WEBVTT - Update: Affirmative Action in Silicon Valley 0:00:02.600 --> 0:00:05.720 Hey everyone, it's Aki. This week, we're re airing an 0:00:05.760 --> 0:00:11.039 episode that we first published in January. Stick around because 0:00:11.039 --> 0:00:15.360 we'll be back at the end with an update. Today's 0:00:15.360 --> 0:00:19.840 episode is about a guy called Mitchel Lee. He runs 0:00:19.840 --> 0:00:22.799 a startup called Penny in San Francisco. We'll tell you 0:00:22.880 --> 0:00:25.480 later about what Penny does. For now, what you need 0:00:25.520 --> 0:00:27.600 to know is Penny is almost two years old and 0:00:27.640 --> 0:00:31.319 it's really small. It's Mitch, his co founder, Alex, and 0:00:31.440 --> 0:00:36.520 two employees. They're all software engineers, and big surprise, they're 0:00:36.560 --> 0:00:40.199 all guys. A few months ago, Mitch started looking for 0:00:40.240 --> 0:00:43.479 a fifth employee, and he wanted that fifth person to 0:00:43.520 --> 0:00:46.640 be different from him and the rest of the team. 0:00:46.680 --> 0:00:48.760 And since this is a podcast and we can't just 0:00:48.840 --> 0:00:51.960 show you a picture of Mitch, we asked Mitch's sister 0:00:52.120 --> 0:00:57.120 Christina to describe what he looks like. He's always got 0:00:57.440 --> 0:01:00.560 some like really soft hoodie or two shirt on in 0:01:00.680 --> 0:01:03.640 jeans or corduroys. If he was walking down the street, 0:01:03.640 --> 0:01:09.839 you probably wouldn't necessarily notice. He blends in pretty well. Basically, 0:01:09.959 --> 0:01:12.640 Mitch looks just like a lot of other people in 0:01:12.720 --> 0:01:16.720 Silicon Valley. He's young, he's white, he's straight, and he 0:01:16.760 --> 0:01:19.319 went to a top college. Yeah, he even has this 0:01:19.480 --> 0:01:22.920 neatly trimmed beard, and perhaps because he's a cyclist like 0:01:23.000 --> 0:01:25.840 the rest of San Francisco, he has a nice tan too. 0:01:26.640 --> 0:01:29.800 In Silicon Valley, most programmers are white and Asian men 0:01:29.920 --> 0:01:33.960 who have computer science degrees from elite universities. But for 0:01:34.120 --> 0:01:37.440 Mitch's next higher he's committed to looking outside that pool 0:01:37.440 --> 0:01:41.440 of people. That's pretty unusual for a company of penny size. 0:01:41.959 --> 0:01:45.560 Some people would call it affirmative action hiring, because Mitch 0:01:45.760 --> 0:01:48.920 is going to be actively considering the candidates background when 0:01:49.000 --> 0:01:52.400 he's deciding who to hire. And it's a very touchy topic. 0:01:53.080 --> 0:01:55.880 As we'll find out, not everyone agrees that it's the 0:01:56.000 --> 0:02:06.840 right thing to do him and I'm Ellen Hewitt, and 0:02:06.960 --> 0:02:10.040 this week Undecrypted, we're gonna be talking about something that 0:02:10.160 --> 0:02:13.600 every technology company says they want to do something about, 0:02:13.960 --> 0:02:17.600 which is diversity in the workforce. Well, they want to 0:02:17.639 --> 0:02:20.360 talk about it in these lofty slogans, but when you 0:02:20.480 --> 0:02:24.720 actually drill into the specifics, things start to get uncomfortable. 0:02:25.160 --> 0:02:27.640 We found one of the few guys in the industry 0:02:27.680 --> 0:02:31.800 willing to speak completely openly, willing to get really uncomfortable 0:02:31.840 --> 0:02:34.919 with us, someone who's trying to do something to fix 0:02:35.000 --> 0:02:38.160 the lack of diversity and tech from within his own 0:02:38.280 --> 0:02:49.359 tiny startup. Oh cool, I look at this giant chess board. 