Speaker 1: I think the first thing is first, you can't you
Speaker 1: can't get around this. You have to be good at
Speaker 1: what you do, Like you have to invest in learning
Speaker 1: what you're really good at and just doing that to
Speaker 1: the best of your ability. Like that's the one thing
Speaker 1: that that's the one impression that you're gonna make with
Speaker 1: most people, they're gonna remember, did you say what you're
Speaker 1: gonna do? You ran that event and it went really well.
Speaker 1: You were, you know, on time. You know, you communicated, like,
Speaker 1: just be a good whatever you want to be in
Speaker 1: the world, Like, just be good at that. I'm Will
Speaker 1: Lucas and this is Black Tech, Green Money. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: answer this you to some of the biggest names, some
Speaker 1: of the brightest minds and brilliant ideas. If you're black,
Speaker 1: in building or simply using tech to secution your back,
Speaker 1: this podcast is for you. Jeron Petty is founder and
Speaker 1: CEO at color Stack, the nonprofit police organization that helps
Speaker 1: black and last the next computer science through this good
Speaker 1: degreed and hired. When he was at Cornell, he worked
Speaker 1: as an Internet Google and later turned them down for
Speaker 1: a full time gig to start his own entrepreneurial journey.
Speaker 1: We've asked so many conversations NY said White about the
Speaker 1: pipeline for black talent in tech. I wanted to get
Speaker 1: an idea of its current state. Torn who works on
Speaker 1: this issue every day provides enough day. When you look
Speaker 1: at the data, it is about thirty percent um. You know,
Speaker 1: Black and Latin X computer science students or people make
Speaker 1: up percent of the population of c S grads and
Speaker 1: about ten percent of the industry. So there's drop offs
Speaker 1: at each level where you can say not enough students
Speaker 1: are graduating with CS degrees to begin with, but also
Speaker 1: from the ones that are, they're not getting jobs in
Speaker 1: software right then maybe going into it or becoming a
Speaker 1: teacher or doing something that they weren't intending to do.
Speaker 1: So we're trying to solve this like multilated problem of
Speaker 1: like access to jobs, placement, retention, and then even attraction
Speaker 1: to to bring that to right. And at the onset,
Speaker 1: do you see enough black students interested in computer science?
Speaker 1: So I studied CS myself, right, so I would c
Speaker 1: S grad um And so when I was on campus,
Speaker 1: the whole reason I started doing this work was because
Speaker 1: I did see that, I did see the interest. But
Speaker 1: what you would find is that even in that intro
Speaker 1: course at a lot of these universities, the intro courses.
Speaker 1: In the intro course, you know, they kind of gotten
Speaker 1: so used to these people that come in and have
Speaker 1: been learning how to study, how to code and program
Speaker 1: from when they were in middle school. So the professors
Speaker 1: I think have adapted for the wrong reasons and have
Speaker 1: now expected so much prior knowledge, where black students, Brown
Speaker 1: students are going into these intro courses and they feel behind,
Speaker 1: and once they get a backgrade on that on that
Speaker 1: first test or project, they're dropping the class, They're dropping
Speaker 1: the nature. Yes, I was reading something a different eneview.
Speaker 1: You were doing it. You were talking about your personal
Speaker 1: mission that you found many of your peers you're in
Speaker 1: their parts in these classes, weren't doing well in these
Speaker 1: classes UM. And you talked about this as pervasive and
Speaker 1: why is that pervasive? White many would say we just
Speaker 1: aren't as talented or you know, we don't have the
Speaker 1: proclivity from map and science. Well, in your research and
Speaker 1: in your work, what have you found to be the
Speaker 1: reasons why we're not UM ready for these classes? And
Speaker 1: so many respects. Yeah, I think the first thing is
Speaker 1: definitely you know what I just mentioned about prior knowledge,
Speaker 1: like if you didn't go to a if you didn't
Speaker 1: go to that private school, right that had cus one
Speaker 1: on one as a freshman, Right. I think public education
Speaker 1: is just catching up to see US education UM and
Speaker 1: baking that into the curriculum for high schools. But if
Speaker 1: you either didn't if you either didn't go to a
Speaker 1: school UM that had the coursework or you had a
Speaker 1: family friend that just was able to expose you to
Speaker 1: that at a young age, you are coming in at
Speaker 1: a college level feelings so behind. So there's that there's
Speaker 1: that mental kind of barrier where you just are not
Speaker 1: as comp it when you're going into your first intro
Speaker 1: course and everybody else seems to know everything that's already
Speaker 1: like from day one, you already discouraged, right. And then
Speaker 1: I think some other areas within on the campus where
Speaker 1: students are kind of sawing themselves short is, for example,
Speaker 1: office hours. I was at t A for a lot
Speaker 1: of the common CS courses at Cornell, and for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of students would wouldn't go to
Speaker 1: office hours, right. Maybe it's because of the same issue
Speaker 1: they're facing in classes where they feel like if they
Speaker 1: go to office hours they're just gonna be you know,
Speaker 1: reinformed that they're like behind or feel like they're dumb
Speaker 1: for asking questions. Um, but it's a lot of those
Speaker 1: small things where privileged kind of in network students already
Speaker 1: know that like office hours, office hours are there, I
Speaker 1: can go talk to the professor, I can use these resources.
