Male Allies
In Code Like A Girl. More on Medium.
Last week, this Tweet caught our eye:
To which we responded with:
And we knew we were onto something. Our tweet got more engagement than Tom Peters’, even though he has about 150,000 more followers than us. Plus he’s a world-renowned thought leader on business management and organizational development. Oh, and he’s written a few best selling books.
So, let’s make Tom proud.
Let’s all identify four women or members of an underrepresented group to sponsor in 2018. And by sponsor, we mean do things like,
✅ Speak their name when they’re not around
✅ Share their career goals…
Imagine attending a party at a tech conference. Someone hands you their empty plate to be cleared. Or asks you to get them another drink. If you’re a person of color working in tech, you know what we’re talking about.
Now imagine meeting someone at a tech event, and the first words out of their mouth are, “Do you work in HR?” While there’s nothing wrong with HR, it is wrong to assume someone isn’t technical at an event for techies. And if you’re a woman, you’ve most likely lost count of the times this has happened to you.
Similarly…
Imagine witnessing “bad ally” behavior. You know what we mean. The leader who asks the only woman in the room to take notes. Or hires a white man to fill a vacant role…even though there’s a qualified woman or person of color ready for a promotion. Or, at a networking event, hangs out only with people of their same gender and race.
There have been plenty of times when we’ve seen this kind of behavior, and we simply shook our heads. While we found it uncomfortable, we didn’t think it was our responsibility to call it out. …
We bet this conversation is happening all over tech. Should inclusion initiatives focus on underrepresented groups, or a wider population? For us, the conversation started with that bro manifesto this summer. And came to a head this week when we read about Apple’s VP of Diversity and Inclusion, Denise Young Smith.
At a recent panel, Denise Young Smith said she focuses on everyone, not just people of color, or the women, or the LGBT. [link]
The audience reacted with a round of applause. If we had been there, we would have joined in. After all, we want to create inclusive…
Last week, one of our followers contacted us for advice. We’ll call him R. A few days later, he got back in touch with an update. And it was somewhat surprising. Here’s what unfolded:
Dear @betterallies — I’ve started leading a new team at a new company, and I want to have a 1-on-1 chat with each of my team members. We don’t have enough meeting rooms, so I was thinking of taking them out to coffee. However, I don’t want to make any of the members on my team uncomfortable, especially the women. Do you have advice on how…
Code Like A Girl
A space that celebrates Women in Technology.
