The Diversity & Inclusion Problem
This post is a response to Ellen Pao’s article in The Cut.
*Be sure to review the statistics image below the article.*
I have heard many opinions on Ms. Pao, especially the gamut from women. I understand the point of view some hold, that Ms. Pao should not speak for “all women in tech.” However, her specific case aside, it does nothing to erase the fact that San Francisco and Silicon Valley have a truly serious Diversity and Inclusion problem tied to its obsession on pedigree over capability.
The issue is so bad it has its own acronym of “D&I” in the Marketing, Identity, Strategy, Social Media and Branding departments, besides just HR, so you know Big Tech means “business.” In Silicon Valley, that most likely means some token hires in a handful of visibly key positions, with no real power to affect meaningful change. These hires will look great for the business website, for company PR and marketing collateral, including corporate culture review sites, which are the only tellingly material efforts these projects will likely undertake.
As a minority within a minority, I do speak from personal experience and observation, and I’m sure the trolls will claw in the comments. You trolls are welcome to, it’s your right, but thank you for outing yourselves in the process.
The Truth Is, that overwhelmingly, most jobs, contracts, or projects I have been on, ran far smoother when women were in positions of greater authority. Or, when women were at least on title, salary, and/or equity parity with men who had corporate responsibilities of similar weight.
I’m not saying the female gender is incapable of ruthlessness in business, but men tend to let their EQ/IQ drop in favor of ego, materialism, tribalism, and just about anything related to sex. It’s an obvious Achilles’ Heel should anyone really want to rack up a tally and make a comparison to women in authority. There’s a reason why “TechBro” and “Brogrammer” culture is a “thing.”
If anything, most corporate and public on-boarding programs desperately need a psychopathy/sociopath test. According to the National Institutes of Health, women score far lower than men where it comes to psychopathy, anti-social, and sociopath disorders. The latter is often coupled with illegal behavior, and specifically predicated on a lack of conscience. If a company is scaling up to be global, then growing fast and not wrecking things, should be part of its ethos.
I would recommend that technologies such as VR be used to screen applicants. In this manner, Silicon Valley can better strive to become the purported meritocracy it claims to be (ha!), with biases for gender, ethnicity, race, etc., wholly removed from the hiring and firing process. Having delivered that pitch a million and one times, I know it will just fall on deaf ears. It is simple pattern-matching in the workplace and investing: “like” hires “like,” and “like” attracts “like,” and “like” also invests in “like,” and “like” fires “unlike.” Until one disrupts this process, not much will improve.
Processes like the one proposed, should be instituted to better ensure that hires are brought in via an unbiased certification of ability. Such a project should be coupled with continued education, so employees can learn to access greater compassion, sympathy, and/or empathy. People who feel safer at work, because they are collaborating with others screened to be competent and who best represent safety, integrity, honesty, reliability and generally uphold a company’s positive values, will tend to be happier, healthier and more efficacious employees. In turn, this yields a more profitable enterprise.
Compassion, sympathy and empathy are EQ that women in authority, in my experience, tend to exhibit, which is why their operations ran that much more smoothly. Contemporaneously, they attempted greater diversity and inclusion, while still delivering on the one thing Silicon Valley cares most about, no matter what anyone claims, and that is profitability.
Alejandro Franceschi is an Emmy, Telly & AVA awarded Creative, Technologist, & Consultant, who has worked with Fortune 500/100 companies.