Speaker 1: But when you feel so behind and when you're not
Speaker 1: kind of in these environments already, you just don't feel
Speaker 1: like you can participate in the same way. With that response, then,
Speaker 1: is waiting until we get to college too late to
Speaker 1: make sure that we're ready for you know, actually getting
Speaker 1: internships to be able to get jobs. I don't believe so.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think, you know, shout out to all
Speaker 1: the Organs, COD Nation, UM America on Tech that are
Speaker 1: doing that are doing work at the high school level,
Speaker 1: Black Girls Code. I think it does. It is helpful
Speaker 1: to start earlier and kind of get that exposure. But
Speaker 1: I don't think it's too late. I think within when
Speaker 1: you're on a campus that is already about discovery of
Speaker 1: oneself and realigious learning and expanding your horizons. I do
Speaker 1: think there is hope where there are students who are
Speaker 1: still primed for pushing their their limits and kind of
Speaker 1: expanding their horizons and trying something new. But it does
Speaker 1: take intentional effort at the earliest stage, that first fresh
Speaker 1: that freshman year, because once you the way the curriculum
Speaker 1: and the major system is set up at a lot
Speaker 1: of these schools is you know, if you try to
Speaker 1: change your major once you're a sophomore junior, near impossible, right,
Speaker 1: And so you really have to target and support those
Speaker 1: students at the freshman level. And I'll even tell you
Speaker 1: this from when I was at Cornell and we were
Speaker 1: doing a lot of work um with underclassmen, we actually
Speaker 1: started doing events that basically made other people who weren't C.
Speaker 1: S Field jealous, right, like, oh, this is so cool,
Speaker 1: Like you know, all my friends are doing this thing
Speaker 1: and they know how to they know how Siri works,
Speaker 1: and they know how the algorithms of YouTube and all
Speaker 1: these different social media work. And they were like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'll do a CS minor, right, And that's happening at
Speaker 1: the college. All these the students that were premed, right,
Speaker 1: but now they're adding a mind a CS minor. So
Speaker 1: I don't think it's too late at all. So as
Speaker 1: an entrepreneur, when you're going through your you know, ideating
Speaker 1: process of the company you're going to start, the organization
Speaker 1: you're gonna start. What was the decision making process like
Speaker 1: for you when you said, you know, I'm going to
Speaker 1: target those college students instead of building an organization like
Speaker 1: a Black Girl's Code that actually gets them younger, earlier
Speaker 1: in the process, so that they by the time it
Speaker 1: gets to college, they're more prepared. That's a good question.
Speaker 1: I think this is the lesson that I have from us,
Speaker 1: that I learned from myself but also trying to share
Speaker 1: with other entrepreneurs, is that you know, you don't want
Speaker 1: to think too much about what you're building. I think incremental,
Speaker 1: like solving the problem in front of you incrementally, you
Speaker 1: kind of just stumble upon a business. Right. That's what
Speaker 1: happened for me my freshman year, I was I got
Speaker 1: an internship at two Sigma, had a really great opportunity there.
Speaker 1: My sophomore year, I came back from that internship feeling
Speaker 1: very discouraged because there weren't other you know, black interns there,
Speaker 1: or I noticed that my friends on campus didn't get
Speaker 1: internships that summer, or weren't doing well in their classes.
Speaker 1: Or were considering dropping. And so I said, okay, how
Speaker 1: can I just solve that problem? How can I just
Speaker 1: get my friends to come with me on all these
Speaker 1: different opportunities you know that I have. And so that
Speaker 1: was the problem that I solved, you know, in was
Speaker 1: I no longer have enough time in the day to
Speaker 1: mentor all these students. So how can I scale that
Speaker 1: by creating a community of peer to peer support? Okay,
Speaker 1: that was my problem I solved in en by building
Speaker 1: the club. And then from twenty it's like, okay, well
Speaker 1: how can I provide this value to more students on
Speaker 1: other campuses? Right? And so it was just me incrementally
Speaker 1: solving the problem that was right in front of me.
Speaker 1: And I think that's how everybody should approach, you know,
Speaker 1: start you know, starting a company, right. You don't have
Speaker 1: to build a Google tomorrow. It's just what's the smallest
Speaker 1: version of that problem you can solve today? And so
Speaker 1: to the idea that you know, not everybody specifically, I'm
Speaker 1: talking about black people and brown people who come into
Speaker 1: college aren't ready for the math courses and the science courses,
Speaker 1: but what are some other barriers that keep them from graduating?
