Actionable Tips for Dispelling Biases in Tech
Hearing discussion of racism and sexism in the workplace?
Some would say that this isn’t anything new in the industry, especially with recent events like Apple’s Diversity Chief stepping down, Google’s run-in with an employee’s memo on sexism, and Susan Fowler’s personal account of Uber’s outrageous treatment of women.
And with the United States’ deep festering history heavily rooted in housing and loan opportunities (learn that here from Adam Ruins Everything), it really isn’t surprising that we have issues with diversity still hitting us hard.
The only thing really surprising is that it’s happening in tech, an industry that champions itself on collaboration and innovation. It’s funny because people talk about tech like its always a few steps ahead of everything else. Oddly enough, tech is, at several points, worse than other industries in terms of diversity in minorities and sex.
Numbers don’t lie and for an industry that calls itself collaborative, it seems to utilize the company of only like-minded people from similar racial backgrounds predominantly, leading to echo chambers to exist in a field which impacts communities worldwide.
You may be wondering though: what can you do about it?
Well here’s a list of things anybody can do regardless of job level, background, and demographic:
1. Acknowledge There’s a Problem
Everything starts by acknowledging the elephant in the room. There are problems with how companies in tech handle diversity and there’s an abundance of war stories out there.
Ever heard of the “You’re not technical enough because of your *insert demographic here*” story?
In an interview conducted, a career coach cites the story of her female black colleague who owned a software development company. When dealing with clients, she actually had to say that she was definitely technical and that she knew her stuff when it came to software development because the racial assumption of her identity came first before the assumption of being experienced by virtue of her job history.
Or how about the “We passed you up for a promotion and subjected you to extra tests because of your race and sex” story?
In another interview, a Latino UX designer had to take extra job tests to verify his skill with his potential employer only to get passed up for a white man who didn’t have to take the tests despite having the same credentials.
2. Re-examine Your Own Attitudes
The next step would require a little bit of self-awareness, humbleness, and openness-to-experience. If you have the time and the will, get a piece of paper and start writing down how you feel about people of different backgrounds. Afterwards, let it sit for a while and then start dissecting the whole thing line by line.
For example, you happen to write something like “Oh, I think that some people from a specific racial group are too much of a nuisiance. I don’t think they’ll fit into the culture that we set in my company.”
What sort of experiences brought you up to think like this? Maybe you had a traumatic encounter in the past with them?
Do all people in that racial group act the same way? Nope. You can probably think of a lot of people that break the mold of the assumption made.
Why do the people from that racial group act like that? They may have a common experience that’s brought about by external forces like economy and politics. Not to say that it’s all because of that. You have to consider their personal experience too!
Are they, therefore, entirely unfit for your company’s culture? Maybe, maybe not. It depends on the person.
3. Don’t Force It on Others
As prior research in sociology would explain, people often disobey authority and rules just to reinforce their autonomy as a person. And that rings very true, especially in diversity. One such example demonstrating this is a research effort by the University of Toronto. They had white testers read a brochure about prejudice against the black minority. When people felt pressure to agree with it, the reading strengthened their bias against blacks. When they felt the choice was theirs, the reading reduced bias.
So it may be tempting to go on a crusade against racism and sexism by just posting about what you think people should do, but odds are, it could just be counter-intuitive.
It’s true for companies that force people to go through mandatory diversity programs. They lessened their diversity with them, not increase it. And the same could be true for you should you decide to release an unfiltered tirade into the wild world of social media.
If we want to change how minorities are treated, we shouldn’t fight as if people chose to be biased. We should only, at best, share what we think as an equal, and hope they’ll see the perspective offered.
4. Connect, not Network
“There’s a difference between connecting with someone and professionally networking with them,” a former Google intern said. Connection, he said, is all about fostering a genuine understanding of a person while networking just tends to be the opportunist’s way of getting more possibilities.
Moreover, he shared that connecting with mentors and colleagues in Google allowed him to feel welcome because they try to integrate him into the activities and processes of their workplace. The number of diverse hires there did comfort him, but he also shared that the treatment of them was more important. It’s through this that he felt that Google really valued diversity, and more importantly inclusivity.
More often than not, companies miss out on the idea of inclusivity (behavior) to chase after diversity (the numbers). Programs will be in place to hire from more diverse backgrounds, but none of that changes anything unless we put in the effort to sustain the change.
People aren’t just another business card, resume, or contact. They are humans with aspirations, fears, skills, and opinions just like you. By connecting with them and getting to know them deeply, we start to get a better grasp of how they are really like as a person and that helps dispel biases from you and others.
So go on out there and don’t network with people, connect with them and understand their backgrounds as you share your own authentic point of view for them to understand.
5. Choose the Right Leaders
In the end, it all comes down to selecting good leaders. Whether it’s a CEO or a manager position, influence and change more often than not come from the top if we don’t have the strength of numbers at the grassroots. If we want organizations to be inclusive, we have to be certain that our leaders and influencers also are. According to Robert Dobbin’s Article from Harvard Business Review, inclusive leaders have at least three of the following behaviors:
- Ensuring that team members speak up and are heard
- Making it safe to propose novel ideas
- Empowering team members to make decisions
- Taking advice and implementing feedback
- Giving actionable feedback
- Sharing credit for team success
So in regards to what’s actionable, we can either share our concerns with our leaders and hope they follow suit, work for a company with inclusive leadership, hire the right leader, or…
6. Be that Leader Yourself
It’s never too early to start being an influencer in your own way if you want to. Whether you’re in a position of leadership or not, by just speaking up, writing, talking, and discussing the whole issue of biases in the industry of tech, we connect to people and help them become aware of the realities happening. As long as what we’re not doing is forceful and as long as we not blindingly persuade others that equality is right, go on out there to the world, connect, and be authentic.
If you’re in a meeting where a woman keeps getting interrupted, speak up and say, “I’d like to go back to what Jane was saying a moment ago. Jane, could you finish your thought?”
If you have a colleague from a minority that’s absolutely brilliant but didn’t get credited for whatever he did in the team, say “I think Suresh also did a great job with what he did.”
If you’re hiring and your colleague is telling you that they don’t want to hire this qualified man from a black background just because he’s black, ask the tough questions and say “What’s wrong with being black and how does that even matter?”
Carve your own path to inclusivity (not just diversity) leadership. Do not wait.
Maybe then we can finally have the courage to freely and proudly exclaim that tech is collaborative and progressive.
If you enjoyed this article thoroughly, take that finger or cursor of yours and clap clap clap!
Nelson Gomez (www.nelgomez.com) is a junior freelance interaction designer in Greater Los Angeles that is open to new opportunities. On a voluntary basis, he leads a small chapter of a youth-run organization called User Experience Society and they learn UX as we go work through small-time applications and projects.
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