they are.
Largely anonymous boards of directors for the tech industry are conspicuously silent and — for decades — have been the province of white, older men. They are equally to blame for hiring trends that skew toward younger, white males, as illustrated in diversity reports recently released by Google, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
Tech boards “are an isolated place, an echo chamber,” says Lucy Marcus, an expert on boards who sits on the board of directors of Atlantia, a multibillion-dollar infrastructure company in Italy.
“It’s a selective circle of the most successful people — and they tend to be older and white,” adds Jenna Bilotta, a former Google designer who is co-founder of Avocado Software. “They feel most comfortable with their own.”
Progress on boards for women has been glacial, and nearly non-existent for African-Americans and Hispanics. White men held about 75% of the board seats on the 500 largest publicly traded companies, vs. 5.5% for male African-Americans in 2012, the most recent year in which data was available, according to the Alliance for Board Diversity.
A Bloomberg story Tuesday offered more depressing news: It said 82% of S&P 500 board members are male.
Little surprise, then, that the hiring patterns of tech firms often reflect the composition of their boards — except for older age.
So far, the woeful figures have been accompanied by official comments from human resources representatives — and conspicuous silence from CEOs, save for Apple CEO Tim Cook. As the de facto leaders of what amount to small countries, as measured by revenue, you would expect the chief executive to weigh in on such a weighty topic.
You might also reasonably expect the CEO’s trusted advisers — the board of directors — to take some form of responsibility or action. Corporate governance requires an independent board that asks hard questions about all aspects of the company’s operations, including diversity throughout its workforce and board.
Don’t hold your breath.
The composition of tech boards — where a minuscule number of women, Hispanics and blacks serve — is even worse than the paltry number of Hispanics and blacks who work at tech companies. “Tech companies consider themselves so cutting edge and yet they are so out of touch with their boards,” Marcus says.
“It truly is shocking,” says John Rogers, CEO of Ariel Investments, a money-management and mutual fund company. He’s a trustee for the University of Chicago and sits on the boards of McDonald’s and energy producer Exelon. “Apple’s board has Al Gore. You would think they would discuss inclusion. I think there is slow movement.”
It’s no better with angel investors, 19% of whom are women and only 4% are minorities, according to the Center for Venture Research.
Facebook’s then-seven-member board was all male until it named Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg in June 2012, after it went public. “Sheryl is a corporate officer of the company,” Marcus says, sighing.
Twitter, too, bent to criticism when it tapped Marjorie Scardino to its eight-member board after its IPO late last year.
There are encouraging signs, though not nearly enough. Notable exceptions include John Thompson (Microsoft) and Colin Powell (Salesforce.com). Thompson, who is vacationing in Europe, had no comment.
Apple added Susan Wagner to its board in July amid a vow by Cook to diversify it.
Three of Google’s 11 board members are women.
And, last week, Care.com named former Time CEO Laura Lang the second female to its six-person board. “I joined because it is an inclusive board,” Lang says. “Diversity of people and thought is a business imperative.”
The usually loquacious Jesse Jackson, who has pressed Silicon Valley to share its diversity numbers, is at a loss to explain why such an open-minded, socially-conscious industry is so exclusionary.
“It’s amazing,” Jackson said in a recent phone interview. “There are plenty of qualified African-Americans, but not much change.”
Whether naive, arrogant or insulated, tech companies are unconsciously biased and that could undercut potential business.
Corporate boards are supposed to provide oversight. Instead, they are part of the problem. Until they wake up and make diversity a priority because of the business imperative, the issue will likely languish. “Board directors need to be held to account,” Marcus says.
Tech companies revel in their use of the word “disruption. How about disrupting your hiring patterns?
Hey, Marc, listen up to the ol’ guys
By Jonathan Trugman
So what is it about “Old White Men” that has Silicon Valley’s senior hoodie in a knot? I mean, I guess being old and white and a man does make you stand out in Silicon Valley, but that’s no reason for hard feelings or snide comments.
What if — despite being old, white and male — you were also brilliant and worth oh, say, $24 billion or $63 billion, making you one of the 25 richest people in the world?
Surely that would engender a healthy degree of respect, if nothing else, from the Silicon Valley crowd.
Two weeks ago, Marc Andreessen— the browser bad boy — criticized New York’s own 78-year-old Carl Icahn, who had the nerve to point out that several of eBay’s board members, including Andreessen, have way too many conflicts and self-dealings.
