Scott Carey
Managing Editor, News

Black developers tell how the US tech industry could do better

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Aug 24, 202018 mins

Black developers have long been underrepresented in the US technology industry, but four share how that could change now that diversity is again top of mind.

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Credit: Help Scout / Tech by Choice / Twitter

As the sustained heat of the Black Lives Matter and racial justice protests that have raged across the country in the days following the May 2020 police killing of George Floyd dies down, the technology industry once again finds itself facing up to its diversity problem.

The number of computer science graduatesโ€”a big source of the software development communityโ€”from minority backgrounds remains stubbornly below 10 percent of total graduates in the US. Progressing in the industry also remains difficult, where attrition rates for Black employees remain high. A lack of senior sponsorship and effective role models, combined with ineffective hiring and retention incentive structures for managers, has seen Black talent wash out of the industry more often than rising to the highest levels.

As a result, the people writing software donโ€™t come close to reflecting society, nor are the rewards for developers equally distributed.

To get a better picture of what itโ€™s like to be an African-American developer today, InfoWorld spoke to four people about their differing routes into the industry, what they would like to see change and advice they would give to a younger version of themselves, tempted by a lucrative career in software development.

Nick Caldwell: Combatting isolation with lots of hard work

Nick Caldwell is the VP of engineering at Twitter, a role he started in June 2020. He previously held senior positions at Microsoft, Reddit, and Google after it acquired the business intelligence firm Looker, where he was the chief product and engineering officer.

nick caldwell twitter Twitter

Nick Caldwell, VP of engineering at Twitter

After growing up in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Maryland, Caldwell graduated from MIT in 2003 with a degree in computer science and electrical engineering, with a specialty in the then-nascent field of machine learning. He turned that into a role at Microsoft, where he joined the speech and natural language group as an intern and later a software development engineer.

Caldwell developed an interest in computers from a young age, as his public defender father typed up his casework on a Tandy 1000 PC. He soon learned how to code in C++ and started to see coding and the early internet as his gateway to opportunity. โ€œThey say talent is evenly distributed but opportunity is not. I saw coding and the early internet as a great equalizer,โ€ he tells InfoWorld.

Then came the hard part: getting through the undergrad computer science program at MIT. โ€œThe biggest challenge, as an African-American person, was isolation,โ€ he says. โ€œThe sheer difficulty of the work, not having people I could talk to, and fear of falling behind. I got into the mindset that its was a personal challenge to power through it all by myself. Nothing has been as difficult for me since going to MIT for undergrad.โ€

Going from MIT to Seattle gave Caldwell a soft enough landing in the corporate world that he ended up staying there for 15 years. โ€I stayed in the same team at Microsoft for longer than I should have. I was afraid to take risks on new opportunities because of how far Iโ€™d climbed the ladder. I was making good money, had stability, and didnโ€™t want to screw it up,โ€ he says.

So knowing what he does now, what advice would he give to a younger version of himself? โ€œIt took me a long time to realize that my skills and ability was all the safety net I needed,โ€ he says.

Beyond that mindset change, Caldwell has grown to appreciate developing knowledge of the business he is working for beyond the code base, and to value his network as highly if not higher than his formal engineering skills. โ€œThe code you create as an engineer is a depreciating asset, but your network is an appreciating asset,โ€ he says.

Speaking about the developer community more broadly, Caldwell believes the industry is โ€œopen and inclusive in the way anyone can submit a pull request to GitHub, but there is another level around it being welcoming of diverse perspectives and inclusive in a way that attracts more diverse talent.โ€

Getting better representation in tech is something Caldwell admits is a complicated problem, but one that could be improved upon with some relatively simple steps.

First is โ€œembracing new funnels of talentโ€ for entry-level positions beyond just candidates with a traditional four-year college degree. Those candidates must then be supported with mentorship, sponsorship, and apprenticeship programs to avoid churning out. โ€œWe see a lot of people dropping out of the industry, so you need to give a feeling of community and safety. If a company doesnโ€™t have enough to do that themselves, they should fund those people to do that externally through groups like /dev/color,โ€ he adds, an organization on whose board he sits.

