 Hi everybody more to this side. Okay wait. I'll move my computer then. Hi everybody. I Challenge you the go community to end fix solve once and for all The discrimination and under representation of women people of color People with disabilities LGBTQIA Anybody Within one year That's all you get one year Is it achievable? I Think so I Intend to show you that it's it probably is if we moved the conversation to a more pragmatic To for more pragmatic solutions discuss the how instead of the if Why a year Because when you want to get something done You set a deadline Don't like my deadline Set your own, but then you have to make it Because we're not likely to discover anything new next year About this topic So why not just do something now? So a little bit about me. I'm Rona and I organize women who go Berlin. I also I also organize various scholarship programs for go bridge I run my own mentoring program and I'm mainly an engineer and I love people opinions code and data So naturally because before giving this talk I check to see what kind of impact I can expect from my own call to action According to science Only 10% of you are likely to take action after hearing my talk To those 10% Thank you You're actually all I need If you implement some of the solutions that I'm going to lay out today or even come up with your own Other companies will take notice So thank you very much in advance To the remaining 90% I Made that number up. So you have no excuse Don't listen to people who say according to science. So why do I do what I do in my entire career? It's been 16 years. I reported to a woman Exactly once for a few months directly For a few months in 2004 It's been almost 16 years And as I become more and more senior it's likely to never happen for me again unless I go work for a very large company anybody hiring And get very lucky And this is what that looks like in a graph. I call this work of art the flat line I can therefore summarize Mathematicians I Can therefore summarize my biggest concern with the tech world, especially startups back-end and ops with really that's where the glass ceiling is Tech lead team lead the most junior leadership positions Well, it turns out that the glass ceiling is even lower than that According to hacker ranks a woman women's report from 2018 women are by far like clear to be in junior position than men Women as a gender I statistically stuck in junior positions Some are truly stuck as juniors are not promoted not trained or promoted very slowly Combined with a very very serious retention problem where women across all levels are constantly living tech In fact according to a survey from November 2018 from indeed The leading reasons for women to leave tech war lack of career growth poor management So so slow salary growth lack of challenge if you can believe that and Lack of work-life balance now. This is a multiple selections as you can see it adds to more than 100% so lack of work-life balance was actually expected to be higher on the list and This is surprising now if you take all of those items we can do something about everything on it So I can share countless stories to explain how we got to this point And I have research is coming out of my ears, but I only have 25 minutes Sorry a call for papers committee for having to review my paper with all the data that I have on this topic So I want to focus instead today on one message That like you I'm in the business of solving problems and this is one that we can solve I Am after all an engineer and this is what I do for a living So we can still have it using the same methodologies that we used to solve everything else It's simple to understand. It's simple to break down We can experiment and monitor our progress and all what what else does a good troubleshooter actually need So why am I coming to you with this simple the go community is modern As a community we've set aside paradigms that have shaped programming for three plus decades Change our perspective and adapt it to a new way of doing things We are not here to serve the language the language is there to serve us So that makes me wonder why why our variables deserve a safe space But our underrepresented groups don't and what would happen if we treated ourselves as seriously as we treat our code So let's examine the current state of diversity in the go community This statistic I took from the from the Stack Overflows Survey of 2019 I selected the responders that worked with go in the past year and This is their gender breakdown and this is the breakdown of their ethnicities and I remind you This is a global survey in Europe. The situation is a lot more dire I couldn't bring myself to bring you the situation in the EU because I couldn't take away United Kingdom just yet I just decided not to So a disclaimer most of my talk is going to be based on data About women about the underrepresentation of women in tech I'd love to be able to talk more about the realities that other groups face But sadly, there's just not enough data on that I believe that some of the information that I'm going to lay out today is relevant to them as well So on a side note I also want to point out something that I think is not addressed enough diversity is not equality and A diverse theme is not necessarily an equal opportunity team And I think it goes through the core of the problem where people do not want to be the tokens of our diversity So let's break down the problem women live tech While we're pursuing engineers Whose problem is it? Well, it's very easy to think that it's my problem or people who care, you know The ideologists the activists, but I argue it's our problem as a community first because we're business-driven and Currently we're paying recruiters a fortune When there's probably available talent How do we know there's available talent depending on where you live 60 to 80 percent of the population is not represented is not participating it's the vast majority of course there's talent and Second because diversity is reported to increase Individual success while improving creativity and eventual growth. So at the very least we're not benefiting there So now that we understand the problem Let's fix it. What were to happen if we were to create a Trello card? For diversity and added to our tasks What would that Trello card look like? The reason I'm turning this into a Trello card is because if any of our products was failing with women and minorities or with the vast majority of the population We would have Solutions with a B tests in production within a month There is no way that we would let this go except we do have a failing product It just happens to be the positions that we cannot fill So we are very