How to Make Real Progress Hiring Diverse Talent with Pinterest, Treehouse, and More

Please welcome our panel: Ryan Carson, founder and CEO of Treehouse; Candice Morgan, head of inclusion and diversity at Pinterest; Wayne Sutton, co-founder at Change Catalyst; David Adewumi, advisor at Terebinth Collective; and Damian Peters, head of product at DevColor.

Well, nice to see you all. It's very bright up here, and we can't really see you, but I trust that you're there. So, um, well, first of all, I'd love for the panel to introduce themselves. So over to you folks.

Yeah, I'm David Adeyemi. For the last 4 months, I helped with partnerships at DevColor, an organization that helps Black software engineers become industry leaders. And now I'm helping to advise and mentor startup companies.

Sounds great.

Hi everyone, I'm Candice Morgan. I'm the head of inclusion and diversity at Pinterest.

Hi, I'm Wayne Sutton, co-founder and CTO of Change Catalyst and also Tech Inclusion.

Hi, my name's Damian Peters. I'm a head of product at DevColor, a nonprofit and YC alum that focuses on helping Black software engineers become industry leaders.

Awesome. So wanted, uh, to start first by asking you all to answer a question. So how many of you are struggling to hire women, Black, or Latinx developers at your company? Just raise your hand. That's a challenge. Yep, pretty much everybody. So the goal of the panel is to help, is to share what we've learned when tackling this problem and give you ideas and talk honestly about what's going on. So just to give the audience some context for why am I leading this panel, why am I up here with these amazing folks, I run a company called Treehouse. and I looked around and I realized the company was mostly male, mostly white, and it was just kind of a shocking realization that I, I, I was guilty. But not only that, we teach, we have a school that teaches code, and a lot of our students were white and were male. And so even though I had tried to create a school that would empower people, it seemed like we were empowering the same people. Again. So set about a kind of a year-long journey of learning and trying to understand what was going on. And basically started talking to nice, smart people like you all and said, you know, please help me understand the problem. And a year later, we booted up basically an apprenticeship program, and we realized this problem can be addressed and move forward if we consider hiring apprentices. And we support them properly. So that's kind of where all this is coming from. So I want to dig in to a bunch of questions for you all. So it seems like a lot of companies out there are requiring computer science degrees to be a developer. Why is that not working? Who wants to go first? Candice?

Yeah, I can, I can definitely start. I think if you look at the history of, of software, engineers and developers, a lot of people were self-taught. A lot of people learned engineering as a second career, maybe started with something else. My sister is actually a developer, and when we were younger, we used to build webpages, and now she works in the front— as a frontend developer. And so a lot of people come into the field with very, very different paths, and they discover this passion of building something that a lot of different people can use to to solve a problem. But somehow along the way, we've gotten into this, locked into this idea that in order to be a qualified developer, you have to have a 4-year computer science degree, plus perhaps a master's and a PhD and several internships at a handful of companies.

[Speaker:JASON M. LEMKIN] Right.

[Speaker:ADRIENNE LAURENCE] Just to enter the front door. And that's not working for a number of reasons, least of which is that we're not reaching people who have the ability to do the job, but their resumes are discarded before we even get to bring them in the front door.

Got it. So kind of to riff on that question, Damian, for instance, why aren't there more folks who are Black or Latinx or female who are getting computer science degrees? I mean, like, why isn't there more?

Why are they— sorry, why are they not getting hired into tech companies?

No, why— I mean, if that's a requirement, there's plenty of white males who have computer science degrees. Why do we not have underrepresented folks getting more computer science degrees?

[Speaker:JASON M. LEMKIN] Yeah, and this is— I'm someone who did finish a 4-year degree in computer science. And even anecdotally, I remember how many people that looked like me in my freshman year, and how that changed my sophomore year, how that changed a little bit more in my senior year. Part of it, too, has been either access or exposure. There's many friends or colleagues who haven't thought about engineering or computer science. Whether they think that either a doctor or lawyer is the ultimate goal. They don't realize sometimes that from a compensation and in terms of the type of work that they do, very similar or can be very, very similar. And at times when it does come to tech, there are certain, both from the physical location sometimes of a lot of tech companies in the tech industries versus where a lot of people do grow up and other ties where, moving into computer science or going into engineering isn't their first thought. And when you see something like that at a large scale, what that plays out is you see a reduction in percentage, right? So it's not individually that every single person, um, how can I convince every single person or expose them to tech? But what you over, over and over several cycles, you'll see that, that number, uh, more people are self-selecting out or either don't understand that this is actually a great opportunity and would be a great career path for their skills and interests.

