A recent National Center for Women & Information Technology “By the Numbers” report puts Black women in computing in 2018 at 3% — and this statistic does not make a distinction between technical and nontechnical women in computing. Of the overall U.S. population, roughly 4.5% identify as LGBT. Since it’s incredibly hard to find industry-wide statistics on LGBT folks in tech, let’s take an extremely optimistic view and assume 4.5% of people in computing are LGBT. Combining these two percentages tells us that .00135% of the computing workforce identifies as Black, queer, and
I came to Affirm from a fairly unusual background. I’d never worked in tech or recruiting and prior to Affirm, I helped run a private optometry practice in Downtown San Francisco. Now I’m a Technical Sourcer on Affirm’s Talent team and co-lead our LGBTQ+ Employee Resource Group (ERG). My career trajectory is untraditional but that’s always been me – I’ve always been a bit different. A little about my past I was born and raised in Kingston, Jamaica until I was 10. Since then I’ve spent a majority of my
Last week, Black Enterprise magazine published an interview with COO of Facebook and CEO of Lean In Sheryl Sandberg. It was rooted in the fact that Sandberg’s Lean In advice has fallen flat for most women, and more specifically for Black women. The strategy has been criticized by many thought leaders, including Michelle Obama who notably said, “that shit doesn’t work all the time.” And this quote from Mindy Harts, founder of The Memo sums up the basis of the criticism through a racialized lens: “Lean In was well-intentioned and
Whether you call it a discussion or a debate, there’s a long-standing conversation in business around culture. This debate is about when the right time is to invest in people and culture. Some camps feel the urgency to achieve product-market fit and prove themselves as a business before they start thinking about building an intentional culture (meaning, more than perks and ping-pong tables). Others believe that purpose drives performance and that teams that feel connected to the company’s culture — its mission, purpose, and impact — are more invested in seeing the
After about 9 months teaching myself how to code, I have accepted an offer with the Guardian Newspaper to join their Digital Fellowship programme as an Associate Software Engineer. In this article, I want to support readers who are already teaching themselves how to code or are considering it. For others, I hope this article sheds some light on how we can support those trying to become engineers without bootcamps or formal education. What does self-taught mean? To me being a self taught engineer means that you haven’t completed any formal
What personal passions bring you to Abstract? I’m very passionate about having diversity in my life. I love having friends and coworkers from different backgrounds and walks of life. I love working at Abstract because we all share these views and inclusion is a huge focus. What’s one childhood lesson that you still carry with you to this day? “What’s for you, is for you” is an idea that I truly believe in. Growing up, there were times that I looked at other people’s accomplishments and compared them to my own. More
I got my first job when I was 16. A few weeks after I got my driver’s license, I drove my red, 2002 Ford Focus over to a local Frisch’s Big Boy. I’d never eaten there, but it always seemed to be empty which I thought was just the right level of intimidating for my first job. My would-be manager, a white man of around 60, conducted an informal interview with me at one of the empty tables — we had every seat in the place to choose from. With
A great career shouldn’t come at the expense of your identity, but this is a tradeoff many of us have to make. Written during Latinx Heritage Month, this article examines the role that remote work plays in preserving Latinx culture across the U.S. In life and in business, we talk a lot about trade-offs. We learn that we can’t have it all, that there are certain things we need to sacrifice to get ahead in life. And as a Latinx person, that often means trading off between two of the
Originally posted here via Wogrammer As a child in Nigeria, Olamide Opadokun noticed a constant issue in her community: the sporadic availability of electricity. With not enough energy being produced for each town, families and businesses were often forced to use backup generators that made loud, disruptive noises and contributed to air pollution. Having read about renewable energy advances happening abroad, Olamide wondered why Nigeria didn’t have a better solution. “It was sunny every day in Nigeria — why weren’t we using more solar energy? As the rest of the
Building a network is a common recommendation for career development. A strong network can help you access unique opportunities, and offer advice to help you grow and handle challenging situations. Yet, many people — especially introverts — struggle with networking because they feel they lack the mental energy, time, or know-how. They sometimes have the perception that networking requires meeting more people than they can handle, or that the people they want to connect with are inaccessible. Over time, I’ve learned to overcome those challenges and grow my own network
