 Cool, so the title of this talk is The Truth About Mentoring Minorities, and hopefully you're in the correct room to hear the right talk. So to start off, I'm gonna tell you all a bit about myself. First off, my name is Byron Woodfork. I am a software crafter for the company known as Aethlite. We are a consulting company with our main office based out of Chicago. However, I happen to be moving to our Los Angeles office as of next week. So if you're an LA resident, feel free to say hi as I could use all the new friends I could get. And there is my Twitter handle as well. It's just my first and last name. So to start off, I'm gonna talk to you all about how I became a software crafter. And to do that, I actually have to do a bit of a rewind back in time. And for those of you that were around computers in like the late 90s, early 2000s, you probably recognize this beast. This is a compact desktop Rosario and this was my first computer ever. Someone actually gave me this computer, or gave it to my mom, my mom gave it to us. And I just was so fascinated. I wanted to learn the ins and outs. I wanted to learn everything that was to learn about this computer and computers in general. So I deconstructed it, I reconstructed it. I spent like hours upon hours learning about the operating system and things of that nature. And fast forward a bit, I eventually found myself in college and I remember having to choose between majors and I was like, all right, like there's computer science and there's these other majors who knows what they are, don't really care, but I really wanna do computer science. However, I was under the notion that to like major in computer science, you had to be ridiculously smart and or ridiculously good at math. And I felt like I did not match the bill in terms of that. So I actually talked myself down for majoring in computer science and that's probably why college didn't exactly pan out for me. That accompanied with like lack of funds and just lack of passion to like pursue what I was doing. I think I was like majoring in biology or something like that. I don't really remember. And upon dropping out of college, I actually found myself working full-time at Best Buy. This isn't exactly what I dreamed in terms of breaking into the tech industry, but I found myself here anyway. And in working at Best Buy, I remember one day I was like listening to like some motivational speech or something like that. And as I was listening to it, I remember something clicked and I knew that, I realized that this was not how I wanted to spend the rest of my life. I realized that I was not chasing my dreams in the way that I thought that I would when I was younger. And with that in mind, I got it in my mind that I was gonna break into the tech industry and I was gonna find some way to do it. So I researched some careers and I landed upon software developer. And for those of you that are familiar with MySpace or did some work with MySpace like in the mid to late 2000s, or yeah, about mid 2000s, you may remember that you could build MySpace layouts using HTML and CSS. And I was actually really good at that back in the day. So I was like, hey, I used to be really good at building MySpace layouts, so becoming a software developer should be pretty easy. Not too far from that, right? And I eventually found out that wasn't exactly as easy as I would hope. But nevertheless, I continued my path forward and I started teaching myself how to code through various sites such as Code Academy, for instance, and various other tutorial sites out there. And in doing so, I eventually came to the conclusion that this still wasn't gonna be as easy as I was hoping for it to be. And upon coming to that realization, I actually started reaching out to some friends, like pretty much anyone that I could find that may know someone that's in the software industry. And I just kept asking questions and eventually I found someone. It was actually a friend of mine, a guy by the name of Dave Moore. And I remember talking to Dave and we were exchanging conversation and I kept asking him questions about software related matters and he kept responding. And I was like, as long as this guy keeps responding, I'm gonna keep asking questions. Like, and eventually Dave realized that I wasn't gonna go away. And I remember he invited me out to his company, company known as Aethlite out in Chicago and he said, we have public meetups on Friday so you should come out and we can talk more about software related matters. And I was like, heck yeah man, I'm coming out like ASAP. I called up Best Buy, I was like, yeah, I'm not gonna be able to come in and work on Friday, click. Didn't really give them explanation. I was like straight path forward to breaking into the software industry is at least that's how I saw it anyway. So after the meetup, while we were at the company known as Aethlite, Dave talked to me about what was called or what he referred to as an apprenticeship. And I was pretty unfamiliar with the term and he explained what it was and basically what the apprenticeship is is the company will bring in people like myself who had little to no experience or senior developers as well into the company and teach them how to either build software or how to be software craft people as we like to refer to them as software crafters and essentially like get them to this level of writing clean code. And when he told me this, I was like, okay, that's awesome. And he offered me the position to become a software apprentice under him. And that was like, and immediately when he said that, like of course, like I'm like, yes, like whatever will get me out of my job at Best Buy, like whatever will break me into the tech industry, I'm all for it. I didn't even think about asking questions about like being paid or anything like that. I was probably willing to pay him