 The keynote was good. I heard it was awesome. Didn't get to go, but. I'm going to go ahead and get started, so we're not in here forever. Today I'm talking about code, culture, and the pursuit of happiness. I'm not really talking about any code, but. I'm Kinsey Endurum. You can find me on Twitter here. And I'm from Denver, Colorado. Yeah, Denver's awesome. I hear some cheers. I work for a company called Ghost Spot Check. It's an awesome startup. We're in downtown Denver, about 45 people. We have about nine engineers. And I also have a nonprofit that I work on on the side called Kubmo. So if you want to check that out, that would be awesome. We build technology curriculum for women's empowerment programs around the world. So a lot of times, these empowerment programs don't have a technology component, and we think it's important. So we build and teach that curriculum. And we're actually headed to Peru in January to teach. So I don't know if anyone is ever interested in doing that type of volunteer work, but it's awesome. So visit Kubmo on Twitter, or the website is Kubmo.builders, if you want more information. So two years ago, actually, in Miami at RubyConf, how many people were at the Miami RubyConf a couple years ago? A couple hands. I very nervously gave one of my first talks talking about breaking down the barriers to entry. And alternative paths to becoming a software engineer. But I guess as time goes on, I've kind of realized that there's a bigger issue that our industry is facing. I'm sure a lot of you have seen this statistic, but that 56% of women are actually leaving the industry compared to the 17% of men that leave the industry, just to show that. And then 97% of these women claim that they're not ever going to come back, which I think is a big shame. So we have all of these awesome, important organizations that are really trying to solve the problem of getting women and minorities into tech, as well as boot camps and awesome code schools that have popped up all over the place that are amazing. But we have very few organizations that are trying to get minorities to stay. And when I was doing research for this, I started taking screenshots of all the articles that were out there because I thought it was really depressing. This is just all over the place. And if I had seen these three years ago when I was first getting into the industry, I probably would have been really discouraged after reading these. So I feel like we have an issue of a leaky bucket. We're doing all this awesome work to get people in, but we're not doing the work to keep people there and to keep people happy. So I am curious why. Like, why are people so unhappy? Why are they leaving? So I did a bunch of research. You'll see my citation slide at the end. It's crammed full of stuff. I also got to interview a bunch of awesome people to understand why they left or why they had felt like they should leave. Most of the people I interviewed said at one point or another they did want to, in fact, leave the tech industry to pursue something else, which I thought was super interesting. So I'm going to kind of dive into a couple of the trends that I found and then really get into why I'm up here talking to you all today. So the first trend that I found was a lack of flexibility in the workplace. So lack of progressive maternity leave policies, obviously. Also, paternity leave policies. A lot of times people will tell me, oh, we have a really progressive maternity leave policy and I'm like, what about maternity leave? They'll say, oh, well, women get three months off. I'm like, what about men? Two weeks. And I'm like, well, that's not really progressive because it's not equal. So I think that's important to mention. But also, a lot of the times women didn't say that the lack of maternity leave was a problem, just a lack of having a flexible work environment in the first place. Also, the tech industry is really notorious for maintaining crazy working hours. And recently, I don't know if you all read this article by DHH, but I thought, I know he has a really bad rap, but I really liked this blog post that he put out and he talked a lot about how he wanted to have a life beyond work. And he wanted more hobbies and intellectual stimulation than hacker news, which I thought was funny. So yeah, and also having familial responsibilities makes it really hard to have a job in the tech industry. A lot of times you have to choose between having a career family and if you have both, I really applaud you. It's a hard thing to do. So yeah, this is a quote from Anita Borg Institute that basically flexible scheduling is essential for retaining women in the workplace who often face work life challenges. The second trend that I found were biased evaluations. They just kept asking me to prove myself over and over again. Like now, I kind of feel like that a lot. A lot of times when people ask what I'm speaking about and I say what I'm speaking about, I get really embarrassed because I feel like I should be giving a hardcore technical talk because people might not take me quite as seriously as a software engineer, which is unfortunate, but that's how I feel. So in survey, 72% of women have sensed biases when they're being critiqued or given a performance review. Here's kind of a chart that Fortune did with 28 companies from all over the world, not just the US, with 248 studies. And this is comparing negative feedback with constructive feedback, men versus women. So 88% of women received critical feedback versus 59% of men. And a lot of times I found certain words were more apparent in women's reviews. Words like abrasive, bossy, which I think is funny, and also piped down, so needing to be quiet and step back and let others shine. The third trend that I found were less technical roles. It's awesome, like I said before, we have all of these amazing junior developers entering the scenes. A lot of grads were boot camps. The scholars here, a lot of them did boot camps