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morning everybody can you hear me okay thank you thank you for that that
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introduction by Sarah I was listening to it and at the end I was like I was talking about me in school so it's early it's early
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and I'm also pretty nervous so I'm going to like take a second so my name is
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Marco Rogers I'm gonna move a little bit but I need my notes so I remember what I want to say feel I don't have any slides
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so kick back come along with me it'll be fun um thank you for having me to
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keynote at railsconf 2017 um let me get to the work stuff I the way to who I am
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stuff I work at a company called clover health and we are building a different
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kind of health insurance company it's backed by technology it's data driven and our goal is to focus on our members
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and their health and keeping them on a path to living well as a way to for us
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to be successful as an insurance company it's really cool but I'm not here to talk about that today I'm not here to
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talk about rails today either I don't actually know rails and they promise me that that was okay before I came I so
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I'm not here to talk about programming really either I've been a manager for like several years now so if I start to
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talk to you about programming should probably like to now check your email like push the production whatever you're doing we are not paid attention to talks
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because that's not going to happen um what I am here to talk about today is
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how it feels to be black in tech I'm
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gonna let that hang for a second so you can adjust it's going to happen but
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don't don't worry right like it we'll get through this I didn't I didn't come to start controversy on my first
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invitation to to Rails comp this talk will be easy for you it'll be hard for me okay I'm going to take on
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all the the hardness I've spoken at conferences before but this is my first
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keynote address and when Sara and other organizers kind of reached out to me I
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asked them like why are you interested in me giving a talk at railsconf and
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they you know said what she just said they said you know we really appreciate your voice on Twitter blog post that
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you've written they seen other my other talks and they said we want you to come and talk about whatever is important to
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you and we want we want you to share that with us and when I ask other people like what do you want me to talk about
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like what would you want to hear me talk about like friends and whatnot a lot of the people that I know who were not
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black they said that they wanted to hear me talk about being black in text like that's a thing that people want to talk
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about we've been talking about diversity inclusion a lot long time but you know we kind of have to start
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digging into different axes on this and we've talked a lot about being a woman in tech - I think I think we didn't
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really good at that we don't get to talk about being black in fact very much
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so people said this one of the what they wanted to hear about and I chewed on
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that for a second I was like not not happening uh-huh I'm not that brave right
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and so I wrote a different talk I wrote a talk that I thought was good my wife
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thought was good other people told me it was good but it was a regular talk it did not pass my bar for key noteworthy
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the keynote slot says like basically quino's is like there's no other
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activities planned right now I need all of y'all to come in here and hear what this person has to say um a lot of
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pressure right and so I asked myself like what qualifications do I have you
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know to come and ask you hundreds of people to come in and listen to me for however long what makes me unique so
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what I ask myself I've done a lot of interesting things I think but only one
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thing spring up as unique to me when that's
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that I have had a pretty good career in tech for like 12 plus years been pretty
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successful and I've been black that entire time
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uh-huh we're we're laughing right okay I'm glad y'all awake uh but uh that's
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uncommon right it's not not normal and I
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mean this is real talk today like I want to have a real conversation with you about it we know the diversity numbers in tech
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are not good for black people right like companies are releasing their stats and they're showing like 2% 1% of African