very we should be very incentivized to fix this once and for all So let's start with the biggest funnel. Everybody complains. They don't get CVs from women They are simply not applying And you've probably heard about this one a highly quoted HP internals research Has reported that women apply to jobs only if they meet 100% of the criteria versus men with only 60% of the criteria. I'm happy to call BS First a little bit background. This is known as the confidence gap Between men and women and it's amazing because HP apparently were able to put a number on the difference on the confidence gap 40% 40% in massive right might as well be 100% So I'm happy to inform you that this statistics is probably not scientific first there is no 100% in any Real serious research. It just doesn't exist to If the HP research even exists It has never been published anywhere We don't know who conducted it. We don't know what they asked. We don't know who they asked and We don't know if it was peer reviewed. We know nothing about it except it went viral So please do not continue Telling everybody about this. Okay However, there seems to be some consensus in the industry the women truly don't apply as easily to jobs as men and there have been real studies for instance the one that was That was done was conducted by Dannings and Ehrlinger the same dining from the Kruger dining effect. If you're familiar And they asked men and women to guess how much they scored in a test and women did underestimate Their scores more than men So a woman named Tara Sophia Moore decided to ask men and women if you decided not to apply for a job because you didn't meet all the Qualifications, why didn't you apply and her results were probably more published on Harvard Business Review and they are interesting She gave them five options to choose from not all of them are important So I'm just gonna read them quickly. I don't think you they would I didn't think they would hire me And I didn't and I didn't want to waste my time and energy I didn't think they weren't hire me and I didn't want to put myself out there in case I fail I Was being respectful of the time and preferences of the person Reviewing applications they had already made clear who they were looking for and I didn't think I could do the job Well, I was following the guidelines about who should apply So very good news the least common answer for women Was that they didn't think they could do the job? Well, that is not why they didn't apply or at least not the leading reason Why they didn't apply? It was similar to men 12.4 percent, but lower we can rejoice in that so More explains People who weren't applying believe they needed the qualifications not to do the job Well, but to be hired in the first place. They thought that they required qualifications were well required So now to be completely fair we cannot say for sure that they thought they could do that were confident They could do the job. Well, but it is not the reason why they're not applying And in a troubleshooting world more is right This is a lead and we can try and poke it and see what kind of results we can get from it So I propose a few solutions Eliminate everything that can be learned in two days or even a week. It probably doesn't matter And if the applicants don't know the technology, they don't know how easy it is to learn Why not experiment? post multiple ads with multiple profiles and see who applies to what At some point you've accumulated a bunch of CVs not all of them meet 100% of your criteria Look at the least common denominator of the applicants that you're currently considering It's probably the profile you're seeking anyway and repost the ad And you should probably rethink all the superlatives killer programmer is pretty obvious But what about ninja or rock star instead of we're hiring the best Why not we'll turn you into the best and while we're on the topic of confidence It's being addressed this proportionately Imposter syndrome the self-doubt all of these are well documented and discussed very often But I have not find found a single research Showing that if they applied that actually get the job So what if women statistically are not likely to get the job with the infamous 60% of the criteria What if women What if when a woman asks for a salary similar to a man's She wouldn't get the job in the first place So I know we all think that we're the one good employer that doesn't discriminate But how is she supposed to know that and in advance and I'm not the only one saying this Several studies have already shown that women's self-promotion is tied to fear of backlash for over-confidence over confidence So what about degrees most that begin With a with a bachelor's degree qualification and there's a real problem with that We know there's discrimination in education system towards all underrepresented groups mainly people of color women LGBTQ Everybody campuses are not famous for being particularly safe and Young girls are silent are silenced in classes worldwide. This is a worldwide phenomena So if we were to consider everything that we're doing we might want to look into that one as well and Finally since women leave tech in masses if we're actively looking for a senior. We're not likely to To even get CVs from underrepresented groups And we're not likely to recruit them in the end So the statistics is just not on our side and it's impossible that everybody only hire seniors 100% of the time So I challenge you then to do one additional thing every time you say go is simple hire a junior So next on our Trello card is defining goals to our recruiters Especially if you're using external recruiters You must set some expectations. I'll explain External recruiters are paid in margin if they think Then a man is likely to get a job. They will send you men if they think That a man is likely to be paid better. They will send you men So we must create an incentive for them to encourage diversity And whether you're using internal or external recruiters you can define some quotas on the amounts of CVs that you're expecting And this will allow you to also see what kind of CVs were being passed over so far So back to our Trello card Go to meet-ups find your applicants where they are When I started organizing women who go Berlin, I didn't wait for people to come I went everywhere women who code women tech makers get carried girls And I unlike you didn't have money to offer them to learn go So you can be more more convincing And I got this question a lot Rona we love what you're doing How can we support you better? Hire my goddamn members. That's how so next on our list is coding challenges and they started as With the thought that you might