Right. And, and during this apprenticeship program, we, we learned that actually there was parents who also didn't understand the opportunity, and so they would actively discourage, you know, their kids from pursuing these opportunities if they could get them without a college degree because it seemed— it didn't seem like the most optimal path. So, Wayne?

Yeah, I agree with everything Candice and David they've been saying it, but also this is not how tech used to be, right? Like Candace was alluding to, like, Ryan, you know, some of us, we old enough to remember like when the tech industry doing Web 1.0, the first boom, it wasn't about computer science degrees. It was about who had the skill, who could get it done, right? It didn't matter what school you went to. It didn't matter what Ivy League school you went to. You just like, okay, I had this skill, I can build this website, build this landing page, you know, set up this MySQL database. Cool, let's hack, let's get it done, let's build it. Didn't matter. But then when the emergence of Facebook, Google, and the second generation of wealth came into the tech industry, we start, the tech industry started creating these patterns and these models and started creating this ripple effect. Everybody like, this worked at Google, awesome. This is the narrative. 3 people, 2 engineers, 1 big business development guy. Let's hack, let's build this company. Y'all went to Stanford, let's recruit our friends. Oh, look what it did for the industry. Like, let's just replicate that. And then we started glorifying the tech industry and everybody started copying, copying, copying. And then that just permeated and I was saying, "All right, this worked at Google, this worked at Facebook, this worked at Twitter, this worked at every other company." And it was like, this is, you know, and this don't change that. And so agreeing with David that historically in underrepresented communities, it's like we have been fighting just to get, you know, let's get first, let's get the right to vote, Dinah, all right, let's go to the same school. Okay, let's go to get our college degree. And then like now it's saying like, let's get a college degree, but then the tech industry is like, we may not hire you if you don't go to this right school. So we've been playing catch up. And then, and also lastly, on data right now, I believe the numbers are 19% of African Americans are getting CS degrees. Right? Now, what we know, the average is 2% Black in tech. So we are there. We're graduating. I don't want to say the system, but the industry has created this pattern, and we're not meeting that pattern. That doesn't mean we have the skill.

Right. Amen. Amen. So why is apprenticeship a possible alternative then? So why may that be an answer? David, you wanna talk a little bit about that?

Yeah, for certain. I think one of the interesting things that Wayne kind of touched on is the tendency in people in the Bay Area and technology to pattern match. And I think one of the problems with pattern matching is that you ignore data, you ignore kind of opportunities even in the face of data. I'm actually reading this book called The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis, and he talks about how Daryl Morey, who's the general manager of the Houston Rockets, they missed a phenomenon like Jeremy Lin in the draft because even though all the data represented that he would be a good basketball player in the NBA, they couldn't get over the fact that he was an Asian basketball player, and so their preconceived notions really kind of restricted their viewpoint. And I think that is one of the reasons that apprentice programs can be so powerful because it's allowing people to kind of bust through the preconceived notions and get their feet in the door. Ryan, you just hosted a dinner last night, and one of the attendees, Actually is a DevColor A* member, Caitlin Carter. And through Code2040, she was able to get her foot in the door at a company like Medium as an intern, and then eventually get a full-time offer, even though she came from a state school in Maryland, which again, according to the pattern, does not match the talent, MIT, Caltech, Harvard, UT Austin, that a lot of tech companies are really looking for. So I think apprentice programs allow people to kind of do an end-around and get directly connected to tech companies regardless of their background, regardless of whether they do or do not fit the pattern.

[Speaker:JASON M. LEMKIN] Right. So one thing that we're doing in our apprenticeship model is we're actually requiring the company to accept the class of apprentices without interviewing them. Because I'm really worried that there's going to be tons of pattern matching going on and tons of hidden biases. And they'll just say, you just— Like you just sound different or you like something is different about you and therefore we're not gonna hire you. So we're saying no choice. Um, but during the apprenticeship, and we should probably define apprenticeship. So Candice, do you wanna talk about that? Like what is apprenticeship?

