Notes / highlights:

Broadly, what does diversity mean you?

At a high level it means the existence of a variety of things and / or people that are different (from yourself). So when we think about diversity in teams, it's really about looking at a broad range of different ethnicities, different experiences, different abilities, different age groups...etc. Diversity can be used as sort of a differentiating factor - what are what are we bringing in that gives us better perspective and that gives us different ways of thinking.

In terms of diversity, I like to remind folks that diversity is an adjective, it's not a person. A person is composed of many different things and some of those may be diverse characteristics.

What does building for diversity actually mean? What's the first thing people should should look at and do?

There are different ways to look at it. Right now, I want to build teams that basically represent the communities that we work in and the communities that we serve. And so I think the first thing to look at your team and your organisation and do some critical work. We need to look at the product and where we are which is obviously different now that we're remote. At Dropbox, we're all across the US and finding some presence in Toronto, for at least our product teams, and then the communities we serve could be all over the world. So making sure that you're not just hiring, the sort of like top notch white male designers that are really well known and are really good as you tend to then miss out on what it’s like to have somebody who grew up in Shanghai or what is it like to have somebody who is from a lower income family or from a different political background

So it comes down to understanding the different facets and then prioritising I think which ones are the most important and how you balance

How do you balance internal stakeholders saying we need the best of the best. Which is often concentrated on education and work experience / folio?

It’s a total myth that the best of the best has to be privileged people. If we actually do the work of sourcing and looking for qualified people, we will find that they come from different races, different backgrounds, different everything. At the risk of singling out one person,  many people may have seen the CEO of Snowflake, who has said that they are going to invest in universities and help hire from them. The problem is that it is creating closed systems, where only privileged people have access to these job as only privileged people have access to this education.

Oppression is a real thing. Systemic oppression is a real thing. So there are many many reasons that someone might not have access to good education or to an interview. But that doesn't mean that that's the only path in order to be qualified for a job. So I think when we start thinking about, particularly ethnic diversity, we have to really make sure that our our qualifications and our requirements will accommodate folks who have maybe taken non traditional paths. When we think about design specifically, design is not something that requires a degree, it just doesn't. We have an incredible amount of designers who are self taught and they bring other things to the table that than just hard design skills or tools skills, like being able to influence or being able to think and systems or being able to work with stakeholders or see customer problems. Therefore as hiring managers we have to really make sure we're not blocking potential qualified people.

At other companies that you've worked with before, did you have metrics that you that you've got to hit? Do you set those metrics and work with your recruitment partners and sourcing teams to to do that?

I think most companies will have some sort of diversity metrics.

If I'm hiring in the US, I want to look at the population of the US and say, if x% of our nation is black, then shouldn't we have that same representation in our team? Those are the kinds of things I think about and my practices are to make sure that there is opportunity for folks who have typically been marginalised or underrepresented to have an opportunity to interview and to get that role.

In your career as a design leader building teams, have you come up against peers who don't see the need for hiring diverse? How have you overcome that and convince them about the need to hire for diversity?

I don't think I've won that battle all the time. And I don't think I fought that battle correctly all the time. It's easy to say, oh, we're gonna have better products because of this or know our customers better. But a lot of companies particularly led by predominantly white males, just don't see it because the world honestly has been fashion around us as white people and that's something I've been recognising lately. I don't understand how much is easy for me because it's just been easy. I don't even have to deal with the obstacles that people of colour do and I'll never be able to - I can learn about it but I have not had that experience. So when you're when you're working with leaders who don't haven't had that experience either, and are mostly focused on the bottom line, or with hiring people who are really focused on just filling hiring gaps, which frankly, right now is really hard for so many roles open, the question becomes, do you want to wait an extra three months to fill a role to get the right candidate in?

I think the biggest successes I've had is just by doing it - by saying, I don't care what your goals are, I'm going to demonstrate that we can hire in record time and we can build diverse teams. And I've done that.

As a recruiter, I get a lot of pushback on companies having know that you were qualified to do a senior IC role but that person might just wants to do hands on work, they don't want to be in a leadership role. Have you experienced that?

If someone's overqualified, it's not up to you to say that they're overqualified. And I saw that a lot where recruiters wouldn't even take a look at somebody, because they had 15 year experience for a 5 year experience role. As a result people tend to make assumptions about the person as to why they haven’t gotten ahead or are in the position they are and there is a natural bias. What I have recognised is that it is not up to me.