at that point. You know, so and luckily the apprenticeship actually involved as he informed me that the company would actually pay me to learn. And this seemed kind of sketchy. I'm like, you all are gonna pay me to learn software. All right, like whatever, like I'm down for it. Like it doesn't matter, like I was willing to pay you. I was willing to work for free if need be. So that's 10 times better, right? So that's pretty much how I became an apprentice and eventually I would graduate and become a software crafter for the company. So that in the nutshell is how I became a software crafter for the company known as Aethlite. And I remember somewhere around the time that I graduated my apprenticeship, I was engaged in a pretty interesting discussion with someone that I had just come to know recently. And the person asked me a question. We were at, like the conversation topic revolved around like racial relations in our country. And the person asked me a question. He said, why aren't more African American people more successful like yourself? Like you brought yourself up, you're from Chicago. You're from a not so great neighborhood. You lived below the poverty line when you were a kid. Like why is it that you were able to become a success within the software industry when so many other people haven't? And like this question really plagued me and it struck me and I had to explain to the person, I had a lot of things that a lot of people that I knew and grew up with simply didn't, right? Like I was one of the lucky ones in that regard. And after that conversation, I really wanted to pinpoint exactly what it was that I had and exactly where my life changed for the better and essentially made me who I am the day. So in coming to that conclusion, hopefully I could help other people like me essentially become successful in the software industry as well. Now, many people wonder why minorities aren't succeeding in their respective companies. Many people wonder what's stopping us from breaking the upper management barrier once we are in these software development companies. And once we're at these companies, what's preventing us from becoming software developers or becoming team leads or becoming executives within our respective companies? In lieu of all this, I asked myself the question, where is the gap for minorities in our industry and how can I help close it? And eventually it clicked and I realized exactly where things changed for me. I realized where my life changed and that brought me to the realization that the solution to breaking the barrier for minorities within the tech industry is providing a strong network of mentors to support them. And now you might be saying to yourself, well, my company hired minority employees and they still left or my company hired minority employees and they're unhappy or my company hired minority employees and they couldn't make it up the corporate ladder. And there's a reason for that. For years, we've been teaching everyone exactly the same. For years, we've been bringing in protégés and apprentices and teaching them exactly the same. For years, we've literally been duct typing our teachings to these protégés and the problem with that is you simply cannot duct type people. You can't duct type software developers. We can't expect everyone to respond to the same type of mentoring. So a contributing factor as to why you'll get people that are unhappy at their jobs and essentially get frustrated and leave is that you're teaching them in the exact same way and it's simply not effective for everyone. Our industry is changing and because of that, we need to change with it and the way that we change is that we change the way that we mentor our protégés and apprentices. Mentors must be willing to adjust their teaching styles to the, essentially adjust their teaching styles to the uniqueness that comes with mentoring someone who's a minority. And in doing so, we must also become aware of the challenges that minorities face as well as the challenges that we face when mentoring someone who is a minority. And to do that, we can take a step back and look at some of the data when it comes to minorities involved in the tech industry. And first off, let's take a look at some of the diversity numbers among tech employees, companies such as Intel, Apple, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft. And if we look at the diversity numbers, we'll see that the largest bar, obviously, middle employees at these companies. And then we can look at next, the women at these companies as well. And as you can see, much noticeably lower. And next, the race and majority of the people that each one of these companies is, of course, an average white person. And if you break out your microscopes, you can see the really sad number of black people that are actually employed at these companies as well on the same goals for Hispanic and people that label themselves as others. So companies in our industry are struggling to retain minority employees. Like the CEO of Intel simply just has no idea, or he said he has no idea as to why they're losing African American employees at an alarming rate. And to look at things such as how often people quit, we have a graph that shows the predicted job quit rate for people across race. Now, if we look at the predicted quit rate for someone who is white, you'll see it's just below 4%. And if we look at the predicted quit rate for someone who is African American, you'll see it's noticeably larger, just below 5%. And the same goes for Hispanic Americans. Now, if we take a look at that, like this pretty much has everyone associated in terms of male and female. However, what happens if we have someone who is a dual minority, say someone who is an African American woman, for example, or someone who's a Hispanic American woman, for example. The predicted job quit