Yeah, absolutely. So at, uh, Pinterest we started an apprenticeship program and we're seeing a, a number of other companies start programs as well, which is a really, really good thing. Um, we define apprentices as people that, um, basically come into our software engineering org with a non-traditional background. They do not have a 4-year computer science degree. They may be self-taught. They may have gone to a coding boot camp. They may have come into coding a number of different ways. They may have had a different career first. But regardless, we don't go through the typical process of an interview until they spend a whole year at the company with a software engineer mentor who spends up to half of their time with that apprentice. And at the end of it, they go through the same interview process as an entry-level engineer.

And what is the pay scale typically for apprentices? Are they—

They're— it's the same as an entry-level software engineer.

Got it.

So that's very important to treat apprentices like any other software engineer. And the success rate of our apprentices thus far has been 100%. All of them have been converted. Right. So we've tripled the program since the first year.

Wow.

So let's dig into that a little bit. So, Apprenticeship appears to be a direct actionable way that you can hire underrepresented talent. Now, we know that that's not enough, but can we explain to the audience, once you hire that talent, how do you, what do you have to do to make it successful? Damon, you wanna talk a little bit about that?

No, um, I've been in a few different tech companies at this point. Um, large ones like Facebook, um, gaming companies like Zynga, super small startups. Startups, and the culture of retention and feeling accepted and comfortable at work definitely has a very direct toll and directly impacts a lot of underrepresented talent in terms of how comfortable they feel. Small anecdotal, I'm trying to think if there's a single company I've been to where there isn't a Google Doc shared by many of the underrepresented employees about places to buy certain food or get your hair done. Because there is a large amount of cultural shift that sometimes goes into either moving out to the Bay Area or the Valley if you're not from California originally, working in tech if you've had a family history or friends that go into maybe more government-related jobs or more business fields, given that we don't have that same level of representation historically. So a lot of times what companies do to help both help the transition for employees moving into tech, so especially for an apprenticeship, You're talking about someone who doesn't have a background of 8 years at another tech company, who's gone through that hurdle, who's necessarily had to deal with maybe being the only representation in their entire company, or at least their entire floor or entire org and department. Providing resources either within the company or externally, great orgs such as DevColor, which does help allow you to build a network outside of work too, where there is more support and there are other people who are both going through the similar hurdles and problems like that. And another problem too is really focusing on workplace performance. So it's not just a matter of feeling comfortable, but it's also helping this person, especially from an apprenticeship, who really is struggling, potentially struggling with a lot of new concepts, a lot of new challenges, that they come to work, you know they're passionate, they're willing to do this program, they've maybe transitioned into a very new career field and taking a big gamble, but really helping them and giving the resources for them to show that they can perform and be successful there. And I think those are some ways that you really start to tackle and eat away at any type of retention issues that you do have, given that you can bring them into the company. But if you can't keep your talent, you're still failing.

Got it.

Yeah.

So Candace, can you talk a little bit more about some of the practical things that you're doing with apprenticeships to support them once they have the job?

Yeah, definitely. I mean, to Damian's point, you come in, you've maybe done 3 months, 9 months of a coding bootcamp, and suddenly you're working with people who have their master's and several years of working experience. One thing you're gonna encounter is imposter syndrome, which in general people experience coming into tech, especially underrepresented talent or women engineers. We've actually found that they report more belonging uncertainty in their first week, even if they're hired full-time and are not an apprentice. So we, we take our, uh, the mentors and the managers that work with apprentices through training around how to help them manage things like imposter syndrome. Um, we also create a cohort experience for them, so we have, um, networking activities, bonding activities. We introduce them to some of our employee communities at the company. Um, and most importantly, just create the sense that they are a full-time software engineer at the company. We also try to amplify both their, what they do really well. So for example, we had one engineer who had done a bootcamp in working in Android, and she brought these new concepts that our Android engineering team hadn't yet worked with. And so we amplify that. The other difference is that apprentices tend to come from other companies. Careers, so they already have some professional experience and they can bring, you know, one of our apprentices was an architect, one was an economist, one was a banker. And so they bring all of these different skills versus someone who's new to the working world altogether.