Last week, the cranky 42-year-old Andreessen, successful and worth $700 million himself, moved up the Forbes list to swipe at the 83-year-old Warren Buffett who has repeatedly criticized bitcoin, an Andreessen investment and obsession.
Whether you believe bitcoin is a fad, a hackers cult or even a “crypto-virtual currency,” there is no need to attack some of the best minds in the world just because they are older and see things differently from the way you do.
That said, when Buffett — who knows a thing or two about currencies — calls bitcoin a “mirage,” no one can dismiss his assessment, not even Andreessen.
So when Andreessen tees off on Buffett with, “Track record of old white men who don’t understand tech — crapping on tech they don’t understand — still at 100 percent.”
The thing is, last week the IRS declared bitcoin was not a currency but a property.
So Buffett was right.
In the meantime, bitcoin has fallen below $500, 60 percent down from its mythical January high.
With age comes wisdom. Show some respect.
How One Man Is Tackling Tech’s Diversity Problem
By Tracey Wallace
The tech industry isn’t a hub of cultural diversity, that much we know. In fact, according to a Human Capital Venture Capital report — the only study ever conducted on VC-backed founders and their race, gender, education and age — 87% of founders are white and 92% of them are male.
Those numbers have hit the public sphere, and programs such as CNN’s “Black In America: The New Promised Land: Silicon Valley” have used the HCVC report to drive home the Valley’s lack of diversity. But few are actively addressing the issue with viable solutions quite like Tristan Walker.
Tristan Walker, former VP of business development at Foursquare, knows exactly what it takes to reach the top of the tech industry among a crowd that is significantly skewed toward white males. In 2012, Walker left Foursquare to become an “Entrepreneur in Residence” at Andreessen Horowitz, and while he works on his new, yet-undisclosed venture, he is paying it forward with his fellowship program CODE2040, which helps young black and Latino engineers get their foot in the door in Silicon Valley.
“CODE2040 is my pride and joy,” says Walker. “The goal of it is to get the top performing black and Latino engineering undergraduates internships in the technology space, specifically Silicon Valley. We want to give them the tools and access they need to be incredibly successful.”
During the program’s inaugural 2012 summer session, CODE2040 hosted five fellows, providing guidance, mentors and a chance to hear the likes of Mike Abbott, a leading venture capitalist, speak in an off-the-record fashion about the industry.
The fellows also had exposure to media training with Bloomberg’s Emily Chang. “We tell these guys, you always got to know your pitch because you never know when folks might ask you what you do, why you do it, how you do it,” says Walker. “So we mock on-air interviews.”
This past summer, CODE2040 welcomed 18 fellows, and in the summer of 2014, Walker says he wants 50 fellows on both coasts.
“The impetus behind founding CODE2040 was so folks wouldn’t make the same mistake that I made when I was young, and that was not knowing that Silicon Valley existed,” says Walker. “I didn’t know that Silicon Valley existed until 2008, when I came out here for business school. And I was ashamed! Had I known about the greatness that is Silicon Valley and folks who were my age fundamentally changing the world, my career path might have been a little bit different. We want these kids to understand what Silicon Valley is all about.”
And how is Silicon Valley reacting to the opportunity for diversity within their summer internships?
“Pretty much all of the startups were very excited about the work that all of the fellows did. Most, if not all of them, will be back on next summer, which we are really proud of,” says Walker.
“It is really important for us to bring really high quality engineering talent to these startups and what we found, which is really great, is that that talent exists! A lot of startups would say, ‘Well, diversity is a big, important thing for us to think about, but we just can’t find the talent.’ And I think we call their bluff on a lot of that.”
Studies have shown, too, that in coming decades, the current minority-majority demographics will radically change, and for the tech industry — an industry solidly built on innovation and being ahead of the curve — that means change needs to happen now.
“The reason we called it CODE2040, is that in the year 2040, black and Latinos will be the majority of the country. If we are not incorporating the perspective of what will be the majority of our country in 20 or 30 years, something is wrong,” says Walker.
“When you think about what all the research suggests and about the fact that this demographic, and a lot of folks would agree, is the most culturally influential demographic in the world, you combine that with all the innovation and the early adopting-ness of Silicon Valley, and really special things can happen. That’s where a lot of the billion-dollar-plus opportunities lie.”
As for Walker’s own advice to the fellows who are accepted to the program, he tries to give them as much perspective as possible.
“It really starts with one thing: You really don’t get what you don’t ask for. I tell these folks to really pursue the dream that they have with vigor, but mostly, also having the faith that things can, will and probably should work out,” he says.