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American sometimes 0% right like sometimes it's just like a line and 0% on their pie chart and then sometimes it
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gets crazy and it's like 4 or 5% oops are high-fiving you know I mean um but it's not great um it's so uncommon
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that you know I have people ask me all the time like how did you do it like you know they're like Marco like how did you
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make it right I don't know if that question is the right question but it
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seems like one that people want to talk about so so I found some courage and I
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was like ok let's talk a little bit about it at least we can't tell the whole story we don't have that much time but I'll talk a little bit about it so
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you know what I'm here to talk about is how to survive as a black person in tech
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when all the evidence seems to point to the fact that that's actually really hard to do as I was putting the title in
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the talk it would be something like survival tips for being black in text and the parentheses I would I would say
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like if you're Marco right because I can only speak for me if I was trying to speak for like all the blackness they
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would like revoke my membership or something don't I can only talk to you about me but hopefully we'll will learn something
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so a couple years ago I gave a talk at ultra comp and it was called conforming
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to succeed and that talk was about some of my formative years growing up and how
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how I initially found my way towards a career intact right you can find that on
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the interwebs you should check it out it's good this one basically picks up where that one left off which is with me
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graduating college I got a I got a degree in computer science from Georgia
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Tech originally from from Atlanta Georgia learn with the text nice getting
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my career started was pretty rocky outwardly you know my situation upon
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graduating was was was pretty dismal it wasn't a typical though right like I had
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no idea what I wanted to do I was not a stellar student which some people are surprised by spent on a lot of been on a
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long journey to getting to the point where I know how to like show up and be good I was not a good student I have a
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lot of prospects right like I didn't have any internships so I was in school you know I applied I got no no callbacks
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no internships no tech related clubs like I hadn't found any like open source
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communities to start to build my portfolio I didn't know how to do any of that stuff I did not have people beating down my door I was just a recent grad
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trying to find a job while black things
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weren't looking good right like I was searching around in Atlanta I wasn't
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getting any callbacks I didn't know any better does it Lana was not a good place to be searching for a tech jobs but
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that's the only place I had ever been and I didn't actually know how to look for jobs anywhere else uh there was much
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of a tech scene in Atlanta like there is now is actually pretty good scene but I was starting to feel really discouraged
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I had spent a lot of money on this on this degree me and my family spent a lot
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of money on it and I just wanted to get a job right so my first survival tip the
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first tip that I picked up for surviving as a black person in tech was pretty simple
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you gotta know some white people uh-huh yeah I mean like that's not really what
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I mean right like you know like what I really mean is that you can know some people already intact so that they can
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vouch for you right so that they can like get your foot in the door or whatever everybody kind of needs a foot
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in the door for me was a buddy of mine from school he's a white guy so a really good friend of mine he called me up he
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was in the DC area he was like I'm working at this place I can recommend you you should come work here so that
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worked out but you might be saying to yourself what be thinking right now like when's they get to part where like it's
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hard cuz it's black right I mean anybody can make the right connection and get
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their foot in the door except like well we know that's not true
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so right like if you're paying attention if you've been paying attention to this
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conversation about diversity you know that most people already in tech right
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like most people they make connections with people who are like them right like you we tend to cluster around our racial
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and like and ethnic identities right like that's the thing that's that's why they're racial ethnic identity why