Got it.

So it's a combination of training them for what they will expect and encounter and acknowledge that you are gonna experience things like imposter syndrome and also helping our engineers support them and realize what they bring to the role.

Got it. So I believe that this is a social justice issue, and this is why it's worth doing. It doesn't have to be about the bottom line or trying to convince people to do it, but I think a lot of the people in the audience are probably at companies where they do need to convince people to do this work. So, David, can you talk a little bit about the clear benefits of leaning in on equity, diversity, inclusion, and how people can talk about that to their CEOs? CEOs or the people that need to support this work?

Sure. I think there's been numerous studies, Ryan, that have been done that show that whether it's women or it's different underrepresented groups, the more that they're in positions of leadership and the more they're in engineering teams, that those teams become more creative. They become more— as they become more diverse, they become more creative. I think when you think about the continuum or the spectrum, really there's 3 different buckets. There's sourcing, there's development, and there's retention. And I think a lot of times companies kind of focus on the sourcing of diverse talent. You know, how do we bring in more women or minority engineers or just employees at our company? And that's kind of where the buck stops, as opposed to Candice's point. Once they're in the door, how do we help them develop? How do we help them retain? She talked about how they helped amplify some of the work of some of the folks who came in with a different Android experience. And I think that's really a critical piece. We were actually at a culture dinner of a major tech company in November, and, you know, the CEO of the company admitted, hey, a lot of people at our company don't believe that diversity really matters.

Wow.

And actually, at another company we went to, they admitted, hey, our senior leaders don't actually believe that there exist senior Black software engineers, right? Some that come out of apprentice programs or junior-level engineers, but they didn't actually physically believe that, you know, Black, senior Black software engineers existed.

Wow.

So I think it's a matter of, you know, kind of in this goal of progress, not perfection, getting people to the next step of showing them, demonstrating, whether it's through DevCloud, whether it's through different organizations, demonstrating them, A, this talent exists, and B, when you hire these people to your team, they're gonna be really productive members and help your team become more creative, become more effective. And I think that's gonna be really important.

Right.

So Wayne, you've been, you know, working hard on this issue for years and years and years.

That's the gray hair show.

Yeah, he's tired. It's been a long time. What have been a couple key takeaways that you want to share with the audience to help create real action and progress in their company? Any particular points you'd like to share?

Yeah, a couple, and then I want to touch on the apprentice program also a little bit, but We've been consulting with companies over the years. I mean, like Ryan said, been doing this work on and off around underrepresented entrepreneurs for the value of supporting them. 'Cause at some point, every single tech company was a small team. So it's important to start early as a startup, but then also as a company, as a culture, it's important for individuals, executive teams to be on the same page. And Candice was, and we was chatting about, was alluding to this earlier, earlier, but it's very important for the CEO, executive team, and everybody to have some sort of inclusion, diversity metrics, goals from the top. And when people leave or come or new hires come in, that they are also on the same page. But it's also important for every individual to come up with their own why, right? Because we talk about, We're talking about people. We're not talking about algorithms. We're not talking about AI. We're talking about bringing humans into a job to solve a problem and to create wealth. We're not talking about some deep logic algorithm that is— why, if Ryan and I, who grew up— Ryan grew up from Colorado, lived in London. We've known each other for years. And I'm from the South, North Carolina. If we can have an intellectual conversation around tech, that's all we're talking about.

Yeah.

Someone looking at people differently to like create access. So individuals should come up with their own why inclusion, why diversity matters to them. As a company, set goals, hold everyone accountable, and then measure and track progress over time. And then also, when we think about the word diversity inclusion and programs, a lot of people come to us and saying, hey, you know, How do we measure success? Diversity inclusion is a big umbrella word. If your goal is, you can set one small goal under the inclusion, under the culture, under the diversity umbrella. If you work on that one goal and track it over time, that could be enough. That goal could be, yes, get more women engineers, get more black women engineers, get more LGBTQ2TIA, Employees, it could be one goal. I'll work on my gender neutral bathroom. Set one goal and just start there. It doesn't have to be this big holistic, we're gonna change our culture overnight. It doesn't work that way.

