It’s a mantra that everyone in Silicon Valley has heard and can recite on command — “diverse teams build better products.” This is true: women, people of color, and other underrepresented minorities have much to contribute in the way of product and technology. In terms of how we approach diversity in tech, however, is this really the most useful framework?
This question of how to frame diversity — what our goals are and why we care — is an important one at TreeHacks. We don’t care about diversity because it will create better hacks: this establishes a dangerous trap in which the merit of diversity is benchmarked by the quality of the technologies it produces. We don’t care about diversity because it’s “popular” and tech companies left and right are endorsing “Women in Tech” campaigns. Here at TreeHacks, diversity is inseparable from the larger issues at play — we cannot advocate for more women in tech while ignoring how jobs traditionally held by women are devalued, and we cannot work to build spaces for black hackers at TreeHacks without understanding how our society discriminates by race.
To understand our approach to diversity at TreeHacks, it’s important to understand what it means for us to be a hackathon. Our events are places where people come together, find community, learn skills, and emerge inspired and rejuvenated to go and build technologies that shape the world and push innovation forward. We want to expand our community, welcoming first-time hackers to experience the magic of their first hackathon at TreeHacks, and giving veteran hackers space to share and to build upon their experience and their knowledge. TreeHacks is about the people: everything we do at TreeHacks is built on providing the best possible experience for the groups who will gain the most.
Diversity matters because people matter. Every single one of our participants deserves to feel safe, welcome, and encouraged by TreeHacks. Environments in which there are groups wholly or grossly underrepresented lend themselves much more to cultures and behaviors that are discriminatory and unacceptable. Hackers are much more likely to create an app facilitating the objectification of women if they work in a hackathon environment without any women present, where no one is conversing about women’s issues. To build inclusive and welcoming communities, we must build communities of people from many backgrounds committed to creating a culture that rejects intolerance and embraces diversity.
Diversity matters because representation matters. We cannot claim to bring together the best hackers from all over the nation if our attendees are almost exclusively white, Asian, or male. TreeHacks is a microcosm of the hackathon community at large, which is an important pipeline into the tech industry. If we claim to be a meritocracy and accept only the “best” tech talent, a lack of diversity means that some groups will be unfairly underrepresented in this talent pool. It means that they aren’t centered in the technical community, and that they will continue to be under-represented at other hackathons and in technical jobs.
Diversity matters because change matters. We recognize that there are huge structural barriers preventing some folks from being able to access opportunities like attending TreeHacks. At any point in the pipeline, you can identify oppressive forces that make it hard for women and people of color to engage, whether that’s the lower rates at which people of color attend college, the increasingly high likelihood that underrepresented minorities feel incompetent in technical fields due to imposter syndrome, or the standing fact that the most common avenues through which people hear about hackathons are white, Asian, and male-dominated.
While tackling systemic racism and sexism are daunting tasks, we have the ability and the duty to change the status quo through our approach to TreeHacks. There are easy things we can do to make profound changes to the demographics, culture, and representation of TreeHacks. Committing ourselves to that change is critical if we wish to see other hackathons, companies, and communities follow suit. No single hackathon is going to change the face of the tech industry or knock down every conceivable barrier for women and people of color. We need every single hackathon to embrace, celebrate, and encourage diversity — and at TreeHacks, that starts with us.
