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welcome to mentoring the way to a diverse and inclusive workplace I'm really grateful that you decided to be
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here today and I'm excited to have this conversation with you my name is Alex
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mulatto I'm a developer at newsela in New York City we are an IDI tech company that is
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focused on promoting literacy and also making differentiated lesson planning easier for educators in the K through 12
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education space you can find me at this garbled string of characters that
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actually says half-gone in Nebraska Twitter or github or just kind of
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generally on the internet so what are we talking about today and why I'd like to
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make the argument to you that the tenants of good mentorship look a lot like the tenants of truly inclusive
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companies and that it could really serve us to think about these efforts mentorship and diversity and inclusion
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in service of one another first I'd like to set up some expectations let's
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briefly talk about who this talk is for this talk can be for anyone
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I really hope to show managers and team leads small actions that can help make a big difference in the happiness and
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inclusivity of your team junior engineers especially those from underrepresented groups will get an idea
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from this talk about what kinds of supports they might look for in a company and for executives who are ready
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to move beyond diversity and inclusion 101 I'd like to present some ideas of initiatives that you can sponsor at your
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place of work we'll talk now about mentorship and the issues inclusion
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belonging and retention for marginalized folks but there are some things that we specifically will not cover this talk is
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not going to delve into the minutiae about who is marginalized in tech we also won't be talking about the benefits
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of diversity inclusion directly through any kind of fiscal lens we won't really
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even touch on the need for these efforts in general this need is going to be taken as a given okay
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we've cleared that up so what are we talking about we'll start with the why why am i the person up here talking to
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you and why this combine combination of mentorship and diversity and inclusion
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then we'll discuss what efforts work for each of these initiatives in service of seeing how they intersect next we'll
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talk about how you might implement a mentorship that serves diversity and inclusion efforts including a
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conversation about what not to do and finally we'll discuss how you can
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convince your company to adopt such a program so why am I talking to you about
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this I'd like to start with a story I'd
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like to tell you about two different kinds of companies that I encounter during my first couple of years in tech
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when I started out in web development I graduated from a code school in Omaha and then I was fortunate to go on to
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work at that very code school in a lot of ways it was a company that seemed a
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little bit impossible at one point my former boss and I had a conversation and
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realized that we were the brownest tech company in Omaha Nebraska we were really tiny but 80% of our
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technical employees were people of color and 50% of our employees overall were women it was something that we were
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really proud of and frankly it took effort to craft there was another thing
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that this company did that made the mentorship that happens there look really easy so it was a consultancy that
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was attached to the development coding school and they had a practice of retaining both code school graduates to
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work as consultant devs and having members of the consultancy teach at the code school so there really was this you
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know natural kind of sense of learning and teaching that was baked into the DNA of the company having teachers as bosses
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was a really huge advantage for me because it meant that I as a junior dev was constantly getting tossed that were
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appropriately sized for me I didn't stay at that company for my entire time in
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Omaha though and when I was on the search for my first fully technical gig I encountered
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the other kind of company that I want to talk to you about and that's the company that doesn't have to challenge the
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status quo when I was searching in a small tech market like Omaha I was
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really shocked at both the lack of the diversity of the kinds of jobs that I was looking at so many of those jobs
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looked the same and the diversity of the teams themselves so often the
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engineering teams were almost entirely homogeneous and at the same time when
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I'd interview with a few of these companies that were working on technical problems that I found interesting I would hear this refrain of we don't have
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the capacity to support your learning right now and I'd look around me and I'd