0:02:55.400 --> 0:02:58.600 The guy's penny work in a small coworking space in 0:02:58.639 --> 0:03:02.800 downtown San Francisco. They're on a shoestring budget. It's really 0:03:02.840 --> 0:03:05.360 not a glamorous place. They don't have free snacks. There 0:03:05.400 --> 0:03:08.800 isn't very good natural light, and their office is about 0:03:08.840 --> 0:03:14.920 the size of the bedroom room, A spacious, lovely I 0:03:15.000 --> 0:03:16.960 was telling her, I'm excited for her to see how 0:03:17.000 --> 0:03:21.800 like the other half of startups live, this is the 0:03:22.360 --> 0:03:25.800 don't spend a lot of money half of starposts. Inside 0:03:25.800 --> 0:03:29.320 this tiny office, there are four guys sitting side by side. 0:03:30.320 --> 0:03:33.119 My name's Mitch. I grew up in San Jose. I'm 0:03:33.200 --> 0:03:37.440 a mid twenties white guy. I'm Alex and I just 0:03:37.520 --> 0:03:42.080 Stanford is American. My name's Andrew Dennis. I'm half black, 0:03:42.080 --> 0:03:46.640 half white. UM I'm married and I'm my dad. I 0:03:46.760 --> 0:03:51.720 am Jonathan and I was born in Taiwan and I 0:03:51.760 --> 0:03:55.119 grew up in Maryland. All four of them believe it's 0:03:55.120 --> 0:03:58.680 the right move for their company to be prioritizing diversity now, 0:03:59.480 --> 0:04:03.040 not because it's the right thing to do, they also 0:04:03.080 --> 0:04:05.840 believe it will help their product. Yeah, Penny is this 0:04:05.920 --> 0:04:08.640 app that links to your bank accounts and can give 0:04:08.640 --> 0:04:12.240 you financial advice based on your spending patterns. Here's Mitch. 0:04:12.880 --> 0:04:15.920 As we were working on that core product, we were realizing, 0:04:16.400 --> 0:04:19.599 we're both two software engineers that grew up in the 0:04:19.640 --> 0:04:22.560 Bay Area. How are we going to get a product 0:04:22.640 --> 0:04:26.520 that does well in Montana and Kansas and Maine. And 0:04:27.480 --> 0:04:30.880 our answer to that was, we should be solving this 0:04:30.960 --> 0:04:34.640 by building out a diverse team that can empathize with 0:04:34.680 --> 0:04:37.760 people from different parts of the country, from different genders 0:04:37.880 --> 0:04:41.400 or different ethnicities. And you use the app by messaging 0:04:41.560 --> 0:04:45.120 this chat bot, this computer program that texts back and 0:04:45.200 --> 0:04:47.960 forth with you. The chat bot is called Penny, and 0:04:48.040 --> 0:04:51.760 Penny has a female face. But at the beginning, everything 0:04:51.800 --> 0:04:55.000 Penny said was written by two guys, Alex and Mitch. 0:04:55.680 --> 0:05:01.120 Here's Mitch's fiance Lizzie Wagner, explaining one way that when awry, 0:05:01.520 --> 0:05:03.200 so they started to use a little bit of like 0:05:03.240 --> 0:05:05.400 a snarky tone. You know, when you use like a 0:05:05.400 --> 0:05:08.640 winky emoji, it can also be considered flirty. So I 0:05:08.680 --> 0:05:11.080 told him I just read this conversation and I think 0:05:11.120 --> 0:05:13.839 Penny was flirting with me, and he was like, no way, 0:05:14.160 --> 0:05:17.440 it's a computer, it can't flirt, and I was like, no, 0:05:17.720 --> 0:05:20.240 it's a flirty conversation. He's like, this is exactly why 0:05:20.240 --> 0:05:23.320 we need more diverse perspectives, because Alex and I never 0:05:23.400 --> 0:05:29.719 even thought about that comment being taken that way. And 0:05:30.120 --> 0:05:33.560 building a relatable chatbot is super important when you're guiding 0:05:33.600 --> 0:05:37.360 customers through something as personal and sensitive and daunting as 0:05:37.400 --> 0:05:40.919 your finances. When a user writes in and says, I 0:05:41.080 --> 0:05:44.599 overdraft a lot, how do you respond? And some people 0:05:44.800 --> 0:05:50.120 will respond with, well, they should stop spending that much money. 0:05:50.440 --> 0:05:52.600 Other people will put themselves in their shoes and say 0:05:52.640 --> 0:05:56.599 that really sucks. That level of empathy doesn't come if 0:05:56.760 --> 0:05:59.880 everyone thinks and acts the same way in a room, 0:06:00.120 --> 0:06:03.360 They're all just gonna confirm each other's opinions of like, well, 0:06:03.360 --> 0:06:06.520 that person shouldn't be spending money they don't have. And 0:06:06.640 --> 0:06:09.440 Penny stands out from the rest of startups and Silicon 0:06:09.560 --> 0:06:13.560 Valley because it's focusing on hiring for diversity so early 0:06:13.680 --> 0:06:17.799 in the company's history. I think the default for early 0:06:17.839 --> 0:06:23.400 stage companies is not necessarily an aversion to diversity. It's 0:06:23.400 --> 0:06:26.680 not an active process of saying we are only going 0:06:26.760 --> 