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people make connections with white people and presumably I can make connections with people who look like me right
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except I didn't see any of those people they were not exist I didn't meet any
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other black students in the College of Computing at Georgia Tech I didn't have any black professors my entire time
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there I was kind of on my own right like I had to I had to reach out to the whoever was around me and try to make
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some connections and I didn't really know how to do that right but I did my best and most of those people around me
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were white and close to me that's what that's what it was that's actually how it played out like if I wanted to get
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anywhere like I'm gonna cleanse when some white people that's kind of how it goes but that's okay right like that
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that's actually expected until we make more progress with this diversity
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problem we should expect people to follow their networks right to kind of cluster around these racial and ethnic
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trends like that's going to keep happening there's nothing wrong with that inherently except that it has some fallout right
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look some realities for people who are trying to make it to a different place from where they come from networking for
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black people in tech was really slim so so what I am saying to you right now is
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if you need to make connections to get into text and you're black you might
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have to explicitly be the exception to that trend of only sticking with your
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ethnic identity so where you can even get started before you could do anything
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you have to not be that right you've got to do something different than what all the statistics are telling you it's
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going to happen uh and I got lucky right like but do you mind he reached out to
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me like he he was also a recent grad he got his job you know he got it his dad his dad was in construction but
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knew was friends with a guy and he knew a guy and he owned a web shop and he's
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again my son needs a job and so they hooked that up you know which I have no problem with by the way like get the
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hooked up like do it like pull some strings pull all the strings like get in where you can fit in I know I have one
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string that one friend who reached out to me and it worked out right but I don't know how many people never had any
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strings didn't get to do anything because they didn't they didn't they weren't able to buck whatever trends
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were keeping them from finding the right network so it worked out for me when I
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had my my first phone interview uh real quick I think it's 20 it's not actually
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that important but I think it's funny my first phone interview I got my first job because phone interviews was useless
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like this he asked me like what I was doing in school or whatever and I told him I was basically like nothing like we built
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some some cruddy apps or whatever and the one key question I feel like this is
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the one key question that he asked me that got me the job because I told him that the language that had used in school was was Java for most things
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right and he like threw this question I mean he's like he's like oh so he said
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you said you do mostly Java does that include JavaScript and
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I'm serious like he asked it like that and I don't know if it was a trick question but that's how he asked he's
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like does that include JavaScript ins and those and I I knew that those who
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were not the same thing I didn't know I
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didn't know a whole lot else but I knew that those who were not the same thing and I'm saying I haven't done much JavaScript but like that's not the same
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thing right and he was like cool you should just come here and work like like
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I had gone through so much trouble just trying to get a call back trying to get somebody talked to me or whatever I had
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literally got a job because my buddy referred me and because I knew that Java and JavaScript are not the same thing
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like it's wild right like there's no barrier except for the social ones to
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reach me really that's my experience there's no barrier except for the social ones um so anyway I got my first job I'm
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working at a web consulting shop in DC and I'm killing it y'all I don't know
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how well I'm actually doing but I kept getting paychecks which for me was the
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only criteria for killing it like I was knocking out because every two weeks
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they would give me money so I made a lot
