Why Market Research is Important for Any Organization

by Sarah Montoya

My friend Lydia introduced me to Poornima’s Lean Product Development Course. Lydia and I have had extensive conversations about my desire to expand my skills and she was confident the class would be a great fit. For the past few years I have worked in social services in a direct service role to low-income youth. I enjoyed my work but often found that I wanted to find different and unique ways to be challenged professionally.

With my background the options for branching out professionally often feel limited unless I go back to school. I studied psychology in undergrad and received a master’s of divinity immediately after; hence, I have never taken a business, marketing, or tech courses in school. But, because I already have a master’s degree I am not in any hurry to take on additional student debt. I usually turn to General Assembly or other spaces to add to my skill set. The first of Poornima’s classes that grabbed my attention was offered through General Assembly, but I wasn’t able to take it, so Lydia helped connect me to Poornima so I could take classes directly from her. I have only sat in on one class and I am so glad I did! I chose the class on Market Research because of my interest in going into fundraising and marketing full time, and my need to have a better understanding of the markets I want to reach out to.

Through the class I learned about Competitive Analysis, Differentiation Techniques, and User Segmentation. A good deal of my time at the moment is dedicated to volunteering for a small nonprofit in San Francisco. We offer financial support to projects in the developing world and a large part of how we do that is by asking for people to contribute to us, so we can pass the money along. More than any other question I am asked is: “Why are you any different than other NGO’s and non profits?”  I hadn’t thought about it in the exact terms listed above but listening to the class I realized that what people want to know is: “Have I done market research? Do I really know who else is doing what we do? And why are we the best organization for them to support?”

Most nonprofits don’t like to think of other nonprofits as competitors, but listening to the class I see that the same understanding of the market applies. We are asking for money so I need to be able to tell people why us. I can’t tell people why we are the best option if I don’t know what the other options are. Also, as I think about our organization’s future knowing the history of other nonprofits like us helps me think about why they succeeded and failed. Everyone makes mistakes and if we can learn from theirs (and ours) we will be a better organization. We also need to know who the market is and we should ask. Finally, as we think about the future of our organization we need to know if there is room in the market for us and how much room.

The class covered all of these issues. In addition to all of this, I know that our approach is different than other organizations. It is an approach that we hope will redirect international development, if we are able to push the development community towards the approach we are taking it will impact the way people choose who they give to, so we need to know if the market is ready to change. We need to be doing market research and we are.

The class helped me think about the parts of research we might be missing, and gave me language for what we are doing and need to be doing. Using the information from the class will enable me to better understand what people are asking me when they ask why us. It will also guide me as I do my research to be better prepared to answer their questions.

Sarah Montoya loves to learn and wants to make the world a better place. As the event manager for Do Good Lab she hosts fabulous events to support sustainable development. She also volunteers with Old Skool Cafe, and is passionate about human rights. Before moving to San Francisco she received her Masters of Divinity from Truett Seminary at Baylor University. Sarah loves traveling, running, crafting, and playing with her dog.

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How to Explain the ROI of Career Development Workshops

by Karen Catlin

Founders for growth stage startup and executives in a larger company know that the war for technical talent is intense.   They also understand that they need to differentiate themselves is to show that they care about their employees, career growth, and development. They want to provide training workshops, mentoring opportunities, and other skill development options.

Employees also suggest such programs, but too often don’t know how to answer the following questions posed by management:

  • How will these offerings make a difference?
  • What return will the company get on their investment?

As a consultant for companies who want to hire and retain female technical talent, I often hear these questions. While it may seem challenging to measure the return on investment of a career development workshop, a group mentoring program, or a coaching package, I’ve found some straightforward approaches to take. It’s not as hard at it looks! My methodology is based on skills I learned as an executive in the software industry, where we used metrics to measure the impact of just about everything we did.

ROI career development programTo calculate and communicate ROI, I follow these 5 steps:

Identify the business problem that you want to hire a consultant to solve. For example, many of the companies I advise want to retain their female technical talent, reducing the turnover or “regretted losses” of this highly-sought after demographic.

Simplify the problem. Instead of measuring the full impact of the program, recast it in simpler terms. E.g., What is the ROI for this program if it helps retain just one female engineer?