0:06:29.200 to hire people that look and sound just like us. 0:06:30.720 --> 0:06:34.760 It's the idea that we want to move fast, and 0:06:34.800 --> 0:06:36.800 the fastest way to hire people is to pull from 0:06:36.800 --> 0:06:39.359 our network. They get this big paycheck from a venture 0:06:39.360 --> 0:06:41.200 capital firm and they say, great, we're going to spend 0:06:41.240 --> 0:06:44.640 it immediately. They expand their team from two or four 0:06:44.720 --> 0:06:49.760 people to eight or twelve. If you punt the issue 0:06:49.760 --> 0:06:52.840 of diversity down the line, it becomes much harder because 0:06:52.839 --> 0:06:56.240 when you have eleven men on your team on a 0:06:56.240 --> 0:07:00.880 twelve person team, it becomes a hostile work environment for 0:07:01.000 --> 0:07:04.240 women trying to enter into that team. When you have 0:07:04.480 --> 0:07:08.320 a group of all white or all Asian people sitting 0:07:08.360 --> 0:07:11.960 in the same room together, it makes it hostile for 0:07:12.720 --> 0:07:20.800 other minority groups to join that environment. These kinds of 0:07:20.840 --> 0:07:25.240 companies really do exist. We talked to Jennifer Barbattini, as 0:07:25.360 --> 0:07:28.280 software engineer who interviewed with Penny in September, though she 0:07:28.360 --> 0:07:32.520 didn't get the job. I remember there was one company 0:07:32.560 --> 0:07:36.360 that I interviewed with. It was a smallish company like 0:07:36.680 --> 0:07:41.040 fifteen to twenty. They had ten engineers. All ten were male. 0:07:41.200 --> 0:07:45.560 And all ten were from Stanford, and I was like, 0:07:46.960 --> 0:07:49.440 I don't know if I'm a good fit here, like, 0:07:49.640 --> 0:07:52.320 and the hiring person was telling me, We're we're trying 0:07:52.360 --> 0:07:55.640 to be diverse, and I'm like, well, okay, but still 0:07:55.680 --> 0:07:58.640 like this is a little intimidating. I don't have a 0:07:58.640 --> 0:08:02.840 Stanford credential. Um, I'm I'm definitely not. I can't brow talk. 0:08:04.600 --> 0:08:07.080 If it's a problem at a startup with twenty people, 0:08:07.320 --> 0:08:10.520 imagine what it's like at a Google or Facebook or Twitter. 0:08:11.280 --> 0:08:15.480 They have thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of employees, only 0:08:15.520 --> 0:08:19.480 about thirty are women, and only about six percent are 0:08:19.560 --> 0:08:23.520 black or Latino. These companies can hire only people from 0:08:23.520 --> 0:08:26.400 those groups for the next year and their numbers would 0:08:26.400 --> 0:08:30.000 barely move. So it makes sense to start early. But 0:08:30.240 --> 0:08:32.800 the problem for startups is the pressure they're under in 0:08:32.840 --> 0:08:35.920 the very early days. You have maybe a year of 0:08:36.000 --> 0:08:38.520 funding in the bank, you have a bunch of competitors, 0:08:38.559 --> 0:08:42.400 and if you can't hire quickly to build quickly your toast. 0:08:43.679 --> 0:08:47.800 The consensus opinion is start worrying about it. When your 0:08:47.840 --> 0:08:50.120 product is successful enough that you know that you're going 0:08:50.160 --> 0:08:52.200 to be building out a team for the long run. 0:08:53.600 --> 0:08:56.920 Even someone like Mitch, who's really determined to focus on this. 0:08:57.240 --> 0:09:01.240 He's run into a lot of obstacles. Remember, Mitch isn't 0:09:01.280 --> 0:09:05.080 this diversity or HR expert. He's just a programmer trying 0:09:05.120 --> 0:09:08.640 to figure it out as he goes along. From a 0:09:08.720 --> 0:09:14.720 macro perspective of actively pursuing diversity, I'm almost but implementation wise, 0:09:14.760 --> 0:09:17.800 I'm i am just throwing darts on board and and 0:09:17.880 --> 0:09:20.760 hoping that we'll learn enough from those to get better. 0:09:24.080 --> 0:09:28.240 Every Monday, Mitch logs onto recruiting sites like angel Lists, Hired, 0:09:28.320 --> 0:09:31.480 and Triple Bite. He's looking for candidates or approach, and 0:09:31.480 --> 0:09:34.640 he'll spend one or two hours on each platform. He 0:09:34.720 --> 0:09:37.360 said it takes him maybe six hours on Monday to 0:09:37.400 --> 0:09:40.000 do that outreach, and then the follow up throughout the 0:09:40.000 --> 0:09:42.959 week brings his time to about fifteen hours every week 0:09:43.520 --> 0:09:47.040 just to fill one role. We spent one such Monday 0:09:47.120 --> 0:09:50.040 with Mitch. As you look through a fresh badge at candidates. 