rate, and compared to men for African American women, is actually 61% greater, and for Hispanic American women, 67% greater. Why is this? Well, one of the main reasons is, according to research, whites and minorities do not progress up the corporate ladder in the same way. Whites are more likely to be placed on a fast track to an executive position within their company than a person of color. Whereas people of color tend to plateau in middle management during their careers at the same companies as their white peers. And as a result, many people get frustrated and essentially leave their company. And unfortunately, this creates a domino effect. And the domino effect is in that you have these minority employees that plateau in their careers and eventually leave your company, and that leaves you with less and less minority employees for other entry-level employees to actually look up to. So it makes it more difficult for people to build relationships with people that look like them and or resemble them. And speaking from experience, it's honestly just comforting knowing that there's someone at the company that looks like me and actually did something in the company, made it up the corporate ladder. One of the questions that I asked myself for any company that I'm gonna apply for is how many people at this company look like me? How many people have built successful careers at this company look like me? And how many people have become executives at this company look like me? And it's far too often that that answer is no one. And this can be disheartening to a lot of people. However, there are companies that actually see minorities succeed and break that upper management barrier. So what sets them apart from the rest? How are some companies succeeding in retaining minority employees? And for the minority employees that are retained at these companies, what's keeping them motivated to essentially achieve something greater within the company? In asking myself these questions, I came across a bit of research and the research was conducted on the career progression of minority employees within corporate America. And the research came to several conclusions, but one of the most notable conclusions was that the minority employees who were the most successful, one thing that they had in common was a strong network of mentors to support them. Why it's so more likely to be placed on a fast track to executive positions, as I mentioned earlier, whereas minorities weren't necessarily fast track. However, even though they weren't fast track at these companies where minorities were successful, their mentors invested in them as if they would be fast track. So even though they plateaued for much longer than their peers who were white, they still invested in them. Their mentors continuously invested in them. And in turn, this helped prevent people from leaving the company and or decreasing their work performance. So this was my first mentor at Aethlite, guide by the name of Dave Moore. Dave mentored me individually for several months and he also brought in Malcolm to be my co-mentor. And around like four months or so into my apprenticeship, Dave introduced me to this guy, Paul Pagle. And I remember the conversation Dave and I had. Dave said, hey Byron, do you know what scope is in Ruby? And at the time I was still pretty green. Like I was still really new to programming aspects in Ruby in general. So I said, no, I don't know what scope is in Ruby. So he said, awesome, because I set up a one-on-one with you and the CEO of the company for him to explain to you what scope is in Ruby. And I was like, what? The CEO of the company, like CEO of the company is gonna teach me Ruby, like who am I? I'm nobody, right? Like that's what was going through my mind. And so I like, I found that really awesome. And Dave introduced me to several other people as well who would eventually become my co-mentors within the company of Aethlite. And if ever there were a question that Dave felt that he weren't as knowledgeable as someone else on the topic, he would actually put me in touch with several other people at the company that could explain it either different from him or much better than him or whatever the case may be. And if he ever felt that I was leaning on him too much for answers, he would continuously have me go out to people that I generally was uncomfortable going out to and not confident in actually asking questions. And he'd make me ask these people these questions. And in turn, this helped me build relationships within the company, helping build my network of mentors and contribute to my success in the company. And also, so to be completely successful as mentors, we must also become aware of the challenges that we face when mentoring someone who's a minority. And with that, we have challenges and opportunities. And according to research, minorities who plateaued in their careers received mentoring that was basically instructional. However, the most successful minorities who actually broke the career barrier, they received mentoring that was more than instructional. They received closer, fuller, developmental relationships with their mentors. So purely instructional mentoring wasn't sufficient enough for minorities. Protégés needed to feel connected to their mentors. Research shows that cross-race as well as cross-gender relationships can have difficulty forming. However, most mentorships must be cross-race or cross-gender. And as a result, you have the possibility of situations such as negative stereotypes, for example. Mentors must be willing to give their protégés the benefit of the doubt, investing in them because we expect them to succeed. A potential mentor who holds a negative stereotype, perhaps based on race, may withhold his support for his protégé until his protégé proves himself or herself worthy. Such subtle