What do you imagine when you think of a programmer, an entrepreneur, or a CEO? If every picture you had was of some dude, then you have a pretty accurate picture of Silicon Valley. The tech industry is full of hoodie-wearing, energy-drink-swilling, strip-club attending male brogrammers, entrepre-dudes, and CE[br]Os and the influx of women into STEM hasn’t tilted the gender scales into any semblance of balance. From the ground floor to the top floor, from the startup to the old-guard tech business, it’s a boy’s-with-tech-toys club. If you think this is great for tech, then you could be part of the problem.
This is the underlying premise of Emily Chang’s bestselling book Brotopia on the culture of Silicon Valley. Emily Chang is an author, journalist, and the anchor of Bloomberg Technology. After observing the Bro culture that has come to dominate Silicon Valley, she put research behind her hunches and explained why and how it came to be.
Want to be part of the solution? Here are three takeaways from Chang’s book on how to balance the diversity scales.
Hire outside your networks.
It’s easy to hire people we know. But our networks are full of people who look and think just like us. So if you’re a male programmer, you tend to know other male programmers. If you are a male entrepreneur, you tend to know other male entrepreneurs. If you went to Harvard or Stanford, you hire people with red logos on their hoodies. The result is a workplace that looks the same and has similar backgrounds, giving them the same life perspective.
Look beyond the top schools and your classmates for recommendations. Search for people with non-traditional paths of learning for new hires.
Ditch the myth of meritocracy.
Meritocracy is the idea the best people will be rewarded, promoted, or hired based on merit alone. It’s a great idea. And it doesn’t work. According to Chang, meritocracy is often based on a narrow definition which favors training, connections, and education primarily available to the wealthy. That is, the people who end up in Harvard and Stanford often come from families who had access to more education and resources than those who didn’t get in. Great programmers can come from state schools or be self-educated too.
Furthermore, companies who adopt merit-based compensation tend to become less gender diverse, as the definitions of “merit” are often male-biased. Chang points out the idea of merit is often based on the experience of single males in their mid-20s with no family.
For example, if you reward people who “work hard” based on how late you see them in the office, this discriminates against people who have families and need to take care of children or elder parents. It’s not just women who lose here, but fathers also. Chang points out how many tech companies are proud to say they are “dog-friendly” but who have no daycare or childcare for parents.
Instead, create standards with input from men and women; single and with families.
Start with diversity and inclusion from the beginning.
One of the concerns of gender diversity is imbalance scales as your company grows. If you hire only males at the beginning of your company, your company will be even more male-dominated as it grows. The 70-30 imbalance at the start will become 80-20 or 90-10 years later as more men hire men, creating a culture that favors men—encouraging women to exit and find opportunity elsewhere.
This is why you must be intentional about diversity and inclusivity from the beginning. The company Slack made an intentional effort to hire women from the start and now have one of the most gender-diverse companies in tech with 43.5 percent women. But you have to be vigilant and maintain the effort.
Google hired women leaders like Susan Wojcicki (CEO of YouTube), Sheryl Sandberg, and Marissa Mayer in the early days, but once the company scaled it fell behind in promoting women in leadership roles. Now Google has 31 percent women employees and only 25 percent in leadership roles.
Want another reason to be gender balanced? Research shows companies with more women represented in leadership make more money. On average, companies who replaced one man with one woman in leadership or board roles saw a 3 to 8 percent increase in profitability.
These three ideas aren’t quick fixes to the gender imbalance.
But culture change isn’t a quick fix. It’s about changing the system of how we hire, retain, and promote people in our companies: tech and all others. It has to start with changing the way we think about men and women at work—so we all succeed together. The benefit is a more profitable, innovative, and creative company and a better working environment for everyone.