SRECon Europe 2016: DivOps, Diversity at Scale

Transcript

1. Div(ersity)Ops Continuous Diversity at Scale SRECon, Dublin, 2016
2. Laine Campbell @lainevcampbell Database Architect and Engineer Founder Aspiring Dandy Co-author, Database Reliability Engineering (O’Reilly)
3. DevOps prescribes diversity wtf does that even mean?
4. DevOps is a cultural framework, supported by: Lean management and development practices, with enabling technologies In order to enable people and teams to practice their crafts in effective and lasting ways Effective Devops, O’Reilly, Jennifer Davis and Katherine Daniels
5. The DevOps Compact The heart of devops starts with people working not only as groups but as teams with a desire for mutual understanding. This can be described as a compact that teams will work together, communicate their intentions and the issues that they run into, and dynamically adjust in order to work toward their shared organizational goals. Effective Devops, O’Reilly, Jennifer Davis and Katherine Daniels
6. The goals of increasing diversity in teams include: increased customer empathy increased constructive conflict
7. Customer empathy via Diversity Effective feature and product development require customer empathy Teams that do not reflect customer diversity are more challenged by this Operational goals - availability, latency, durability are all features of the system
8. Customer empathy via Diversity 45% more likely to grow market share 70% more likely to capture a new market 152% more likely to understand the customer’s needs Center for Talent Innovation, 2013: 40 case studies, 1,800 employee surveys
9. Improved Team Performance via Diversity Diversity generates greater options for reaching goals and solving problems Diversity increases the chance for constructive conflict
10. Diverse Teams Customer Empathy Improved Team Performance Interpersonal Conflict Constructive Conflict New Market Penetration Increased Market Share Dystopian Future Better Choices Better Collaboration Clarity of Goals Increased Participation Improved Information Diversity Benefits Chart for Executives
11. Let’s Define Diversity Inherent Diversity - gender, sexuality, ethnicity, disability, age Acquired Diversity - education and experience
12. Acquired Diversity Inherent Diversity can and often does lead to informational differences Education and experience must be valued as much, as it also leads to information diversity
13. Information diversity leads to constructive conflict collaborative space brings out greater ideas trust in your team helps you to participate information share and clarity seeking helps avoid bias and reductive reasoning
14. Inherent diversity without respect and empathy leads to interpersonal conflict acknowledgment of intent is crucial recognizing and eliminating biases helps foster respect trust that conflict and criticism are constructive and improving is a must
15. Engineers who cannot evolve empathy and respect for others need to get off the bus (or be kicked off)
16. A DivOps Compact Goals: Inherent diversity in teams representative of customer base and overall population numbers. Active acquisition and celebration of acquired diversity in all team members. Elimination of interpersonal conflict due to lack of respect and empathy. Elimination of bias in all aspects of team development and operations.
17. A DivOps Compact Communication: Inherent diversity team membership targets defined and tracked Develop programs to celebrate acquired diversity traits and schedule them. Publish the results of your team. Establish bias training and standards, and track compliance. Schedule empathy post-mortems where people can voluntarily share experiences that have increased their empathy. They must be blameless!
18. Exercise 1: Recognizing Acquired Diversity Break into teams (no larger than 6, no smaller than 4) Privately list 4 traits you’d consider acquired diversity Team leads writes out attributes Discuss how teams can benefit from these traits
19. Bias and privilege recognizing how we experience the world
20. Biases allow us to filter information and make quick decisions Combatting unconscious bias is hard, because it feels right! It is uncomfortable to do. 99.999996% of mental processing is unconscious Neurology of sensory systems
21. Is bias a big deal? Debunking common misconceptions stereotypes exist for a reason i’m color blind, and don’t see race this is a meritocracy, we hire the best regardless of diversity
22. From our overlords friends at Google: • Citing: http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~lane/papers/male_female.pdf • Modeled a company with 8 tiers of employment (1 = least, 500 positions, 8 = most senior, 10 positions). Gender distribution is 50% at all levels to start. • 15% attrition bringing in new staff based on performance from level below. • Performance was random, but men could get 1-101, vs women who get 1-100. • After 20 performance cycles only 35% of L8 were women, 46% of L5 and 53% of L1. • This from only 1% variance in bias!
23. Confirmation Bias creating a hypothesis in your mind and looking for ways to prove, or confirm, it JoAnn had a baby, and must be too distracted to work effectively… Look at the number of bugs she’s closed She’s not at her desk, must be taking a day off She missed that page and it escalated to secondary, must have been with the baby
24. Similarity-Attraction Bias judging others against one’s own identity and behavior This guy is from Oxford… This person is a gamer too! This person is a snappy dresser, just like me. The essence of the meritocracy
25. Implicit Bias unconscious use of stereotypes and attitudes to impact evaluation of anything exhibiting traits associated with those stereotypes and attitudes stereotypes based on race, gender, class, religion, sexuality… • impacts hiring decisions • impacts physician treatment decisions • impacts court sentencing decisions requires long-term changes to reduce or eliminate
26. Implicit Bias exercise: • go to https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html • select gender-science IAT and run through the test • discuss results in same groups as before
27. Mitigating Bias • acknowledging the existence of bias • recognizing opportunities for unconscious bias to impact what we do • creating structures to eliminate opportunities for bias • asking for second opinions, challenging others and working as a team • measure and report on success
28. Real World Strategies living up to the DivOps Compact
29. Recognizing opportunities for bias in the workplace as teams, we work together to create the ideal space for constructive conflict and empathy
30. Management and leadership Recruiting and hiring Meetings and collaboration Social and cultural
31. Management and leadership: • confront your own biases • look at the culture of your group and organization • show visible support for diversity • promote empathy and connection • performance management and promotions
32. Management and leadership: confront your own biases • do I give equivalent focus and attention to every individual on my team? • do I give positive and constructive feedback to those different from me? • do I utilize and recognize everyone’s skills and talents appropriately? • am I fair in providing opportunities for development and advancement? • are the events and activities I create for my team encourage full participation? • do all of my team members participate in meetings and chat? do they feel free to?