Measure the cost. While retaining an employee doesn’t have specific costs, replacing an employee does. To measure that cost, I searched for information from highly rated research groups. I found estimates reporting that it costs from 50% to 250% of a person’s salary to replace them (source: Catalyst). I decided to be conservative and go with the lower number. Based on my experience managing software development teams in Silicon Valley, I decided to use $120,000 as an average salary for my calculation. So, 50% of $120,000 = $60,000, or the average cost to replace a software engineer.

Calculate the ROI of the program you want. Simply divide the cost of the problem by the cost of the program. If the fee for the project is $10,000, the ROI would be $60,000/$10,000, or 6:1.

Compare the ROI to other initiatives. Ask management about the ROI they’ve seen for other career development programs. Or, find published examples for other companies. Assuming the ROI being offered to you is comparable or better, this data will showcase the impact the program can have for your organization. For example, I found that Sodexo measured reduced turnover and increased productivity to assess their mentoring program. In 2007, they reported a 2:1 ROI. (Source: Catalyst).  If I can provide mentoring with a 6:1 ROI, my program will benefit you well by comparison

Have you seen other ways to measure ROI for career development programs? Please leave a comment. I’d love to hear from you.

After a successful career in the software industry, Karen Catlin now focuses on developing powerful women leaders. She draws from her experience as an executive to coach individuals, lead workshops, and advise companies on hiring and retaining female talent. Karen also writes “Use Your Inside Voice,” a blog about the intersection of parenting and leadership.

In her prior role, Karen was a vice president in the CTO’s office at Adobe Systems. She co-founded the “Adobe & Women” initiative, focused on attracting, retaining, and providing career development opportunities for women at Adobe. Karen joined Adobe as part of the 2005 acquisition of Macromedia. While at Macromedia, she held a variety of management positions across engineering, including establishing the program management discipline for the company. Earlier in her career Karen worked for GO Corporation, Hitachi Europe Limited, and Brown University.

Karen holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Brown University.

In her spare time, Karen enjoys being outdoors, playing tennis, and designing hand-knit accessories.  She resides in San Mateo, CA with her husband and their two teenagers.

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How to Start Getting Speaking Engagements

I know many people are afraid of public speaking, I was too!  It just so happened that I managed to get rid of it once in for all after doing it for 18 years :)  (I started doing oratory and debate when I was 12.)

 

If you’ve looked at my speaker page it’s clear that I speak a lot!  So it’s natural that I get asked the question, “How did you get started getting speaking engagements?”  I’m assuming that if you’re asking this question then you’ve gotten past your fear of public speaking.  If not I’d highly recommend that you join ToastMasters to get some practice.

 

Public speaking is a great way to build a personal brand, but you cannot start out thinking that people are going to come after you.  In fact conference and event organizers are getting pretty picky about who speaks at their conference, and will often times ask you to submit a sample of your work.

 

So if you’re a newbie to public speaking, but want to eventually be like me and travel the country speaking, here are some steps to get you started:

 

  1. Figure out what you want to speak about, and start very focused.  I initially started speaking on just engineering best practices with topics like Build v. Buy.  Then as I become more knowledgable I branched out to additional topics like product development, entrepreneurship, and leadership.

    2.  

  2. Speaking at unconferences.   I started speaking at any place that had a speaker volunteer program like CodeCamp and ProductCamp.  This gave me a chance to practice my public speaking and presentation skills, but most importantly got used to interacting with a larger audience.

    3.  

  3. Make friends with event and conference organizers.  I let people know that I was interested and capable.  Some organizers are reluctant, and will want to meet with you to see if you have the chops.  So as I mentioned before, you’ll need a little portfolio.  Even something as simple as a YouTube video of you presenting can be powerful.  Or you can offer to teach or present something in person.

    4.  

  4. Know who you’re audience is.  If you decide to go down this track realize that you need to care about what your audience needs, which means you need to think and anticipate context and questions.  You’ll also want to get feedback from them on formats and styles, like talks, panels, workshops, and what they took away.

    5.  

