009. Why DEI is a requirement for ambitious startups building world-class teams
A fundamental frame for thinking about Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in a startup context.
In this week’s post, I’m offering a useful analogy – a foundational frame for thinking about DEI (Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion) in a startup context.
I don’t remember when I first heard about the practice of canaries being used as alarm systems in the mining industry in the early 1900s – but I realized it’s an apt but grim analogy for underrepresented people in hypergrowth startups, and a reminder for why startups need to take DEI seriously early on.
Mining is dangerous work, partially due to the presence of toxic and hazardous gas. Miners would bring caged canary birds into the tunnels with them, which, due to their small size and sensitive respiratory systems, would show signs of distress before humans could pick up on the danger. It was a useful early warning system, albeit a cruel one, and the practice was phased out with the invention of digital detectors.
Now, back to how this is relevant to startups and DEI.
Say your startup is 10 people. You're all friendly with each other, and it is feasible for everyone to have a personal 1:1 relationship with every other team member. There’s easy camaraderie and trust, and in the case of a misunderstanding, it’s simply a matter of walking over to their desk or hopping on a Zoom to talk it out.
In this context, the company has little need for “process” or bureaucracy. Unlimited PTO? Sure! The Founder knows that you’ve worked your ass off the past 6 months and deserve 3 weeks off. Managers? Who needs middle management when you all work directly with one another and everyone can see exactly how busy and productive everyone else is?
But a startup’s job is to grow, and soon, cracks will appear in the high-trust, low-process environment that you’ve built and have gotten so attached to. This is not necessarily anyone’s fault, but a fact of human nature – as more people get added to a group, more communication friction and complexity get introduced. And with less 1:1 time and personal relationships, the newly-created gaps tend to be filled by biases.
It’s important to note that biases exist within all of us. Some of these biases are conscious (known to us) and some are unconscious (unknown, but still contribute to our reactions and behavior). These biases are a result of hundreds of years of discrimination and oppression in our society, whether it’s sexism, racism, ageism, ableism, classism, etc. From stereotypes to language, to our media, to zoning laws, government policies, access to capital and resources – unequal treatment is so baked into our everyday lives, we’re often like fish trying to see the water that we’re swimming in.
The reality is, early-stage startups tend to be very homogeneous. And, hot take – this isn’t inherently bad, as founding teams take big risks together to start something from scratch and be incredibly focused to ship and find Product-Market Fit. Founding teams and the first few employees tend to be from people’s personal networks. Whether that’s a former classmate, colleague, or a referral, they tend to be of similar backgrounds to the founders.
But after PMF, the company’s focus shifts to scaling – and this means hiring and growing a team beyond personal networks and referrals, with far more diverse skill sets (e.g. bringing the first Sales rep is a classic, significant milestone for a startup with technical cofounders!). As the company grows, the team gets stronger with the infusion of new talent, perspectives, and backgrounds.
In an ideal world, founders would know to pay just as careful attention to Management and People Ops and resource it in step with Product and Growth. But we don’t live in that reality yet. At too many companies, the “Org work” as I call it, is the last priority, only looked at when various People systems break, instead of being approached proactively.
Unfortunately, underrepresented groups are like canaries in the coal mine of your organizational processes. Whatever biases exist, they are essentially guaranteed to affect these groups first.
But here's the thing! The biased policies and processes that hurt underrepresented people when you're 20-50 people—become the exact problems that your privileged, white, cisgender male engineers complain about at 200, 500+ employees. Except by then, these practices become entrenched and much harder to fix.
Say one of your newly-hired managers, unknownst to you, is a power-tripping bully. They will eventually be found out and let go, but not without creating a mountainload of damage on your team’s morale, productivity, and runway – and that’s if you’re lucky and no high-performer quits on you first. This kind of manager will almost always have their first run-ins with the underrepresented groups, whether it’s the sole woman on the sales team or the only Black engineer. Unfortunately, these individuals are often labeled as "troublemakers," and sometimes even retaliated against.
Take another example in recruiting. Say your process entails a monster of a take-home assignment, one that takes 15 hours to complete (unfortunately, I’ve heard worse). The canaries here are most likely to be candidates with caregiving responsibilities, who will drop off from the process. The hiring manager deems them “not serious enough,” and ends up only hiring the “young 20-something dude with no other major responsibilities” stereotypes, not realizing the talent pools that the company is missing out on.
So, it's not that your queer Latina colleague "complains" more. More likely, she simply sees and experiences things that you can't. Various organizational processes like interviews, meetings, comp policies, performance reviews, etc – unless carefully designed, are almost guaranteed to be stacked against groups that are already marginalized.
This contributes to perpetuation of the cycle: Not only is tech already a male-dominated and racially homogeneous field, studies have shown that people from underrepresented groups tend to leave the industry at higher rates, due to the unfair treatment they receive at work.1
For those who aren’t motivated by doing the right thing,2 maybe this is what they need to hear: DEI is not a “charity” effort for those pesky women, people of color, and other underrepresented groups. Not taking it seriously will hurt everyone else as you scale – and ultimately, hurt the chances of YOU being able to achieve your dreams of building a great company.
DEI is not about “checking the boxes” or trying to look good so everyone can “stop complaining and leave me alone” – it’s the way to build strong teams in our newly globally-connected world. I hope everyone (esp those from majority backgrounds, i.e. cisgender white men) can see DEI as an invitation to level up in this new competency in business. As an added benefit, you get to examine your own beliefs and inner life in this very personal journey, as well as step into a role of advocacy during these politically fraught times.
Org work must be taken as seriously as you do Eng/Product/Growth. Given limited resources, of course you'll make tradeoffs — but "org debt" is real, and lack of intentionality gives way to these biases creeping in and becoming entrenched in your org. Trust me, it is WAY easier to work on this stuff early.
In the meantime, take their feedback from your canaries seriously – both employees & candidates. Fight the urge to dismiss them or label them as “disgruntled” or “naive.” It’s up to you to see that all feedback is valid, it just sometimes requires taking a perspective other than your own. For some people, every day is a battle to survive and thrive in this industry. This might sound hyperbolic, but it's not.
As a startup, your job is to innovate and grow. If you believe doing so requires getting the best out of your people – hiring for diverse skill sets, cultivating the environment for maximum productivity, building processes to allow increasingly large groups of people to collaborate and win together – then DEI is fundamental to that work, and the canaries are the clues to what needs the most attention. Adopting this frame from here on out – it’s entirely your choice. But seems pretty obvious now, doesn’t it? :)
This post was adapted from my 2019 twitter (RIP) thread on the topic
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Jennifer Kim is the CEO/Founder of Workflow, an education and consulting company that trains the next generation of startup leaders on all things Recruiting, People Ops, and DEI. Through its flagship program, the HireEd Accelerator, Jen and her team have taught hundreds of startup leaders to make hiring a competitive advantage. Previously, Jen was Head of People at Lever and was Advisor to dozens of top startups. She is also a Venture Partner at Symphonic Capital, and is known for her hot takes on tech industry and culture as @jenistyping.
Appendix / Past Discussions
The Tech Leavers Study, The Kapor Center
wtf?