[Speaker:JASON M. LEMKIN] Right. Yeah, this is one thing I want to encourage everybody listening here is that this is actionable, and it's as simple as realizing there is amazing underrepresented talent in your town, probably in your neighborhood right now. It, you know, if you ever hear someone say, "There's no talent, like I can't," it's just not true. We have amazing people everywhere. So that's the first thing, realize, okay, this isn't that hard actually. And then if you partner with an organization that has the trust of the community, right? To say, "Hey, I as a white CEO can't walk into a group of Black folks and say, 'Hey, we wanna hire you.'" It's a great job for you, trust me, because you don't know me, I don't know you, there's no trust, you know, we don't know each other, so you have to partner with an organization that has that trust, and they communicate the message, there's opportunities for you, and companies need you. This isn't charity, you know, this isn't something, this is, they need your talent, and then that boots up the talent but then as a company you have to support it once it comes in.

One thing too, I definitely think, and along those lines, it's really important, kind of the North Star is where inherently we believe and understand that there's value in having a diverse company. If I went to any engineering manager, any CEO, and said, hiring quality, good engineers is important for your company, no one would, we don't have forums on that. We don't need to explain that to anyone. It is inherently known and understood. And it's great now that we are starting to see this, that we have data. There's actually research. There's numerical revenue benefit, business benefit, strategic benefit that both can be proved, tracked, and has been seen with these diverse talents. And once companies, and once heads of companies, every, you know, employees, once we get to a point of where we understand that having a good representation, having different thoughts, inputting product strategy or helping us solve engineering problems, we will start to solve the problem. Um, one fundamental thing that's very interesting, going back to the qualified engineering, um, issue, huge issue in the Valley. We have actively worked on it over the years. There are stories of startups standing on corners asking for engineers because they understand they need great talent and they're willing to do whatever needs to happen. And sometimes we approach this problem as there is, I have a bunch of problems like, oh, diversity is one of them. I probably should address it. Let me bring in someone or hire someone or tackle one facet of it as opposed to I actually believe and everyone actually believes and we as an industry and we as a company believe that if we have a good representation, we actually have a strategic advantage. I think if we try and if a lot of, individuals to try and get, think that way or imbue that type of thinking, you would be surprised how quickly everyone or a lot more people will get on board individually, whether it's small decisions they make that fundamentally shift the makeup of your companies and both retention, hiring, and even helping to remove biases.

Right.

If I, yeah, totally agree. And if I could, if I could add to that, so it's really interesting because a lot of people I think that in my role, my entire purpose is recruiting to hit our diversity goals. And kind of as Damien said, it's like this add-on additional thing. But actually, some of the projects I'm working on right now have to do with our Pinners and reaching a broader swath of our Pinners. So most of the people on Pinterest are outside of the United States. It's incredibly, incredibly diverse. And the most important thing that indicates someone's going to use it again is that there's something relevant for relevant for you. So for example, Wayne and I were talking about motorcycles and your hobby around motorcycles and, you know, finding cool things on Pinterest. I'm putting you on the spot there. And if you can't find something that's relevant for you, then it's not gonna be the service for you. And so our mission is helping people find, discover, and do things they love. But what if, you know, I'm looking for a hairstyle and when I type in hairstyle, all I see are people who don't have my hair type? If I'm looking for a wedding and a gown, I can't see anybody with my skin tone, then we're actually not meeting our mission. Mission. And I think that's one of the reasons that, um, that, that our leadership team has invested in diversity. But every time that I have new managers that I'm talking to and onboarding them, I have to take them from this mindset of, oh, in addition to all my other goals, I now have this additional goal around like diversity hiring, to help them realize like, what outcome are you actually trying to solve? Like, what product are you trying to put out? And here's how that will be enriched with a diverse mindset.

Yeah. And if we don't have diverse viewpoints, you just don't see any of that. So we're an online school. We have video, and we do motion design over the teaching. And we had all white guys who were doing the motion design. And then we suddenly realized all the people in our motion design are white. And it's just like, oh my gosh. Yeah, so what are you going to think if you arrive at a school and all their motion graphics are white people? You're going to think, I don't belong here. And so there's all these tiny things that you just don't see until you have a diverse viewpoint around you.