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see the classmates who I graduated code school with and I'd see the students who I taught and I would see a workforce
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that looked really different than the engineering managers who are making these hiring decisions and I would see a
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larger representation of marginalized races genders and sexualities in these junior engineers than the Omaha tech
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industry as a whole and I'd wonder how is possible for our industry to grow and
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to change if all of the difference that I was seeing was among these newbies and if the companies that could have any of
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their pick of new hires weren't making room for them and their learning I wondered what would happen to this
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workforce if these star companies the ones with the shiniest offices yes but
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also the most current tech and the best benefits were leaving this workforce behind through this back to back
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exposure to companies with really different relationships to skill building and learning on the one hand and diversity inclusion on the other I
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really started thinking to myself hmm maybe these two things have some kind of
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relationship to one another and so I'd like to pose the question to you what if
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strong mentorship at an organization begets diversity and inclusion when serving
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what office place initiatives are effective in terms of both mentorship diversity inclusion and retention will
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see major areas of overlap how can we start thinking about building a good culture of one in service of the other
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what would it look like to endorse a mentorship that is designed from the offset to be supportive for
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underrepresented employees and what if connecting and advancing those workers
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was a key component of our corporate DNI strategy how might this framing of
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mentorship and DNI being hand-in-hand serve us could it drive more empathetic
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mentorship more effective mentorship could the business case for solid
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diversity and inclusion strategy be made more tangible by wrapping that work under the banner of mentorship and skill
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building these are the core ideas I want to think about with all of you today so
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let's start by breaking down what practices constitute good mentorship and good diversity and inclusion efforts
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with the goal of seeing how they intersect I'm going to start off by
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talking about techniques that will help you support and retain employees from underrepresented identities first of all
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we can start off by thinking about recruiting processes it's important to be thinking about where you are posting
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what networks you're leveraging and what kind of language you're using in your post to both attract the kinds of
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candidates you want of course but also be welcoming to candidates that you might have overlooked there are even tools that can help you
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audit the kind of language that you use in your job posting to make sure it's inclusive and doesn't alienate great
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candidates by using overly gendered language for example one place that I
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really really really like to recommend for job postings is a site called key values to post a role companies have to
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fill out a profile about their values there's things like actively practices inclusion and good for juniors listed
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there but there's also phrases like high quality code base flexible work
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arrangements and engineering driven culture candidates then can search for
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the companies that align with their highest prioritized values I really love this site because it helps us hiring
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decision-makers begin to think of these positions and the candidate holistically and can really help lead us
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to a practice of values based interviewing I'd like to speak a little
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bit here to the idea of recommendations as a mean of means of recruitment I recently had a really compelling
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conversation with one of our executive team leads Rosella where I had asked how we might
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think of fairly compensating people from underrepresented backgrounds when we bring people from our networks into the
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company and this member mentioned the tool of referral bonuses for employees to both incentivize and compensate them
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to reach out to their networks and I agree I think this can be one really
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good tool but the strategy kind of cuts both ways if your company is already
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made up of people with a lot of overlapping identities relying too much on recommendations can compound that
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homogeneity next let's talk about the technique of having affinity groups at
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the company importantly these groups should not just be about getting together to talk about being a blank
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employee at the company so not just your experience as a trans employee or a Latin ex engineer there should be space
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for that but also just for social interactions and relationship building especially across teams and departments