racism is that, may help explain why the minorities in the research that I mentioned earlier weren't fast-tracked in the same way that white people were in the companies that they worked for. Whites were placed on a fast-track based on their perceived potential, whereas minorities had to prove a solid and sustained record of performance over time. So in turn, minorities actually had to be over-prepared for the same positions that their white peers were actually being granted. When we, as minorities, feel like we aren't given the benefit of the doubt, we might become more reserved in our actions for fear that we might fail or be disciplined at something, or for something we do or say. And stereotypes have also proven to actually reduce performance within the workplace. And that actually brings me to an idea, and the idea is what's known as stereotype threat. Stereotype threat is when people feel themselves to be at risk of conforming to stereotypes about their social group, and to elaborate on this, there were these psychologists at Stanford, and they were actually conducting this case research study. And the case research study involved them grabbing both men and women, and they placed them into a room, and the men and women that they grabbed had equal levels of math skills. So upon placing them into the room, they actually gave everyone standardized math tests, and they had them take the tests, and they noticed something that actually repeated itself. They noticed that women actually underperformed on the standardized math tests, even though they were of equal skill level to all the men in the room as well. And the psychologists couldn't actually figure out why it took them a while before they actually had an idea, and the idea was, hey, maybe there's a stereotype threat that's happening that we aren't seeing, specifically the stereotype that women aren't as good as men in standardized math tests. So they actually recreated the same environment, the same experiment. They placed the men and the women in the room again, gave them the standardized math tests, except this time they did something different. This time before they took the tests in front of everyone in the room, they said, I know you may have heard that women aren't as good as men on standardized math tests. However, that's not true for this particular test. For this particular test, women actually performed just as well as the men. And in saying just those few words, the women actually brought their scores up and performed just as well as the men. So if you caught that, there was that stereotype threat that they just had looming in the back of their mind, something that you just don't necessarily think of, something that is unconscious, it's not something that you think of on a regular basis. And it can definitely, as proven in the case study, lower your performance on the job. And in talking about that, this leads me to something that is referred to as being a coach and a counselor for your protege. And to explain, a coach gives technical advice while a counselor talks about the emotional experience of something. And I'm gonna tell you all the story about essentially me working for Aethlite and my first days of coming into Aethlite. I remember every day I come into work, I came into work with just one goal. And that goal was to make sure that I didn't get fired. Like you laugh, but I'm so serious. Like every day I came into work with imposter syndrome, like surely everyone else here is better at software development than I am. Like I'm sitting next to people that came out of deaf boot camp and paid like 10, 20 grand to come out of deaf boot camp and I just came off of Code Academy trying to teach myself how to write NIF statement, right? Like I'm sitting next to people that went to college and got computer science degrees, people that are already five or 10 years into their software development careers and their apprentices as well. Like I was feeling inadequate. And eventually like all of this anxiety built up and I informed my mentor and he told me something that actually shocked me. Like he told me that he also felt the same way I did when he was an apprentice. And this was like super shocking to me in the fact that I knew how much experience he had coming in the eighth light. He had several years of experience, really smart guy. And I was like, all right, like if he felt the same way I did, maybe I'm just like going crazy. Maybe I actually have this. And he told me that I did. He told me and informed me that I was good enough to be at the company, good enough to work here and that I was progressing in my career essentially being an apprentice and becoming a software developer. So to be effective mentors for minorities, we must both play the role of coaching counselor, not only teaching the technical things, but also being someone that can listen, someone that can actually connect to our protégés on that emotional level as well. Because it's too often that minorities feel like outcasts. It's too often that they feel like they don't have anyone to relate to. And while there might not be someone at your company that looks like your minority protégé, that doesn't mean you can't be there for them emotionally. And something else that comes to mind when it comes to matching up people with mentors is the idea of identification and role modeling. And what I mean by that is you essentially want to have someone that a protégé can identify with for them to be taught by. Now, Dave and I, we had similar feelings of emotion going through our apprenticeship. While we're on completely different technical levels, we actually experienced similar struggles in going through our apprenticeship and that allowed us to essentially connect and identify with each other. And he was already my role model because I remember he took me to his place and I was