  5. Full court press!  I tell the world I’m a qualified speaker, because well I am!  My senior year of high school I was flying all over the country, and gave over a 100 speeches.  Fast forward to the present, I’ve done 50+ talks  and presentations in a 3 year period.  I stay up-to-date on conferences that are coming up where I think they’ll need speakers.  This is a full time job for me.  You can do less if it’s meant to be a supplement to your main job.  Also I know many people who get invited to speak because they’ve published a book or are an expert in their field.  But despite getting the invite, you still need to be an engaging and entertaining speaker, or word will get out…

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Femgineer Spotlight: Elaine Chen Product Development Executive in High Tech

This week’s Femgineer Spotlight is Elaine Chen. Elaine is the VP of Product Development at Rethink Robotics, a Boston startup with a mission to reinvigorate manufacturing in America.

She also teaches entrepreneurial product development and marketing at MIT’s Sloan School of Management.

Before joining Rethink Robotics, Elaine, similarly, has worked at several other Boston area startups, which built products with a strong human interaction component, including Zeo, Zeemote, and SensAble Technologies.

Her work in the field of human machines interface and systems engineering, wasn’t her chosen path when she was studying mechanical engineering at MIT. Instead she was interested in rehabilitative engineering, but an opportunity came up when she was working on her second thesis on human machine interfaces for rehabilitative robots.

While working with her thesis advisor, she was introduced to Exos, a startup at the time that designed, developed, and manufactured haptic devices that provided a sense of touch when interacting with various applications, including surgical simulation, teleoperation, and video gaming in arcades and on home PCs.  She ultimately joined the company upon graduation.

At Exos she was originally hired as a machine designer, but went on to write all the firmware running kinematics code that controlled each haptic device developed at the company, and to manage application software development on the PC.  Her experience in this startup taught her two things:

  1. Startups are a great place to push yourself beyond your comfort zone: you are usually free to do anything you want even if it is not technically within your job function.
  2. Engineering is only part of the puzzle, which is only part of the puzzle in product development, which in turn is also only part of the puzzle in building a business.

“I learned to look at the broader problem of building a viable business by solving real problems with enough market pull that makes those problems worth solving, instead of being attracted to the pure technology sides of things.”

Exos was eventually acquired by Microsoft in 1996. Taking the experience and lessons from working at Exos, she wrapped up her tenure as a software development manager and went on to take leadership positions in several other high tech startups.

Today, the same passion and intensity can be seen at in her work on Baxter, a humanoid robot with 7 degrees of freedom on each arm, at Rethink Robotics.

“It’s awesomely hard core and 100% related to everything I learned about engineering and product development to date. It’s got at least four engineering disciplines rolled up in the same product: mechanical, electrical, controls, and software.”

Elaine’s position as the head of engineering in a hardware startup is fairly rare in the technology sector, where engineering is traditionally male dominated.

In a survey done in 2008 by the National Science Foundation of the 10 million scientist and engineers who are employed in industry, only 3 million work in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) fields. Within just engineering, the gender gap is vast – 20% and 80% men. The gap is a bit smaller for computer and math related professions (36% women and 64% men).

Elaine does think that the landscape is changing. “Women on the whole know they can achieve anything men can, and obstacles are slowly coming down. However, things in the trenches are improving so slowly that sometimes it’s hard to tell.”

With the media angling stories on female tech executives such as Marissa Mayer and Sheryl Sandberg on their roles as women and mothers rather than on their careers, it has been harder to tell if the landscape is changing.

“The reality is that it took hundreds of years for cultural attitudes to get here, and it’s going to take a very long time to get out of here.  What we can do is to make sure the next generation hears a balanced narrative, and we take extra steps to encourage girls to nourish their interest in STEM to compensate for the very ambivalent messages that they are hearing from everyone around them.  It can be as simple as encouraging a girl to take part in the FIRST Lego League or teaching a girl and her friends to program a game in Python, along with their male counterparts.  Another thing we can do is to proactively mentor young women in tech to invest and continue to invest in their careers, regardless of the signals they pick up from the workplace and from society.”

“We also need more female role models in leadership positions.  Seeing is believing and a successful female leader who is clearly thriving and loving her work and her life is worth a thousand words.”

Elaine is an embodiment of the true definition of a Femgineer. Her passion and accomplishments in engineering, and her passion to help change the prevalent mainstream attitudes about women in STEM is what being a Femgineer is all about.

