This month we dove into Susanne Tedrick’s new book, Women of Color in Tech. Tedrick provides an excellent overview of the challenges many women of color face when trying to enter into and stay in the technology industry. The mix of real-world advice, personal experience, and industry stories combine to form a comprehensive resource for anyone in technology or looking to enter the field.
Tech Themes
The Current State. Tedrick starts the book with uncomfortable statistics. Only 26% of computing roles are held by women; Black women hold 3% and Hispanic women hold 2% of computing roles. In addition, the trends aren’t positive - 26% is a 9% decrease since 1990. According to the Ascend Foundation, a Pan-Asian organization for business professionals, from 2007 to 2015, black women experienced a 13% decrease in professional roles in technology. While distressing, there are some green shoots, a 2012 paper by Heather Gonzalez and Jeffrey Kuenzi pointed out that science and engineering graduate program enrollments grew 65%, 55%, and 50% for Hispanic/Latino, American Indian/Alaska Native, and African American students, respectively. So why is this? Tedrick acknowledges that there is no one single answer, instead, its a combination of circumstances starting at early adolescence. Tedrick introduces the idea of “STEM Deserts” or areas where STEM education is not offered. These deserts disproportionally affect high poverty schools (schools where 75% or more of the students are eligible for free lunch and breakfast). Almost half of these schools contain large Black and Hispanic populations. Once women of color arrive at college it gets harder: “Coupling [student debt] with professor’s biases, a lack of meaningful support at home or within their community, and few to no peers with whom they can identify in their academic programs, many young women of color struggle to get through their programs.” For the few that conquer all of these challenges, the workplace introduces a whole new set of issues. Tedrick cites the Kapor Center’s Tech Leavers Study: “Thirty percent of women of color respondents claimed that they were passed over for promotions and 24% report being stereotyped.” According to a Harvard Business Review article written by feminist legal scholar Joan Williams, “77% of black women report having to prove themselves over and over; their success discounted and their expertise questioned.” When you compile all of these challenges throughout a lifetime, it becomes an incredibly difficult journey for black women in tech.
Technical Roles and the Building Blocks of the Internet. Tedrick introduces many key organizational roles in technology including business analysis, consulting, data science, information security, product management, project management, software development, technical sales, technical support, user experience design, and web design. After introducing each one, she provides a prescriptive guide for individuals looking to learn more - hitting on key skills, educational requirements, and the latest trends. While I can’t cover every role here, one underappreciated position / sub-segment of technology Tedrick discusses is computer networking. Ultimately, networking was the benefit that unlocked the internet to the masses. Protocols like TCP/IP, VoIP, and HTTP are crucial to the functioning internet. These protocols offer ways for computers to communicate with one another in a consistent manner. The IP (Internet Protocol) provides basic addressing for computers and TCP provides the continual delivery of ordered and reliable bytes from one computer to another in what are called packets. A packet is a pre-defined standard for sending data. VoIP is an extension of this protocol specifically for transcoding audio and video voice signals into packets. HTTP is the way you request the data found at a location: http://techbookofthemonth.com tells the browser to fetch the website at that URL. A lot of basic networking features are typically baked into the operating system, which for most consumers today is Linux. Linux is an open-source operating system that handles all of the things that makes your computer run: memory, CPU, connected devices, graphics, desktop environment, and the ability to run applications. However, Linux programming is still not a commonly learned skill. Tedrick quotes Tameika Reed, a senior infrastructure engineer and founder of Women in Linux: “We have people who are getting degrees and PhDs and so on. . . . When it comes down to Linux, which runs in 90 percent of most companies, and it’s time to troubleshoot something, they don’t know how to troubleshoot the basics of the foundation. I look at Linux as the foundations of getting into tech.” Red Hat, which was acquired by IBM for $34 billion in 2019, offers an enterprise version of Linux which comes with support, guaranteed versioning, and additional security. While computer networking is not a flashy industry, it underpins so much that it remains very interesting.
Technology Skills. Chapter six lays out a great way to assess your own skills and understand where you need improvement. These skills can require additional schooling via college, trade schools, or massive-open-online-courses (MOOCs) like Coursera but other ways to complement this learning include hackathons, conferences, networking, and volunteering. Tedrick wanted to improve her own skills so she volunteered to help set up a conference: “To improve my web design, WordPress, and conference organization skills, I volunteered my services for a leadership conference being held by IEEE Women in Engineering for four months in 2016. I helped to build and maintain the event website using WordPress, as well as helped people with registration and refunds. This experience greatly improved my understanding of web design, search engine optimization (SEO), event promotion, and collaborating with remote teams (I was based in Chicago, while much of the event team and registrants were based in and around Detroit, Michigan). In the process, I learned more about the different fields of engineering and broadened my network with incredible engineering students and professionals.” The book is incredibly helpful for skill-building - it gives you the exact things you need to learn to be successful in specific positions and it even clears up some myths of the technology industry. One common myth is that “Tech Careers Require Constant, Hands-On Programming.” As evidenced by the myriad of roles listed above, the technology industry involves so much more than programming. In addition, Tech careers exist outside of the top five big-name companies like Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Netflix and even exist at non-tech companies too. One critical skill that Tedrick highlights for a number of different technical roles is communication. Communication is not often mentioned when discussing software engineering, but Tedrick picks up on its huge importance, and the necessary ability to communicate to technical and non-technical audiences. On top of sharing with non-technical audiences, engineers need to know how to communicate accurate deadlines to managers and ask for help when unsure of how to implement a challenging new feature. Communication is not just speaking, its also listening and empathetically understanding where others are coming from, to establish common ground and grow mutual understanding.