like, dude, like this is a huge place, like this is a nice place, you're a software developer, like you're a rock star, at least, that's how I saw it in my mind. So he was already my role model. He was doing these awesome things, giving talks and whatnot and teaching people. And I was like, that is the life that I want to have. So he was already my role model. So in identification and role modeling, it also means that a mentor sees someone that reminds himself or herself of themselves in previous times or as an apprentice sees someone that reminds him or herself of themselves in the future. And I mentioned before, many relationships must be cross race or cross gender or many mentorships, I should say. And because of this, this brings about the idea and opportunity for something that's referred to as protective hesitation. And protective hesitation is when you review your relationship with someone as more fragile than others in fear that you might offend that person from something you do or say. And to elaborate on this, there's a case study whereas there was a white mentor who had a minority protege and he felt as though his minority protege style was too abrasive, like he was too rude and generally not a great person to work with. However, he never told his protege this for fear that he might sound prejudice, specifically that he'd harbor the stereotype that all black men are rude or disrespectful. And the mentor eventually found out that he was right when his protege became an issue with other people at the company. And by that time, it was too late. His protege had been deemed a problem. So in terms of discussing race and in terms of just racial relations period, people believe that they aren't supposed to discuss race and if we have to discuss it, then it must be a problem. However, that's not the case. Relationships where mentor and protege can actually actively discuss race can lead to greater opportunities for their protege. And some people will argue that discussing race might make people feel othered and that doesn't have to be the case. When we're open to discussing race, we're helping inspire our minority apprentices to take hold of something that makes them unique as individuals. I had a conversation with one of my mentors and I remember him saying that, he said, Byron, like I don't know if you're aware but there aren't many people in the software industry that look like you. And I was like, yeah, I kind of knew that. I thought he was joking but he was actually serious. He was making a point. He said, there aren't many people in the software industry that look like you and if you wanted to take it upon yourself to essentially become someone that other people look up to and essentially teaching people software development, that could be really huge for yourself as well as several other people that are looking to break into the software industry. Like you could be their inspiration, that person that they connect to on that level. So discussing race actually is one of the main reasons that I'm actually up here because my mentors inspired me to actually give this talk. So all in all, we've discussed things such as the career progression of both whites and minorities. We've discussed that whites are more likely to be placed on a fast track within corporate America than that of a minority. We've also discussed the diversity numbers among several tech employees and discussed essentially people having issues retaining employees at their companies. And to back that up, we've also discussed ways that we can help change those things. We've discussed that we can build strong network, strong menswear networks for our apprentices. We've discussed that we can become coaches and counselors for our apprentices as well. We've also discussed the possibility of negative stereotypes in the workplace, as well as the stereotype threat. We've also discussed the ability to identify and become role models for our apprentices. And we've discussed the idea of protective hesitation. And the goal of this talk was to essentially answer this question. Where is the gap for minorities and how can I help close it? And I think successfully like answer that question at least on one aspect. Building a strong network of mentors for our apprentices. So that concludes the talk. To wrap this up, I'd actually like to discuss this last one thing with you all. At Eighth Light, we've always had an apprenticeship model. And it wasn't until recent time that we actually had this crazy idea of not only just bringing apprentices into the company for us to teach, but to actually bring apprenticeship programs to other companies. So essentially, if you were a company that had like a group of developers who were either junior or senior level and wanted to either learn about some new technology or they wanted to learn how to become leaders within the technology space, we're actually working on this new project where we'll actually teach a group of developers from your company how to do that. And right now, the project is called Develop. It's a working title. We really don't have a specific title yet. I wanted to go with Bartik after I believe Susan Bartik who was awesome. But apart from that, if you have any questions in regards to this or anything else for that matter, feel free to see me and that is it. And I am willing to take questions as well. Yeah, so like, I think one of the things about my mentorship that really helped me out in that regard, or I'm sorry, let me repeat the question. You said, what are some things that you can do to help you and your apprentice identify with each other and discuss and essentially become more open, correct? Right, so one of the things that really helped me in that regard was that my mentor and I would actually like just talk after work, right? Like we just talk about whatever and like while we were