 

 

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I Don’t Want to Burn Any Bridges

I don’t know if it’s the proximity to the Golden Gate Bridge, or just a common phrase, but last week I heard not 1, not 2, but 3 people I’m mentoring tell me, “Well I don’t want to burn any bridges.” They were responding to my gentle nudge for them to speak up for what they wanted.

These three people thought that reaching out to someone they didn’t know and asking them for a favor, standing up to a boss, or asking for what they needed to advance in their career would somehow burn a bridge.  My response to their remark was, “The funny thing about bridges is that they go both ways.”

What I meant by that remark was that if someone is going to shoot you down or be unresponsive then do you really want to continue the relationship with them?  The problem is that too often we think that if we reach out to ask someone for a favor they will be annoyed or burdened. It’s because we’re so conditioned to getting rejected or thinking that we’re not good enough. We forget that we also have values to offer to others, which includes or talents, skills, and experience.

As smart and honestly overqualified as the people are that I mentor, their biggest problem isn’t finding a job, or even leveling up in their career. What’s really holding them back is that they don’t understand their own self-worth.

On paper, I have been under-qualified for EVERY job I have applied for.

My first job right out of college was as an R&D Engineer, the job description read something like: 5 years experience or a PhD in Electrical Engineering. Must have experience in ASIC verification.

I didn’t have 5 years experience, nor did I have a PhD, and I sure as heck didn’t know what ASIC verification was (if you’re curious: it’s an application specific integrated circuit). During my interview, I didn’t sit there and feel sorry for myself. I knew my interviewers knew that I had limited abilities and experience. But they were willing to fly me across the country, put me up in a rather nice hotel, take me out to lunch and dinner, and spend the entire day interviewing me, so I figured I must know something. During the interview, I just did the best I could, I answered every question I knew, and mentioned what I didn’t know. That was enough to get the job, and be one of the highest paid engineering graduates back in 2004, when tech was still recovering from it’s previous dot com bubble burst!

Fast forward to 2006, when I started working at Mint. Being a founding engineer meant that I had to interview both my bosses: the director of engineering and the VP of engineering. Clearly these two men had many many years of experience on me. At the time, I didn’t even know what they would do in the roles. But I just marched on up to the white board, and had them solve problems.

In each of these situations, I knew that I had limited capabilities, but it didn’t stop me from trying and reaching out to people. The biggest thing I had going for me was knowing that sometime before I had been presented with a challenge, and had figured out a way to tackle it.

And yes rejection is part of the game.  They way in which someone rejects you is important.  If they don’t respond at all or are overly harsh, then you’re better of not working with them or for them.

So instead of second guessing your own abilities, take the time to quiet your mind, and let your mouth do the talking. Know that you have something to offer, and if people want to reject you, give them the freedom to reject you.  And know that you also have the freedom to pursue other opportunities.  Don’t hold yourself back by coming up with some excuse like, “I don’t want to burn any bridges.”

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Alyssa Ravasio: GitHub Scholarship Winner

After sorting through many outstanding applications and interviewing some amazing candidates, we struggled with the choice of picking a candidate.   Our choice came down to Alyssa Ravasio, who will be one of two winners of the Github scholarship for Femgineer’s Lean Product Development course this summer.

Alyssa Ravasio was chosen for a project that she is building called CaliforniaCamping, a search engine for campsites in California.

CaliforniaCamping will solve the problems of “Where can I camp next weekend?” or more specifically, “Where can I camp next weekend by a beach and within a 3 hour drive from SF?”

The project came out of her experience just this year, when she went camping with her family and had to go through the frustrating process of making a campground reservation.

Alyssa went to sites such as parks.ca.gov and reserveamerica.com, but they offered no additional data or pictures. This forced Alyssa to go to additional sites like Yelp for campground reviews, as well as doing a Google image search for pictures.

After much work she was finally able to make her reservation at Andrew Molera State Park. But when she arrived, she discovered that it was home to the sweetest left breaking waves, a relevant piece of information that was missed from her research.

Driving back home to get her wetsuit, Alyssa was determined to build something better that would take the pain out of finding and reserving a campsite.

In addition to time-based search, Alyssa is planning to develop maps, photographs, and video into CaliforniaCamping.

Alyssa’s project has been an example of Github and Femgineer’s efforts to get more women into tech and build a more female-friendly engineering culture.

Github recently held their Passion Project series that highlights prominent, smart, and interesting women in the technology/startup/developer world.

