This is the Engineering Culture Podcast, from the people behind InfoQ.com and the QCon conferences.
In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Alex Qin following on from her QCon London talk “Shaving My Head Made Me A Better Programmer”.
Key Takeaways
- Casual discrimination and unconscious bias is rife in society, and very prevalent in tech
- The need to have many more people in the field who don’t fit the preconceived mould of a programmer
- The complexity of the overall system means we need to tackle discrimination at many levels in many different aspects
- One person can make a difference
- Call things out when you see things that are wrong – speak up, show up and shield those who can’t shield themselves
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0:25 Introductions
1:15 Why Alex got involved in working for social change
1:40 Addressing social injustices through using programming skills
2:10 Alex’s story of casual discrimination and harassment and being treated as an incompetent programmer because she is an attractive woman
3:32 After shaving her head she was suddenly accepted as competent by people around her
4:10 The need to tackle the issue and do something about the discrimination – teaching people who don’t fit the status-quo programming skills
4:25 Aiming to have many more people in the field who don’t fit the preconcieved mould of a programmer
4:55 Historically software and computer science was inclusive and not discriminatory
5:25 The massive drop off of women in computing in the 1980’s coinciding with the adoption of personal computers as “boy’s toys”
6:16 The messages from the media and environment which result in unconscious biases
6:57 Unlearning biases starts with recognising that you have them
7:35 The complexity of the overall system means we need to tackle discrimination at many levels in many different aspects
8:05 Start small – start at the local community
8:15 Practical advice for people in tech companies
8:35 Find why you care about this issue – look for compelling reasons that matter to you
8:50 Diverse teams make more money for their organisations and are more innovative
9:30 Products built by homogenous teams can have severe blind-spots (examples from Apple and Google)
10:15 The lack of diversity in tech is a symptom of the type of discrimination that exists in the larger world
10:30 Gather data – what are the diversity metrics in your team/organisation. Use this data to focus your efforts
11:20 Everyone’s diversity numbers are embarrassing
12:05 Consider the vast gaps in talent that you’re missing out on because of low diversity
12:10 Explore the hiring process and see where the unintentional bias comes into the process
12:40 In tech we pride ourselves on being data driven – use the data to make a difference
13:00 Avoiding tokenism
13:15 Tokenism stops being an issue when we reach critical mass
13:50 Being authentic and aware in the effort to avoid discrimination should prevent tokenism
14:10 The first issue to address in the hiring process is to admit that bias exists
14:40 Example of Skillshare using a set rubric to evaluate candidates and training for interviewing
15:20 Eat before you interview someone – you are more prone to give in to your biases when you’re tired and hungry
15:50 Constantly and consciously explore the interviewing process, identify the biases in the approach and work to overcome them
16:25 Discussing The Code Cooperative – an adult education initiative teaching recently released prisoners to write code
17:22 The people who are best equipped to solve problems are the ones who experience them
18:05 Addressing problems in the criminal justice system by building products which target the problems encountered by the students
18:15 Explaining the approach taken to teaching at The Code Cooperative
19:15 Describing some of the student’s projects and how they linked their projects to real issues they faced in the justice system
20:00 Tech companies donated laptops which gave the students the ability to practice and learn
20:45 Most technologists care about leveraging their skills to make a difference in the world
21:20 One person can make a difference
22:00 Advice for listeners who want to do something to make a difference – start in your sphere of influence
22:40 Call things out when you see things that are wrong – speak up, show up and shield those who can’t shield themselves
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