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of good friends but at the same time like I'm feeling out of place right like I'm the only black person on my team
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it's just true for a long time they didn't bother me necessarily but I
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couldn't help but notice right and the same way like I don't know if y'all know this right but like black people when we
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walk into a room any room we like immediately scan the room to see how many other black people are in it this
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is the thing like it doesn't make a difference like you're not going to do anything but like you just want to know you got to read the atmosphere in the room right like I've known I know at
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least two people I saw walking here I could I could actually point to you where they're sitting to but I won't do that to probably America
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but you got to read the atmosphere right so but one day this changed
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they had another black person let's call him Karl names have been changed to
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protect the innocent column Karl and by the anything I mean be like if he will
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recognize themselves in the talk I don't want them to be mad at me and so we're in change all the names karl was similar
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to me in a lot of ways he was a recent grad they hired a lot of recent grads he
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had a CS degree from the decent school you know and and he was black okay so so
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those might be like the only ways that he was similar to me but that's enough right like that was enough I mean
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there's no other black people around like I hope that this crowd at least that we've progressed enough to the
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point where we understand that having another person around who looks like you like that matters right it matters a lot
00:16:06.040
that's part of why diversity is important seeing yourself reflected around you in people being successful it
00:16:13.579
has a huge impact on whether you are able to be successful right so all of a
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sudden I had this other person that could reflect back at me what was going on if you take nothing else away from
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this talk let it be that right let's like let it be like hearing from me that
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being black always matters always whatever it is that you're trying to do right like I'm trying to do I'm trying
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to do that same thing I'm trying to do it too but I'm trying to do it while black and that means that the rules
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might be different they might not be right there are always different but they might be so I have to like tread
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carefully and it helps if I see what happens with other people who are trying to do this big wall so black so even
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though me and Karl weren't that tight I'm personally invested in what happens then he's like the only other data point
00:17:03.439
I have for what happens to black people in text besides me what was not a good data point Karl did not do awesome and
00:17:11.689
he's let go within six months I have been there I don't know not not that
00:17:18.980
long maybe I had been like six months and he was let go within six months of him coming and I remember
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vividly the reason that were given these might sound familiar to some of y'all he
00:17:30.590
wasn't really picking things up fast enough you know like he did and also right he didn't really have the right
00:17:36.500
attitude Carling have the right attitude to this day I don't really know what the
00:17:41.570
right attitude is I don't really know how fast you have to pick something up
00:17:47.030
for that to be fast enough and for you to not be fired I still don't know um
00:17:52.780
but I had to had to put this together with what I was able to observe about
00:17:57.799
Carl for myself and what I observed is that like Carl was always asking for
00:18:03.409
help right like he was pretty upfront about what he knew and what he didn't
00:18:08.900
feel comfortable with and what he didn't feel capable of Carl when he came in he
00:18:14.330
knew like C sharp and dotnet like that was the language that he was most familiar with but our shot was mostly
00:18:19.880
Python at that time and so he was kind of expected to transition like he was picking up a new language and he was
00:18:26.630
humble enough to ask for help with it I was in Sikkim on-seam dog so
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uh the next survival tip that I picked up don't ask her out don't ask anybody for anything don't
00:18:42.230
admit that you're having a hard time keep your head down just make it make it work don't tell people that you're
00:18:47.960
struggling um y'all this is not good life advice this is not a good lesson it
00:18:55.700
took me a long time to unlearn it right like I don't give people this advice is not healthy but remember right like
00:19:01.490
these are tips for survival right like I was trying to adapt to the environment that I found myself in and I have any
00:19:07.280
guidance right now I was telling me I was work I just saw people who look like me dropping like flies so you know
00:19:15.230
that's kind of how it worked out the first black engineer that I had ever
00:19:21.799
worked with he took a hit because he didn't prove that he deserved to be there and all I could do was try to
00:19:28.700
learn from that to make sure that I wasn't next call is not intact anymore as far as I
00:19:35.000
know he bounced around to some other jobs he's not didn't really recover from that like the I don't know what that
00:19:40.640
does to your confidence and he had to find another profession right so we're
00:19:46.250