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as well as some kind of pathway for action within the organization the most
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effective affinity groups act like caucuses and having a representative who is responsible for bringing the concerns
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of the group to upper management and consulting with them on solutions is really the best way to form these groups
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in order for this caucus model to work there needs to be dedicated and
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regularly occurring time for leadership to invite the feedback clear definition
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around performance evaluation and advancement helps remove unspoken biases or completely unrecognized biases come
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review time for example when researchers at Stanford consulted with various
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companies on their review procedures they found that when managers begin consistently applying a set of per group
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previously agreed-upon criteria there was a reduction in the gender gap in ratings previously men had been over
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represented in the top performance tier and women were over-represented in the middle tier but that gap was completely
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eliminated once they started using this previously agreed-upon criteria
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additionally who defines that evaluation criteria and where and when it's made
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accessible to your employees are all key parts of the equation for crafting something agreed upon and transparent
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even just having these clear definitions of roles and responsibilities often gets
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named as a key concern among workers with underrepresented identities having
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these codified helps an employee who has been historically disenfranchised point to clear language around their authority
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and their contribution at work are they being looked at as having a scope of ownership and responsibility
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are they in the meetings that they're supposed to be in literally are these employees getting a seat at the table
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where business decisions are being made representation and leadership is
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consistently ranked as important by workers with underrepresented identities I know that I am not the only one who
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goes through the list of executive team members and board members at a company before I applied to a job and when I do
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that I'm looking for something specific are there people there who are steering the ship who look like me or who look
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like my mentors and my role models reasons for this include ensuring that there is a clear model for advancement
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within the organization and also making sure there's at least a chance of having
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a demonstrated ally in leadership but also again seeing that embodiment of the
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value alignment we talked about earlier lastly I'd like to mention investment in
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internal and external advocacy this could look like a lot of different things for example newsela puts company
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money toward issues facing our affinity groups but we're also developing a field trip model to host students from
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underrepresented backgrounds so that can learn more about the company and the technology behind our product we can
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also consider the willingness to invest and profession development of these groups as part of this category this could look like a
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flexible learning budget for employees or sponsorship of professional development conferences that are aimed
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specifically at these underrepresented groups all of these efforts from youth
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education all the way through the pipeline to professional development and retention are proof of a company putting
00:14:01.529
their money where their mouth is and our one way of being accountable and measurable for strategic DNI initiatives
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so at this point we are a room of people who care about this issue this is why we
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are here and you might be thinking to yourselves seasick these kinds of
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supports are obvious but unfortunately they're not researched by the Boston
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Consulting Group a multinational management consult consulting firm found stark differences in the importances of
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various workplace practices when they are ranked by members of an underrepresented group versus a dominant
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group in question first let's talk about
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formal sponsorship I like to think about sponsorship is kind of like super mentorship sponsors are people who work
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as accomplices in your advancement and ultimately are accountable themselves for your growth at a company this was
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ranked 14th out of 31 inclusion initiatives by people of color and twenty-eighth by white men
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representation and leadership was ranked fifth out of 31 initiatives by women and
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17th by men having a bias free day today
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the idea that you might want a nine-to-five free of jokes about your identity or to see that who participates
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in meetings is fair this was ranked 5th of 31 initiatives by LGBTQ workers and 17 or 15th excuse me
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by straight men not only are these