Speaker 1: And then you know, then allowing the opportunity to go
Speaker 1: get internships and jobs by out of school. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think there's there's so many. I mean there's a whole
Speaker 1: Pockets episode on those barriers. But I think a couple
Speaker 1: that I even I know, I knew already as a
Speaker 1: student myself, but then I learned from building color stack.
Speaker 1: One it's just financial, right, Like some students just you know,
Speaker 1: can't well drop you know, drop out of school or
Speaker 1: or changed from a four year to a two year
Speaker 1: or just be you know, indefinitely on leave of absence
Speaker 1: just because of money. Right. So I think there's there's
Speaker 1: definitely a conversation around the affordability of school, especially these
Speaker 1: private institutions versus state schools, where sometimes just money that
Speaker 1: that prevents someone from continuing um. The second thing I
Speaker 1: think about a lot is no, no two CS degrees
Speaker 1: are made equal, right, you know you would think that, yes,
Speaker 1: from a Cornell or you know, a Kinesaw State or
Speaker 1: Study of the University, like they all offer a computer science.
Speaker 1: So no matter which one I pick, I should be good.
Speaker 1: The truth of the matter is that academia has not
Speaker 1: stayed on par with industry, and so a lot of
Speaker 1: what it takes to become a software engineering industry is
Speaker 1: taught out side of the classroom. And so there are
Speaker 1: two kind of sub reasons why you know, students aren't
Speaker 1: able to keep up. One is if you don't have
Speaker 1: the time right outside of a class where you're a
Speaker 1: commuter student or you're working another job to pay for school,
Speaker 1: and you think that you know, you can just do
Speaker 1: your classes and do homework and be done. You know
Speaker 1: you're gonna be s sol when you find out that
Speaker 1: in order to really get that job, you actually have
Speaker 1: to do your homework, get a good grade, but then
Speaker 1: also learn how to become a software engineer. And you know,
Speaker 1: when you're in a privileged position of just being on
Speaker 1: campus and just focusing on school and all that's taken
Speaker 1: care of, you have that time, but many of these
Speaker 1: students don't. And then then on the other hand, you
Speaker 1: also don't have the curriculum that is tied and kind
Speaker 1: of pegged two industry standards, where a school like an
Speaker 1: M I T or Carnegie Mellon they have partnerships with
Speaker 1: these companies to build curriculums. That's relevant. But if you're
Speaker 1: going to a local a local school, smaller CS department,
Speaker 1: you just just might be out of date. And so
Speaker 1: it's interesting you say that because I've had these conversations
Speaker 1: about you know, industry and university is not being able
Speaker 1: to stay on part or college is not being able
Speaker 1: to stay on par with what they're educating, and so
Speaker 1: often it comes back to hiring the professors who can
Speaker 1: teach it because they those professors can go to the
Speaker 1: industry and make more money than they would, you know,
Speaker 1: working in the university or a college. And so I
Speaker 1: wonder what your idea is on how much self directed
Speaker 1: education we need to do, even if you're in school
Speaker 1: for your CS degree, how much of this outside of
Speaker 1: that to your you did you did talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about this, and you know, you've got a job
Speaker 1: and you've got other things to pay for to pay
Speaker 1: for that education. How much of that self directed effort
Speaker 1: is required in order to get the look from a
Speaker 1: big company or a startup that you may be interested in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I think for the most part, when you
Speaker 1: look at a big like, the bigger the company, the
Speaker 1: more resources they have for learning and development. So as
Speaker 1: long as you can prove that you can code, just
Speaker 1: generally a lot of the bigger companies with more infrastructure
Speaker 1: for learning and development. Like, if you do well in
Speaker 1: your classes and you can demonstrate your basic knowledge of coding,
Speaker 1: you'll be able to kind of secure at least beyond
Speaker 1: their radar and be competitive for roles at bigger companies.
Speaker 1: If you're talking about mid sized company and especially for
Speaker 1: a startup, they're going to expect you to come and
Speaker 1: hit the ground running. So it's gonna require you to,
Speaker 1: you know, subscribe to certain newsletters so you know what
Speaker 1: the newest tech tech is. Like JavaScript has a new
Speaker 1: framework like every year, you need to know what those are. Right, Um,
Speaker 1: you're going to have to know how to build an
Speaker 1: iOS app if you want to work on a team
Speaker 1: that their only product is a mobile app. Right, That's that.
Speaker 1: And that's a perfect example of something that, like across
Speaker 1: the board, is rarely taught in institutions. Right, Like you
Speaker 1: might how to code and Python, you might learn about databases,
Speaker 1: you might learn about machine learning, but even something like
Speaker 1: iOS development isn't a thing that's typically taught in schools because,
Speaker 1: like professors do research, and there was a much much
Speaker 1: research done on like mobile app development. It's usually like
Speaker 1: database efficiency or machine learning or like programming languages compilers,
Speaker 1: so things like iOS development, which is ubiquitous in terms
Speaker 1: of its impact. Everybody uses their phone and has apps.