and I think it's great. But a lot of the times they have these awesome other career paths that they had, other strengths. So they end up getting pulled into non-technical roles and then the developer dream kind of goes out the window. And I get it, at a small company, employees need to wear many hats. But I think it's important that if we hire people in the hopes that they're going to be writing code that they actually get to write code. So this definitely happened to me. I was at a job and I was told I was gonna be writing code all the time and it was gonna be awesome. And slowly over time I started getting pulled into more like business development roles and placing people type thing. And I started to get really unhappy and kept voicing that I wanted to be in a technical role. And it came down to the point where they offered me a high paying job but it wasn't a technical role. And I was really scared to kind of jump off that clip and not have another job and say, you know what, I just wanna do this. And I did that and I'm so glad that I did. I know a lot of people are in that situation if I were you I would just say, hey, give it a shot. And if it doesn't work out, you can always find another job like that. And I know a lot of people who have definitely experienced the same things. And then we also have the issue of mid-level developers who are awesome and getting pulled into managerial positions and they stop writing code. The fourth thing I found was a sense of isolation. You know, being the odd duck and not feeling like you belong. I talked to Sandy Metz about this talk and she said that this was one of the things that she felt feelings of not belonging in a homogenous group. So yeah, you feel lonely like a fraud and that you don't deserve a seat at the table. And eventually you get tired of being the odd duck. Eileen, who is speaking I think later today, said that she wouldn't feel so alone if more women gave technical talks and contributed to open source. Which as you all know, very few women do contribute to open source. And I felt like I should probably reach out to my manager to tell them how much I was struggling. But I felt like the odd person out. And at the end of the day it's really just having someone to talk to about these issues. I'm the only female engineer on my team so a lot of times I don't really feel like I have people I can talk to except for other people that I know outside of my company, which is great. The fifth thing I found was the little things. So really just over the years, people's small comments or things that make you feel different piling up over and over again. And yeah, this is kind of a long quote, so sorry, I have lots of quotes. Yeah, this is another quote, just not seeming worth it, having to put up with the culture in tech. Elena, who runs Women Who Code says things that are so small that you never complain about them. But they're the kind of things that make you question like, hey, is this the right career path for me? Recently, I don't know if anyone has read this blog post, but Shaft, I don't know his real name. Does anyone know his real name besides his Twitter handle? He was the VP of Engineering at Twitter. Who left, just left? What's his name? Leslie, okay, yeah, sorry, I couldn't find his name. But he just put out a really awesome blog post on Medium that talked about his struggles with diversity working in the tech industry and I thought it was really, really a good read. So basically, he could not see himself at a company where they were so unaware of diversity and had so many blind spots. So, he also went on to say that from this position, Twitter may find it hard to make changes to culture in the future. And now, since he's left, there are no people of color in any VP roles, any managerial roles in the engineering or product team, which I thought was really interesting. So, it's really a thousand tiny paper cuts. The CTO of the United States, Megan Smith, has been quoted saying this a lot. Joanne Chang, who is also in Denver, gives us an example of the things that she hears over and over again that kind of make her feel discouraged, especially as a senior developer. Kylie, more often than not, people think I'm brand new or more junior than I am just based on her gender. So, I realize everything that I've been telling you has been very, very woman focused. I've given this talk a couple times at conferences and I realize going back that I don't really talk about people of color, different socioeconomic backgrounds or different sexual orientations. And part of this is because there's a extreme lack of research in this area. Most of the time when you're Googling why people leave the tech industry, it really just focuses on women and most of the time white women. So, I really loved Corinna's talk yesterday because she didn't just focus on women, she focused on a bunch of different diversity issues. And a lot of times you go to women's conferences or women's groups and that's kind of the only thing that's ever focused on. We kind of have tunnel vision with this. So, Salesforce this year had their big conference and they had a panel called Building an Inclusive Workplace and they solely talked about white women. And even when they were asked about why they aren't focusing on broader aspects of diversity, the CEO, this was the CEO's answer. So, we're not ignoring it, it's something we support. It's something we're working on, but our main focus right now is the women's issue. And I think there's a problem with that. So, this echoes what many are saying in Silicon Valley. Get in line, people of color, wait for white women to get theirs and then we'll get to you. And I don't think that's okay. We're spending huge amounts of money and time on getting women into tech, but not on people of color, different sexual orientations or socioeconomic backgrounds like I've said. A lot of times it isn't a big deal when there isn't a person of color on a panel, but when it's all