Tech’s Other Diversity Problem
I’m not talking about the lack of diversity among engineers.
That is not to say that isn’t a problem, too, because it is. It’s just not where my anecdotal experience lies.
I’m talking rather, about the gross lack of diversity in HR, specifically recruiting. In my time as a recruiter, the culture that surrounded me often felt antiquated — not far off from Mad Men’s portrayal of Sterling Cooper.
Half of my floor was made up of engineering, and the other half was taken up by recruiting. The women’s restroom was on the engineering side and the men’s on the HR side. Almost like a practical joke, it seemed like the floor was inconveniently designed to make the opposite sex walk to the other side of the building every time someone had to use the bathroom.
Yes, the majority of engineers on my floor were men. I don’t think that would come as a surprise to many. The lack of (gender, racial, age, you name it) diversity amongst engineers, while still an epidemic, has gained some awareness through PR and journalistic efforts. The much less talked about the problem of homogeneity in recruiting is something we hear a lot less about, and I feel like making some noise.
A bit of backstory:
When I was new to the workforce, fresh out of college, I interviewed to be a recruiting coordinator at a large tech company in New York City. During my interview, I received a building tour where I oohed and ahhed at all the appropriate moments — like when they spoke about their “open desk culture,” and boasted about their unlimited supply of ethically sourced coffee.
My interviewers took pride in their efforts to hire applicants from diverse backgrounds, as evidenced by the art installations throughout the building that celebrated different cultures. I was impressed and naive. And when I received an offer I could hardly say no.
It did not take long for the novelty to wear off.
To their credit, I should say there were some people on my team who I think did genuinely care about increasing diversity in engineering. But that did not eliminate the major issue at hand. I am referring of course, to the homogeneity within our own team.
It seems appropriate to me that a staffing team whose job is largely to change the status quo of the uniform population of engineers would also be representative of a broad spectrum of backgrounds. In reality, my team was made up almost exclusively of those who were roughly the same age, race, gender, and ability. I think everyone in my team was under 30. Everyone was cis female. Almost everyone was white. The irony just blared hypocrisy, at least to me.
The problem with an all-female hiring cohort in a male-dominated industry:
The problem with hiring an all-female HR staff to support a mostly male engineering staff is layered. Recruiting at the end of the day always has, and always will be a supportive function for the overarching goals of the business. A recruiter’s purpose is to hire the talent that does the work the company is in business to do. I’m not contesting that. But it becomes a problem when your support staff is all female, and your talent is all male. (Think of the secretary and the businessman or the nurse and the doctor relationship if you need context.)
It gets worse when you factor in that part of my job was learning to be a mouthpiece for how awesome our diversity efforts in our hiring practices were. Maybe I have the overly sensitive, moral compass of a liberal snowflake who went to UC Berkeley, but doing this made me feel sick to my stomach. The flaming pretense of just about any tech corporation which claims to care about altruism is often laughable.
It gets worse yet when you consider that an even larger part of my job was interacting with the overwhelmingly male engineering population who “volunteered” their time to help with our so-called diverse hiring tactics. I cannot tell you how many times I begged my male engineer colleagues to help me fulfill my interview staffing duties. They did this on a volunteer basis, and offering their help was seen as a favor. On the other hand, this was the thing I was getting paid to do and it was largely the thing my job performance rested on.
It gets even worse yet when you factor in the part of recruiting that involves enticing candidates to accept offers. If you haven’t noticed, one of the lures tech companies use to coax people into signing contracts is convincing them what a fun, cool place they are to work. Beer on tap? You got it. Company happy hours? It’s in the budget. Nap pods, why not?
So when my all female team would take out a group of 30 or 40 young, mostly male candidates with offers of up to 200k (roughly 3 times what I made) for a night on the town with an open bar all in the name of convincing them to sign their contract…you see how this is a problem, right?
It’s an environment ripe for abuse of power. I heard some ugly stories from others, but they are not mine to tell. Personally, I experienced candidates ask for my number and badger me to shed my coat during such nights out. When I brought it up to my team members, there was no escalation of the issue.
Can we please talk about this? Maybe my experience was a fluke. But something tells me it is systematic. When trying to increase diversity in the workplace, let’s not forget about the makeup of the departments that are doing the actual hiring.
It feels relevant, at least in my data set of one.
Tech’s Other Diversity Problem
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