Speaker 1: You're actually not even learning that on average if you
Speaker 1: get as from any school in the country. So you
Speaker 1: have to go out and take a you to me
Speaker 1: course or go on YouTube or get a book. You
Speaker 1: just have to know that, and so some other things
Speaker 1: that we talked about, you know, with that are prohibitive
Speaker 1: for students to get the degree and actually actually graduating.
Speaker 1: What are some of those things that actually keep you
Speaker 1: from getting a job. So let's say you've graduated, You've
Speaker 1: you went to a mid level university, midlevel college, you
Speaker 1: didn't go to Cornell. There not everybody as smart as you.
Speaker 1: But let's say you know, I went to a mid
Speaker 1: level school, I got my degree, and I still can't
Speaker 1: get a job at the company that I'm interested in.
Speaker 1: What are some of those reasons why, other than racism?
Speaker 1: Other than that, Yeah, let's start like that's already that's
Speaker 1: the pre requisite, that's always there. Um, yeah, I think
Speaker 1: I think, you know, there's there's some there's some challenges
Speaker 1: definitely when it comes to like exposure to companies, So
Speaker 1: for example, you know at certain schools, like at the
Speaker 1: top level school, you're gonna have companies flying out to
Speaker 1: be at that career. Fair right, every company that you
Speaker 1: know will go out and make sure they're at Cornell,
Speaker 1: at m I T whatever to get in front of
Speaker 1: those students. What I see at the mid level schools
Speaker 1: is that it's usually like local companies, and if you're
Speaker 1: at a small school in Michigan, there's no local tech company, right,
Speaker 1: So your your access and your exposure to employment is
Speaker 1: usually at best I T. Right, at best, you're learning
Speaker 1: about some org that has a back office I T
Speaker 1: team that you might be able to work for, um,
Speaker 1: you don't even know, you aren't even talking to her.
Speaker 1: On the radar of like pure tech pure software companies
Speaker 1: that are hiring software engineers, which is what you study
Speaker 1: to be, right, So it's it's not like, let's not
Speaker 1: confused that you study to be that, but the roles
Speaker 1: and and and the opportunities that are available to you
Speaker 1: are more aligned for I T and other things that
Speaker 1: are not coding. So that's one of the ways that
Speaker 1: caused that obviously bridges the gap. So no matter what
Speaker 1: schools are going to, your career for if you're at
Speaker 1: a small school in Michigan, Illinois wherever. I mean, we
Speaker 1: partner with fifty top tech companies today where you can
Speaker 1: immediately get on the radar. But that's like one of
Speaker 1: the bigger, bigger reasons. You know, I'm glad you bring
Speaker 1: up color Stack in the way that you have because
Speaker 1: I'm interested in you know, colors Stack is a nonprofit
Speaker 1: number one. UM, A lot of people will ask how
Speaker 1: do you make money doing this? You know, because I
Speaker 1: mean it's is this like purely altruistic or are you
Speaker 1: attempting to like be like I want build a billion
Speaker 1: dollarlet organizations? Why what's the motivation behind this? Yeah, for sure,
Speaker 1: there's a lot to unpack there. So for me, you
Speaker 1: know me personally, my my passion and who I am
Speaker 1: at heart is I like to help people. I'm a
Speaker 1: servant leader, like I just want to help people reach
Speaker 1: their full potential. So, you know, the decision to start
Speaker 1: color Stack was easy for me because I knew I'd
Speaker 1: be happy every day. Like every time I student gets
Speaker 1: a job, even if they just get a good, great
Speaker 1: on their homework assignment, I am just fired up, like
Speaker 1: let's go. Like I'm so happy for you. UM. And
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter how big we get, I'll always kind
Speaker 1: of have that local mindset of like, if we can
Speaker 1: help one student, we're successful. UM. So that's just me.