Their sponsorship of this scholarship is an extension of their efforts to promote women who are doing outstanding work in software engineering and following their passions to build products.

Right now Alyssa is at the ideation stage. But with the Femgineer Lean Product Development course, Alyssa is hoping to take it to the next level under the guidance of Poornima.

Alyssa Ravasio recently graduated student from Dev Bootcamp, the nine week intensive web development course. She also graduated from UCLA where she created the individual major Digital Democracy, which focuses on how the internet is changing the world. She worked in Internet policy at the US Department of State, sales/marketing for the iPad startup Revel, and operations at the outdoor adventure startup Xola.

Besides the Internet, Alyssa is also passionate about journalism, film, art, and the ocean. She believes that the Internet’s potential to change the way our world works lies on a magnitude that can only be compared to language itself!

Stay tuned to see Alyssa’s progress by following her @alyraz and checking out CaliforniaCamping!

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Pushing Past Easy Excuses to Quit

I am really bad at quitting.  Failing miserably isn’t enough to get me to quit either.  For example, when I was a freshman in college I got a 19 on my first Computer Science test.  It was a wake-up call that instilled fear in me to drop the class, but a semester later I couldn’t shake the thought of dropping it.  So instead I decided to spend my entire summer re-taking the course.  Eventually, majoring in computer science, and well we know what happened after that.

Even when catastrophe strikes I cannot quit.  My freshman year, my dad lost his job.  I had to choose between taking out a rather large student loan to fund my education and pay it back, leave college altogether, or apply to one that I could afford.  I took out the loan.  I successfully paid that loan back 3 1/2 years ago.

Then there are times when people tell me that I’m not good enough or try to get in my way.  Once again not quitting.  My junior year of college I wanted to add Electrical Engineering as a major.  The dean at my engineering school was opposed to me entering with 2 years left, and not having completed half the curriculum.  She suggested that I do a fifth year.  Oh sure let me just take out another loan…  I don’t think so!  I finished both my degrees with just 2 years left.

I know what you’re thinking,”Thanks for sharing your story of perseverance Poornima, run along now…”

But here’s the thing, each time I faced a hurdle instead of letting it completely paralyze me I took it in stride.  And in those college years I didn’t even have the strong support system I have today.  In fact, my parents who were at this point providing very minimal financial and emotional support were still breathing down my neck to finish school.  I didn’t let my peers who were smarter, more experienced, and didn’t have to worry about money bother me.  I just put my blinders on and plugged away.

I just have two things that keep me going: “Will an older Poornima feel regret for quitting?  What immediate discomfort will quitting avoid that I can learn to live with just a little longer?”

Here are some additional choice moments in my adult life when I could have quit, but I just pushed through:

2006 I wanted to work at Mint.  Aaron said I couldn’t because I didn’t know web development.  I asked him for one month to prove that I could learn and be a productive engineer.

2010 My first BizeeBee co-founder left for personal reasons.  Usually a great excuse to close up shop, right?  I pushed myself and the team to launch the product months later, making revenue from day one with a handful of early adopters.

2012 While most startups were closing shop or getting bought up in talent acquisitions due to the Series A Crunch, I used up the rest of personal savings to bootstrap BizeeBee and start Femgineer.  I’m still building and pushing the businesses closer to profitability everyday.

Now this isn’t me passing judgment on those who have quit things.  In fact, you might not even have really quit, you may have just taken a timeout.  But just know that quitting is an indefinite timeout :)

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So you want that dream software engineering job? Here’s what to do.

by Frances Advincula

I was anorexic in high school, and to start over in my efforts of recovery, I ran away to the other side of the world. I ended up turning down a scholarship to a private university and enrolled in a small, new college in Manila for undergrad. My parents rightfully worried I was throwing my future away. I worried about it too, but I think things turned out just fine. I love all the cutting edge things I get to code for Accenture Software now, and I’ve been asked to be interviewed by well-known companies  — Google, Microsoft, Amazon, LinkedIn, Netflix, Fog Creek Software, and hot startups — AirBnb, The Levo League.

Why the sob story? I want to help everyone realize that, no matter what your state is in life, you can still do something proactive to better yourself, to achieve your goals. Yes, you have a shot at the big companies and rising startups even if you didn’t go to Stanford or live in Silicon Valley (although that most certainly helps!). I did it from the other side of the world,  from school in a developing country. You can too.

