How different engineering teams talk about diversity

Diversity and inclusion is core to our company mission.

At CHANI, we’re building an app to make astrology and its wisdom accessible to everyone as a tool for self-discovery, mindfulness, and healing. We are a queer, feminist-led tech and media company and are proud to help foster the change we want to see not just in tech, but in the greater community as well. Starting with introductions and at every step in the interview process, we always ask, “What are your pronouns?” Many people on our team (11 out of 28) identify as people of color and we feel strongly about hiring veterans and people who identify as having disabilities. You’ll never have to worry about calling out of work if you have health concerns you need to prioritize. In addition to being flexible and accommodating, we also offer short- and long-term disability insurance.

We never filter out our politics when we make content. For example, we don't give planets genders when they are traditionally referred to as feminine or masculine (i.e. using she/her pronouns when referring to the moon). We are open about our beliefs, not just when it comes to our art, content, and technology, but also in terms of the benefits we have in place. For instance, our Personal and Professional Growth Stipend covers mental health services, Gender Affirmation Hormone Replacement Treatments, and grief doulas or other grief services. Milcah (they/he), our Director of Engineering, has used this stipend for massages, therapy, and attending Render(ATL), a tech conference that focuses on React, leadership, diversity, inclusion, and accessibility. We also have a Gender-Based Violence Emergency Stipend, available in emergency circumstances if either an employee or a family member of an employee experiences any incident of gender-based violence, which includes domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking, or human trafficking.

Finally, we make sure to give back. “As a queer, nonbinary trans survivor and as someone who is super mission driven, it means a lot to me that CHANI gives 5% of all app profits directly to Black, Latinx, Native/Indigenous, Queer and/or Trans survivors of gender-based violence via FreeFrom.org,” says Milcah. “Being able to work with a team whose mission is to empower people to heal through the work of self-discovery is fully aligned with my belief that technology can help people lead more fulfilling and meaningful lives.”

We’re intentional about creating a diverse and inclusive workplace.

We know employing a team rich in diverse lived experiences allows our employees, our product, and our community to flourish. We recognize diversity is more than the common categories of gender, race, and physical ability.

While we could rattle off a list of boxes our team checks, to us, diversity is more complex than a box – boxes don't account for intersectional identities, nor does seeking a specific number within each box help individuals thrive once they've arrived in our organization: that's where inclusion and belonging come in. We also reflect on our processes regularly to incorporate feedback and address evolving needs. So, here's how we show up:

• A thoughtful and respectful hiring process. This is not a gatekeeping exercise: we actively seek new perspectives to learn from, regardless of background. We aim to represent daily responsibilities in our questions and exercises. We do our best to ensure you feel comfortable enough to show us your strengths. We are flexible where possible to account for different life circumstances (i.e. offering the option to take an assignment home or complete it live). We expect this to be a mutual process where you are interviewing us as well.
• Structured onboarding. We iterate on this with every new hire, but we approach onboarding like interviewing: deliver clear expectations with the requisite support (i.e. dedicated onboarding buddies) and maintain a welcoming environment to ensure success. We value new hires not only for their ability to help grow the business, but also because they're in the best position to draw attention to outdated processes, missing documentation, or needed context.
• Open lines of communication to leadership. It's not just that leaders make themselves available to employees – they are actively engaged. Render's leaders offer transparency into company challenges, wins, and seek input within and outside their area of expertise. Learn more about our leadership team:
  • CEO: Anurag Goel
  • VP of Engineering: Uma Chingunde
  • Head of People: Alison Baritot
  • Head of Finance: Josh Weiss
• A commitment to compensation parity. Our leadership regularly reviews and compares internal compensation to market data. Fairness is an important principle for us and this ensures we maintain consistency between new and existing Renders in the same role.

We crave original ideas that can only come from a diverse team.

Our team works on the edge of VC, defining the future of the industry as a whole. To do this successfully, we constantly seek out original ideas. Doing so requires bringing a diverse set of people and backgrounds together – something we’re looking to improve on with our future hiring. Currently, our team members span the globe from Australia to California, New York, Colorado, India, Canada, and beyond. Some folks have kids (around 40% of the engineering team are parents) while others are just starting their careers. Whether you have a PhD in computer science or chemistry or are completely self-taught – we welcome all different types of backgrounds. Compensation is not based on your title, but rather on the impact you bring to the company. We’re also testing out an engineering fellowship model to work with more engineers who have non-traditional backgrounds.

When it comes to our product, we embrace our unique role and opportunity as an open venture platform in a historically exclusive industry. One of our four company values is “Build a Safe and Trusted Place for our Community.” In practice, we strive to keep AngelList open and inclusive to a broader set of investors and founders compared to other alternatives, which means we always prioritize the safety and trust of our users. We regularly ask ourselves: "Will this encourage more activity on our platform from new and existing investors or alienate them?" "Are we proud to put our name/brand behind this decision?" While we always champion bold ideas, we're mindful of making a positive contribution toward a future we want to live in.

Building a diverse team is core to our mission.

We’re working to create a world where all people, regardless of income or background, achieve equitable health outcomes. Doing so requires bringing a diverse set of people and backgrounds together – something we’re looking to continue to invest in and improve on with future hiring. Currently, we have folks on the team who span the U.S., India, and Brazil, and are proud of this geographic and cultural diversity. We also encourage you to meet our diverse leadership team and board of directors here.