Speaker 1: That was my motivation personally. UM. Obviously, so I started
Speaker 1: color Stack, this is beginning kind of peak of the
Speaker 1: pandemic UM. And so for me, I mean I still
Speaker 1: knew rationally speaking that like, I had to make this
Speaker 1: work financially. I had an offer at Google that I
Speaker 1: had accepted at the time actually so I was heading
Speaker 1: to Google was to be to be an associate product
Speaker 1: manager UM. And basically my my calculation internally was, Hey,
Speaker 1: I know I'm not going to make the same amount
Speaker 1: that I would make if I was a product manager
Speaker 1: in industry, but I want to be paid kind of respect,
Speaker 1: you know appropriately, um for my time and effort working
Speaker 1: on clubs back full time. And so I first sought
Speaker 1: out to raise enough money to do that. So my
Speaker 1: first goal was raised enough money to do this full
Speaker 1: time for at least couple of years. So we got
Speaker 1: an incubation deal UM or Triple Byte, and that's that
Speaker 1: was amazing. They were so supportive they got us off
Speaker 1: the ground and today I mean we have a full
Speaker 1: time team six two contractors, and we fund that mainly
Speaker 1: through corporate sponsorships. So similar to you know, even after
Speaker 1: tech how you know, you guys do an event, you
Speaker 1: have all these sponsors they come in and kind of
Speaker 1: try to attract talent. We're doing the same thing kind
Speaker 1: of all year round through events and engagement with our
Speaker 1: students and companies a budget for it. Like we're becoming
Speaker 1: a line item in university recruiting budgets where they're like, hey,
Speaker 1: all right, we're doing a new strategy. Fore we gotta
Speaker 1: hit Apporte, we've gotta hit Grace Hopper, and we've got
Speaker 1: a partner with color Stack. I love that. But when
Speaker 1: you go to a company and you say, look, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna help you with your black talent, there's people who
Speaker 1: came before you who said I can do that in
Speaker 1: a hundred and nine coming after you who said I
Speaker 1: can do that. Like what is what is it that
Speaker 1: got them to believe that? You know Geran and what
Speaker 1: he's doing with colors Stack, these are who you need
Speaker 1: to be working with. Yeah, for sure. I mean I
Speaker 1: think the first of a couple of early things that
Speaker 1: I did strategically or I understanding do them intentionally, but
Speaker 1: they happened that they were strategic. Um. The first thing
Speaker 1: was be being a cs UH student myself. The transition
Speaker 1: from this recruiter was trying to recruit me to for
Speaker 1: their company, to hey, I'm not running a nonprofit that
Speaker 1: you can benefit like that was such a transition because
Speaker 1: you know, these these recruiters were like trying to literally
Speaker 1: trying to hire me for the new new graph programs,
Speaker 1: and you know, unfortunately said notes allow them to have
Speaker 1: to pick one. But it was so easy to like
Speaker 1: reach out to them because they're already excited about me
Speaker 1: as a candidate, to be like, hey, well I'm doing
Speaker 1: this other thing that's going to help you in ideally
Speaker 1: find hundreds of more means out there in the world.
Speaker 1: And they were like immediately on board because I had
Speaker 1: built that trust and they already respected me for you know,
Speaker 1: a different reason but related. So I had tons of
Speaker 1: relationships like dual Lingo is a good example, Squarespace, some
Speaker 1: of our silver partners, like those recruiters, I was in
Speaker 1: their pipeline. They were trying to hire me, right, so
Speaker 1: it's easy to kind of leverage those relationships and then
Speaker 1: the second thing I connected with UM he's on my
Speaker 1: board now wahab will Hobba Lobby. He's the founder of
Speaker 1: a community called u r X, which is a community
Speaker 1: of university recruiters and so we connected, we hit it off.
Speaker 1: I asked him to join from my board and like
Speaker 1: the brand, equity and trust just built from that as well,
Speaker 1: all the intros from that as well, Like that just
Speaker 1: all helped out. Where a lot of the early sales
Speaker 1: I didn't have much, but they just because of my background,
Speaker 1: because of the people I have associated with, we're able
Speaker 1: to give me a chance and you know, they're rewarded
Speaker 1: and longan you know, from from your perspective, UM, when
Speaker 1: when a company doesn't have black talent at the levels
Speaker 1: it should, UM, what are they What are they missing
Speaker 1: out on? Because we often talk about this from a
Speaker 1: justice perspective like equality and you know, having diversity, But
Speaker 1: what are they actually missing out on? UM? And I'm
Speaker 1: talking about even from financially. Are they missing out on
Speaker 1: the revenue opportunity for having black candidates, black talent on
Speaker 1: their teams? Yeah? For sure. I mean I think I
Speaker 1: think you can you can be specific about black talent,
Speaker 1: but This applies to all kind of intersectional identities out there.
Speaker 1: I think the more homogeneous right a team is, the
Speaker 1: more blind side you have, blind spots you have where
Speaker 1: you know you're thinking the same way, right, you have
Speaker 1: very similar experiences. You just view you view the world
Speaker 1: in a certain way, and you're not able to really
Speaker 1: bring in new insight and get truly creative on new
Speaker 1: product innovation or even just how your team should operate,
Speaker 1: or even just lessons learned. I mean there's a lot
Speaker 1: of you know, not every you know, black student is
Speaker 1: necessarily low income, but there are lessons learned from being,
Speaker 1: you know, in certain situations and growing up in certain
Speaker 1: circumstances that could help when when companies have to cut
Speaker 1: budget and figure out, you know, innovative ways to get
Speaker 1: the profitability. But I'm sure if you're if you're a
Speaker 1: bunch of people who never had to deal with never
Speaker 1: to think about money, you probably don't know what you're
Speaker 1: doing right now. You probably you probably are trying to
Speaker 1: figure that out. And that's just an example, right, But
Speaker 1: I think you know that I've even learned within um
Speaker 1: the space of building a team that's primarily black, Like,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of the sectional value from the intersectionality
Speaker 1: where people are bringing different to the table that I
Speaker 1: just would never have thought of, and that leads to
Speaker 1: better outcomes, better products, better solutions, and better returns. At
Speaker 1: the end of the day. You know, we've had um
Speaker 1: these stats that come out that talk about you know,
Speaker 1: ten percent of Google's national workforce is black or Latin
Speaker 1: X and or you know, talk about Apple, you know
Speaker 1: where I think it's like nearly half of their global
Speaker 1: team is all white people, right, And you know, I
Speaker 1: have the perspective that you know, I'm not interested in
Speaker 1: asking for us he did the table. That's just me.