like we're like one down like two black engineers one of them already off the
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table um fast forward a couple years I'm
00:19:56.650
actually doing well now like I know the computers quietly sometimes people ask
00:20:03.530
me questions about computers and I know the answers to those questions so like
00:20:09.530
it's lit right like I feel pretty good about it I'm like okay I might I might deliver to be here I'm going out to
00:20:16.430
client sites now so we got contracted out I'm contracting for big company big
00:20:24.020
tech company they got a lot of in-house des but they also like bring in
00:20:29.570
contractors to kind of enhance their internal teams and we worked with them a lot during that time period so I walked
00:20:35.780
onto this team and we were building a web-based RSS reader this is like 2007
00:20:41.090
so it was like really awesome projects and so that's where I got to work with
00:20:49.550
my second black engineer second one I had ever met yes so like the nside an
00:20:56.840
exaggeration like years into my career in tech and I've worked with exactly two black devs so you know you can see that
00:21:06.170
like there's not a lot of opportunity for me to observe what's supposed to happen here I'm just trying to like make my way so
00:21:13.640
the second guy let's call him Lester Lester was different from me and he was
00:21:18.740
different from Carl too right like left there seemed comfortable right
00:21:24.350
like Lester would come in at like 10:30 11 o'clock sometimes you wouldn't even apologize and like you know whatever um
00:21:31.460
his clothes were pretty disheveled most of the time like this is this was contractor land right like I had to wear
00:21:37.520
a button-down is to sit at a desk and type right but he was like wearing t-shirts unlike wearing teacher it's like a big
00:21:43.880
deal to me I was like I want to wear t-shirts all my like collars like my neck itchy
00:21:50.740
Lester was even like he was like even sarcastic and snarky with people even
00:21:56.480
people even his bosses rightly even the people who were like when on the project and he gives them crap all the time but
00:22:02.660
everybody seems to be okay with it right like they were just like it whatever that's Lester you know he does what he
00:22:08.330
does let me tell you y'all this was fascinating to me he I didn't really
00:22:14.900
understand I keep in mind my whole career had been about like like I want to be here like I got in I was really
00:22:21.080
lucky like I'm hustling hard to prove that I deserve to be here and here was a guy he thing did not give a crap okay
00:22:29.110
but he was still respected for all intents and purposes Lester had somehow
00:22:34.400
managed to achieve the confidence of someone who was black in tech but not
00:22:39.650
feeling like they were struggling to survive and I was like what is this magic I need it price I can feed I don't
00:22:47.000
know where you get it from but I need that uh-huh so I got to know Lester a little bit this was tough right like I
00:22:53.600
had to had to be careful because I was still junior member of the team I was a contractor right like you play your
00:22:59.660
cards close to the chest remember you can't you can't let them know that you don't know what you're doing I guess not that's not cool but
00:23:05.720
Lester and I got friendly enough that one day I was able to ask him like why are you so comfortable okay like how so
00:23:13.250
it was a conversation that I had I had I've only been able to have with black people to be honest right because I was
00:23:19.820
using very few words but he knew exactly what I was talking about like we were right on the same page I'm gonna give
00:23:25.970
you the dramatized version it was pretty close to this uh but you know it was
00:23:31.640
like Lester man like how do you do it hey I mean you walk in here and you just
00:23:37.460
post up like like it's all good and like what is that how do you how do you get away with it that's what I said that's
00:23:43.160
awesome and then when he was right with me he didn't miss a beat he was like now
00:23:48.680
I hear you little homie right like he did he didn't call me low homey as a dramatization right remember
00:23:56.360
he's like nah hey man but it is what it is he's like you know I'm not worried
00:24:02.070
about it like they know they couldn't do this without me yeah so blew my mind
00:24:08.550
okay like this was this blew my mind like I mean like I had met people who
00:24:15.480
had this kind of like nonchalant confidence like you can't be intact without meeting those people what I had
00:24:20.850
no idea you could do that while also black I didn't I didn't know anything
00:24:26.010
like everybody everybody since the beginning of time and told me if you want to be successful you have to be
00:24:32.640
like straight-laced and you got to be on top of your stuff and like you have to be very personable and like give me all
00:24:39.420
that stuff like you got to be twice as good I know y'all heard this right like that's real like black people tell each
00:24:45.270
other that all the time passed down in our history like you better get your stuff together because they're not going to hang around acting like that that's
00:24:51.390
what we hear all the time and then like with Lester okay well sighs I had
00:24:58.170
touched him about it had to find out more about it and I found out that Lester I've been doing this for a long time right like he was already 10 years
00:25:04.560
into his career he had ten years on his belt a lot of it was the same company he
00:25:09.900
had paid his dues already he's a senior people respect to him because he had already spent using years proven that he
00:25:17.160
deserved to be here um so at this point he like leaned on that reputation and he made himself comfortable right came in
00:25:23.850
late or whatever you wanted he got paid a lot exactly and like him I wanted to
00:25:30.060
be left there like I really wanted to be left there when I grew up so my net my
00:25:36.030
next survival tip came from Lester who's the first piece of advice that I had ever gotten from another black person in
00:25:42.480
text like years after I started and I don't get to talk to any other black person to tell me like what a flight and
00:25:49.230
I finally met one person and I was like what's up like what do I do he's like now you can't be like me buddy
00:25:56.400
don't do that it's like you got to earn this you got to add a word for a long time I used to be like you so you do
