it is self-manufactured. Companies
use the same recruiting firms. They
have a process where it’s easier for a
certain type of person to get through,
so then the recruiters bring in that
type of person, and build a huge pool
of only them.
There are fewer women with computer science degrees, but that’s also
an excuse. You don’t necessarily need
a computer science degree. A lot
of people are self-trained, and a lot of
people who are successful in tech aren’t
engineers. But it’s not only engineering
that has a dearth of women. It’s across
the whole tech industry, so it’s a much
bigger problem.
I’ve heard people say #Me Too hasn’t
helped women, it has just made men
scared of hiring women.
Of course it helped. People said the
same thing about my lawsuit—that VCs
would never hire another woman, that
it was going to prevent people from
meeting with women, and that it was
going to destroy any kind of gender
progress that had already been made.
That’s just sensationalistic—and also a
little bit pissy, for lack of a better word.
It’s like, “We don’t like this change, so
we’re going to dig in our heels.”
Plenty of long-standing research
shows that diverse teams perform
better. So why do we still see
so many all-white, all-male
partnerships?
Some of these companies are so data-
driven, so metrics-oriented—yet once
the data is staring them in the face,
their emotions override it, and they
think they don’t need to change. I
think there’s a comfort zone, and
there’s a fear of women in the work-
place. Sometimes they’ll say, “Our
culture is so inappropriate that we
can’t bring a woman into this envi-
ronment.”
So how do you change an entrenched
culture, like Uber’s?
It is so hard. You have to be vigilant
about every interaction. You have to
make sure if there are violations of
values that you’re on it. Uber’s culture
is in its DNA now, and I haven’t seen
all of the courage required to do the
tough changes. The company is going
to have to fire more than 20 people. It’s
going to have to really dig in and spend
time on it. The change agent needs to
be the CEO.
There are some signs that Uber
is not quite there. I don’t understand
why it doesn’t have the diversity and
inclusion lead reporting directly to
the CEO. Chief brand o;cer Bozoma
Saint John’s leaving is not a good
sign—especially when Uber is putting
$500 million into branding. That’s
not good.
What do you tell the well-meaning
CEO who hasn’t thought about
inclusion or diversity a lot but
wants to be one of the good guys?
There are a lot of very basic things:
Make inclusion either an explicit value
or part of all your other values. Make
sure you step back and look at all of
your processes: How are you recruit-
ing people? How are you building your
pipeline? Are you rewarding people
for bringing in their friends, who
probably look like them? Are you
getting a look at as many candidates
as possible, or are you looking only at
candidates who are on your homoge-
neous radar? Are you then going
through a fair process to bring candi-
dates on board? Or are you using trick
questions that people with friends in
the company will be able to answer,
because they get a heads-up?
If your leadership team is not
diverse and inclusive, then clearly this
is not a priority for you. It also means
that you have a limited circle. It may
be because of your recruiter or it may
be because of your board. But if your
executive team doesn’t have much
diversity, that’s going to be a problem,
because the company won’t be able to
attract people. And if you do, you’re
not going to get them to stay, because
they won’t see anybody who looks like
them in the top ranks.
The early results from the first
group of companies to work with
Project Include show some progress
in creating gender diversity but
not racial or ethnic diversity. What
can we learn from that?
Diversifying by race can be harder
than diversifying by gender, from an
emotional perspective. A lot of men
will say, “I want to bring women in,
because I want my daughter to have a
chance.” It’s very oriented toward the
people they have a direct connection
with. When it comes to somebody
from a di;erent race or ethnicity, they
may not have that connection.
And companies are still doing one
thing at a time: They focus on gender
first, and then the next group. Or
they’re going to attack it one phase at
a time because it’s so hard. That is
not inclusion. That means you may
be widening the group of people
included, but you’re still excluding all
these other people and your processes
are still not fair. And the people whom
you are theoretically including are
probably still treated di;erently,
because your culture is based around
exclusion. That’s the piece people
sometimes don’t get, because they
don’t want to. There are specific problems for specific groups, but the focus
and end goal is change, of the whole
industry, for everybody.
KIMBERLY WEISUL is an Inc. editor-at-large.
“The internet is such a powerful tool, and it’s been turned into this weapon used to hurt and harass people.”
