Show Me the Data with Tracy Chou
We’ve all heard companies talk big about how they value diversity. But many still aren’t willing to quantify how they’re doing: who works there? Who’s getting hired and promoted? Are people being paid equitably? On today’s show, we talk about diversity, data, and how one engineer’s call for hard numbers shook things up.
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That engineer was Tracy Chou — a leading voice in tech industry diversity and inclusion conversations. She’s a wildly talented software engineer who believes in the importance of increasing transparency among tech companies, the need for tech to value a humanities education, and the pleasures of spending way too much time on Twitter.
As an engineer, I’m so used to having to have data for everything. But the lack of data on the workforce side just felt so hypocritical to me. It seemed like it wasn’t really a problem that we wanted to solve if we weren’t even looking at the data.
We talked with Tracy about:
- What the real picture of diversity in tech companies looks like and where the numbers are.
- Why it’s important for tech companies to get comfortable releasing data about their workforce, and why it’s critical to consider the intersectionality of diversity efforts.
- A nonprofit Tracy helped to found called Project Include, which shares best practices around implementing diversity and inclusion solutions.
Plus, we talk about ch-ch-ch-changes and asking for help:
- Specifically, change at work — how we deal with it and how it can affect us emotionally and physically.
- And yup, we constantly have to remind ourselves that it’s ok to ask for help. The good news is, we’re helping each other do it more. Jenn even got to take a vacation complete with funnel cake, because she asked for help with childcare.
☞ And there’s always a full transcript.
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