A mother or a father could have taken maternity or paternity leave or maybe decided to raise their kids for a couple years. Maybe they're actually really great but they just want to stay in this role or don't want to climb the ladder. I had somebody on my team who was gonna commute 2 hours one way before the pandemic and I almost said no to her because I didn’t think that work life balance would work for her. But the reality was that it was not my decision to make, that's their decision. I have no idea what people have going on in their lives. So just scrap that and ask ‘are they qualified’? Who cares if there are overqualified as long as they are qualified or close to being qualified.

What would you say for those that have maybe been in a leadership role for, say, five to 10 years and come back down to a IC role but haven’t work the recent work to show - it’s tough for them to get to get it look in?

That's a problem for a lot of folks, leaders, people who might have been out of the game for a while, folks who have NDA where they can't show work, juniors who come in not having done the work yet.

I've really changed my tune on what I believe about potential. I used to come in and say you must have hard evidence of demonstrated skills. But I'm starting to recognise how much that actually plays into the privilege, you pay for an expensive school, they'll help you put together a really great portfolio. You hustle on your own, you might not have the same sort craft, or the same sort of handheld experience, but you might have something else you. So how do we start to not only look at opening up?

Craft is a part of it but also a question of how do they collaborate, how do they strategise or how do they think about innovation? We often eat heavily on craft especially when hiring. Most screeners require a portfolio review and if you don't send a portfolio into a recruiter, then how do you how do you actually get past that step?

In terms of the interview process, how do you run an interview process? How do you take into account different people coming into that process?

One of the things that I've done that's actually helped with the diversity piece is that I talk to people pre interview, and whenever I'm hiring, I open my Twitter DMs, and my LinkedIn messages and I answer questions. I don't know how to solve that at scale as for one role, I may speak to 200 people, which takes a lot of time. That's the place though where I think as hiring managers, if we really believe that we want to build diverse teams, we have to personally be able to invest in the process. For most people, they’ll feel like that’s insane but comes down to ‘how much do you care’?

I don't know if I want everybody to take my strategies because maybe they'll hire the people that I want to hire. But what I found is that I've got people who aren't applying, because they've been told they're not ready, or they believe they're not ready, maybe they just lack the confidence, maybe they just have questions/concern that aren't really a big deal such as I’ll need to take mat leave or I’m moving somewhere. I have found I can actually answer a lot of these questions and then I get a much more focused pipeline.

Some people may just not work out, currently I am not hiring in India we don't have business operations set up there and the time zones don't really work for collaboration so I can weed out and ensure that there is a really useful pipeline. Then also for folks who really stand out to me and who might not fit this profile, but I can see that there's something there I can say to the recruiter I want you to dig into this and learn about this. So access to a hiring manager is extremely important when it comes to building diverse teams.

“I think half of what I do on those conversations is just encourage people to apply and remind them like, it never hurts, like it just never hurts to apply. Even if you're nervous about it. Worst thing that happens is you don't get a response. And that's okay. Getting comfortable with just like putting ourselves out there is important.”

What's your thoughts on the million dollar question about design tasks in an interview?

I don't think we should be doing outside of interview design exercises. That is paid work. It's biassed against people who have other responsibilities, full time jobs, child or elder care. However, I don't mind them in the interview process if they're guided. And here's why.

A good interview process for me typically consists of a portfolio review, probably a product strategy kind of conversation, maybe a blind critique where you go in and discuss something with a designer and a problem solving exercise.

The reason I think that that the body of things is important is it gives folks an opportunity in multiple different scenarios to show their skills. Somebody who doesn't do great in the portfolio exercise, maybe they're better on the spot, they might do well in the problem solving or vice versa. When I design interview processes, I basically I figure out what I'm looking for and I call those ‘look fors’. Then I, I design multiple experiences so the candidate has multiple chances to hit a single look for. Those exercises are then a way to give multiple opportunities for different styles. We're not all the same in how we think, how we perform, how nervous we are or in how much energy interviews give us.

There's one scenario where I would do an external exercise. I've done interviews with people and after they have come back to me and said, I bombed it and want another shot. So I would probably give a take home exercise in a scenario where I'm missing a signal on something crucial, and the person wants to come back and prove themselves.

Why do you think there's a lack of diversity at the leadership level?

I see women not promoting women, which is a problem. I've experienced this myself and do my best to not mimic it.