0:09:50.240 --> 0:09:53.280 These ones he found and hired this week, there were 0:09:53.320 --> 0:09:58.280 forty two that matched to search criteria. The very first 0:09:58.320 --> 0:10:03.840 candidate has really which is great, comes from a university 0:10:03.840 --> 0:10:07.679 I've never heard of, also great, and then has experience 0:10:07.800 --> 0:10:11.520 in different areas and you see the person's photos, and 0:10:11.840 --> 0:10:14.640 you see the person's photo and their name, UM, and 0:10:14.880 --> 0:10:18.360 actually what salary they're interested in, which is pretty interesting. 0:10:19.800 --> 0:10:23.320 So I will start looking through this. Fortunately, when you 0:10:23.320 --> 0:10:26.600 have forty two people every week on this platform, plus 0:10:26.679 --> 0:10:29.960 the hundreds across, a lot of startups look at these 0:10:29.960 --> 0:10:32.960 sites when they're trying to hire. But after a while, 0:10:33.200 --> 0:10:36.080 Mitch realized that these job sites, they're only good for 0:10:36.120 --> 0:10:39.839 finding a certain kind of candidate. Angel List is great, UM, 0:10:40.480 --> 0:10:45.319 but not a good place to look for diversity. Same 0:10:45.400 --> 0:10:48.439 with many of the hiring platforms that we tried. H 0:10:49.120 --> 0:10:51.760 I've asked them about that in the past, and the 0:10:51.800 --> 0:10:56.480 typical answer is, sorry, this is just what's available. This 0:10:56.559 --> 0:11:00.760 is the pool of candidates. It's predominantly male, it's predominantly white, orasan. 0:11:02.000 --> 0:11:04.600 So Mitch started to look for ways to find people 0:11:04.640 --> 0:11:08.920 with more varied profiles, things like newsletters and meet ups 0:11:09.000 --> 0:11:12.480 for women and engineering. He also looked for new graduates 0:11:12.480 --> 0:11:14.880 from coding boot camps, which teach you how to code 0:11:14.920 --> 0:11:18.120 in a short period of time. These people tend to 0:11:18.120 --> 0:11:21.560 come from unusual backgrounds, but boot camps didn't turn out 0:11:21.559 --> 0:11:24.800 to be particularly helpful for Mitch. He found that a 0:11:24.800 --> 0:11:27.920 lot of these graduates didn't have enough experience to start 0:11:28.000 --> 0:11:31.960 contributing right away, and Penny, as a young startup, doesn't 0:11:32.040 --> 0:11:38.640 have the resources to train them. To apply to Penny, 0:11:38.760 --> 0:11:41.440 you have to complete a coding questionnaire, kind of like 0:11:41.480 --> 0:11:44.720 a TACOME test. And Mitch found that some people who 0:11:44.760 --> 0:11:48.200 started it weren't finishing. And a lot of the people 0:11:48.200 --> 0:11:51.160 who were dropping out were people who didn't have computer 0:11:51.240 --> 0:11:54.800 science degrees, or were women, or were programmers of color, 0:11:55.200 --> 0:11:57.960 and it was often these candidates that Mitch was most 0:11:58.000 --> 0:12:01.640 interested in. Mitch suspect did it might have something to 0:12:01.679 --> 0:12:05.440 do with a lack of confidence, Like these people with 0:12:05.520 --> 0:12:08.960 non traditional backgrounds are taking themselves out of the running 0:12:09.240 --> 0:12:13.560 before they even tried. Maybe the job description will say 0:12:13.600 --> 0:12:16.160 you have to have at least three years of experience, 0:12:16.840 --> 0:12:19.120 and let's say often the men with two years of 0:12:19.200 --> 0:12:23.720 experience will apply anyway, but the women wouldn't. So Mitch 0:12:24.160 --> 0:12:35.680 he tried something new. Before the break, Mitch had a 0:12:35.720 --> 0:12:40.160 realization that the very candidates he was interested in were 0:12:40.200 --> 0:12:43.800 taking themselves out of the running, maybe because they didn't 0:12:43.840 --> 0:12:46.680 think they would get the job anyway. Here's what he 0:12:46.760 --> 0:12:51.600 decided to do about it. When we get the sense 0:12:51.679 --> 0:12:56.760 that somebody has either a confidence issue, like just doesn't 0:12:56.800 --> 0:12:59.520 think they're a good fit for the position or doesn't 0:12:59.520 --> 0:13:02.560 think they have the skill set required, we will have 0:13:02.640 --> 0:13:06.320 a lot more contact with that person to assuage their fears. 