Speaker 1: I'm interested in building my own tables. And so I
Speaker 1: wonder what your take is on these not necessarily competing approaches,
Speaker 1: But what is your take on You're like, look, we're
Speaker 1: going to continue to beat down the door of Google,
Speaker 1: say you need to be hiring us versus we're gonna
Speaker 1: go build the next Google. Yeah. No, for sure, I'm
Speaker 1: so happy you wrote this up because that might have
Speaker 1: the same thesis, Like we partner a companys and you know,
Speaker 1: we were happy to to to help these students get jobs.
Speaker 1: But my ultimate mission and our ultimate mission at color
Speaker 1: Stag is to to to give these students agency. I
Speaker 1: had a really close friend, a mentee that became a
Speaker 1: close friend of mine, and she a black woman from
Speaker 1: from New York. And she um had a terrible experience, uh,
Speaker 1: interning at at Google with me, right, we wait to
Speaker 1: take walks like almost every day kind of she was
Speaker 1: crying like there's a really bad experience. Right, And you
Speaker 1: know I could have went to you know, the manager
Speaker 1: or talk to someone in the team be like, hey,
Speaker 1: you guy should do this differently, or here's the impact
Speaker 1: of this, and blah blah blah. But I focused more
Speaker 1: on just investing in her. The next summer, she worked
Speaker 1: at a company, a startup that was building a woman
Speaker 1: coaching an empowerment platform, and obviously the team was all women,
Speaker 1: and she had the best time of her life. And
Speaker 1: now she's over there working at Figma, having a great career,
Speaker 1: you know, careers, early career experience. And so for me,
Speaker 1: it's all about agency, Like I just want to help
Speaker 1: these students, right, want them to become the strongest engineers
Speaker 1: in the world so that they can chart their own path. Right,
Speaker 1: Because when you to your point, if we just focused
Speaker 1: on like trying to make these companies less biased, less racist,
Speaker 1: less whatever. That's just gonna be endless. That's that's how
Speaker 1: we got to the point where we're still talking about
Speaker 1: this ten, fifteen, twenty years later. I'm not focused on
Speaker 1: that they can do their thing. I'm trying to help
Speaker 1: thesetems just become the best. I love that. And one
Speaker 1: of the conversations that we were talking about an afro
Speaker 1: tech was, you know, we often talk about getting black
Speaker 1: people into tech, but it's another thing to keep us
Speaker 1: in tech because we don't necessarily have ecosystem everywhere, which
Speaker 1: is why colors tech is important, which is why afro
Speaker 1: tech is important. What are some interesting ways you found
Speaker 1: to help those who might be in the ecosystem but
Speaker 1: might be disengaged from the ecosystem so we don't lose
Speaker 1: talent that you know, could have opportunity here but they
Speaker 1: don't see themselves. Yeah, for sure. I mean there was
Speaker 1: some study done that said something like one of there's
Speaker 1: like a predict year of retention that has to do
Speaker 1: with like comedy friends you make in the workplace, Like
Speaker 1: if you don't make like two or three, then you're
Speaker 1: very likely to leave that company. And I think, you know,
Speaker 1: that applies here as well, where at the very least
Speaker 1: you need community, which is a thing that Avrotec does,
Speaker 1: Like you said, it is a thing that colors Stack does.
Speaker 1: All these events and all these ways for you to
Speaker 1: connect with other folks that may not be at your company,
Speaker 1: because we know what the numbers look like, but at
Speaker 1: least you notice someone in your same role in the industry,
Speaker 1: and that leads to further retention because you at least
Speaker 1: have that support system. Right. So, like, that's one thing
Speaker 1: that I think is important, and I think people need
Speaker 1: to know about that. Even if your company may not
Speaker 1: be the most ideal situation and you can't build community,
Speaker 1: at least you can do that across different companies through
Speaker 1: you know, company agnostic communities. And I think the other
Speaker 1: thing that is missing a lot is understanding what it
Speaker 1: takes to progress. I think what happens a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of recent RADS and early CREPT professionals stay
Speaker 1: in that entry level role, that junior role for too long,
Speaker 1: and one is the fault of the manager. But like
Speaker 1: we just talked about, I'm not trying to convince a
Speaker 1: manager be less biased and whatever. Let's just focus on
Speaker 1: really educating our June from our community, people who are
Speaker 1: in that junior level, Like, here's what it really takes
Speaker 1: to to become that level two, level three, that senior level,
Speaker 1: that manager level. Like what what's the next step? Right?
