Engineering teams that actively practice inclusion

We are committed to doing the hard work required for true institutional change.

We strive to be a community where everyone is welcome to be themselves without fear of discrimination and encouraging of each other. We want all of our team members to feel empowered to stand up for themselves and each other.

Our leadership team has made concrete commitments toward fostering diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) at the company. For example, we hold ourselves accountable by using data to ensure our pay bands are equitable for each role. Being open, honest, and transparent with our staff about both our findings, as well as our plans to improve is important to us. Moreover, we have a very clear goal to build a team that reflects the diverse communities we live in, not just the dominant paradigm in the tech world.

We also maintain safe spaces to engage in open dialogue and provide our team members with monthly DEIB open forums, workshops, book clubs, guest speakers, cultural month celebrations, and more. You can read our complete DEIB mission statement here.

Inclusion means making space for every Karateer.

Building an inclusive environment is top of mind in everything we do, because if you don’t have an inclusive environment, you can’t retain a diverse team. We hire from around the world and interview by one of our core values, which is human-centered.

We strongly believe in fighting systemic racism and supporting underrepresented groups. Historically, Black software engineers have been largely kept out of the highest levels of tech and not afforded equal access to career opportunities that interviews create. Only 5% of software engineers in the U.S. are Black and we’re in a position to affect real-world change. That’s why we created Brilliant Black Minds, a program that leverages our product to help prepare Black software engineers for future interviews with free interview practice, feedback, and coaching. In fact, Serena Williams partnered with us to help scale the program and double the number of Black engineers in tech! We’re even going one step further with Partners of Brilliance, which directly connects engineers to specific roles based on their practice interview progression. Eligible participants are invited to connect with a recruiter from one of our partner companies and fast-track through the interview process. Companies including Prime Video, Citi, Duolingo, Indeed, and Flatiron Health have all signed on as inaugural partners to help us close the interview access gap and are committed to hiring from the Black Brilliant Minds community.

We make it a priority to learn from one another and ensure that meetings are inclusive of those who are remote (i.e. figuring out the best angle, tech, or room to use so that everyone can hear each other and participate equally). During all-hands meetings, we often have presenters from the LGBTQ+ community and Brilliant Black Minds, to name a few. Our goal is for every Karateer to feel they have a seat at a table (or multiple tables). While it might not be the highest decision-making table, we always want your voice to be heard. That means you can even go to the CEO with feedback any time, regardless of your role.

Whether it’s working on projects such as making sure equitable language is used in our UX (and that we’re labeling the right buttons for candidates to use with non-binary pronouns), or providing interview engineers with ongoing training and mentorship, inclusion is core to our product, company, and how we operate day-to-day.

We value everyone’s input.

It’s important to us that every team member feels comfortable speaking up and expressing both their ideas and concerns. At our weekly all-hands meeting, everyone shares what they worked on the previous week, any highlights, and what they’ll be working on that week. We make sure to rotate the order so that we never start with the same person and always give everyone equal floor space. There’s also a fun grab bag question too, which can range from sharing the last book you read or your spirit animal to slightly deeper topics such as a favorite childhood memory.

It’s safe to say that we avoid silos, and our weekly all-hands is also a great place for engineers to learn more about other parts of the business and explain what they’re working on to folks who are less familiar. We’re happy to explain more technical terms to our marketing peers and vice-versa. In order to learn from each other, having diverse experiences and expertises is paramount. Maybe you’re self-taught or have a CS degree, a parent or an empty nester, just starting out in your career or further along – we welcome folks from all backgrounds.

We think of diversity and inclusion in terms of 3 P's: Presence, Participation, and Progress.

Presence: The first step to inclusion is simply including diverse people in your company. We actively discuss improving and diversifying the culture in our #diversity-equity-inclusion Slack channel, ERGs, DEI working groups, and other forums. To reduce bias in engineering hiring, we've introduced standardized rubrics and assessment metrics for our interview process. We're continually investigating methods for improving the diversity of our candidate pool. Our executive team leadership unambiguously supports devoting significant resources to this end.

Participation: Once you get people in the door, you must ensure everyone is involved in meaningful decisions. Our employees come from all walks of life: some are parents to newborn children, some are empty nesters, and others are part of the younger workforce. Companies should mold themselves to accommodate their employees’ work styles. Most of our communication is asynchronously accessible. Company-wide celebrations happen at all hours of the day, not just after work, and include activities, food, and beverages compatible with various lifestyles.

Progress: We want all employees to create the biggest impact possible. We've instituted a program of training managers in coaching skills to maximize every report's chance of success. Majority-identifying, as well as minority-identifying engineering leaders lead our DEI working groups. We support formal communities (ERGs) and organic communities (such as our Women in Eng group) that have developed within our organization – ask us about these!

An inclusive environment is crucial for both our product and our culture.