0:13:06.440 --> 0:13:08.960 That may mean a phone screen much earlier in the process, 0:13:09.000 --> 0:13:13.679 It may mean more check in emails. That helped him 0:13:13.679 --> 0:13:16.760 shepherd more people through the whole process, not just the 0:13:16.840 --> 0:13:20.560 ultra confident ones. And that was a small success, but 0:13:20.720 --> 0:13:23.560 it all came at a real cost in the form 0:13:23.640 --> 0:13:27.200 of Mitch's time. The fifteen hours a week that Mitch 0:13:27.320 --> 0:13:30.840 was spending on recruiting, that's fifteen hours he's not coding 0:13:31.120 --> 0:13:34.800 or troubleshooting or mentoring his team. Mitch said it was 0:13:34.840 --> 0:13:36.920 worth it, but you can see why a lot of 0:13:36.960 --> 0:13:39.920 other founders in his position wouldn't really have the time 0:13:39.920 --> 0:13:42.720 to do this. And that brings us to the most 0:13:42.800 --> 0:13:46.840 controversial part. When you get to that final stage, would 0:13:46.880 --> 0:13:50.840 you pick one person or another because they're a minority candidate? 0:13:51.400 --> 0:14:02.000 What would you do? I talked to Jay Shriney Vassan. 0:14:02.400 --> 0:14:05.000 He's the CEO of Spoke, which is a nine person 0:14:05.240 --> 0:14:09.840 enterprise startup in San Francisco. Like Mitch J says he 0:14:09.920 --> 0:14:13.720 wants a diverse team, but he said he's not comfortable 0:14:13.800 --> 0:14:16.840 with making someone's ethnicity or gender one of the reasons 0:14:16.880 --> 0:14:20.880 why he's hiring them. He explicitly did not factor that 0:14:20.960 --> 0:14:23.560 into the final decision because I think that's unfair to 0:14:24.520 --> 0:14:27.960 us as well as the person being hired. UM. At 0:14:28.000 --> 0:14:30.840 the end of the day, UM, we want to have 0:14:30.920 --> 0:14:35.440 the best people possible for each role in our company, 0:14:35.960 --> 0:14:39.760 and this makes sense right. Picking someone in part because 0:14:39.800 --> 0:14:41.760 of what they look like can even be seen as 0:14:41.800 --> 0:14:45.680 employment discrimination, or it can feel patronizing to the person 0:14:45.720 --> 0:14:48.880 who was hired. These are the kind of counter arguments 0:14:48.920 --> 0:14:52.200 you hear a lot in Silicon Valley and elsewhere. But 0:14:52.320 --> 0:14:56.760 we asked, Mitch, here are two hypothetical candidates equally strong, 0:14:56.880 --> 0:15:00.680 encoding and other important values at Penny, but one's a 0:15:00.720 --> 0:15:03.600 white guy and the other has a less typical background. 0:15:03.920 --> 0:15:08.520 Who would you hire? You just said that they're equally qualified. 0:15:08.920 --> 0:15:13.400 What we're saying is that the the people that were 0:15:13.440 --> 0:15:16.880 interested in hiring were weighing them across all these factors, 0:15:16.960 --> 0:15:19.760 and so somebody with a diverse background and a totally 0:15:19.800 --> 0:15:24.360 different perspective, in our opinion, is more qualified. For the 0:15:24.400 --> 0:15:27.160 position that we're trying to fill. Giving us a perspective 0:15:27.160 --> 0:15:30.920 that we've never considered helps the product more than somebody 0:15:30.960 --> 0:15:34.320 that has our same perspective but as good at engineering. 0:15:34.760 --> 0:15:37.520 Did you have put back from people who felt like, 0:15:38.080 --> 0:15:40.600 what's unfair? Should I be punished for going to Stanford? Right? 0:15:41.160 --> 0:15:45.320 What's exactly that should I be punished for going to Stanford? 0:15:46.160 --> 0:15:48.680 It's it's something that I don't have a good answer to, 0:15:49.320 --> 0:15:54.680 other than the entire playing field is leaning in your direction. 