Second, โ€œtie goals related to diversity and inclusion to executive leadershipโ€™s incentives and you will see change immediately.โ€

In terms of his personal responsibility, Caldwell now finds himself in a position where he can help younger people get into the technology industry. โ€œHistorically there has been a frustrating stigma associated with investing in diversity and inclusion efforts. Recent events have pulled in more people who were hesitant or afraid to help,โ€ he says. โ€œNow is the time to act as a mentor, or even better a sponsor, for the underrepresented in tech.โ€

Third, be visible. Another useful program for pulling Caldwell out of his own comfort zone has been the โ€œaccountability squadsโ€ at /dev/color, where people share goals and then hold each other accountable regularly. โ€œThis helped me blog more, speak at events and network with venture capital groups, all things I had put off in the past,โ€ he says.

Caldwell says that taking on these more public-facing activities can be difficult for Black people in tech, which brings additionalโ€”and unwarrantedโ€”layers of scrutiny. โ€œIf you are successful as an underrepresented person, you will be accused of being token anyway. Itโ€™s not enough to be excellent, you have to be phenomenal,โ€ he says. โ€œThat makes it harder to ask for help and build a network of supporters. I have only recently overcome those fears.โ€

Anjuan Simmons: Why sharing your privilege matters

Anjuan Simmons is an engineering coach at Help Scout and the author of Minority Tech. Born and raised in Texas, he formally learned how to code at the University of Texas at Austin and later at Texas A&M University, but his love for engineering was born out of an interest in something far more universal for self-professed nerds everywhere: Star Trek.

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Anjuan Simmons, engineering coach at Help Scout

โ€œPicard was always my favorite captain, and the engineer was Geordi La Forge, a Black man. Being that young and that much of a sci-fi nerd gave me a vision of what you can be in engineering,โ€ he tells InfoWorld.

Simmons was also fortunate enough to benefit from a high school program that looked to get more Black people to see themselves as engineers, not something that all kids can claim. โ€œThat made it feel within reach to me as a student,โ€ he says.

With an electrical engineering degree under his belt, Simmons landed a job in 1997 within the technology practice at the consultancy Accenture in Houston, where one of the partners was a Black man. โ€œHe had done good work diversifying the talent pool,โ€ Simmons says, โ€œthat allowed me to see myself at work.โ€

However, when he hit the road, Simmons often found himself as the lone Black person on a team, and he was regularly overlooked as a team lead by clients. He gives an example of a typical experience he had:

I would be the team lead, and my team and I would be holed up in a conference room at the client site. A member of the client executive team would walk into the conference room and assume that one of the white members of my team was the team lead. That team member would point to me and let that person know that the questions they were asking had to be answered by me.
These are not overt racist actions but part of a systematic structure where there are not a lot of Black people being represented as leaders in the industry.

The importance of those role models for people in technology from minority backgrounds cannot be underplayed, and they often become important sources of sponsorship and mentorship. โ€œI had experiences being sponsored during my career,โ€ Simmons says. โ€œOne of my first projects was led by a white man, and we had to deploy software to hub sites in Lagos, Hannover, Dubai, and Cairo. He picked me to be his tech leadโ€”that was someone who lent me some of his privilege to do that.โ€

Simmons notes that networks and routes into tech have opened up for people of color, and he finds Twitter a particularly useful personal resource. โ€œI see more Black people in the tech industry. And Twitter is a great way to find people that look like me; I find more people there than in my everyday life,โ€ he says, โ€œbut there is still a lack of representation at the senior level.โ€

While Simmons believes tech truly wants to be open and inclusive, people in the industry โ€œoften have trouble seeing the ways it is not. Most people donโ€™t have a great view of what the experiences of a Black person is and the ways the developer community is set up.โ€

While increased conversation around diversity and inclusion are good steps, Simmons and many of his peers see more of a need for tangible action by companies to address the issue. In his 2017 talk โ€œLending Privilege,โ€ Simmons explains: โ€œDiversity can be a numbers game, but inclusion requires empathy. Corporations arenโ€™t designed to be inclusive, they exist to deliver value to shareholders. โ€ฆ HR departments arenโ€™t going to help make our industry more inclusive.โ€

โ€œI wrote โ€˜Lending Privilegeโ€™ to be something they can do,โ€ he says. These steps include clearly defining diversity at your organization, expanding hiring pools, and white team leads lending their privilege where possible.

