Who’s interested: Primary – L&D, DEI team and Corp Giving, Secondary – Senior Leaders
Takeaways:
– In 2014, many Silicon Valley firms began providing public transparency around the underrepresentation of Black and Latinx workers – however, the needle hasn’t moved
– The root cause is the current system for training, finding, and retaining underrepresented engineers
– Once past the intro courses and hiring past elite colleges, “the few Black engineers who make it past those barriers feel isolated in an industry that relies so heavily on personal connections”
– “Students without early exposure to tech pathways, mentors, and resources to learn outside of the classroom will be the last ones in and the first ones out”
ideascape view: Far too often is DEI strategy and planning around “groups” confused by Companies as the problem vs. an audience to solve for. CodePath.org identified root causes to underrepresentation and opined on why only committing to monitor groups was a failure. DEI and Senior Leaders should begin their journey by articulating business problems to solve; e.g., representation of employees vs. customers, and then include diversity considerations in their remedy plans. If the root cause is too difficult to solve independently, networks can yield an answer.
