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Minority groups are considered as such for a reason (numbers). Fortune 500 companies are not only investing in D&I efforts to bring those candidates in at top d

Minority groups are considered as such for a reason (numbers). Fortune 500 companies are not only investing in D&I efforts to bring those candidates in at top dollar. They are also training unskilled minorities into tech trades. How can your small business compete with that?

marcinzm 6y ago
How do you compete with them on any other talented employee who they pay top dollar for and are willing to train via internships? You provide them with things they cannot get at those companies. In my experience it's not difficult to find great minority engineers if you build a culture that is actually inclusive. Few companies really do that, large or small, and retention of minority engineers is abysmal at large companies.
- atlgator 6y ago
  That's a fair point and I agree with you, but there's a bit of a chicken and egg problem to create that inclusive environment. What other things would attract talent over Fortune 500 companies? I ask because it's really tough for SMBs to develop hiring programs without the margins the big companies have.
  - marcinzm 6y ago
    Inclusive environment does not mean you have a diverse team already but that you have an inclusive team. That generally means ensuring that your company feels like a safe space to candidates. That means paying very close attention to even the small things your team does especially during interviews. In my experience, minorities and women have a lifetime of training in spotting red flags early as very bad things can happen to them otherwise. Do they talk over people? Do they interrupt people a lot? Do they make "harmless" sexist jokes? Do they act angry or aggressive? Do you give problems that require a certain social context to solve? There's also how you do the interview process. A smaller company should be able to do a more personal interview process and lean less towards metrics that can be scaled to millions of interviews. Top university is a viable metric but can you cast your net more broadly? Internships are good guides but can you do a code test or contract-to-hire instead if the candidate was too busy working manual labor during the summer? Can you partner with a boot camp to get access to their best graduates? edit: Also, you want to ensure that your interviewers don't confuse blind confidence with skill. Imposter syndrome in particular seems to affect minority and female engineers which can be interpreted as a lack of skill even if they give the correct answers.
    - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
      I don't think this is as simple as you're suggesting. You mention talking over people and interrupting, but there are cultures like my own where that's just how you have a conversation. In order to fit the "inclusive environment" mold, I have to deliberately suppress my natural speech patterns, making sure I don't ever talk to my coworkers the way I would to my family. I don't mean to claim this is the biggest problem in the world. If a company thinks they can be a lot more inclusive of other people by being a bit less inclusive of me, that's fine in my book. But it's frustrating to see these kinds of cultural impositions described as though they have no costs or tradeoffs. Cultural mismatches are hard to handle, and we do ourselves no favors by pretending that the solution is obvious.
      - marcinzm 6y ago
        Sure but the question was about how a small business can be more inclusive without spending a lot of money. Not how they can be more inclusive without doing anything or changing anything. In the end everything has a cost and it's up to them to decide if it's worth it. The largest cost is that certain people will simply not stop doing these things so you have to decide if firing them is worth the inclusion gains or not.
        SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
        My point is that the idea of "more inclusive" as a unidimensional thing is wrong. Mandating a specific set of speech standards is more inclusive of some people and less inclusive of others. It can often be the right thing to do, but you've gotta bite the bullet and acknowledge the effects on both sides. It's a bit offensive, frankly, to dismiss any culture that's incompatible with the standards you'd prefer as "certain people will simply not stop doing these things".

marcinzm 6y ago

How do you compete with them on any other talented employee who they pay top dollar for and are willing to train via internships? You provide them with things they cannot get at those companies. In my experience it's not difficult to find great minority engineers if you build a culture that is actually inclusive. Few companies really do that, large or small, and retention of minority engineers is abysmal at large companies.

atlgator 6y ago
That's a fair point and I agree with you, but there's a bit of a chicken and egg problem to create that inclusive environment. What other things would attract talent over Fortune 500 companies? I ask because it's really tough for SMBs to develop hiring programs without the margins the big companies have.
- marcinzm 6y ago
  Inclusive environment does not mean you have a diverse team already but that you have an inclusive team. That generally means ensuring that your company feels like a safe space to candidates. That means paying very close attention to even the small things your team does especially during interviews. In my experience, minorities and women have a lifetime of training in spotting red flags early as very bad things can happen to them otherwise. Do they talk over people? Do they interrupt people a lot? Do they make "harmless" sexist jokes? Do they act angry or aggressive? Do you give problems that require a certain social context to solve? There's also how you do the interview process. A smaller company should be able to do a more personal interview process and lean less towards metrics that can be scaled to millions of interviews. Top university is a viable metric but can you cast your net more broadly? Internships are good guides but can you do a code test or contract-to-hire instead if the candidate was too busy working manual labor during the summer? Can you partner with a boot camp to get access to their best graduates? edit: Also, you want to ensure that your interviewers don't confuse blind confidence with skill. Imposter syndrome in particular seems to affect minority and female engineers which can be interpreted as a lack of skill even if they give the correct answers.
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    I don't think this is as simple as you're suggesting. You mention talking over people and interrupting, but there are cultures like my own where that's just how you have a conversation. In order to fit the "inclusive environment" mold, I have to deliberately suppress my natural speech patterns, making sure I don't ever talk to my coworkers the way I would to my family. I don't mean to claim this is the biggest problem in the world. If a company thinks they can be a lot more inclusive of other people by being a bit less inclusive of me, that's fine in my book. But it's frustrating to see these kinds of cultural impositions described as though they have no costs or tradeoffs. Cultural mismatches are hard to handle, and we do ourselves no favors by pretending that the solution is obvious.
    - marcinzm 6y ago
      Sure but the question was about how a small business can be more inclusive without spending a lot of money. Not how they can be more inclusive without doing anything or changing anything. In the end everything has a cost and it's up to them to decide if it's worth it. The largest cost is that certain people will simply not stop doing these things so you have to decide if firing them is worth the inclusion gains or not.
      - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
        My point is that the idea of "more inclusive" as a unidimensional thing is wrong. Mandating a specific set of speech standards is more inclusive of some people and less inclusive of others. It can often be the right thing to do, but you've gotta bite the bullet and acknowledge the effects on both sides. It's a bit offensive, frankly, to dismiss any culture that's incompatible with the standards you'd prefer as "certain people will simply not stop doing these things".