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numerical gaps dark but the real-world application of this misunderstanding is really devastating too it might look
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like request from an affinity group representative going unheard by HR or an executive leadership team
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investing in initiatives that they think are really good for their company but are totally out of line with what
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employees actually want so we've just talked about methods of ensuring success
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and happiness of underrepresented folks at your company and we just uncovered that those supports aren't obvious to
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all people especially not people who have historically been in positions of power and authority keeping these points
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in mind I'd like to talk about how we can help support and level up junior engineers here again we see recruitment
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processes but the issues that we think about when we think specifically through the lens of supporting junior engineers
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look a little bit different first of all is your company being transparent about the needs that they have for a
00:16:45.389
particular job posting and are they accurately detailing the ask of the engineer later on in the process is your
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interview structure reflecting and addressing those needs are they catered in any specific way to this position
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does the process managed to remain friendly and human I'm an advocate for a
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radical and admittedly not easy endeavor I think that at every step of the
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process the candidate should receive feedback on their interview performance if the company decides not to move
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forward with a candidate HR and hiring managers should work together to craft actionable feedback so that the
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candidate has tangible ways that they can improve for jobs like this in the future or at least has more information
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to analyze why this role or this company wasn't the right fit for them the
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company should also consider the role itself if you're hiring a junior engineer is the role designed for them
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like an apprenticeship or a clearly defined entry-level position in the
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position is the structure of their work or the expectation of their output meaningfully different than that of a
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mid-level engineer and are there clear expectations in place about how they move from this role to mid-level and
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grow within the company Meghan - did a fantastic job of outlining how she
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designed and piloted an apprenticeship program that accounted for some of these concerns in her talk at last year's
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Rails conference and I've linked that at the resources at the end of these slides one such component of the program that
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I'd like to talk about is onboarding clear and structured onboarding is essential for any engineer but
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especially for juniors crucially please don't make their onboarding point person
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someone that they have to report to having an idea about who to go to for information that's free from any kind of
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office politics is key for these junior engineers who are already focused on leveling up their skills not to mention
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the difficulty of learning new processes and personalities consider the way that
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you were on boarded at your company was the information transparent were they
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reflective of a reflective of institutional knowledge as acknowledged at your company was it widely accessible
00:19:01.310
would it have looked drastically different if another colleague had been responsible for your onboarding if so
00:19:08.520
you might consider revising the process starting with defining standard onboarding materials once a junior
00:19:17.400
engineer is starting to settle into their role and responsibilities at the company learning groups can be a really
00:19:22.530
great source of support these give junior engineers space to ask questions and demonstrate leadership especially if
00:19:29.460
the groups are for peer to peer learning even better is if other levels of
00:19:34.500
employees are modeling this behavior in public areas for department-wide questions and answers like slack
00:19:40.740
channels remember that seemingly impossible code school from the beginning of this talk they had a rule
00:19:47.880
that no tech question could go in a private channel in slack all of those learning opportunities had to happen out
00:19:53.970
in the open apart from the kinds of informal relationships that can blossom
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naturally between an engineer and their colleagues having a formalized mentorship in place helps ensure that
00:20:05.850
compensated time is being spent on measureable goals for the engineer this time might look like mentorship advice
00:20:12.900
giving and knowledge sharing or coaching a more experienced engineer could guide
00:20:18.450
the junior to set attainable goals context of work and they'd even set aside time to work on those goals with
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the engineer or it could look like that buffed up sponsorship that we talked about earlier where a manager helps lead
00:20:31.749
the junior to set these goals recommends them for opportunities and ultimately is also accountable for their progress
00:20:40.139
clear expectations around growth are particularly helpful for empowering juniors to identify their skills gaps
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done right a standardized review process can help reframe junior Ness to
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opportunities for growth rather than any kind of deficit and they also help blend
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a framework to the formalized mentorship we just discussed so far we've covered
00:21:03.669