Speaker 1: I think the breaking into the industry and that content
Speaker 1: is great, but I really want to see over the
Speaker 1: next five years more content and support around. Once you
Speaker 1: get there, how do you grow? How do you continue
Speaker 1: to progress? Right? Yeah? Yeah, I'm still thinking about how
Speaker 1: you got these deals versus the people who came before
Speaker 1: you and the people who were in mine after you.
Speaker 1: And so because a lot of it has to come
Speaker 1: down to you, you know, like what did you learn
Speaker 1: through your journey, whether it was in school or just upbringing,
Speaker 1: about how to make yourself valuable while you're still in school,
Speaker 1: Like what kind of things make you more attractive as
Speaker 1: a person as a professional, even that aside from turning
Speaker 1: down a role at Google and as I can go
Speaker 1: into cornell Um and getting accepting the cornell and getting
Speaker 1: getting a job offered from Google, Like what aside from
Speaker 1: those things, like what would you admonish other students to
Speaker 1: do to make themselves more not just hirable, um, but
Speaker 1: attractive as partners to these organizations. Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: And I think the first thing is first, you can't
Speaker 1: you can't get around this. You have to be good
Speaker 1: at what you do, like if you have to invest
Speaker 1: in learning what you're really good at and just doing
Speaker 1: that to the best of your ability. Like that's the
Speaker 1: one thing that you know, people are gonna that's the
Speaker 1: one impression that you're gonna make With most people, they're
Speaker 1: gonna remember, like, you know, did you say what you're
Speaker 1: gonna do? You ran that of and it went really well.
Speaker 1: You were, you know, on time. You know, you communicate,
Speaker 1: like just be a good whatever you want to be
Speaker 1: in the world, Like, just be good at that, right.
Speaker 1: I think that's where I started. I started Cornell by
Speaker 1: just trying to be the best CS student I can be.
Speaker 1: The second level is about kind of networking. I hate
Speaker 1: to say networking because sometimes it's just like people think
Speaker 1: it's like super professional and boring and like proper, but
Speaker 1: it's really just putting yourself out there. Within my sophomore year,
Speaker 1: I started to like post on, LinkedIn and even little
Speaker 1: things like oh I just watched like Panther. I just really,
Speaker 1: you know, love the representation it was a little article
Speaker 1: kind of just a couple of words. But I started
Speaker 1: to build this brand on social media um based on
Speaker 1: my interests and my accolades that people you know, started
Speaker 1: to recognize and and and understand about me and build
Speaker 1: that personal brands that when they think of certain opportunities,
Speaker 1: they were able to think of me. Right. And so
Speaker 1: once you already build that skill set right that nobody
Speaker 1: can debate, you start putting yourself out there so that
Speaker 1: people the right person can find you see that and
Speaker 1: and and promote, you know, refer you to an opportunity
Speaker 1: or select you for an opportunity. So I think it's
Speaker 1: like those are the two things that I would say,
Speaker 1: for the most part, that you gotta do. And I
Speaker 1: think the last thing is like once you get the opportunity,
Speaker 1: it's just like doing what you say you're gonna do,
Speaker 1: following up and just seeing things through. I think the
Speaker 1: biggest thing that students aren't doing right now. We deal
Speaker 1: with this a lot of color stack. It's just they
Speaker 1: don't close. They will apply to this thing that we have.
Speaker 1: They'll show up to the first event, but then three
Speaker 1: weeks later it's like, oh, hey, like I'm there either
Speaker 1: ghosting us or like oh hey, I got busy or whatever,
Speaker 1: and they're not kind of following through like just close
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, It's it's interesting you started that off
Speaker 1: talking about you know, actually doing what you said you're
Speaker 1: gonna do and um and being good at what you
Speaker 1: actually are you know, supposed to be doing, because I
Speaker 1: have had I had this conversation um with several different
Speaker 1: people in this podcast about you know, it's sometimes it
Speaker 1: can be a folk pod to walk into a job
Speaker 1: too early and talking about diversity and equity and include
Speaker 1: like you need to hire more of us and you
Speaker 1: just got hired last week, bro, Like but we and
Speaker 1: we hired you to code and now now you've got
Speaker 1: your black panther shirt on. And I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: it comes like come on, like, actually be good at
Speaker 1: the job. And then as you build that credibility, then
Speaker 1: you can start speaking up on certain things. So I
Speaker 1: wonder there and it's a balance there and and and
Speaker 1: I'm sensitive to the balance of like when you see injustice,
Speaker 1: obviously you've got to you've gotta address things appropriately. But
Speaker 1: I'm about to think about the ways that we want
Speaker 1: to be you know, brother human Johnson. And that's no
Speaker 1: shade on him so early in the journey of a
Speaker 1: professional career, when you when you haven't proven yourself to
Speaker 1: be good at the role that they hired you for,
Speaker 1: you speak on that. Yeah, it's tough. Like you said,
Speaker 1: there's a balance, right, But I think and I want
Speaker 1: to preface that also by saying purposes also by saying, like,
Speaker 1: you know, we we know that the current circumstances aren't right.