To help you get started,  I thought I’d share what I did, in hopes that you too, can find your dream femgineering job. You wan’t to  be ready when luck comes knocking, don’t you? 

Perfect your cover letter and resume.
If you are still in school or in an entry-level position, keep your resume to one page. I’ve heard that HR will throw it straight to the trash pile if it’s any longer than that. But anyway, just common sense — practice good grammar, proofread, ask your friends to proofread, etc. And read this article by Joel Spolsky: “Getting Your Resume Read.” It is the best, actionable advice on the topic that I have ever read. Ever.

Build your portfolio of coding projects.
CS theory is great (Automata Theory was one of my absolutest, favoritest subjects), but if you want a software engineer job, you have to show that you can write code. If you don’t have a lot of experience, software school projects are a good thing to list on your resume. But listen, I didn’t even have a GitHub back then, but I had my portfolio –and it served me well. So just imagine how far having GitHub can take you! Oh the places you’ll go!

Get an engineering internship, no matter what.
This is included in Joel Spolsky’s advice to CS students (which you are at a serious disadvantage if you don’t read it). Nothing will teach you how the industry works than a solid internship. You’re gonna be walking the talk by the time it’s over. I actually did mine fulltime for 6 months at Accenture, and I wasn’t the same person afterwards. If you really can’t find a good internship, consider remote ones like Gnome’s Outreach Program for Women.

Have a blog or write for other publications.
Why? Because blogging shows that you are curious and passionate. Blogging shows that you are willing to spend time outside of work/school for the things you care about. Blogging exposes you to new ideas and people who care about those ideas. Blogging forces you to be an expert in something (really, how are you going to write about it if you know squat?). Find organizations you want to write about and shoot the editor a well crafted email, volunteering. The worst case is that they’ll say no. This is how I got to write for a few startups, and even a fashion magazine!

Be Googable.
You are a young person. Social media is expected of us (plus, lots of startups communicate via social media). It’s also a great way to show you care without investing too much time blogging.  A couple of ideas that go beyond Twitter/Facebook/Google+ include:

  1. Pinterest – Make boards about topics you are interested in: UX, Women-in-Tech, Startup Lessons, etc.
  2. Good Reads – Show that you are well-read with software and startup books! Poornima has a great reading list, and check out the Fog Creek Software MBA Program’s reading list.

Sharpen your interview skills.
Tech interviews are hard. You get asked the normal questions and you get grilled in coding problems and alogrithms too. You have to be prepared!

  1. Her Campus’s, 20 Interview Questions and How to Answer Them
  2. Coding Horror’s, Getting the Interview Phone Screen Right
  3. Poornima’s slideshow, Interview Skills & Secrets
  4. Palantir’s 3 Part Series: How to Rock an Algorithms Interview, The Coding Interview, The UI Design Interview
  5. Gayle Laakmann McDowell’s book, Cracking the Coding Interview: 150 Programming Questions and Solutions is a really good, and thorough review of CS and programming fundamentals.

To calm your nerves, remember that an interview is two-sided. You are interviewing them too! You are also trying to find out if that company will invest in your learning and if you will fit into its culture (Read “My Interview Questions for Potential Employers“).

One last piece of advice.
Take time to enjoy your last semester too. People told me this, I ignored them, and I very much regret it. This is your last chance to savor your campus, your college friends, and the privilege of not yet fully being in the real world, with bills and rent and performance reviews to worry about. (Oh and it’s also probably not a good idea to take the GRE the same week as your finals, just sayin’.)

 

Frances Advincula writes the series Frances Fridays. Frances recently graduated with a degree in Computer Science and is currently pursuing a masters at Johns Hopkins. She now works as a Software Developer for Accenture Software. A proud geek girl, she’s sure she is the only one who can’t play video games. Tweet her at  @FranAdvincula.

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Diversity Seems Dismal

By Justin Reyes

Everyone agrees that diversity is important, and companies boast that they are actively working to hire people from diverse backgrounds in addition to promoting diversity programs.  However, when CNN Money recently requested companies to provide statistics regarding their employee composition, only three were willing to release information.  The lack of participation and the dismal results reported highlight that not only is diversity still an issue, but that there are many who are willing to pay lip-service to the cause, rather than actually follow through with what they are promoting.

