If we want to truly encourage diversity in our industry, we are going to have to listen and respond to feedback from under-represented groups that challenges our assumptions.

Women, people of colour and other minorities are underrepresented and sometimes feel unwelcome in tech. We need to fix this.

In my role as a VP of Engineering at a fast-growing startup, I spent hundreds of hours interviewing and sourcing candidates in the last year alone. The bar we set ourselves was high: not just hire people with excellent skills and culture add, but also maintain and improve our current diversity (33% women, 9% people of color) across experience levels.

Career conversations are a necessary part of your direct report’s growth, but without care, these meetings can lack purpose, meaning, and impact.

Your job title says “software engineer”, but you seem to spend most of your time in meetings.