00:26:02.070
that until you could be like me and it takes a long time this place that he gave me was always be better
00:26:08.549
didn't they expect you to be never let them see your confidence waver because if you don't believe you're worth it
00:26:14.789
they won't even right that was his advice and this resonated with me it max
00:26:21.539
exactly with what I had just seen happened to Carl right like not just happened but you know like that matched
00:26:27.239
up I was like right like right like Carl was like trying to be honest with them like wow kind of know what I'm doing and
00:26:33.629
they were like sorry that's not how it's gonna work so this is kind of a big deal
00:26:39.029
right we when we talk about barriers to diversity and inclusion um a lot of us
00:26:46.079
are starting to recognize the pervasiveness of imposter syndrome right people sit in like they don't belong or
00:26:53.700
they're not good enough like no matter what people tell them they always feel like an imposter and we need to talk
00:26:59.999
about it cuz a lot of people struggle with it's a real thing but that's not my life to survive in tech while black I
00:27:06.869
never felt like I had the luxury of not believing in myself like I was just not a thing right like I always had to show
00:27:13.139
up like I was ready to be better than everybody else otherwise they would tell me to go home right so so far like I
00:27:21.629
have two examples of people who look like me in Texas one of them was honest
00:27:27.269
and open about her shortcomings and they told him to go home and the other one he
00:27:32.669
said never let them see you sweat and he made more money than any black person I'd ever met
00:27:37.919
and I don't just mean in tech I mean like anybody ever write like and I grew
00:27:43.409
up in Atlanta I knew a lot of black people and he made more money than all of them by far so it was a real easy choice for
00:27:51.809
me to try to figure out who to emulate you know like today when people talk
00:27:56.969
about imposter syndrome right I have a lot of sympathy for them like I know it's a real thing but I'm not telling
00:28:04.320
black people that getting comfortable with impostor syndrome is going to help because I don't believe that that has
00:28:10.799
not been my experience and so I can like participate in that conversation like a little bit but not a lot like it doesn't
00:28:17.909
work that way for me and a lot of people that I know you gotta bring your a-game right like you've got to impress people
00:28:23.550
early and often otherwise you might not be around long enough to get comfortable you know you know what kind of you know
00:28:30.780
how to count I'm so fast forward a few
00:28:35.790
more years this product is a story I think so I'm pretty confident in my
00:28:42.930
skills at this point I'm leading like big projects like I'm making real good money I even tell other people what to
00:28:50.640
do occasionally and they do it right like was it which is weird right I liked it was kind of weird um when I took on a
00:28:58.530
project for a really big client that real deep pockets they're paying a lot of money it was a big like multi-phase
00:29:05.280
software project had multiple teams on it different contracting companies participating in it and I'm leading the
00:29:12.780
team that was building the website out there was a lot of fancy features and
00:29:18.030
search and e-commerce and stuff so we were building a website and the other teams were building data sets and web
00:29:24.150
services for us to use so as things
00:29:29.970
ramped up I started interacting with other teams and another black that shows
00:29:36.690
up this was Trey and Trey was like the fifth or sixth like black dev that had
00:29:44.640
come across at this point like oh four years and de Meyer my career or whatever
00:29:52.320
uh but I don't like I don't even get excited anymore now right like I'm like me and one of us pops up like every six
00:29:58.260
months right it's not even special anymore you know I mean so um so plus
00:30:06.870
like I had a persona now also I was about business and I mean like I was I
00:30:13.500
was I was actually killing it like actually I was working long hours never asked people for help always acting like
00:30:19.380
I knew what I was doing Neverland see you sweat right always be better than what they expect I was
00:30:26.160
probably a jerk to a lot of people it was not a good period for me but it seemed to be serving me well right like
00:30:33.330
I have been here four years I was still here right I gotta prove to people that I deserve to be here uh and I started to think
00:30:40.110
like maybe it wasn't so hard survive intact while black maybe people were
00:30:45.120
making harder than it needed to be right now I was about to come crashing down
00:30:51.960
like that was called um I never I never found out how Trey actually got onto the
00:30:58.320
team if I was speculating based on the limited data points I had I would probably say that he had a white friend
00:31:04.590
from college and like his dad got him a job and then that white friend called him and got him onto the team but that
00:31:10.529
was that's a very limited data set so like I you know I'm probably projecting to a certain extent that's all I know
00:31:16.559
about how black people get into tech at this point so uh but you know I should
00:31:23.220
tell you like what was mine was my relationship with Trey right um
00:31:28.909
Trey was in charge of web services so in this world like me getting my work
00:31:35.490
delivered was directly dependent on him getting his work delivered right like he
00:31:40.769
had that he had to deliver me the web services so that I can integrate this is like the mid-2000s right like there's
00:31:46.169
been a no agile like we got Gantt charts and waterfalls everywhere like you know the dependencies in him he was first and
00:31:52.919
then I was second like on the chart and so so like I had to work with him and I needed him to give me his stuff and I
00:32:00.299
didn't like Trey very much I like working with Trey because he didn't he didn't move fast enough for me you know
00:32:05.580
I was constantly waiting on him now in hindsight I was missing something about
00:32:12.149
this project that a bunch of other contractors like Trey seem to understand already when you have a big client with
00:32:20.519
deep pockets it pays to not move very fast right and I mean like literally it pays like your
00:32:26.940