The excuse provided by many companies is that the pool of eligible technical talent is small, and a diverse set of candidates is even smaller.  In the race to out compete and stay efficient, it’s easier for most companies to poach capable candidates from competitors.  Investing in best practices for the long term success of the organization, and helping educate groups that would otherwise not have known about such opportunities seems like a lot of effort to most.  Clearly money and resources exist to purchase and refine talent, or is it just that diversity seems uncool?

So while companies are willing to pool money into poaching talent and shutting down products, they still seem to be oblivious to the fact that there is high company turnover in tech, and fewer people are majoring in engineering and computer science.  If the trend continues then the talent wars we see today will only get worse.  Reaching out to minority groups, educating, and encouraging them to pursue careers in technology seems like not only a valuable approach, but also one where the minority groups would indeed benefit.  In fact there are already a number of minority groups like SHPE (society of hispanic professionals), that would be open to discussing ways of working together.

Fortunately, there are a few companies out there that care, such as Etsy.  Etsy, the handmade arts and crafts e-commerce website grew their number of women engineers by 500% in one year through a concerted and ongoing effort of campaigns and an educational program.  The program is aimed at introducing people who would not normally have considered careers in technology.  By actively educating them, Etsy is able to train and recruit a talented pool of capable individuals.

Perhaps most companies aren’t as enlightened as Etsy, because to most talent is interchangeable.  However, the true value in having a diverse team is because the world is changing, people are dividing themselves into different subcultures, and want to associate themselves with brands that reflect their identity and needs.  This is exemplified by the growing number of niche markets, and people’s desire for these products are also increasing.  Moreover, people’s purchasing decisions are no longer limited to price, but also include social good and environmental concerns.  But, it’s hard to create products and service customers without a deep understanding of all their changing needs and concerns.  This problem becomes even more acute when companies are rather homogenous.  Having a diverse employee composition breeds better solutions, because there is a wider set of experiences that results in diverse thoughts and solutions.

The current numbers in tech aren’t great, and masking them certainly doesn’t solve the problem.  If we want to continue to build products that connect with customers, then companies need to be active about reaching out, training, and recruiting minority groups. After all, innovation isn’t about buying products to shut them down, and diversity isn’t a marketing campaign.

Justin Reyes is an regular contributor on Femgineer.com.

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Femgineer Friendly Company: CoverHound

CoverHound is an up-and-coming startup in San Francisco, CA, founded by Basil Enan, who is currently the CEO.  Basil is focused on building his business, which helps consumers find the best insurance policies for their needs.  The inspiration for CoverHound arouse after Basil grew dissatisfied at the way customers were being treated by insurance providers.  He had been an executive at InsWeb, where he sold leads to CMO Rory Joyce, then at Kemper Insurance.  Finally, he left to start CoverHound, because he believed that the insurance market should be open to price comparison.

 

Basil founded CoverHound in May of 2010.   He met CTO Joel Hayhurst, who had engineered a lead system for Affinity Labs, and similarly wanted to challenge the insurance model.
CoverHound has grown in the past 3 years, and recently received Series A funding to the tune of $4.5 million from RRE Ventures.

 

While Basil is focused on the business, he also believes in building a culture that is is Femgineer friendly.  He recently reached out to me to come, and host a Femgineer Forum at the CoverHound offices.  He wants his team to learn techniques to attracting Femgineers so they can instill a friendly company culture.

 

Aside from striving to be Femgineer friendly, CoverHound also has a pretty relaxed culture.  It believes in work-life balance, making it different from your average fueled by Red Bull and Monster startup.  They do indeed work  hard, but  aim to take responsibility for things whether small or large while working, and also have time to enjoy time outside of work.

 

CoverHound also aims to bring the ideas of employees to life.   If there is enthusiasm for an idea or even if it’s just a: “Yeah that’s something we can try…”, the proposer will receive resources to support executing the idea.  If the project is a success, then great. If it proves to be less than a success, then as a company CoverHound tries to minimize the impact and go over lessons learned, but there is never a sense that failure is to be avoided at all costs.

 

Join me as I host the next Femgineer Forum on April 2nd sponsored by CoverHound.

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