individual techniques that can support junior engineers and techniques that can support employees with underrepresented
00:21:09.340
identities I'd like to quickly talk about the intersection between the two
00:21:14.409
as it turns out many great diversity and inclusion initiatives also are great
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mentorship initiatives and vice versa things like thoughtful and transparent
00:21:26.889
recruiting processes having groups of peers that have some kind of accountability to one another and the
00:21:32.289
company as a whole having standard and clear review processes having definition over one's
00:21:38.889
role knowing exactly what they are accountable for what their responsibilities are and what other
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employees should come to them for and also having some kind of formalized mentorship having a pathway to folks in
00:21:51.249
decision-making positions that happens on company time thinking about this
00:21:57.279
overlap then what would a mentorship program look like with diversity and inclusion in mind in this next section
00:22:06.519
we'll discuss how mentorship can and should embody the overlapping tenants we just discussed as well as make a
00:22:12.999
business case for this kind of mentorship but first I want to take some time to talk about the fact that
00:22:18.759
building this culture of mentorship is hard work and it's easy to fall into a
00:22:23.889
pattern of saying that we're doing things are good for juniors or good for marginalized folks without really
00:22:29.979
measuring if that's true right now you might have some defense mechanisms
00:22:36.179
coming up you might be thinking not at my place of work no we are intentional
00:22:42.950
but intent is only half of the picture and we all make mistakes to build an
00:22:50.460
example of that I'd like to paint a picture for you of a company that thinks that they have it right it's almost kind
00:22:56.580
of the opposite of the problem that I had in Omaha it's the company that's mastered how to talk the talk but not a
00:23:03.809
lot else you might know this company it's the kind of company that hosts
00:23:10.409
biased trainings for their employees or has a code of conduct posted on their walls for their events but where despite
00:23:16.919
operating in a market like New York or San Francisco there are somehow no Women Engineers to be seen or engineers of
00:23:23.940
color in the office but there are white women in leadership and the average
00:23:30.539
retention of an employee is something like six or seven years much better than the industry average so if all of them
00:23:37.320
can be happy there maybe maybe you can be too it's the kind of place with
00:23:42.690
totally unstructured learning or you might be sent to go do a task like learn angular on your own you might have no
00:23:51.000
clear path to advance from one role to the next or even worse receive conflicting advice about what to do to
00:23:57.570
level up and you might be put under the wing of mentors who are not receiving support and training of their own
00:24:04.669
working at this kind of company you might notice other trends over time
00:24:09.799
somehow all of the juniors across hundreds of employees are women somehow
00:24:15.870
it's only these junior women engineers who are left out of conversations around tech hiring did any of you here your
00:24:24.870
company or a company that you know in that description I know I can see parts
00:24:31.289
of companies that I really love in that picture so what do we do about it if
00:24:39.510
intent is only half of the equation then the other is sacrifice intention is good
00:24:45.720
but is sacrifice to redesign and change practices to take time to survey and
00:24:52.240
measure outcomes and to make real investments in employees that gets us to building this truly special
00:24:58.270
implementation of the combine mentorship and support for marginalized workers
00:25:03.870
let's talk about what such a program should be starting from the very first
00:25:09.160
introduction that a worker has with a company mentorship that prioritizes my
00:25:14.290
marginalized people in our industry really should begin during the interview process I was surprised when I
00:25:21.610
interviewed at newsela that I received feedback at every step of the way and
00:25:27.600
not only was i receiving feedback from the specific employees who interviewed me I was also being asked to give my
00:25:34.600
thoughts on the process sacrifices had to be made here right the company had to
00:25:40.600
give up some level of opacity and protection around their process in order to share that feedback out and they also
00:25:47.740
had to show vulnerability and humility in order to accept my comments in return
00:25:53.880
it made clear to me that newsela had a strong culture of respect and knowledge sharing and I was impressed that the
00:26:01.360
company valued the perspectives of all these employees in order to share them out on behalf of the company under their
00:26:06.880
name I think it shows that exemplifying good mentorship can happen or as early
00:26:11.920
on as initial conversations with potential candidates these kinds of
00:26:17.230
mentorship should also really place serious focus on developing the mentors in the equation being a mentee paired
00:26:24.130
with an untrained mentor is a special kind of hell it puts the mentee in the
00:26:29.620
situation of having to manage up which is work that's likely to go unnoticed come review time worse if the mentee
00:26:37.210
hasn't had good mentorship before they might not even recognize the ways in which the mentorship isn't serving them
00:26:43.720
which can really be confusing if some of their growth benchmarks aren't being met
00:26:48.900
at the end of the day mentorship is a two-way street and being a good mentor is a learned skill my former boss Sumeet
00:26:56.920
Jane has a talk where he discusses action tactics for leveling up junior engineers
00:27:01.960
on its face this is a talk about bringing juniors up to speed but looked
00:27:07.610
at another way it's a discussion about how to develop mentorship as a practice in your workplace by sacrificing the
00:27:14.120
time and the space for forming good habits we've talked already about the
00:27:19.429
advantages of clear growth paths and accountability of both for juniors and employees with marginalized identities
00:27:25.040
but I'd like to invite you to think about the person with the power in this equation the mentor for a moment have
00:27:33.559
you ever seen a colleague become a better collaborator after working with a junior engineer maybe their commit
00:27:39.980
messages are more descriptive or they do more work to define technical requirements ahead of starting
00:27:45.980
development mentorship is leadership and it's learned work being done on both
00:27:52.220
sides should be considered and evaluated along clear growth objectives for both the mentor and the mentee and be taken
00:27:59.600
into account as a facet of each employee's growth and advancement this necessitates the sacrifice of taking
