Building a pipeline to address tech’s diversity gap starts with all of us.

Silicon Valley is marked by a serious diversity problem. Women are significantly underrepresented in technical positions in Silicon Valley. Blacks and Latinos are statistically miniscule. Experienced developers are discovering that age and experience, which typically is an advantage, works against them in this era of “ageism” where tech companies fawn over young developers.“Older” developers and product managers are also increasingly overlooked. Female founders often deal with some very serious obstacles when it comes to being funded. CNN recently released a report that unveiled some bleak diversity numbers. You can read the report here.

Grim diversity stats illustrate a problem in plain sight: The status quo in current hiring practices perpetuates an underlying problematic perspective on what constitutes a potentially qualified team member. We need to expand only expand the potential candidate pool from a qualitative perspective, we need to update outreach based on that new criteria.

A plethora of solutions have been proposed to solve this problem ranging from working with universities to draw more women into Computer Science to creating coding programs targeting these groups. Some have postulated that underperformance in the sciences is the reason why Blacks and Latinos are underrepresented. The argument has been put forth that women don’t want to work in tech. Many of the arguments are sound with a substantial amount of supporting evidence/data. Rather that list them all, I will focus on one recurring reason as to why this diversity imbalance continues: The lack of a pipeline.

Large corporations and startups have stated that the most significant impediment to hiring more diverse workforces is the lack of a pipeline. Simply put: they can’t find qualified women, black, latinos, older-aged, and other non-white male and non asian-male candidates to fill available positions. I’m not sure if this is the main obstacle, but the optimist in me wants to believe it is. It’s anecdotal evidence, but I’ve hired and put together teams and even though I’m in one of the underrepresented groups, my latest team was composed of one woman, one black male and 11 white males. It was not by design. You just hire the best people that you can. I would have liked a different composition as I firmly believe more diverse environments can produce more powerful ideas.

Most of my hiring was done through referrals and I simply lacked the pipeline to create a more diverse team. I also failed to convert on an extremely talented woman who I wanted to become a cofounder (she was actually overqualified for my startup). Although I was doing this on another continent and with a limited network, I don’t think it would have made much difference even If I had launched the company in the U.S. I’ve improved the diversity of my network, but it’s not great. I believe that the lack of a pipeline IS a real problem. I want to build that pipeline.

While many are comfortable with solely working with people that are similar to them, I do think a large percentage of people in tech like the idea of working in a more diverse environment. Where do they go if their personal network is not a diverse as they would like it to be? For these people, it’s not an ideological issue. It’s a visibility issue. We need to make qualified people in STEAM visible (I’ve added an A for “arts” as design (UI/UX, etc) has become increasingly more important in tech). My goal is to make it so easy to hire a diverse workforce that people will become uncomfortable with the fact they haven’t.

Now, I just want to give a basic summation of why I’ve decided to work on this problem.

While I’ve done my fair share of reading on this topic over the years, I’m positive this project will be one of my more challenging projects. I wish I could say this idea something that I’ve been working on for quite some time. It’s not. I’ve only started working on Steamrole in Mid-November. I’m a fairly prolific poster on Product Hunt. Depending on how you track the ranking, I’m #1 (I’m too proud of my HunterRank. It’s sad). I tweeted that I needed a new Product Hunt-related goal and another “hunter”, Tom Masiero, replied that I needed to get that “Green M” icon by my name and become a “maker” (for those who don’t know, a maker is someone who is a creator of a product that has been “hunted” or posted to Product Hunt”). After having contemplated various ideas, I went back and read a post on Hacker News titled “Requests for Startups”. Request #18 was Diversity: A diverse workforce is good for business and good for the world.

Diversity

A diverse workforce is good for business and good for the world.

Without different perspectives, the products and services we create will miss big opportunities for large segments of people. We want to fund non- profits and startups that are working on making technology a place that is more inclusive and attractive to people of all ages, races, sexual orientations, and cultures.

I reread that post a couple times (btw. The original Startup Ideas I Would Like to Fund was a gem and several awesome companies have attacked that list). Looking at it through a different lens really made #18 stick this time.

I wanted to create a solution to a real problem so I decided to tackle #18. It fit the four criteria I had:

1) a “real” problem

2) a problem I could “intimately” understand

3) a market that was underserved yet very sizable

4) something that if successful would make the world a better place.

So once I decided it was the idea I wanted to pursue, I just started. It’s only been 19 days so far, but I’ve made respectable progress and we’re live.

So I’ve been working on Steamrole.

Steamrole was devised to create a pipeline of women, black, latinos, “older”, and other underrepresented but qualified software engineers, data scientists, product managers, designers, and other technical workers that are in the San Fransisco Bay Area or are willing to relocation.

