The theme for the event — Diversity Meetup at Walmart Labs by HasGeek — was Giving voice to our work; making workspaces safe and inclusive. Pooja and I spoke about our journey with the community and how it changed our personal and professional lives. Seema spoke about NestAway’s vision — Creating a workplace without discrimination. They currently have a pilot program on hiring non-binary people.
It was a different event altogether where I learned the importance of thinking gender as non-binary. Seema and the audience shared the struggles and the rejections they go through. All because of lack of appreciation for diversity — be it gender diversity or caste or a minority community.
Rasagy Sharma has summarised the event [with his beautiful Sketch Notes]. He summarises it as:
To summarize: I went to HasGeek’s Diversity meetup seeking answers to many questions, but I returned with stories, more empathy, and many more questions, for which I’m glad!
Recently, I spoke @ Rails Girls, Kochi — the first Rails Girls event in Kerala. Close to 90 participants turned up [most of them are students] for the event. There were mentors too — one for each team consisting 3 to 4 participants. It was a very well organised event, and I am sure all the participants had a great time learning.
Hari, one of the organisers of the event, asked me to speak about the importance of choosing the career. It is sad to see many talented people join “some” company without thinking much about what they are getting into, and later they get stuck there sometimes forever.
Both the events were related to growth, and I believe Growth is about:
- Grow by giving
- Being resilient
- Accepting rejections positively
Many great products/services and people behind those showcase the above. Why Netflix created Chaos Monkey or why Amazon and/or Google has Gamedays are not accidental.
Great businesses provide a lot of value and are built resiliently. The leaders of those businesses have high empathy, especially towards customers and also showcase resiliency. They provide a lot more value to the customers, exceeding customers’ expectations. They are also usually trained to accept failures without which it is not possible to be resilient.
On a different note, Chad Fowler has written about How startup CTOs learn to be startup CTOs, which has a lot of valuable resources on the topic. A recommended reading to learn to be a Startup CTO.