overlook someone because they don't have the experience you're looking for So they were supposed to be a way to allow applicants to surprise you and it's a fine idea. It really is However companies are now sending out challenges that take days or even weeks to complete and we need to revise this process Here's why and this is true to probably all parents, but especially women and especially to mothers with babies a Young working mother can maybe allocate four to five hours a week to complete a challenge and She's probably applying to other places as well So if you're sending so if your challenge cannot be complete within four to five hours And I mean four to five hours not sprint points not t-shirt sizes Five four to five hours. You've probably no business sending it to anyone But I'll take it a step further because now you're telling yourself few hours takes only two hours to complete If you're setting out the challenge with the expectation that you're going to hire the person whose solution standouts stands out that is a function of time and resources and Our young working mother again cannot compete so This is where we implicitly prefer young people younger people with no commitments So consider this people are likely to have children after spending a few years in the industry after have been built a career So we might be eliminating people with the primes of their careers Our next item is of course retention. Let's retain our hires Because otherwise we didn't achieve anything Code reviews are a great way to build and destroy trust between colleagues so make sure to have constructive code review process and This one is really important training education budget and conferences So we see this everywhere conferences constantly have to allocate diversity tickets to underrepresented groups and then people like me distribute them Set a clear budget and let's learn your employees decide how they are going to spend it Finally define a clear path to promotion Give your employees a sense of opportunity create the mentoring program in your organization Scheduled performance evaluation scheduled races races. You don't have to wait to be asked if you value your employees And consider also anonymizing the CV process and your coding challenges if you choose to keep them and Let's talk about the thumbs up process Over the past 15 years companies have been making interview processes Harder and longer and if you if before you would interview with Two maybe three people today. You're likely to be interviewed by at least four to six people And they all have to give the thumbs up But we just doubled the chances that one of your interviewers is biased So finally people should feel safe at work Physically and emotionally if you have any kind of bullying at work On any background any background and it is inexcusable figure it out And here's the promised Trello card with all of the ideas. I just explained This is not everything you might come up with your own ideas And if you do please share them back with me Share it we tell your friends your recruiters and your managers be brave and thank you very much Cool, so we have some time for questions. So any questions in the audience? You're really far Thank you for coming this way. Yes Hi, so first a short disclaimer like I'm white sis and a man So I'm obviously very privileged to even talk about anything in this subject. I don't consider myself a particular Defender of the cause, but I try to help whenever I can And one thing that come up pretty often for me is that whenever I start in a discussion in this area It's like it's very hard to to point out what problem you're trying to solve like why is it a problem? Like I kind of see it for me, but it's really hard for me to take to convince someone that just shrugs and said Yeah, why is it my problem? I should even care, right? So do you have any like short and to-the-point arguments that could help me and when I'm in this sort of discussion to say Look, this is something that we should try to solve if even if we're like very privileged position and don't see it as a day-to-day problem Well wonder is the recruitment So I can tell you that I mentored about a hundred people to date and they're all incredibly talented And I'm enjoying a select in what's called a select or selection bias Where all the people who are brave enough to come to me and ask for help are incredibly talented and probably could make it on their own So think about this if you started your own mentoring program, you could probably hire 100 people tomorrow That would be incredibly talented and very very good. That is one To my first job was actually and this was 2003 was I was doing C++ and at some point We were a majority of women to me It's a no-brainer because I know what that workplace look like and it was quite amazing And I mean I understand that people speak from experience and do not understand what a diverse Workplaces and therefore do not understand necessarily the necessity They will just figure it out along the way because it is nicer. It is just nicer For the people in the back we can hear you perfectly from here Thanks So most of the the things you mentioned are about the hiring process But you didn't say a lot about actually the education problem, right? There are a lot less women actually studying computer science and such can you elaborate about that, please? So this this changes from country to country and But we see worldwide a worldwide friend that the women do sign up less Those are Those studies are also hard to get to and if you are Okay, a curious thing like do I have how long do I have okay? Have one minute. I have one minute Yes, one minute. Okay. I'll try to make it short in my country in my home country I come from Israel. There's something called a psychometry. It's an internal. It's an it's a when you try to enter the The university you have to do that. It weighs 50% of the score that is actually going to send you to the university Women do pretty well for 12 years in my own country Do it pretty well and do way better and have better grades than men during the 12 years men do better on the psychometric exam Why 50% I'm always puzzled like why not 40% why not 80% if you're sure that it's really that important or it's more important Or it's as important as 12 years of rates. Why not that those things are so arbitrary that we don't even see them That's the answer basically We need to poke at to every every step of the way and understand what decisions we've made and Nobody's ever going to change yet, you know Nobody this is not even nobody's thinking about these things That's the problem, and I'm just gonna go away now because I'm being picked out Thanks so much