friends before I got to A-Flight, once he became my mentor, it was kind of intimidating, like it was weird. Like I feel like I couldn't open up to him anymore once he became my mentor, but eventually we got to that point. And it was honestly just a matter of like Kim showing me that he was a real person. Him opening up to me about ways that he felt, things that he felt. And that allowed me to feel like I could trust him enough to actually open up to him. So essentially like, I feel like the more that you pour into someone, the better your relationship can be and that'll allow people to feel like they can trust you and open up to you as well. Right, so like you would essentially like to reach out to the minority developers that you have on your team at your company, correct? Yeah, so with that, like there can be like several ways to do that and essentially making sure that you can retain your minority employees. And you said there's like five of them. Okay, and they're all of equal levels within the company? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so in that regard, like it can be pretty difficult when someone's starting out because like there's no one for them to look up to in terms of people that look like them. So one thing that I always suggest in that aspect is to actually find people outside of your company, not necessarily to even hire, but people to maybe come in and like give a talk, people for them to network with, right? So that they can like build those mentor relationships. And in terms of like you, like making them feel welcome, just like talk to them about like thing, like ask them what are their concerns with the company, right? Like ask them where do they wanna be and if they open up to you in that regard, then you can say, all right, like let's start making some plans to like get you to where you wanna be because it's really often that people just won't ask those questions and or they'll ask the questions and the people will tell them and they're like, okay, well, all right, don't really have too much to tell you, but like you'll get that, you'll get somewhere eventually, like pretty much just like working with them, right? And like making them feel like they're a part of the team and a part of the company and someone that matters. All right, so to repeat the question, she said that she has a woman of color within her group of women software developers. Yeah, and you don't wanna like make her responsible for educating you on like challenges that she faces in the industry. Yeah, so like to start with that, that's like making sure that your team, actually one believes in the idea of becoming educated on like challenges that she'll face on a regular basis, right? It starts with you all. And if you can like even talk to her or like give presentations for that matter on challenges that minorities face on a regular basis, like that's like really huge. Like that makes us like feel like we're not alone in like this struggle to like break into the tech industry and actually succeed, right? So as long as you all were to attack it in that aspect and actually be proactive and not reactive and not like put the burden completely on her to inform you all of like ways that she might feel or things that she or challenges that she might face. All right, so. So yeah, so the question revolved around if you're looking for or if you're either not employed or you don't have a strong network or mentor network at your current workplace, what can you do to make it so that you do, right? Yeah, so in that aspect, like one thing that I always tell people to keep in mind, even if you have employees at your company that have strong networks of mentors like try to encourage them to or like you essentially put it on yourself as a mentor or as an apprentice to like reach out to other people outside of the company that you either work for or if you're actually unemployed, then I'd honestly just started reaching out to just like people that I admire, right? Like I've reached out to several people that like were just role models to me in the software industry and actually gotten replies back. People that would like happily discuss like progressing up the software development ladder and breaking into the tech industry and stuff like that. So as long as like you can like muster up the courage to actually talk to these people, a lot of them will actually reply. A lot of them are really helpful and willing to teach local user groups. Yeah, that's a huge thing too. Yeah, just like going to meetups, anything within a community, things that are preferably free. And like you can meet a lot of really cool people there. A lot of people that actually got employed at AtheLite met someone at Meetups. So right, so to repeat the question, she said that she has a coworker who is being racist towards another minority coworker within the workplace and she wasn't exactly sure how to handle the issue. So before going to HR, and I'm gonna tread lightly on answering this question because it's a very sensitive topic. So before going to HR, I'd honestly talk to whoever was the first hire up in like in charge of the team and actually let them know that it's making you feel uncomfortable. Like put it on you, don't say, oh, it's making this person feel uncomfortable because maybe it's not, maybe it's making you feel uncomfortable. And if that is the case, then it's their job to actually see to it that something is done about it. And in that regard, when that person, whoever the hire up is, decides to go to HR for example, they'll say like, hey, you actually have the problem with this person and what they were saying. And that way you just completely take the burden off of the person that you're seeing being abused. So, sweet, thank you. I've never gotten that. Thank you all for the very thought-provoking questions, those were all.