Creating & Managing Diverse Teams

Transcript

1. Presentation Title Org/ Contact Creating and Managing Diverse Teams Nicola Monat-Jacobs Senior Director, Learning Platforms & Services Longsight, Inc.
2. Diverse Teams are Good! •  A lot of research that supports that diverse teams are better problem solvers. •  …and these group cooperate better the more women they have! (MIT/CMU/Union) http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100930143339.htm •  Heterogeneous teams did better but rated their own performance worse. Homogeneous teams did worse but rated themselves better http://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/better_decisions_through_diversity •  "Having a bunch of smart people in a group doesn't necessarily make the group smart," concludes Malone.
3. Diverse Teams are Good! •  Not only that, but we desperately need the people: •  The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that by 2020 there will be more than 1.4 million computing-related job openings. At current rates, however, we can only fill about 30% of those jobs with U.S. computing bachelor's grads. - National Center for Women and Information Technology •  But convincing you is not necessarily the goal of this presentation…
4. What is diversity anyway? …race, religion, color, gender, national origin, disability, sexual orientation, age, education, geographic origin, and skill characteristics. US Dept of Interior, Office of Civil Rights
6. Disclosure time…. Overall Tech Non-Tech Men 72% 75% 67% Women 27% 25% 33% I have noticed….. Last year at Apereo, both Keynote speakers were women. And today too… let’s be clear: I think Apereo is out-performing other technical communities when it comes to diversity.
8. Understanding challenges… With no information about the job “applicants” other than their appearance, the managers (of both sexes) were twice as likely to hire a man over a woman. Men tended to exaggerate their acumen, while women downplayed theirs. But the managers failed to compensate for that difference, and were again twice as likely to choose a man. The bias persisted even when managers were given hard data about the applicants’ ability to perform the tasks in question. Managers were still one- and-a-half times more likely to hire a man. Study: Woman Who Can Do Math Still Can’t Get Hired http://nyti.ms/1dJwYwn •  “John”/”Jennifer” study – academics are not immune! •  Interview Anecdote time!
9. Understanding challenges… •  “Minority” name example •  Howard/Heidi study (Harvard Business School, Lean In) - successful venture capitalist - While the students rated them equally in terms of success, they thought Howard was likeable while Heidi seemed selfish and not “the type of person you would want to hire or work for.” •  Gina Davis, Institute on Gender in Media. One study found that men have come to perceive that 17% ratio as 50/50. •  A McKinsey study says men are promoted based on potential, while women are promoted on accomplishments. •  Sandberg, TED talk, 2 more questions example
10. Understanding challenges… •  Confidence Gap - When girls are told before a test that girls are bad at math, they do worse. Even checking M/F has a negative effect. - When girls do well in math, they attribute it to luck or help, rather than innate talent the way boys do. This doesn’t happen in other subjects. •  Imposter Syndrome - This can happen to anyone, but the idea that you are a “fraud” and you will be found out.
11. What can you do? Maybe this whole system is out of order!!!! What is the work environment? This is not for you. This is not for you. This is not for you. This is not for you. This is not for you. This is not for you. This is not for you. “Culture fit” - t's almost this sacred space which lets them uncritically reject people from the company or from the team. On the surface level it tends to mean “We just don't like you. You're different from us. We don't want to figure out how to work with you.” “Not a culture fit” gives us a really easy way to disregard your experience and you as a person. http://www.fastcolabs.com/3016238/why-your-startups-culture-is-secretly-a wful
12. What can you do? Maybe this whole system is out of order!!!! What is the work environment?
13. What can you do? Etsy Case Study: •  Hacker School •  Interviews suck – “quick prove to me how smart you are!” “Smart” is not optional. “Quick” and “prove to me” are very rarely actually part of the job. •  Simply saying that you value diversity internally isn’t enough — there’s just no reason for an outside observer to believe you if they come and see a scarcity of women in the organization. http://firstround.com/article/How-Etsy-Grew-their-Number-of-Female-Engineers-by-500 -in-One-Year
14. What can you do? Maybe this whole system is out of order!!!! Harvey Mudd Case Study •  Complete overhaul of Intro course: take focus from “hard-core programming” and Java to “Gold”/”Black” Python course. From raw computation to solving problems. •  Sponsorship to Grace Hopper conference •  Hands-on research projects for Sophomores Alvarado, Christine and Dodds, Zachary Women in CS: An Evaluation of Three Promising Practices http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/03/science/giving-women-the-access-cod e.html
15. What can you do? You are going to have to do some recruitment. “When I’d talk to men about the conference and ask if they felt like they had an idea to submit for a talk, they’d *always* start brainstorming on the spot…and yet, overwhelmingly the women I talked to with the same pitch deferred with a, “well, but I’m not an expert on anything,” or “I wouldn’t know what to submit,” or “yes but I’m not a *lead* [title], so you should talk to my boss and see if he’d want to present.” http://geekfeminism.org/2012/05/21/how-i-got-50-women-speakers-at-my-te ch-conference/ Recognize when challenges are preventing you from “seeing” a qualified candidate
16. What can you do? “It needs to be okay for women to fail. We need flawed women whose mistakes represent just that — their own mistakes.” I need terrible female engineers https://medium.com/women-and-work/1023a2e9 73dd
17. What can you do? Maybe this whole system is out of order!!!!
18. What can you do? …let’s have FLEX time, maternity AND paternity leave. What employees are valued at your org? The ones that stay late and JAM on code all night? Or the ones that ask for help early and often and finish their work on time and go home? These work-life improvements benefit us ALL.
19. What can you do? What kind of kind of employees do you value? “Soft” skills are important for everyone to have. Recognize their value don’t just give lip service. The woman on your team is not the MOM of the team. She is not the secretary (unless she is) – it is not her job to take the notes because “she has the neatest writing.” What should you be asking yourself? Periodically take the “temperature” of the group, the organization, yourself. Are you confusing experience and ability? Let’s keep the conversation going…
20. What can you do? What is special about OUR community? •  Open source, community source, everything you do is public. EXCEPT when its not. •  We’re focused on educational technology •  This is not purely a technical conference. •  We need to be better about bringing in new developers…what is *that* experience like?! •  What (else) can we do?