33. Management and leadership: look at your culture • how is interaction among people of different backgrounds/ cultures? • is conflict/tension interpersonal, or constructive? if interpersonal, is it between people who are very different? • how much of casual chat is insensitive or offensive? negative? • is anyone isolated? non-participatory?
34. Management and leadership: show visible support • actively introduce your new hires to everyone • share knowledge about resources and networks to your team • encourage participation, give recognition and help team members advance their ideas • be open, fair and consistent in your communications • be an advocate for every team member equally, particularly in difficult situations • be visibly active in your company’s diversity initiatives, and create your own for the team
35. Management and leadership: promote empathy and connection • create opportunities for different people to work together for extended periods. (On-call shifts, paired coding, peer reviews) • recognize minorities need to feel they are not alone. create opportunities for collaboration and connection there also. • mediate interpersonal issues through empathy • encourage cross-functional and cross-team participation
36. Management and leadership: performance management • avoid the halo and horn effects: create comprehensive performance evaluations and use them to objectively measure • avoid first-impression and recency effects: be sure to take notes and evaluate throughout the performance interval • recognize discomfort or affinity as a sign of potential bias. be extra mindful of objectivity in these instances. • solicit feedback from peers and colleagues. cross-reference to your own insights • provide tools to team members to tell you or your organization if they felt the performance process was fair or biased
37. Performance management: Case study • providing managers and peers the opportunity to take notes, comment and provide feedback privately and publicly throughout the year builds a culture that acknowledges performance constantly. avoiding first impression/recency effects • creating a set of criteria to be graded on, using a fixed scale with clear definitions and examples. avoiding halo and horn effects • assigning a group of peers to provide feedback on the individual, in addition to public feedback tools for everyone. avoiding bias with a larger group of inputs • having managers review together, requiring justification for all ratings. avoiding bias via peer retrospection • creating reports that show anonymized data about ratings, cross referenced to inherent, and some acquired diversity components. look for company wide biases that can indicate cultural issues and manager level bias • creating reports that take feedback from individuals about the objectiveness of the performance report process continual improvement for performance management
38. Recruiting and hiring: The public face • job descriptions tell much about the biases inherent in company culture • advertising and company PR tells much the same
39. The public face: Case Study • job description language can indicate cultural and bias issues. using only male pronouns, or phrases like “rock star” can push people away. • emphasizing opportunities for growth and development, rather than focus on performance and “superheroes” also encourages different candidates to apply. • have a code of conduct for your organization prominently on display, and linked to for all emails from recruiters and HR
40. Recruiting and hiring: Building pipeline • typical recruiting channels bring typical candidates • building diverse pipelines requires outreach • investment in early career candidates is often required
41. Building pipeline: Case study • recognize that minority engineers are very wary of company cultures • invest in training early career staff. partner with code schools, provide scholarships and provide real world experience to show off your organization’s culture. • contribute and sponsor organizations committed to the groups you hope to attract to your team • be strategic and reach out individually to people in your team’s network. personal network recruiting is much more effective.
42. Recruiting and hiring: The interview process • blind interviews mitigate opportunities for bias • standardizing inputs, outputs and requirements also contribute to this • memory increases risk of bias, take notes! • use numbers when rating all aspects of the desirable candidate • justify your ratings, with real evidence and data • peer reviews on decisions help eliminate any final biases
43. The interview process: Case study • blind interview questions and challenges eliminate potential biases in early phase interviewing. • using algorithms or human ranking, answers can be ranked and moved to the next phase. • extensive note taking is done in a central system during all final interviews. • hiring committees can minimize bias by requiring justification of choices. • Hire/pass decisions are all tracked, and reported on by position and department to help identify bias. • follow up feedback from candidates helps to improve the process over time.
44. Recruiting and hiring: Measuring success • build targets for diversity on teams, and report on them with all other team performance reports • interview candidates, both hired and not, just as you would customers • continue to adjust and evolve based on metrics, run experiments. Treat it as product development!
45. Meetings and collaboration: • optimize for participation, encouraging everyone to speak and not allowing interruptions • record all ideas/suggestions (excellent for ChatOps) to document inputs that might be ignored due to bias
46. Social and cultural: • team events must be something that can be enjoyed by all • evaluate your culture, and ask if it welcoming? what can be done to create joy and passion for everyone? • hold each other accountable, and don’t wait for others to speak up.
47. Q&A @lainevcampbell, slides on http://speakerdeck.com/lainevcampbell