Managing Against the Machine
How managers can use their power for positive transformation of the workplace and tech industry.
The tech industry is in moral crisis. We live in a dystopian, panoptic geek revenge fantasy infested by absurd beliefs in meritocracy, full of entrenched inequalities, focused on white upper-class problems, inherently hostile to minorities, rife with blatant sexism and generally incapable of reaching anyone beyond early adopter audiences of people just like us.
The state of management in our industry is also dire.
Our managers are usually people who have been promoted up from individual contributor roles within growing companies. They are thrust into positions of great power and influence despite having almost no experience, almost no training, almost no critical consciousness, almost no understanding of the problem space. And because most technology companies and startups either don’t care or don’t know how to mentor managers, even people with tons of experience are horrible managers, trailed by decades of inflicted damage on the teams and companies that have enabled them. “Barely functional” is the default state of managers in our industry, defined by a dangerous miasma of privilege, incompetence, ego-mania, pressure and fear.
And managers play a large role in company culture, generally with disastrous results.
Despite this, the disproportionate access that managers have to power and resources makes management a fertile site for transformative action and social consciousness within the tech industry.
As our community faces the growing realization that things are horribly, horribly wrong, managers have an enormous opportunity to participate in transforming the industry for good. Here are five ways ways that managers can use their positions of power to make an impact.
Ensure people on your team are being paid equitably.
Regularly analyze the salaries of people on your team to ensure equitable pay and correct for wage inequities associated with gender, race, sexual orientation and other factors. Get started:
- Compare each person’s salary to market rates for their position, role and experience level. HR can help you determine accurate market rates, or you can compile it yourself using a combination of published data, anecdotal information from the community, and established pay ranges for roles. Do this at least every six months.
- Compare average salary of white men on your team to the average salary of women, POC, GLBT and other marginalized or underrepresented groups. Then, do something about the gaps within your org.
- Pay equality begins in the negotiation process. Women and members of other minority groups in tech often ask for, and are offered less, money than white men. This is a known phenomenon. It is your moral and ethical responsibility to understand this pattern and correct, rather than exploit it, during the hiring process. Base your offers on equitable pay even if you were asked for less money during the negotiation process.
If your people are making less than market rate (disproportionally, women and other marginalized/oppressed people in tech), making less than the dominant class (i.e. white men), or being offered less because of entrenched inequalities in the negotiation process, you are in a powerful position to change the status quo as a manager.
Advocate for better management training and mentorship.
There are lots of amazing educators and resources in the world to help managers in your company be more aware, more effective, more competent. Managers are often in the best position to help develop these programs, and socially conscious managers can make sure these programs integrate diversity, social justice, critical consciousness, and management anti-patterns as core areas of inquiry. The act of carving out space to consider the unique challenges and problems of management itself can help transform startups early in their management practice.
Demonstrate positive power in the workplace.
Destructive power punishes, microaggresses, demeans, humiliates, stereotypes, divides, frightens and neglects. It is also used to police and oppress members of marginalized groups. Positive power inspires, unites, empowers, and promotes autonomy, personal growth and humane teamwork. Think critically about the ways your power as a manager is constructed and performed — start by thinking about microaggressions, how you build agreement and handle critique and dissent, and the real emotional consequences of your actions as a manager on the people around you. Critical consciousness about the negative impacts we have on our team — and the humility and thoughtfulness it takes to confront it — are absolutely transformative practices in our approach to the craft.
Direct company resources to social justice causes.
Managers have a lot of influence over the events a company sponsors, the causes it promotes, the people it funds, the projects it invests in. How can you use that influence to help promote transformative social projects within the technology industry? There are a number of hacker schools, child and teen education programs, progressive events and organizations that advocate for oppressed people in technology and bring social consciousness to our industry. How can you use some of your team’s time and money to support these ventures? Participation in them will make your workplace more friendly to diverse workers, help with recruiting, bring new viewpoints and perspectives into your workplace, and cultivate critical thinking in your team.
Some awesome programs:
Hire diverse teams.
Managers are often given a great deal of power and influence over who gets hired onto their team. They are often the chief interviewer, primary negotiator, final approver, head recruiter, and lord of the budget. As such, they can play a transformative role in recruiting, hiring and retaining diverse candidates. Ultimately, this benefits your business because diverse teams are more innovative and outperform homogeneous teams. And you’ll be helping to rebuild the system at the same time. Some practical strategies:
- Analyze your hiring pipeline. Are women and other members of marginalized and underrepresented populations present in the pipeline? If so, are they making into your company and if not, why? Use your powers of root cause analysis.
- Look at the existing makeup of your team. What categories of diversity are missing? Don’t just look at gender. How can you get your team invested and excited about building a more diverse group?
- Increase the number of diverse candidates you’re speaking with by actively participating in communities that support diversity in tech, promoting your job positions within those communities (if appropriate), and proactively recruiting talent outside of homogeneous communities.
As a manager, you occupy a position of power, influence and access to resources. How can you use that position to change and to transform your team, the community, and ultimately the industry?
More than just changing external systems, engaging in social justice and developing critical consciousness changes you as a manager — changes your own, personal practice of management. It makes you more effective, more powerful, more able to help your team learn, grow and succeed. Through engagement with diverse communities, gaining understanding of microaggressions and other negative power practices, and building an environment where good management is actively nurtured, we gain the empathy and skillset to be truly great managers.