00:28:06.080
time and attention to outline and standardize what these objectives should be at your place of work I'd also like
00:28:14.059
to shout out that this mentorship should be happening on compensated time now I'm
00:28:20.120
not advocating for only mentorship under a corporate umbrella some of my most meaningful relationships with other
00:28:27.350
engineers have happened importantly in vocally individualistic nonprofit and
00:28:32.540
even anti corporate spaces but there's a need for and a benefit from having these
00:28:39.230
supports in the context of our work and the scope of that mentorship shouldn't be happening at happy hours or weekend
00:28:46.160
hackathons or rock climbing gyms but they should be happening in the confines of our typical work week the employee is
00:28:53.750
doing work for the company and hopefully as we just discussed goals of the mentorship are being determined by
00:28:59.630
leadership at the company so getting that employee leveled up is the responsibility of the company paid time
00:29:07.910
must be allocated for it lastly the kind of mentorship should be making the
00:29:14.559
space for reflection among peers but I'd like to invite us to rethink the peer
00:29:19.990
group peer groups within an organization can be cut many different ways the point
00:29:26.830
that I really want to drive here is that new learnings get cemented when they're put into action through application and
00:29:33.570
the groups where this application happens aren't always the most obvious for example I once worked at a company
00:29:41.620
that created a slack channel for junior engineers and it was meant to be this kind of peer-to-peer learning space but
00:29:48.269
because we were spread out over all these different offices and projects it wasn't actually an organic place for us
00:29:55.630
to apply our knowledge or clarify questions they might have taken the time
00:30:01.419
to think or better yet ask us junior engineers about other ways to define peer groups
00:30:07.960
across the company a black woman junior engineer doesn't
00:30:13.450
only have peers that are other junior engineers black employees or women employees they could be other back-end
00:30:20.409
developers members of her prod or product team stakeholders in the future
00:30:26.230
that she's building employees that share her professional interests outside of the work that she's completing just for
00:30:32.649
her team the more chances that she gets to share out her learnings and growth the more
00:30:39.190
that she gets to demonstrate and test those learnings and the more that this mentorship pays dividends all of this
00:30:47.860
sounds good but getting buy-in is hard so how do we get management seal of approval what's the value to the company
00:30:56.970
by thinking about supporting underrepresented groups through mentorship initiatives we can sell
00:31:03.639
programs that are good for diversity and inclusion to our companies through making the business case for mentorship
00:31:08.950
which many see is having a clear fiscal value the DNI strategies alone for each
00:31:15.610
item that we talked about is being a directive of this kind of mentorship we'll talk about the potential value
00:31:21.340
proposition to the company so beginning with the idea that this kind of mentorship should start early we can see that this
00:31:28.750
kind of mentorship can build brand halo among candidates and reflect the company well outside of the business itself we
00:31:36.850
can also see that through development of strong mentors this kind of mentorship can help distribute management
00:31:42.310
responsibilities when you have lead engineers or team leads taking on some of the work of observing engineers goals
00:31:49.210
to make sure that there is a sense of inclusivity and belonging on the team you free up higher level employees to
00:31:56.200
look at bird's eye view concerns of your engineering team and think about how they intersect with other parts of the
00:32:01.450
company because this kind of mentorship focuses on the development of both the
00:32:06.550
mentor and the mentee it really can build its own workforce mentorship is a
00:32:12.610
learned skill and therefore strong disciplined and studied mentorship begets strong dedicated and practiced
00:32:19.990
mentors reinforcing your program for the next batch of new hires because this
00:32:27.040
mentorship is happening on compensated hours it can help distribute business knowledge because employees are learning
00:32:33.940
on the job you build skills in the context of their actual work rather than
00:32:39.220
in the abstract or on toy problems accomplishing real business problems helps these employees gain authority in
00:32:46.120
their day-to-day work and because this mentorship incorporates a cross-functional notion of the peer
00:32:52.630
group it can foster relationship building and belonging when people are
00:32:57.700
recognized for their expertise and given the opportunity to practice wielding that expertise in collaboration with
00:33:04.090
their colleagues you've created the rare conditions for employees to bond over their work which is a really really
00:33:10.870
special thing this has been a journey we
00:33:16.060
have talked about the real-life experiences that spurred this thought experiment about the combination of
00:33:21.970
mentorship and diversity and inclusion efforts and we reviewed key areas of focus for each of these initiatives
00:33:28.000
covering why these supports aren't obvious as they make team and how they
00:33:33.040
intersect we discussed how you might implement a mentorship that deserves diversity and inclusion efforts
00:33:39.970
including a conversation around the kinds of thinking that can lead to pitfalls and made a business case for
00:33:46.840
such a framework altogether I hope that this presentation has helped us start to
00:33:53.080
think about what these efforts would look like if we thought about them in service of one another and has given you
00:33:58.990
some ideas about areas of improvement for bolstering your own mentorship and inclusivity efforts at your places of
00:34:04.660
work thanks for listening to the ideas in this talk again I'm Alex millat Maul
00:34:10.270
I'm a developer at Mozilla and I am happy to talk about any of the ideas that I mentioned here about newsela
00:34:17.980
or about my experience in engineering in general you can find me at the info here or I'm at the conference for the rest of
00:34:23.860
the time I want to quickly thank some people for their help in developing this
00:34:29.500
talk notably Jennifer - who's here she helped make me feel really comfortable
00:34:34.750
at railsconf last year and encouraged me to submit this talk as well as helped me practice it and my friend Shannon
00:34:41.740
Jackson who reviewed these slides while eight months pregnant because she is a manager and a friend who does not quit
00:34:47.710
and officially today is now the best mom in the world
00:34:58.230
these slides are not up yet but I will tweet them out and then they will be on
00:35:19.380
you