Business Themes
Tedrick’s Story and Grit. Susanne’s personal stories appear throughout the book and perfectly complement the substantial amount of how-to information and advice. Chapter nine talks about the daily challenges of many women of color in tech and their lack of support to solve those challenges. Susanne’s own story is one of incredible determination and perseverance: “My mother had been diagnosed with a brain tumor when I was very young. This initial tumor led to more health issues for her over the years, including a decline into dementia, a loss of some of her short-term memory, and impacted mobility. The latter half of her life was spent in and out of hospitals, having numerous operations and medical incidents. My father was left to care for me and my sister, while also supporting several other family members in one house. Between work and caring for my mom, he couldn’t be around much, and fortunately, some nearby relatives and family friends helped to raise and care for us. As there was only one income (already too high to qualify for most public assistance programs) and my mother needed many medications, there were times where a choice had to be made between eating, having phone service, making critical house repairs, or having the lights stay on. This went on for nearly two decades, up until my mother’s death. It wasn’t until well into my adult life that I realized I was living in ‘survival mode’ and just trying to exist. I was spending most of my time trying to find happiness in my life; having a meaningful and engaging career was not an immediate goal or one I thought was achievable for me.” After working in administrative roles and taking on a couple of different jobs, she managed to attend Northwestern while continuing to work. “I used much of my vacation and holiday time from work not only to study but to attend conferences, interviews, boot camps, and the like. I did homework during lunch breaks or before the start of a full workday, only to go to class for several hours in the same evening.” Tedrick has risen to be an award-winning public speaker, author, and technologist at IBM (oh and she’s also run a couple of marathons). Her story is truly inspirational!
Culture, Intersectionality, and Bias. We’ve discussed Clayton Christensen’s Resources-Processes-Values framework before and how they impact the discovery of emerging technologies. Often the processes create a culture and set of habitual routines that can be difficult to change. The culture of big technology has been anti-women for a long time. As Tedrick points out, women of color not only have to deal with this challenge but also repeated racial abuse, microaggressions, and tokenism. Kimberlé Crenshaw called this intersectionality, or the idea that a person's social identities (e.g., gender, caste, sex, race, class, sexuality, religion, disability, physical appearance, height, etc.) combine to create unique modes of discrimination and privilege. Tedrick points out an example of this with Sheryl Sandberg’s famous novel, Lean In. The book became a bestseller and made Sheryl Sandberg a household name (to those that didn’t already know her as COO of Facebook). However, as Tedrick points out: “The central problem with the book, which Sandberg herself later acknowledged, is that it assumed that the reader had certain privileges that many women of color do not have: completely supportive households that don’t require much of their time and attention, work cultures that allow expression of their thoughts without fear of being fired or held back, and access to career mentors to help them become stronger leaders. This lack of understanding of where the reader may be coming from and experiencing caused much of Sandberg’s advice to ring hollow for women of color.” The book ignores the structural challenges that many women of color face. Michelle Obama put it bluntly: “It’s not always enough to lean in, because that shit doesn’t work all the time.” When building culture at an organization, it’s super important to think about how that culture addresses each social identity at the company. Furthermore, it’s not the responsibility of diverse individuals to build that culture. Tedrick sums it up well: “Addressing tokenism, much like addressing bias, unfortunately, is not something that you alone can address. It is also not our responsibility to address this. It is up to organizations and their leaders to correct and address tokenism so that women of color are fully engaged.”
Negotiating Compensation. Understanding pay and compensation are critical to understanding any job offer. Frequently job candidates are remiss to ask for additional compensation because they fear retribution like the offer is pulled and given to someone else and worry about sounding greedy before even joining a new company. As Susanne found out after receiving her first traditional job, this can lead to lower salaries, especially when adjusting for location. In addition, Susanne points out the enormous gender pay gap that occurs at organizations: “It’s no secret that women—and specifically, women of color—are underpaid in about every industry, not just tech. While it is on companies to fix their approaches to compensation, it is our right and duty to demand fair compensation for our work.” A study of the technology industry done by job search marketplace, Hired, shows that black women were paid $0.89 on the dollar compared to white males. This is the lowest across White, Asian, Black, and Hispanic men and women in the technology sector. For LGBTQI+ individuals, the wage gap is $0.90 to $1 of compensation for non-LGBTQI+. While pay gap detail for black LGBTQI+ community is under-studied, according to The National LGBTQ Task Force’s 2011, 48% of trans and gender non-conforming black individuals experienced discrimination in the hiring process. Outside of the technology industry, the pay gap is even more stark with Black women earning $0.62 for every dollar earned by a White male. To address many of these challenges, and ensure that candidates get as close to a fair offer as possible, Tedrick lays out a framework for considering a new job, from pay to benefits to location. Tedrick advises individuals to first research local salaries for the role they are taking on. Armed with data, Tedrick suggests candidates try to be confident, respectful, and flexible in all discussions and to emphasize the unique value they bring to the organization.
Dig Deeper
Work Smart & Start Smart: Salary Negotiation for Women of Color
Anita Borg and the history of one of the largest professional organizations for women in technology
How the World’s most prevalent operating system was built by a 21-year old in Finland
Black Girls Code: Empowering Young Black Women to Become Innovators
Tedrick’s Twitter, website, and talk with the Women’s National Book Association