hourly you're billing them just like the longer if you take the more money you get and everybody was doing that on this
00:32:35.010
project to be honest like my boss was okay with me doing that too like he didn't really say that but he was like
00:32:40.649
you know I was telling him about time and he was like now be fine so um but
00:32:46.139
like that didn't sit well with me that was never the kind of attitude that's that well with me for one thing
00:32:51.260
like my my work ethic is too strong it didn't didn't really allow it it felt dishonest to me like we were
00:32:56.269
still building them right like I wasn't in charge of building so somebody would build them whether I did work or not and that is I just didn't feel good about
00:33:02.179
that but also also remember that like
00:33:07.610
I'm still trying to survive I'm doing better I'm feeling more comfortable with it but I'm still trying to survive and
00:33:14.210
that depends on me constantly showing other people that I was awesome right that I deserve to be here because
00:33:19.760
I still there's no other black people is like me and Trey there's like dozens of people on this project music me and Trey so working with Trey bothered me you
00:33:30.139
know I mean like I didn't see him checking then very often like he would take days on something that I felt
00:33:36.049
should be much easier than what he was making it out to be he was throwing all
00:33:41.240
the Gantt charts off man like we work a lot we work hard on those so he was throwing them all off if I was going to
00:33:48.139
hit my deadlines that he had to hit his I I need to try to step up I started to
00:33:53.330
feel like Trey was kind of lazy you know said if the leg Trey wasn't picking things up fast enough you know I mean
00:33:59.690
like maybe he had the right attitude so
00:34:06.649
you I mean you see what's going on here right way I like I'm becoming that guy you know you don't talk about like that
00:34:13.790
guy he's like a little bit too full of himself he starts to undermine the
00:34:19.339
people around him you know like subtly at first like I'm not trying to be a jerk right like I just want to get
00:34:25.010
things done you know like I'm trying to be awesome and you're kind of like cramping my style right now that guy I
00:34:30.829
was that guy so I decided I was going to talk to somebody about getting things
00:34:36.530
back on track yeah unfortunately I did
00:34:43.490
what that guy does like I went to the higher ups and I expressed some concerns about the timeline you know I didn't
00:34:51.319
call Trey out specifically but I made it known that it didn't feel to me like the web services were materializing fast
00:34:58.130
enough like I had the business jargon down y'all like I was on it I got inside
00:35:03.640
at all but they knew what I was talking about so you know I mean this would be
00:35:09.010
cool right like you know Trey will get like a kick in the pants and then we'll get things rolling I'll be able to be
00:35:14.440
awesome again but not right like this the story is about survival so you know
00:35:19.480
that's not how I went in my vague recollection of this which may also be
00:35:25.150
dramatized for the story but I had this conversation on the Thursday and by next
00:35:31.630
Tuesday we were informed that Trey was no longer on the team y'all when I tell
00:35:38.140
you that leg that took all the air out of me right like I didn't know how to
00:35:43.720
process that like we were a team like we have been working together like it's not the Lang like I mean we just bothering
00:35:49.840
me like you know but he was gone but like snapped me right back into reality
00:35:55.330
right I was I was right back to being keenly aware that was the only black
00:36:00.400
death for miles around here and I got reminded how quickly they get rid of
00:36:06.970
folks who look like me at the drop of a hat Dom only this kind of was my fault
00:36:19.120
remember at this stage we're still clocking in at like less than eight
00:36:26.620
blacks tez that had ever seen in my career including me and had just helped one of
00:36:35.560
them get fired I didn't even have the courage to ask what happened like I
00:36:40.930
didn't I knew what happened right they probably pulled Trey aside and they're probably like not really picking things
00:36:46.360
up fast enough does we really feel like you have the right attitude his project so I have to let you go that was the end
00:36:57.190
of me being that guy nipped in the bud like quickly my this last tip for
00:37:04.600
surviving in tech while blacks never helped them get rid of us never the only
00:37:12.790
reason I'm here and able to like talk to y'all today it's because I managed to never get on
00:37:18.940
the wrong persons bad side or like I managed to make the right the right kind of white friends who would step up and
00:37:25.150
like put in a good word for me you know or I managed to be just awesome enough
00:37:30.400
to offset whoever else was trying to undermine me but that doesn't feel awesome just feels
00:37:37.240
lucky it feels really lucky I mean like my confidence is still intact like I
00:37:43.420
know what I can do I know what I'm capable of but right alongside that that's just a healthy respect for still
00:37:50.470
how lucky I am to be able to be here so that has some fallout right like these
00:37:56.500
lessons you learn to have fallout like to this day I thought it's extremely difficult for me to give any kind of
00:38:03.220
negative feedback to other black people it doesn't feel right can't do it I'll pass bow out I'll like
00:38:10.240
I won't say anything there's not enough of us who even get a shot at all for me
00:38:18.250
to be making it harder like one step harder at all I can't do it
00:38:26.310
so I've given you a few survival - there's a bunch of them for lamb with
00:38:31.570
time I guess it maybe maybe this talk is
00:38:36.640
not what you expected like even when I told you we were going to talk about being black you want to expect to talk
00:38:43.570
about like discrimination and microaggressions and stuff and that stuff happens - I got a lot of those
00:38:49.510
stories like if you got some more keynotes I'll fill them up
00:38:55.430
but you know like that stuff is what happens to by people in text right but
00:39:00.869
what I wanted to talk about is how it feels to be a black person in Texas you
00:39:06.299
know because like that's what I feel like I want people to walk away with is like understanding that you know those
00:39:14.160
few people that you see dotted around like there's a lot going on for them to be here there's a lot going on for the