If companies are willing to look outside of Stanford and their personal networks, maybe we can open up a broader, yet still highly qualified pool of candidates to help companies grow. We’ll be working with top universities around the country and also aggressively targeting highly-skilled and experienced technical workers would be willing to migrate to Silicon Valley if given the opportunity (we’ll move beyond SV if there is demand). Furthermore, we’ll expand the typical recruitment path and try new discovery methods to find often overlooked but talented candidates.

We don’t think of this as means of increasing diversity only for the sake of diversity. That’s a great goal; however, most startups and large companies are concerned with creating innovative workplace and increasing profitability. Well, diverse workforces are reported as being not only more creative than the average company but also more productive and profitable.

The idea is not that companies should be coming to us to fill quotas. The idea is that we’ll be presenting them with a source of highly qualified candidates that otherwise wouldn’t be very accessible. So we want startups to think of us as a great source of technical candidates who just happen to be women, black, latino, older-ages, etc.

We hope that founders are open to this. There is a tenet that homogeneous teams are better than diverse teams in early stage startup. Although you can’t argue against his success and I understand the philosophical argument he was making, this statement by Max Levchin always bothered me.

Having a highly homogeneous (background, education, values, preferences, etc) very early team is better than not — cuts down on time-wasting arguments.

I think it’s kind of an exclusionary way of approaching team building. I understand he’s very directly advocating focus and that is good for an early stage startup, but as an underrepresented person in tech, I guess I see this differently because I couldn’t get anything done with that ideology. By default, I have to work in diverse groups. Ultimately, we want people to rethink the concept of “cultural fit” as it locks out a lot of talented candidates that could probably be great contributors to a team. Furthermore, a less homogeneous team doesn’t necessarily suppose that you’ll waste more time debating instead of acting as he argues. There is simply no evidence that the “best” way to hire and it seems more of a decision made out of comfort. I’ve never seen the evidence that suggests individuals who share “values” and “preferences” necessarily produce a better startup environment. I think this is a case of confusing correlation with causation as surely they were much more significant reasons as to why they succeeded. Having a less homogenous, yet equally-talented team, would have likely produced similar results. I’m still a huge fan of Levchin.

I’ve been the only person of my descent in the school, the only person of my gender in classroom, the only non-muslim in my advanced Arabic program, the only non-American on a startup team, etc. I’ve seen how having a different perspective can have an eye-opening impact on a homogenous environment. I have a unique view of this problem having spent a lot of time in the San Francisco Bay Area and spending the last decade living overseas in various startup communities over the globe (traveling to around 40 countries). Being the only American on a team obviously allowed me to give insight that other non-americans couldn’t possibly have that made positive contributions to our product development. Having someone on the team that is apart of the product’s user base, in my cases, is going to help produce a better product. Unfortunately, products are often made by excluding entire genders, races, age groups, etc that could positively contribute and help gain market penetration. I’m optimistic in that the people who make hiring decisions want to be more inclusive. It’s just not easy and in a world where you increasingly need to scale quickly, it’s not a priority. If tools were provided that made it easier for them quickly locate qualified yet diverse candidates, I’m hopeful we can begin to create more diverse workforces. It’s good for us all.

Creating a marketplace that addresses the diversity gap is but one way to solve this problem.

I understand it’s not just about being hired. Underrepresented groups need support so that they can thrive once they’ve been hired. We need to work on “cultural fit” issues that can often be problematic. These are special needs that maybe a lot of startups or HR department are not adequately prepared to deal with at this stage. We know that, but we have to start somewhere and address one problem at a time for now. I do think it’s a great cause.

It would be good for the ecosystem. Great products and startups are often spun out of teams that met working at tech companies. If these groups aren’t represented in the workforce, they can never get together in the first place. Imagine how many great startups will never be build because these talented candidates never get a chance to step into the ecosystem and provide their unique perspective. Ultimately, we all lose with exclusion.

If you would like to help me connect with organizations that can help me find qualified candidates or if there is anyway you think you could contribute, please reach out on twitter @erictwillis

I need all the help I can get. I’ve had several great women help me put this together. Even the name is not my own creation (thanks Kiki!). So considering I’m also addressing the gender gap, I need women from the tech community to lend a hand. I can’t fully do this justice without you. So if I have something wrong or if you think there is something I should pay extra attention to, please reach out to me. I need your insight!

Also wanted to give a shoutout for a few organizations that are tackling this problem and doing an awesome job: (Women Who Code, Black Girls Code, Yes We Code, Platform, Hackbright Academy, Code2040, AllStarCode). There are countless others.