What advice would Simmons give to a younger version of himself? โ€œAct like you are a startup of one,โ€ he says. โ€œYou have to build your expertise. You have to do marketing and you have to understand personal branding. You have to look for investors, those are the mentors and sponsors.โ€

Valerie Phoenix: Taking the self-taught route

Valerie Phoenix is a senior software engineer at logistics software startup Mastery Logistics Systems and also the founder of Tech by Choice, an organization aimed at increasing diversity in the science, tech, engineering, and math industries by offering low- to no-cost skill-building events and virtual gatherings.

valerie phoenix tech by choice Tech by Choice

Valerie Phoenix, senior software engineer at Mastery Logistics Systems and founder of Tech by Choice

Born and raised in California, Phoenix studied psychology and art at California State University at Northridge, where she supported herself with a job at a small Los Angeles-based startup Estify, doing data entry and customer support.

It was there that she took a keen interest in the engineering side of the business, seeing a big career opportunity in software development, so she started to learn how to code in HTML and CSS on her own time.

As she honed her front-end development skills, Phoenix built a website for a mural reveal she was working on as part of her art class. This caught the attention of a professor at the collegeโ€™s MetaLab programme, which specializes in developing mobile web applications for the university and some external clients. โ€œMetaLab was a great support system, and even after I landed jobs they would help me with my resumรฉ and I would always share my wins with them,โ€ Phoenix tells InfoWorld.

This was a welcome change from her role at Estify, where she encountered resistance to her transition into engineering. โ€œI was one of the few women and the only Black person who worked there, so I think that added to their displeasure or distrust of my ability,โ€ she says. โ€œI had to deal with the engineering lead, who didnโ€™t really like to see my transition into those roles, so I was given tasks way out of scope and didnโ€™t have a lot of help because of that.โ€

Undeterred, Phoenix continued to sharpen her skills. โ€œMy only option to stay in these positions was to learn and to learn quickly,โ€ she says. The MetaLab and various online communities proved valuable in the absence of a professional support network for Phoenix, specifically the CodeNewbie podcast and Slack group in the early days.

โ€œThat is where I learned the vocabulary,โ€ she says. โ€œThrough that I found out about Meetup and discovered local communities. Now I have noticed more people who come from diverse backgrounds who are looking to connect, so I am seeing more groups pop up to support that.โ€

The next step for Phoenix was the scariest: landing a bona fide engineering role. Her mentors at the MetaLab proved invaluable here, helping her to hone her rรฉsumรฉ and prepare for technical interviews. She soon found herself in a junior developer at Zenith Insurance, where she was not only the youngest person on the team but also the only Black woman. There she learned the value of process and project management skills, before returning to the startup world with Mastery in 2019.

What would she tell a younger version of herself, knowing what she does now? โ€œI wish I knew I didnโ€™t have to learn all languages and frameworks and should focus on one and master that before moving on,โ€ she says. โ€œKnowing when to leave a company is also important to understand. When a company gives you tasks that donโ€™t make you ready for the market or outdate your skills and you get stuck, that is when itโ€™s time to look elsewhere.โ€

Speaking more broadly, Phoenix doesnโ€™t see the software developer community as a particularly open and inclusive place. โ€œI want to say we are trending in the right direction and it is nice to see corporates recognize a problem and speaking out, and it is nice to amplify Black voices but if you arenโ€™t paying them properly and establishing proper policies, all of the support and donations mean nothing. Itโ€™s performative allyship; that is not really helpful,โ€ she says. Instead, she would like to see management incentives aligned with hiring and retaining more diverse talent into organizations.