0:15:56.880 --> 0:15:59.640 I know that it can feel like in that specific 0:15:59.760 --> 0:16:05.000 and sense um you're being discriminated against or you're somehow 0:16:05.080 --> 0:16:09.600 unfairly disadvantaged, but you are unfairly advantaged everywhere else in 0:16:09.640 --> 0:16:13.280 your life. So it's just, uh, it's just a slight 0:16:13.360 --> 0:16:17.480 tilt of the playing field a little less in your favor, um, 0:16:17.680 --> 0:16:21.000 which I'm okay with. I can I can sleep easy 0:16:21.080 --> 0:16:24.000 at night knowing that, knowing that if you graduated from 0:16:24.000 --> 0:16:27.280 Stanford you're going to be fine. I'm not worried about you. 0:16:29.640 --> 0:16:32.120 And we just heard Mitch laughing there, But you can 0:16:32.160 --> 0:16:36.440 tell just how carefully and deliberately Mitch has been choosing 0:16:36.520 --> 0:16:40.120 his words through this whole interview. His face was flushed. 0:16:40.240 --> 0:16:43.120 You could really tell that he was nervous. And I 0:16:43.160 --> 0:16:45.560 don't blame him here. We are shoving a mic in 0:16:45.640 --> 0:16:48.640 his face asking him to talk about gender and race 0:16:48.800 --> 0:16:51.840 and all these other things that are so touchy. The 0:16:51.880 --> 0:16:54.400 things going on in my mind are I need to 0:16:54.440 --> 0:16:56.600 be careful about this. I know that people are going 0:16:56.640 --> 0:16:58.520 to look at me and say, you're just some white 0:16:58.600 --> 0:17:01.680 dude rattling off about diversity, but you have no idea 0:17:01.680 --> 0:17:05.760 what you're talking about. That may be true. I may 0:17:05.760 --> 0:17:07.560 not know what I'm talking about, but I want to 0:17:07.560 --> 0:17:11.119 get that conversation going so that I can learn, so 0:17:11.119 --> 0:17:13.760 that the rest of our team can learn, and so 0:17:13.800 --> 0:17:18.400 that um we do better moving forward. We're basically just saying, 0:17:18.520 --> 0:17:21.600 you know, Allen, I really can't remember the last time 0:17:21.640 --> 0:17:24.359 I was this nervous trying to come up with the 0:17:24.400 --> 0:17:28.479 most delicate way to pose these questions. Me too, and Aki. 0:17:28.960 --> 0:17:32.040 You and I are both women of color, you're also gay. 0:17:32.080 --> 0:17:34.200 It really makes you think back to every time you've 0:17:34.240 --> 0:17:38.160 ever been offered a new job. Yeah, and I guess 0:17:38.240 --> 0:17:41.560 until now this has all been theoretical. But when we 0:17:41.600 --> 0:17:44.040 went in to interview the Penny team, they were in 0:17:44.080 --> 0:17:47.800 the final stages with one candidate. They were talking to 0:17:47.840 --> 0:17:51.000 a woman and she's of Indian descent. While we were 0:17:51.000 --> 0:17:53.399 in the Penny office, we got the team altogether in 0:17:53.400 --> 0:17:56.240 a room and asked them what they thought of her. Yeah, 0:17:56.280 --> 0:17:58.840 they all thought she would work well with the team, 0:17:58.880 --> 0:18:03.080 but she lacks some techical experience. Specifically, she wasn't fluent 0:18:03.240 --> 0:18:05.960 in the main programming language that Penny is written in. 0:18:06.480 --> 0:18:08.840 On top of that, the company was about to enter 0:18:08.960 --> 0:18:13.199 a really busy period. Great culture fit. It's somebody that 0:18:13.240 --> 0:18:16.760 we would all gladly have in the room working with us, 0:18:18.440 --> 0:18:21.639 because she's articulate and well thought out, and it is 0:18:21.760 --> 0:18:24.760 very responsive to feedback. How do you weigh that with 0:18:24.840 --> 0:18:28.560 the fact that she has no experience shipping production Ruby code, 0:18:28.560 --> 0:18:32.280 which is the language that we write in UM, but 0:18:32.400 --> 0:18:34.919 seems to have the aptitude to pick that up quickly. Well, 0:18:36.600 --> 0:18:40.359 the answer is we don't know, so ACKI. When we 0:18:40.560 --> 0:18:43.800 visited Mention his team, everything that they were saying seemed 0:18:43.840 --> 0:18:46.800 pretty reasonable to us. Yeah, I thought he was a 0:18:46.880 --> 0:18:51.280 really thoughtful guy. I was just genuinely impressed. But we're 0:18:51.320 --> 0:18:55.200 not experts on this either. So we outlined Mitch's philosophy 0:18:55.240 --> 0:18:59.000 and