Speaker 1: Like we we we can't change today what happened right
Speaker 1: over the past hundreds of years. We are here today
Speaker 1: and there are certain circumstances. So these are just ways
Speaker 1: that we can kind of get around that. But we know,
Speaker 1: like I battle, I have these conversations with students all
Speaker 1: the time where it's like, do you want to be
Speaker 1: that pioneer. I don't think you have to be, and
Speaker 1: I don't think you deserve to be, but someone needs
Speaker 1: to be the first black employee at a certain company
Speaker 1: if that company is going to increase and kind of
Speaker 1: be more diverse over time. And so to your point,
Speaker 1: I think, you know, being good at what you do
Speaker 1: the best as best you can kind of just reduces
Speaker 1: any evidence, right, any unsaid or kind of flaky evidence.
Speaker 1: Um for not commoning you, letting you go like all
Speaker 1: these different things, and that still might happen just because
Speaker 1: of racism and biased But the best thing that you
Speaker 1: can do for your own agency in your career is
Speaker 1: just do the work right, because at the end the day,
Speaker 1: as much as all this other social stuff is present,
Speaker 1: companies want to be profitable, do better, do better work
Speaker 1: for their customers, make great experiences, and reward their investors.
Speaker 1: So if you can just take care of that, right,
Speaker 1: if you can just write that code, push that product,
Speaker 1: do the things, you have so much more agency to
Speaker 1: to to add anything on top of that, to start
Speaker 1: adding new initiatives because of that respect that you have
Speaker 1: that you have kind of solidified right now. I love that. Um.
Speaker 1: I was reading the interview another interview you were talking about.
Speaker 1: I'm in a paraphrase a statement that you had here,
Speaker 1: and it says, you know, being a computer science major
Speaker 1: actually forces you to think about things in the same
Speaker 1: way an entrepreneur thinks about things. If you remember saying that,
Speaker 1: can you speak on that and elaborate? Yeah? I think so.
Speaker 1: When I'll start learning how to how to code, and
Speaker 1: front of me, who who hasn't learned how to code.
Speaker 1: It really you're you're trying to held the computer what
Speaker 1: to do at the end of the day. Right, You're
Speaker 1: using this coding language which boils down into language that
Speaker 1: the machine that you're coding on can understand to perform
Speaker 1: some level of computation or render website or whatever the
Speaker 1: case may be. Right, And what I started to learn
Speaker 1: early on is that, like you have to be so
Speaker 1: detailed to write, like you have to think about so
Speaker 1: many different cases, if else, for loops, like all these
Speaker 1: different things that boiled down to to to solve some
Speaker 1: basic problem like adding two numbers. Like if you've ever
Speaker 1: written code, you know that adding two numbers isn't like
Speaker 1: some super trivial things like you actually have to think
Speaker 1: about a lot of like um edge cases and and
Speaker 1: and and math that you didn't think about before. And
Speaker 1: so I remember on this part, I think it might
Speaker 1: have been the same podcast. I would tell them explain
Speaker 1: to me how you would how you would you know
Speaker 1: how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. And
Speaker 1: they realized how many ups they take for granted. And
Speaker 1: I was like, well, as a business leader, right, as
Speaker 1: a founder, if you want to go and build a
Speaker 1: nonprofit that supports Black and Latin ext computer science students.
Speaker 1: And you tell me, and I ask you how you're
Speaker 1: gonna do that, and you tell me, Oh, we're gonna
Speaker 1: do events and we're gonna run a slack and we're
Speaker 1: gonna get sponsors. Well, okay, let's break that down into
Speaker 1: how you're gonna do those individual things. You need to
Speaker 1: break those things down, need to continue to do that.
Speaker 1: And it just reminded me so much of like what
Speaker 1: I learned when I wrote code. So when I come
Speaker 1: in and think about how to build a company, I'm
Speaker 1: starting from the basis of like I've already learned and
Speaker 1: been trained on how to be so detailed in my
Speaker 1: solutions that I'm applying that here in the same in
Speaker 1: the same use case of like starting company, where I'm
Speaker 1: thinking about each step, each edge case, boiling it all
Speaker 1: down to it's fundamentally uh kind of basic parts of
Speaker 1: the solution. Black Tech, Green Money and Production to Blackvity
Speaker 1: Afro Tech on the Black Effect podcast Network and Night
Speaker 1: Hired Media is produced by Morgan Dubon and me Well Lucas,
Speaker 1: with additional production support by Sarah Rogan and Rose McLucas.
Speaker 1: Special thank you to Michael Davis. That's a serrano. Learned
Speaker 1: more about my guests and other tech the trucks that
Speaker 1: innovators to afro tech dot com. Join your black tech,
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Speaker 1: Peace and love,