Mentorship also plays an important roleโ€”specifically people who are willing to give up their time to push underrepresented groups โ€œto make the next steps in your career, write that first book or speak at a conference, and get paid for it,โ€ Phoenix says. Only then โ€œwill retention rates go up for diverse candidates.โ€

Then there is her work at Tech by Choice, which aims to open up avenues into technology for people who may not have the network or the means to break into the industry. โ€œBeing a self-taught developer was hard, and I relied on community support to do that. But even those communities were not that accessible to me,โ€ she says. โ€œSome courses cost $100, so I had to decide whether to pay my phone bill that month or take the course.โ€

Tech by Choice offers events and online courses that cost as little as $5 and is โ€œfocused on getting people in but also leveling people up from entry level to the board and C-level who make these decisions and write policies that will actually make tech diverse,โ€ Phoenix says.

What is the next step for Phoenix personally? โ€œManagement. I havenโ€™t cracked that code yet,โ€ she says.

โ€˜Ericโ€™: Donโ€™t set yourself up for disappointment

Eric (a pseudonym because the developer wanted to remain anonymous) moved to the US at a young age. After graduating with a degree in computer science and mathematics from a top university, he has worked as a software engineer for several startups and more established firms in the financial services industry.

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โ€œEric,โ€ a Black software engineer who wishes to remain anonymous

A prodigious programmer, Eric says he relied on his coding chops to excel in college, where he โ€œdoesnโ€™t remember any other Black people in the program through my four years. โ€ฆ I felt comfortable in the computer science program, and the benefit of not having to spend time worrying about my computer science coursework meant I could spend more time in other liberal arts programs, which were much more diverse.โ€

Eric says small groups did form, mainly around certain teaching assistants and gaming circles, which he admits can be difficult for minorities to access. โ€œThey tend to not be the most socially inclusive people,โ€ he says. โ€œThis was an era where those [exclusionary] behaviors were more normalized. I didnโ€™t find the culture inclusive, but I worked through it. Iโ€™m not the kind of person that looks for belonging, so I focused on competence.โ€

Since leaving college, Eric was able to get an associate developer role within a department he admits wasnโ€™t โ€œthe most glamorous.โ€ But he was soon able to progress toward more exotic, exciting technologies and opportunities.

He admits to feeling underestimated throughout his career, but he has managed to turn that to his advantage. โ€œStarting as an associate software engineer, the expectations are very low and of me were particularly lowโ€”I was put into a program with nonprofessional coders with the expectation that I wouldnโ€™t know anything,โ€ he says. โ€œI felt underestimated, but I wasnโ€™t looking for validation.โ€

Mentorship is something Eric has valued throughout his career, but he sees its limitations when it comes to the important decisions regarding promotions and pay. โ€œI had a lot of mentorship early on, and your peers and direct managers tend have a better sense of your potential,โ€ he says, โ€œI was able to attract good mentors based on what I produced and on my personality. Despite that, systemically speaking, the barriers were pretty significant. Having one person or team on your side is different to a committee making promotion and pay decisions.โ€

When it comes to the broader software engineering community, Eric thinks there have been important steps taken in recent years around the language of diversity and inclusion, but that behaviors around promotion and pay havenโ€™t budged. โ€œThey are seemingly trying but many of the problems are systemic and psychological. Yes, the language has improved, which is important, but I donโ€™t think the behaviors and the numbers have changed all that much,โ€ he says.

In terms of actually changing those behaviors, Eric sees a need for the incentives around corporate diversity and inclusion to be realigned. โ€œYou have to reward managers for having inclusive and diverse teams, for example,โ€ he says. โ€œAt the very least you have to audit your pay and promotion process to ensure that there are no systemic inequalities.โ€

What advice would Eric have for a younger version of himself starting out now? โ€œI would say donโ€™t go by what people say they value or the marketing; come in with an open mind. What is important is behavior and recognizing if that doesnโ€™t align with what they are saying. Donโ€™t set yourself up for disappointment,โ€ he says.