tactics with my Von Hutchinson, a former labor lawyer 0:18:59.040 --> 0:19:01.840 who is now a concip Bolton helping smaller startups on 0:19:01.920 --> 0:19:06.280 diversity and inclusion. You get an A for enthusiasm. Mitch 0:19:08.320 --> 0:19:10.960 for this letter grade, I would give him a beat. Um. 0:19:11.000 --> 0:19:14.920 I think that he's doing some of the right things. Um, 0:19:14.920 --> 0:19:17.080 he's taking a couple of risks, but he could take 0:19:17.119 --> 0:19:20.680 bigger risks. I think that he could definitely educate theself 0:19:20.680 --> 0:19:22.960 a little bit more. Just come through the resources and 0:19:22.960 --> 0:19:25.760 see what's out there. My Van said that in the 0:19:25.840 --> 0:19:30.080 long term, Penny should build relationships with organizations that are 0:19:30.200 --> 0:19:34.880 trying to bring more underrepresented groups into tech host dinners 0:19:34.920 --> 0:19:38.080 and meetups and that kind of thing. But she also 0:19:38.160 --> 0:19:42.160 gave Mitch some practical advice for right now, like put 0:19:42.200 --> 0:19:45.359 your pledge to diversity on your company's landing page, not 0:19:45.480 --> 0:19:48.800 just on your job spage. Consider bringing in an expert 0:19:48.840 --> 0:19:51.200 to help guide you instead of trying to figure it 0:19:51.240 --> 0:19:55.080 out for yourself. And when you hire minority candidates, don't 0:19:55.160 --> 0:19:58.359 expect them to do the work of recruiting diverse candidates 0:19:58.440 --> 0:20:02.280 for you. I'm real happy there are guys out here 0:20:02.359 --> 0:20:06.720 like Mitch. I think, Um, sometimes we see guys like 0:20:06.800 --> 0:20:09.760 Mitch don't stay like Mitch for very long. I think 0:20:09.800 --> 0:20:11.959 it's going to be in the next few years it's 0:20:11.960 --> 0:20:16.800 going to be really hard to hold those values and 0:20:17.640 --> 0:20:20.520 not to succumb to the temptations that are going to 0:20:20.600 --> 0:20:23.160 be abound in the industry when it comes to making 0:20:23.160 --> 0:20:26.320 the final call on who to hire. My Vaughan said, 0:20:26.440 --> 0:20:29.199 Mitch is taking the right approach by focusing on the 0:20:29.240 --> 0:20:32.240 different perspectives that a candidate would bring to Penny. I 0:20:32.240 --> 0:20:34.400 don't think that you should hire someone just because they're 0:20:34.400 --> 0:20:37.399 black or just because they're a woman. That will fill 0:20:37.400 --> 0:20:39.080 a short term goal, but that's not going to pay 0:20:39.080 --> 0:20:41.280 off in the long run. And I feel like so 0:20:41.359 --> 0:20:45.000 often we we equate identity with experience and it's not 0:20:45.080 --> 0:20:48.399 the same thing, although sometimes they're tied, right, So I 0:20:48.440 --> 0:20:51.040 think if you can figure out a way to really 0:20:51.160 --> 0:20:54.440 capture that, to capture the experience part of the identity 0:20:54.480 --> 0:20:57.200 as opposed to just the identity in a vacuum, like 0:20:57.280 --> 0:20:59.639 that's when you're kind of like more set up for 0:20:59.680 --> 0:21:05.160 a six US, Which brings us to our climax. Did Mitch, Alexandrew, 0:21:05.200 --> 0:21:09.040 and Jonathan hire the female programmer? We followed up with 0:21:09.080 --> 0:21:12.000 them in late November, and even though they were approaching 0:21:12.040 --> 0:21:14.639 a busy time, they decided to give her an offer. 0:21:15.280 --> 0:21:18.720 Her name's Vertica Shrivastav, and we met her just a 0:21:18.720 --> 0:21:22.479 few days after she accepted Penny's offer. She told us 0:21:22.480 --> 0:21:24.800 that as she's met with all these different companies, she 0:21:24.920 --> 0:21:31.520 knew she was likely going to be an outlier. I 0:21:31.560 --> 0:21:35.200 made it a point to ask Um how many female 0:21:35.240 --> 0:21:39.320 engineers they had, and after I started asking, I realized 0:21:39.320 --> 0:21:41.760 it made people uncomfortable. I didn't mean I didn't mean 0:21:41.800 --> 0:21:44.480 it as like a point of superiority. I just wanted 0:21:44.520 --> 0:21:47.040 to know how many female engineers because it would affect 0:21:47.080 --> 0:21:51.800 me as someone