There’s something called queen bee syndrome, where female leaders say I had to fight to get up to this level and so I don't want you to experience this if you're a female a I'm going to protect you by not promoting you too soon as I don't want you to have pain. I think that's true of not just gender but any underrepresented folks also.

There's still a lot of bro culture in tech.

There's the idea that we don't tend to bring people in that have different skills, talents or styles. People don’t always think or look for the compliments. Instead of looking for direct replacements when there are openings, what if we say, what's the whitespace? What are the gaps that we need to fill? Do we need, a really empathetic leader to come in and build culture? Do we need somebody who's really skilled at, taking systems and building strategy, as we don't have that? I see a lot of duplication in leadership teams and I’d love to focus more on compliments and elevation.

How do you plan on hiring remotely? has it affected your reach and/or being able to be more picky with who you bring in?

In theory it should open the applicant base. I've seen it a little bit. I still see most most designers living in areas like New York and the Seattle Bay Area. But that's because that's where we've lived, where we’ve had to live. So it's going to be interesting to see people distributed a little bit more.

As an industry, we still tend to go after really well known people or people who work at big tech companies. Frankly, nobody at a big tech company wants to go work at your little startup unless they've like made their bank. There's tonnes of great talent, the folks who are working at startups but to open up the sourcing and being able to look at the range of designers, the work needs to be done and we need to hold ourselves accountable.

How do you handle tradeoffs and the pressure from the business in finding the right talent as hiring to diversity goals often takes time?

The assumption that it will take more time is not always accurate. Don’t let it stop you from trying because if you do the sourcing work, you can get the right people. If the support is needed asap, hire a contractor or somebody that can plug the gap in the short term and take the time to find the person. A lot of the time there are a lot of excuses and less action than there should be.

During the portly review stage of an interview, how do you determine whether the candidate has a good / the right thought process?

Will depend on the role, the seniority and the type of designer you are looking for as to what the requirements are. Key thing is really the problem and demonstrating the ability to handle the process rather than the process itself — how do they manage the twists and turns and then how do they get results.

How do you overcome personal biases to achieve diversity?

I fail all the time and am continually working to do better. I have a lot of privileges that I can’t see and don’t always understand or know about. So I have be willing to be called out on it also. Recently read a really good book by Kim Scott (author of Radical Candor) called Just Work in which she addresses the different between bias, prejudice and bullying and an associated framework. And none is one thing, we all move through the elements, sometimes we are aware and other time w may not realise until after we have been through the experience and thats when we have to go back and address it, face it and learn from it. We all need to be conscious of where we are sitting in the framework and be open to feedback. It is constant work.

In terms of the interview process it is not about saying that you are not bias but more about recognising you are and what your biases are. It might not be a racial or ethnic bias, it could be a bias towards the school that the candidate attended or because there is a pre existing relationship. So when you think about feedback or a judgement we have to view it with the lens of knowing it contains biases.

Another thing I do is disregard any detail or judgement that is not directly connected to a requirement. Like if someone is late to an interview — what if there was an issue with their childcare or they had an issue with public transport because they don’t have the luxury of getting an Uber. So I always just try to focus on the criteria and ensure that any judgement is evidence based.

Who is responsible for hiring diverse teams?

All of us. We are talking about building diverse teams but there is a while other conversation around how we design culture and environments that allow people to thrive once they arrive. As a leader I have a lot of influence but am not the final decision maker so it needs to come from every level - the investment needs to come from every level. No-one can do it alone, we have to work together to achieve it.

Hiring and contact

Hiring a lot in the US, some in Toronto and there is one position in Tel Aviv and hopefully will be growing a lot this year. Roles of note:

• An experience senior manager that cares deeply about people and is a good strategist
• Few more manager roles already listed on the dropbox site
• Mid level design roles
• No junior roles at the moment

Don’t always list roles though and people can connect on LinkedIn and Twitter (@Jazzy33ca)

Random quotes

“After the George Floyd murder murders, realised that I had a role as a leader to actually be a better advocate for diversity in my org. Learnt that I need to use my privilege to connect with people that might not have the networks. Intentionally reshaping your network can help to break the cycle”

“Black people in particular have been screaming for equity and equality and the thing I realise is that I have scream for them. I'm not going to do it perfectly but I am going try…. It’s the commitment I made last year and I have keep going as its the only way that we will get to more equitable and diverse teams. If I give up it puts the onus back on those that are oppressed and that’s not okay”