00:39:21.269
longest time being black in text it felt like being on a tightrope you know so
00:39:30.119
like like I'm out there by myself because like most people didn't even get to get started they didn't even get
00:39:36.569
shown where the tightrope was so they need to get a chance to try I'm offered by myself and I'm concentrating right
00:39:42.990
because like everybody else was walking around right like a bee nobody else gets has to walk on the tightrope but I still
00:39:48.180
have to make it to the end at the same time they do or maybe even faster so I'm concentrating and then like Carl comes
00:39:58.529
up behind me right and I like I hear him he slips and falls and I can't turn
00:40:05.700
around like I had to keep my eyes trained on the Rope I don't feel safe yet like you know I don't feel like I
00:40:11.339
even had my legs under me so I can't do anything about that and then like Lester comes up and like
00:40:18.480
Lester's riding a unicycle he's like you know he's doing laps around me I said I don't even know how you do laughs on a tightrope but he's doing it like you
00:40:25.349
know in it Lester and I you know I like
00:40:30.990
I reach out to him and he's like nah little homie like don't try this yet you're not ready
00:40:37.400
but don't fall that's not good and you just speed off like and everything em
00:40:42.750
again so I'm getting a little bit better right like but then like I come up
00:40:49.980
behind Trey right on this tightrope and I'm like I'm just starting to feel like
00:40:55.410
I'm gaining my momentum right like I'm getting a hang of this I'm like I'm trying to move a little bit faster and
00:41:01.970
Trey's like you slowing me down you know feeling like I got to get to the end room break I got to be at least as fast as
00:41:07.960
everybody else and he slowing me down so like you know I'll have no ill will but I like nudge him I'm like guy the way
00:41:13.840
man I'm here to play I'm about to do it and he loses his balance and he falls I
00:41:21.390
lose sight of tribe he's gone just meet now like I can make it sit in but like
00:41:27.420
watching people drop him that's what it feels like all the time it felt that way
00:41:34.240
a long long time it's still in the back of my head now but like for a long time that's how I felt is like I was still
00:41:40.300
here like I got to show up everyday right they didn't pull me into a conference room so mad about attitude right but I'm walking out everybody
00:41:46.960
around me dropping out oh I know it's
00:41:53.050
got real depressing I apologize for starting your morning off this way but like this is real talk
00:41:58.300
right like I wanted to have a real conversation with you about what it means for this industry to have such a
00:42:04.900
poor track record for black people those of us who are making it feel like we're
00:42:12.700
running a gauntlet a lot of times you know like just to be here just to stand in this room I had to go through a lot I
00:42:19.020
got into talking about diversity even more because I know this is not what it
00:42:25.840
should be like we I think we all know like at this point we all know it's not where it should be like I want to work
00:42:32.230
towards a world where black people can stop getting this advice is terrible advice right like maybe you can't get a
00:42:40.000
callback without knowing the wipers and already works there right that should be possible there should be a thing I have alright maybe you don't have to hit the
00:42:46.840
ground running all the time maybe you can show up and like ask for help and
00:42:51.940
have people like support you while you grow maybe one day we'll like have
00:42:57.460
enough black people that it's okay for for us to point to somebody who's not doing too well be like you need to do
00:43:03.790
better and like not feel like we might be like killing your career by saying
00:43:09.250
that like that should happen right that should be a thing that's possible I mean
00:43:15.820
it's simple it should be simple all I want is to have enough black people around that it doesn't feel like survival for
00:43:23.060
me to be here right like i want to i want this talk to be stupid because nobody believes that this is the thing i
00:43:29.680
want to be able to put that tightrope away you know i want us to stop pushing so hard so we can spend our time and
00:43:36.200
energy on something better you know what i mean like i want to spend my time on something better i'm going to learn rails at some point
00:43:42.170
like if as soon as I get a minute like that's gonna be a thing so anyway I'm
00:43:48.109
going to wrap up but just a couple things like and this is this is recent
00:43:54.020
it wasn't really part of the talk but my cousin I got a little cousin he just started college uh he's reaching out to
00:44:01.760
me he's like I'm gonna do computer science right and like I know this kid
00:44:07.220
so I'm like right but I like school yeah that's gonna happen Frank but he keeps coming back to me he's like nah nah I'm
00:44:13.010
doing it right and I'm like alright I'm not I'm not being very good cousin I'm like alright why do you think this is
00:44:19.339
what you want to do I should be encouraging him but I'm like you're not that reliable so um but he's like he's
00:44:29.089
like I want to do what you do right he's like you you know I'm going you your life is great like you get to do
00:44:34.640
whatever you want to do and like you make more money than any black person I've ever met
00:44:40.060
he's right I just I do nothing so Hilda
00:44:46.940
I make more money than any black people
00:44:53.869
he and I have ever met and so I was like oh well he must be serious about it
00:44:59.510
right and so I got to start helping him right like I'm bringing him and his brother out here flying them out to
00:45:05.359
California hang out with me a little bit so we can talk about it saying it ain't never been nowhere in never in
00:45:10.460
California but I got to do it right I gotta bring them out and try to figure out how to get them going try to figure
00:45:15.980
out how to help them try to figure out how to give them a leg up where I didn't have one right like they already know by
00:45:21.020
person context at least one right so maybe maybe that'll work out that's all
00:45:26.870
that's all I got y'all thanks so much for having me and letting me get this
00:45:32.180
stuff off my chest to you today I'll be hanging around rest of the day feel free to come chat with me I'm open