men, we kind of tend to freak out. And I think we should always be questioning these things. And if going back to one of my previous slides I showed, you can see here all of the research that I had found are some of the titles of the articles that had come up and most all of them are just focused around gender and that's it. So, pretty eye-opening. So, and I'm definitely guilty of thinking in this mindset too. You know, my entire presentation, like I said, has been pretty much focused on women. So, basically, I want to make more of an effort to think of different things, on different levels and all of these things coming together. And that is what diversity should be. So I'm hoping everyone here can get inspiring to do that too. So I've kind of digressed, but I thought that was something important to bring up just because I've mostly been talking about women up and to this point. So where I think change needs to happen, as far as making people not want to leave a toxic industry, like the tech industry has a rap for right now. And I really do think it comes down to one thing, the root cause of all of this, and that is company culture. So, and also before I keep going, and by company culture I do not mean perks. Pamela Vickers gave a really good talk and a lot of times when people think of company culture, they think, oh, I get really fancy coffee, there's a barista in my office and I get chef cooked lunches and stuff like that. And that's definitely not what I'm talking about now. And those things are awesome and I love being able to bring my dog to work, but I don't think that's the thing that we should focus on. So a lot of things came up like old boys club, lack of support and microaggressions. A lot of psychologists who've been studying this definitely found that people's apprehension about staying in the industry come from the environments that they work in. So Pamela, who I've been talking about a lot, I feel like dreaded going into work each day and she felt stupid every day and that's a terrible way to feel her going to work. So what's interesting is she left that company and moved on to a different company and it completely changed her mind about the tech industry. She's now at a company where she has helpful people who lead her and she continues to grow, so I think that's awesome. And I can totally resonate with this because the only reason I am where I am today was because I left that company culture that wasn't right for me and that was toxic and found one where it was amazing. And I've been at the company I'm at for over a year now and I get to write code every day and it's been amazing and I almost decided not to pursue this any longer and I'm so glad that I did. So the CEO of Airbnb also has a great blog post where he talks about don't fuck up the culture. That was what he heard as a most important piece of advice that he could give. He goes on to say that culture is what creates the foundation for all future innovation. Airbnb won't be around for a long time or won't be around maybe it will in 100 years but he thinks that the company culture will be. So what can we do? What can we do about this issue? A lot of times when I was reading through the research I would see quotes like this when people were asked what they could do about the situation and I really disagree with these types of answers like basically saying that we're fucked and I completely disagree with this and I think everyone and Scarlett here says just men and I think everyone is crucial for creating an environment where everyone can thrive and not just women. So I do want to say to be wary of something called culture fit and I hear this a lot and a lot of times it can be anti-diversity I guess is the right word for it because you don't want to find people who are just like you. Someone told me they do something called the beer test so do you want to go have a beer with this person on a regular basis? And I don't think that's a very good gauge of hiring and finding out if someone's a culture fit. I think we should be focusing on broader issues of culture and I'm gonna kind of talk about a couple of these but just creating a culture where acknowledging that there is a problem. If something comes up, being able to talk about it openly and freely and not have it be a weird issue. A lot of times when I was unhappy in a company I didn't feel like I could do this without being punished or without being excluded or being like oh, this girl's just talking about diversity all the time. So I think that's a problem. And also where we recognize our biases and Sarah May has said this a lot in her blog posts and I also mean all of our biases. Google does unconscious bias training workshops. They actually have a really amazing site right now where you can get all of their resources and stuff that they're doing. It's awesome if you just go to their website. We've started to do this at GoSpotCheck and it's been amazing. And it's really eye-opening and not just for the dudes on my team but me too in different ways that I am biased. I also like this having open casual conversations. If someone says something that we talked about the little things. Somebody says something that kind of bothers you. Just say something. It's scary but that's where change comes from. So we need cultures where it's okay to make mistakes as long as we can learn from them as well. A lot of times I've heard like having three strike policies so if you break production three times you're fired which I think is really weird. We also educate ourselves on these issues. Read these blog posts, read what people are saying. I think it's really important that we're thinking about these things. And we also spend a lot of time mentoring and onboarding because otherwise the junior developers who are coming in are not going to succeed. I got to visit SoundCloud this summer when I was in Berlin and they do an awesome mentoring program where they give employees 20% time each week where they can