Job Searches and Career Changes When You're Not the "Default"

There's been a lot of focus in recent years on improving diversity in the workplace, especially in tech. I am totally behind this goal. My bootcamp cohort was 78% BIPOC and 22% women, and the engineering team at my internship is majority-women, both of which I take as encouraging signs, but I know the field as a whole is rather different.

What I've found problematic are some of the ways the industry has tried to work toward this goal, and the advice we give people looking to get into tech when they don't fit the expected image of a developer. For the most part, the industry's approach appears to boil down to the following:

"Women and people of color approach the workplace differently than white dudes, so we need to...
1) seem to remove hurdles that block candidates in disproportionate demographic ways (emphasis on seem there)
2) encourage them to study the way white dudes approach the job search and the workplace, and to mimic those behaviors"

This isn't a new problem; it's been going on for decades. The earliest study of "imposter syndrome" was done in the late '70s. It essentially pathologized the "I don't belong here" pressure felt by high-achieving women working in fields that constantly subtly told them "you don't belong here". This article points out much more eloquently than I could that imposter syndrome is a reaction to the way workplaces are structured; it's not a problem with the perception of the person experiencing it. But in recent years, this concept has been massively diluted, as self-doubt in any high performer gets labeled "imposter syndrome", and articles abound on how to fight it. In the chaos, the question of how we can build workspaces that help more people thrive and do their best work gets lost.

As part of my tech bootcamp, we received an avalanche of career advice, for which I'm immensely grateful. But some of that advice did reflect today's common wisdom about job seeking, falling into that "think more like white dudes" approach. However well-meaning they may be, people giving this advice never stop to think that perhaps the differences in the way folks of color and women approach the job hunt are due to the very real differences in their lived experiences in this area.

We get told, "if a job description lists qualifications you don't have, don't let it stop you from applying. White guys tend to apply if they only meet 60% of the qualifications on a job description. And even if they don't consider you for that job, you'll be on their radar the next time an opening comes up that you are qualified for." Some companies have gone so far as to reword their job descriptions, listing their desired qualifications as "nice to haves" or adding a disclaimer saying "even if you don't meet all of these qualifications, apply anyway - our approach considers everything a candidate has to offer". This is that "seeming to remove hurdles" bit.

But here's the thing. White guys who apply for jobs while only meeting 60% of the qualifications do so because they know, consciously or not, that simply being a white dude is the other 40%. In their lived experience, the return they get for putting in for those jobs, in terms of getting interviews, eventual offers, or just further leads, is worthwhile. For everyone else, experience tells them that if they want to stand a chance of being contacted at all, they need to meet 90+% of the qualifications. Otherwise, they're just wasting their time.

So those reworded job descriptions, as inclusive as they may seem, and as much as they may feel like a step forward...they're actually insidious, because they encourage people to apply for positions they have no shot at getting. I have applied for jobs with descriptions that are worded to have zero mention of a specific amount of experience required, and with a list of technologies that 100% matches those I've used. Yet more than once, after taking the time to craft a cover letter and apply, literally as soon as my application was reviewed by a human, I got a rejection email stating "Thanks, but we're looking for someone with more experience." No phone screen, no tech screen, just, "Oh, you're just starting out? Yep, we're gonna pass." If they'd worded the job description to list minimum years of experience, I wouldn't have wasted my time.

Even for jobs that are truly intended to be entry-level, barriers exist that can alter the collective diversity of your eventual hires. I applied for positions labeled "junior" and "new grad" that didn't list a minimum level of experience or a CS/CE/etc degree requirement, but the first thing they did is send me a tech screen with algorithms ranked at the hardest difficulty on LeetCode. One was even specifically listed as being for "experienced developers".

This may seem like an innocuous, meritocratic way to screen candidates, but what it's actually doing is screening for candidates who either have a CS degree or have specifically dedicated a huge chunk of time to understanding and practicing algorithms. The former obviously tilts the candidate pool in a less-diverse direction.

And in terms of determining who has the skills to do the job, algorithm challenges aren't great. Building this skillset can help broaden your understanding of data structures and how to write clean code, but being bad at it doesn't mean you're bad at building things. I know programmers with over a decade of experience in the field - including principal-level engineers - who can build anything you want and build it well, but couldn't begin to tell you how to implement a bubble sort. And why should they? It's О(n2)! Actually putting it to use in the real world would make no sense.

Conversely, being good at algorithm challenges doesn't necessarily mean you're good at building things. I'll admit that my bootcamp instructor may be somewhat of a biased source. But when we were only six weeks in, just after finishing our first front-end project, he claimed that we had created something more complicated at that point than he had in the entirety of his time in college earning his CS degree.

Finally, negotiation is another area in which we hear "common wisdom" about the way people with different backgrounds have different approaches, and how we should all just strive to act like white guys. And again, this ignores people's lived experiences. Salary disparities get blamed on differences in a willingness to negotiate. But every time in my life when I've tried to negotiate, I've been shut down hard.

I've had a potential employer offer me less than I was earning in my current position despite knowing exactly what I made. It was a required question on their application. They were unwilling to budge when I asked if they could work with me, because the 8% increase I was looking for over their offer was "more than some people make who've been working here for a year".

For a different job years later, the recruiter extended an offer that once again undercut my current salary, quite drastically this time. Then after I explained the situation, she implied that I must be lying about how much I made and requested a copy of my paystub before they would negotiate further.

I walked away from both of these job offers.

All of this is not to say you shouldn't try to negotiate. But I think it's fair to say that some people have more success with it than others, and that boiling down salary disparities to variation in candidates' willingness to negotiate is ridiculous.

So what's the takeaway? Recruiters and hiring managers:

1) If you have hard requirements for a position, don't leave them out of the job description.

2) If you're truly looking to increase diversity, maybe increase your willingness to take a chance on bootcamp grads and other folks without a CS degree for a junior spot. Or if you insist on a degree, consider targeting HBCUs/Sarah Lawrence/Seven Sisters schools for job fairs and intern pipelines.

3) If you're willing to look beyond a degree, maybe decrease your reliance on algorithm challenges as part of your screening. Consider instead conducting tech screenings by having candidates perform a code review, or complete a project where they build you a small application. If you're truly screening for ability to do the job, and not for a 'did you major in CS?' shibboleth, a code review or project will serve just as well or better.

4) Negotiate with respect. If your offer is firm, it's better to simply say that than to give some patronizing excuse. Consider as well whether or not you truly approach negotiation in the same manner with every candidate.

Everyone else: Don't take it personally if negotiating an offer or applying for jobs that are a bit of stretch doesn't work as well for you as you've heard it should. And good luck out there!