At the end of the day, we’re not looking for a certain brand name or degree on your resume. Fun fact: Jeremy, our VP of Engineering, has a BA in Communications. We welcome folks who have non-traditional backgrounds and only care about whether you can write quality code, are growth-oriented, and most importantly, are a nice human.

Orit, Principal Product Manager, (second from left) and Cecilia, Co-founder and VP of Product, (front right) enjoying some time with CareMessage colleagues on a company retreat.

We create an inclusive space for everyone.

Respect and integrity are at the core of how we hire, how we work together as a team, how we treat our customers, and how we engage with our greater communities. This means we always seek to "widen the circle" and look for a variety of perspectives to get things done. We believe in teams and the best teams are built on the diverse experiences and skills of a rich mix of people. Great individuals make even greater teams, and we celebrate our wide range of backgrounds and stages of life.

Here are just a few great examples of teammates who changed career paths before joining LaunchDarkly's Product Delivery department:

• Zoë Adelman (Product Management Lead) went through a full-stack coding bootcamp to work as a web developer, then moved into product design and built a company’s first design system. Next, she worked for a design collaboration product in both post-sales and product.
• Linnea Schulenburg (Sr. Product Manager) started out teaching English overseas, then taught art and design, worked in marketing at a school, then got a side gig at a startup before moving full-time into the tech world. She found the customer education she did in marketing was transferrable to product management.
• Ember Stevens (Technical Writer) started out in higher education. “I realized that creating written training materials was one of my favorite parts of the job, and was thrilled to find out you could make a full-time career out of that kind of work. Eventually I was able to leverage my experience as a long-time customer of a local software company into working for them, and my tech writing career started there. Now, I love what I do and haven’t looked back!”

We strive to be as diverse as the customers we serve and the communities they operate in.

In an ideal world, this means we’d look around the table at a meeting and not be able to distinguish our team members from our customers. Seeking out diversity not only helps make our team stronger, but it also helps us build the best product possible by incorporating different perspectives and challenging bias.

Whether it’s adding more women to the team (we’re currently around 35% on the engineering team) or people of different ages, ethnic backgrounds, parenting status, and abilities – diversity is extremely important to us. We’re proud to work with people who have different professional backgrounds and experiences. Engineers on the team come from small startups and large publicly traded tech companies; some started here as interns; some with computer science backgrounds. Still, we recognize that creating a diverse team is an ongoing process and one that we will always strive to improve upon.

Building for the emerging billion

Our work is all about making life-changing products available to anyone, anywhere. We understand how structures in society can restrict opportunity. Angaza is committed to removing and countering bias in our hiring practices so that candidates from underrepresented backgrounds are evaluated fairly.

We can also share the results of a simple gender survey. Women are:

• ⅔ of our founders
• over half of our leadership team
• ⅓ of our engineers

We don’t focus on pedigree. Engineers on our team have had backgrounds in public planning and policy, fine arts, classics, Arabic, French – and more traditional computer science education, too. We welcome anyone who believes in our mission: increasing access to life-changing products for anyone, anywhere.

We’re proud to work with people who have different backgrounds and life experiences.

Engineers on the team come from small startups and large publicly traded tech companies; some started here as interns; some are new parents. We also have folks who are more extroverted and love to pair program, while others are introverted and prefer to have more heads-down time. Several of our summer interns this year came from the Brilliant Black Minds project and have decided to stay on part-time. We rely on different perspectives to challenge bias and help us build the best product possible.

Our engineering team includes a beekeeper, a professional Carnatic musician, and a former midwife.

When you join Curai, you’ll be working alongside parents, athletes, music fans, cooks, Ivy League computer science grads, and engineers who took non-traditional paths. Building a diverse and inclusive team is an ongoing journey for us, and we feel we are never finished. Currently our engineering team is 45% women and 65% people of color, numbers which we'd like to continue to improve upon.

In order for us to succeed, we must build a team that reflects the diversity of the patients we serve. We believe our patient care and business will be better if those of us building it come from a variety of backgrounds. As a team we also recognize that diversity is only a piece of the puzzle; equity and inclusion are key as well. We want everyone at Curai to find a sense of belonging and be able to access the same opportunities. For example, one of the ways we foster equity is by having salary bands for our engineering roles. Our leadership also completes an annual compensation disparity audit.

In the words of Neal Khosla, our CEO, "Creating space and opportunity means making a concerted effort from the top down to help build a more inclusive organization. We're a company that is trying to build a more equitable healthcare future, and to do that we're going to need an organization with broad representation. We have to build an organization for everyone and that starts with a conscious effort to recruit, retain, develop, and create space for everyone to be successful in our org."

We’re intentional about building a diverse team.

We are committed to building a diverse, inclusive, and equitable workspace where everyone (regardless of age, education, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, or any personal characteristics) feels like they belong. To do so, we have internal DEI goals and actively work toward increasing our pipelines so we can hire more folks from underrepresented groups. For example, we partner with female-centric engineering recruiting platforms (like Elpha and Grace Hopper). While we’re proud to have several female managers (3 out of 4 on the engineering, product, and design team), we recognize there’s more to diversity than gender. We welcome people from all backgrounds, whether they have CS degrees or are self-taught. Last but not least, we’re a great place to work for families and offer 16 weeks paid parental leave for birthing parents, and 12 weeks for non-birthing parents.