mentor and give back to the community which I think is really awesome on their dime. Also having flexible work schedules and equal maternity and maternity leave policies is important. Travis CI has 25 days of required pay time off and these are vacation days. I think required pay time off is awesome because it actually forces you to take a break and a lot of times when you have unlimited time off you feel guilty about taking time off most of the time. At least I do. So it's nice having the required. So just develop a reputation for being a company that cares about its employees. Also investing and learning. I think that's important. We're very lucky that we're in an industry where we can learn every day but really being behind your employees and supporting them when they are doing those things. And I think another really important thing is being transparent. A lot of times you don't really know what's happening behind closed doors. Having open offices, having space where you can truly know and understand what's going on in the higher levels of your company I think is really important. So now I want to kind of go into some of the things that I haven't liked in cultures that I've been a part of before and which almost made me leave the industry or not be a developer anymore. The first thing is definitely feeling my gender. Feeling like I couldn't be myself or being told I couldn't be myself. Little care for employees. I really just felt like they did not care if I was there or not. No transparency. And any time I had a need or something that I wanted to change it always fell upon deaf ears and that's not something that should ever happen in the company. Unhelpful feedback. So a lot of the times the criticism that I would receive would be like, oh, your personality doesn't fit or this sort of thing, not like, hey, you can do this better when you're writing code or this is how you can become a better developer. And you can't see. Yeah, it didn't feeling like I had a voice. Didn't feel like I could make changes that I needed to. So the cultures that I do like and that I've seen or been a part of are pretty much just the opposite of all the things that I didn't like. Never feeling my gender, having a voice, feeling like I can be myself. Also a place where learning is prioritized. And notice that I didn't say I was best friends with all my employees. I had awesome perks and I had the highest salary. I actually took a really big salary cut to go to the company I'm at and it was definitely worth it just because of the culture. So why am I up here? Why should I care about all this stuff? Why are you sitting here listening? And I really do believe that improving company culture will solve the diversity problem. More diverse teams make better decisions. Diverse groups outperform homogenous groups. We've seen all this research. This quote was pulled from the article that I was telling you about about the VP of Engineering from Twitter. We should be seeing this. A lot of times we see this as a morality issue but it's more than that. It's a benefit to growth. But it's also more than this and the problem spans beyond diversity. 31% of employees are engaged at their work. That's a really low number. So the study defined engaged as people who were involved, enthusiastic and committed to their work and their workplace. And the study surveyed about 2.5 million Americans which was crazy. So imagine if 100% or 80% of us were actually engaged in our jobs and how much more productive we would be not only in the workplace but in solving these issues that are greatly facing our society. So really going further than diversity and actually trying to change the world. So change can start here with all of us. And I think that we need to be the role models because everyone's looking at us right now. We make the devices that everyone has in their hand. Everyone has a laptop. Everyone has a cell phone. Maybe not everyone has a laptop actually. In developing countries it's more the cell phone thing. But still. And we're developing the apps and we're building the software that everyone is using. So we truly are the future of innovation and I believe that we can make the biggest change. So I know there are a lot of you who have small companies are gonna go on and create your own companies. And I think it's really important that you pay a lot of attention to creating your company cultures. And a lot of time that's not the first place or the first thing that comes to your mind. You're very excited about the product you're creating, et cetera, et cetera. But you should be really excited and passionate about the cultures that you're building because I think it's really important. You could be the sole reason why someone stays in the tech industry, why someone leaves, why someone ultimately solves a problem that changes the world. Also for people who are still not at that level yet and employees, I think choosing your company culture is really important. And you don't have to be unhappy. A lot of people I feel like are in their current cultures and there are places where you can truly be happy and feel like you can make a difference. And I think it is a big responsibility to support that and find the company that fits that. So I really do believe that we have the power in this situation. I just wanted to put this picture because I thought it was funny. Yeah, so opposite to what the quotes that I had been reading a lot of the articles, I really do believe that this can change. And I believe that we need to change it because we are a culture. The Ruby community, for example, is a culture and let's lead by example and let's not fuck it up. And here, that's it. And these are my citations. If you wanna look at those. Oh, you can't really see them all got cut off. But yeah, if anyone wants to talk more, feel free to tweet at me or send me an email. Thank you guys so much for listening to me this morning and I hope you have a great rest of your day. Thank you.