Ryan, and I think to your point and to Candace's point, I do think people need to see themselves represented in the larger storytelling.

Right.

And I think right now, much of the storytelling is kind of, is from an extrinsic motivation. So, you know, the media's reporting, hey, such and such company has only 20% of women in leadership, or they have 4% Black people versus, you know, 13% of the population or whatnot. I think we need to do better at telling stories when we do have women and minorities and underrepresented groups be successful in software engineering and in other fields within the tech industry. If I had, you know, a dollar for every person that came up to me after The Social Network came out and said, "Oh, wow, like, now I want to get in, you know, computer science. I want to get in startups. How do I start a tech company?" because they saw the story in their major Hollywood production and they saw, you know, a version of Mark Zuckerberg's story, And that was then the inspiration. I remember a few years ago, actually in 2011, Wayne, I was in Wayne's program in NewMe, and it was a startup program specifically trying to help black minority tech companies rise and get funding. And I remember Vivek Wadhwa came and said, "We need a black Zuckerberg." And his point was that we need, people need something to aspire to, and if we can tell better stories and feature people from different backgrounds, who've succeeded in technology, I think then we're going to create intrinsic motivation for both for the individuals to now join tech, do a CS degree, pursue this field, whether an apprentice program or through CS. And we're also going to give more motivation for the companies to realize, like the Jeremy Lin, you know, kind of Darryl Moore example, oh, wow, there can be Black women, Latinx, you know, Native American software engineers.

And they—

and because we've seen it, because we've seen that story being told. And so I think we need to become better storytellers as a group. As an industry.

[Speaker] Thank you. So one thing, I think almost everybody is white out there, which is great, and normal for this kind of audience. And I know that I went through this kind of period of being afraid of saying wrong things, or, you know, it's just a really charged issue. But as I've gone through that, I realized, as soon as I leaned in and tried to learn these things, everybody was welcoming. Your whole community was welcome to me. So what advice can you give to everyone out there that's like, this is kind of terrifying. I want to do the right thing, but how do I start? Anyone speak to that?

I can start. So we have this event at Pinterest. We call it KnitCon. Basically, we have this value about knitting, which is basically people bringing together different ideas. Yeah, so not knitting, although that's a nice metaphor. And knitting is very related to the benefit of diversity, that extrinsic— intrinsic point that you were talking about. And so, I had this session, because one of the things I realized is when I'm talking to our executives or whoever, a manager, and I'm kind of coaching them on this topic, I always say, like, I'm not going to judge anything you say, because I can tell where your intention is coming from. And if you— you know, no matter what you say, it's not going to be an issue, and we can work on that. But I decided that the best thing that I could do is be vulnerable about times that I've stumbled into things and said the wrong things around groups or topics that I've been learning about. So I had this KnitCon session, and it was called, "I Didn't Mean to Offend You..." And I'm thinking of doing it again this year. But essentially, I, myself, and 2 other coworkers told stories of times that we, unintentionally offended a population or somebody that we knew because we were learning about a new population and their perspective. So normalizing that learning curve was really effective.

Got it.

So why don't we go down one more time just so we can remind the audience where they can find you all if they want to ask you more questions. So Damon, do you want to start? Where can people—

Yeah.

So you can find out more about DevColor, of course, on social media, but at devcolor.org. You can find out a little bit about me personally at damiampeters.com.

Great.

Wayne?

You can find out more about the work we do at Change Catalyst at changecatalyst.co and the work we do around creating inclusive tech ecosystem at techinclusion.co. And I'm at Wayne Sutton on every social network, almost every.

Great. Yeah, so you can definitely find out the work that we're doing at Pinterest around diversity on Medium. We have some posts that we call Pinclusion posts. Look for one more coming out this week. And you can also find me on LinkedIn and in social media.

Great.

Yeah, I'm David Adeyomi on social media, so you can find me there.

Great. And I'm happy to answer all your questions too. I've learned a ton, and I'd love to share what I learned. I'm just Ryan at teamtreehouse.com. So I want to thank my amazing panel. Thanks for being with us, and thank you all for listening.

Thank you, guys. Take care.