joining their team. And it made people uncomfortable. UM. 0:21:51.960 --> 0:21:54.040 They kind of be like, you know, well we had 0:21:54.119 --> 0:21:59.919 this engineer. She left UM, but she didn't sense that 0:22:00.040 --> 0:22:04.359 same discomfort at Penny. I had asked him a question UM, 0:22:04.400 --> 0:22:07.359 saying that companies always asked me why am I interested 0:22:07.400 --> 0:22:09.080 in them? I think it's only fair for me to 0:22:09.119 --> 0:22:11.879 ask UM, why are you interested in me? And I 0:22:12.000 --> 0:22:14.239 like that They didn't like tiptoe around the fact that 0:22:14.280 --> 0:22:17.600 I'm a female engineer. They're like, diversity is something that's 0:22:17.600 --> 0:22:21.320 really important to us, and you're clearly different because you're female, 0:22:21.359 --> 0:22:23.520 and then also listed like other things that were a 0:22:23.520 --> 0:22:27.040 little different about me than I guess the average software engineer. 0:22:27.440 --> 0:22:29.240 So like that. They're honest about that, and they're not 0:22:29.280 --> 0:22:31.879 trying to just because I'm a girl got out of 0:22:31.880 --> 0:22:34.560 the team, like they saw something more in me other 0:22:34.600 --> 0:22:42.040 than just that I'm a female. Fortica starts this week, 0:22:42.320 --> 0:22:46.719 but Mitch's work isn't over. Wi Bond, the diversity consultant, 0:22:46.880 --> 0:22:48.800 told us that it's not going to be enough to 0:22:48.920 --> 0:22:52.960 just hire candidates with minority backgrounds. The hardest part is 0:22:53.000 --> 0:22:55.440 making sure that the new hire feels like a real 0:22:55.680 --> 0:22:59.040 and necessary part of a team with challenging work, but 0:22:59.119 --> 0:23:02.440 also the right amount of support. It's a difficult balance, 0:23:03.520 --> 0:23:06.439 Mitch just success in the long term ultimately depends on 0:23:06.480 --> 0:23:10.640 whether Vertica stays and thrives at Penny and down the road, 0:23:10.840 --> 0:23:13.600 whether the different people Mitch keeps hiring will make the 0:23:13.600 --> 0:23:17.600 app more useful and enjoyable to everyone, not just people 0:23:17.680 --> 0:23:40.480 in the Silicon Valley bubble. Okay, silent, it is June 0:23:41.280 --> 0:23:45.520 now because birth con. She's been good. She's still at Penny. 0:23:45.720 --> 0:23:49.080 I talked to her and Mitch this week and asked her, 0:23:49.760 --> 0:23:52.880 you know, what her experience was like, and I was surprised. 0:23:52.880 --> 0:23:55.840 She told me, you know, the first um part of 0:23:55.840 --> 0:23:59.320 her time there, she felt actually pretty uncomfortable, pretty because 0:23:59.320 --> 0:24:02.000 she was the only woman there. Yeah, and I think 0:24:02.040 --> 0:24:05.199 because her engineering background was different. I think she just 0:24:05.560 --> 0:24:08.560 you know, she didn't have a background in fintech. Uh. 0:24:08.560 --> 0:24:10.600 But she told me she was really touched by how 0:24:10.680 --> 0:24:13.760 much the company really tried to make sure she understood 0:24:13.800 --> 0:24:16.040 they felt she belonged with them, she was part of 0:24:16.080 --> 0:24:18.919 the team, that kind of thing. So, you know, for example, 0:24:18.920 --> 0:24:21.800 they eat lunch together every day, and she said that 0:24:22.160 --> 0:24:25.320 even though the conversation could sometimes move to topics that 0:24:25.359 --> 0:24:28.720 she wasn't that interested in, she noticed that at different points, 0:24:28.800 --> 0:24:31.720 you know, different coworkers of hers would notice and try 0:24:31.800 --> 0:24:34.480 to move the conversation back to something that we could 0:24:34.480 --> 0:24:36.960 that they could all participate in. So they made a 0:24:37.000 --> 0:24:39.840 real effort. Yeah, and she felt like, you know, they 0:24:39.880 --> 0:24:41.920 were the ones who were really pushing the message like, yes, 0:24:42.000 --> 0:24:44.240 you're part of the team. And if anything, she said, 0:24:44.240 --> 0:24:46.359 she was the one who was nervous about it or 0:24:46.480 --> 0:24:48.760 or unsure that that was that that was the correct 0:24:48.760 --> 0:24:52.400