In my 15 year career as an engineer, I truly thought the issue with diversity and inclusion would have improved. Instead it is getting worse at least for African American women. The current statistics on all races of women is 40% leave engineering for good. Why? What is causing this exodus? One reason is LACK of inclusion.
During my trip to San Francisco to attend the Black Enterprise Tech Connect Summit, I’ve been renewed and highly encouraged in the work I’m doing. I want to focus on one speaker's statement about having a diverse workforce. That speaker was Stewart Butterfield, the CEO of the tech company, Slack.
As it’s been publicized tech corporations have a very low number of minority engineers. Slack has a 7% African American rate for engineers. You're like, "Wow, that's low." Actually, in tech 7% is actually high. Stewart Butterfield, the CEO of Slack stated was he did not talk about diversity. He did not say, "Oh, we have to go out and recruit more," or, "We have to go out and take one person from Facebook or another tech company and bring them in." He was like, "That doesn't change anything." He added, "All I'm doing is moving bodies, that is not a growing diversity. That is just me taking one technical expert of color to a different organization.”
He's like, "That does nothing for the industry." He said, "You have to be intentional." He said, "Okay, so ..." He not only talked a little bit about diversity but what said, which I had not heard anybody say what they did for inclusion and address inclusion. He said, "I need higher numbers so the African American engineer person, employee is not lonely, they don't feel out of place, they don’t feel excluded. They feel accepted. That they are in a work space where they can see people who look like them." Nobody else said that shit. Nobody wanted to address inclusion. He sat there and said, "Okay, so I bring them over to my company, they leave the industry."
He specifically sat there and addressed the issue which is, you can bring in 10,000 people of color. If 5,000 leave stem, leave tech, leave engineering, you have not solved the problem, none whatsoever. He's sitting there addressing the problem on a whole which not only is one part, bringing in and educating minorities in tech, in engineering, but how do you keep them in the field. They are leaving the field. They're not leaving an employer, they're not leaving Silicon Valley, they're not leaving California, the West Coast, they're completely leaving the industry. How do you go about changing that?
When he was on stage the interviewer said, "We want to discuss diversity at Slack." He said, "Well, the company was started by four white guys." but let me tell you what he said in there that really was interesting.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) tracks college graduation and employment rates for STEM majors and employees. Looking at the 2015 graduation rates for women of color in STEM majors
I'm sitting there like, "Something is not right for somebody to come outside of the US to be willing to address it openly, honestly, and say, "There is an issue in this industry," and they're not even American. It was just like, "Really dude? You're not even American and you want to talk about this?" Maybe that's what it is. Maybe because he has a different perspective, maybe because he's not from the US, he's been here for a long time that he sees it a different way. Wherein maybe as an American if you're Caucasian, well that's just the way it is. He does not have that perspective so it's really interesting to hear him talk about Slack and he wanted to do inclusion, not just diversity.