We’re on a mission to build tools that help restore financial health for millions of Americans with limited incomes. Having a diverse, equitable, and inclusive culture is the key to creating the best product possible, starting with how we interview. We use a structured interview process with consistent questions and well-defined stages, grading rubrics, and scorecards to reduce bias. We provide interview bias training for our interviewers as well.

We’ve designed our onboarding experience to provide every new engineer with a level playing field to understand our product. We provide a peer buddy program and schedule 1:1 chats with teammates to make the first weeks of joining our remote first environment more comfortable.

We also invite all employees to join and participate in our JEDI (justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion) Slack channel. We enjoy celebrating heritage months as a company with events and activities such as virtual African and Latin America diaspora cooking classes, identity-centered learning games, guest lectures, and more!

We celebrate and support our individual identities. In order to do our best work everyone must feel respected, valued, and that they belong.

Here are several ways Asana engineers practice inclusivity and build community:

• Employee Resource Groups foster trusted, safe spaces for underrepresented groups and allies. Our thriving communities include AsanaWomen, Asanapac, Blacsana, Team Rainbow for LGBTQIA+ Asanas, Raíz for Latine/Latinx Asanas,and Gradient for Asanas of color.
• Gigabytes is our growing community of women, transgender, and gender non-conforming individuals in technical roles.
• Ask Me Anything sessions with members of our leadership team and external thought leaders forge connections and bring unique perspectives to the table.
• The Real Talk event series promotes candid, open conversations. Asanas come together to discuss important, often uncomfortable topics, such as experiences around identity and workplace challenges.
• Organized group learning programs like book clubs, learning talks, and movie screenings provide ways for every Asana to build community and connection.
• Gender-inclusive spaces: From gender-neutral restrooms in every office, to pronoun fields in our product, we recognize and embrace all identities.

One of our company values is "Good Ideas Come From Everywhere."

This runs counter to how many design firms operate and the belief that “Good Ideas Come From the Top.” Instead, we deliberately build our process around entire teams working together to achieve the greatest outcome – regardless of exact job title, seniority, formal experience, gender, race, religion, or other characteristic. This is a really important cultural dimension that has kept our culture strong – but it’s fragile and fleeting unless we find ways to codify it into the company’s operating system.

That’s why we’re in the midst of developing stronger formal practices to promote inclusivity in everyone’s job. It’s becoming a part of performance reviews and a specific objective for us to improve as part of our quarterly goal setting.

Thus far, we’ve ensured that we’re up-to-date with the legal and ethical compliance you would expect from a firm our size, including standardized procedures around compensation, formal policies for sexual or other types of harassment, and holding DEI training and other company-wide summits.

But let’s be honest, these are things every company should do. Our challenge this year (and every year) is how can we go further? The past year taught us that if inclusion and creation of a safe space is a priority, it’s going to take more formal checks to ensure we’re living up to our standards. That’s why we’re working with groups like Canopy and Plucky to hold more formal staff management, coaching and hiring training, and provide additional opportunities for team members of different backgrounds to share their experiences.

In terms of our day-to-day work, we’re actively pursuing projects that have diverse points of view, as well as business partnerships and pipelines that allow our own views to be broadened. While we could easily fall back on a known vendor or contractor for a work engagement, instead we do the extra work required to expand our search and step out of our comfort zone. We empower all Upstatement employees to do the same at all levels of the organization – be it new business opportunities, the nitty gritty of a project, recruitment, or even choosing our catering partners (back when co-location was a thing).

Lastly (phew), we’ve created a new pro bono program to help under-represented founders in our community and broaden our own horizons. We’re donating our design/engineering services to help people or groups that don’t have the same networks or opportunities in the tech world. We hope this gives them a leg up for their venture and can meaningfully change the make-up of the industry over time.

Creating an inclusive environment is top of mind in everything we do.

Our mission to improve health outcomes for low-income communities and communities of color isn’t just theoretical, it’s personal. Vineet (co-founder and CEO) was inspired to use text messaging to fill a gap in patient care after his experience volunteering at St. Vincent’s Free Clinic in Galveston, Texas in the wake of Hurricane Ike. He turned down his medical school acceptance and partnered with fellow Stanford classmate, Cecilia (co-founder and VP of Product), to found CareMessage. Having grown up in a low-income immigrant household, Cecilia brings an invaluable perspective on how to design products and build technology for underserved communities. She’s also an advocate for diversity and inclusion in the broader tech industry, thanks to her work collecting and publishing data on Latina tech founders.

Internally, we’re committed to fostering inclusivity by continually reviewing and improving our equitable hiring processes. When it comes to compensation, we offer competitive and equal pay regardless of location. If we find we need to increase the salary for a particular role to be competitive, we immediately raise everyone in that role’s salary as well. What’s more, we allocate time and budget investments to our ERGs, which include BIPOC, Parents of CareMessage, and Women of CareMessage. We also place an emphasis on making space for everyone’s voice to be heard, not just the loudest person in the room. As we grow, we look to our team members to participate in these conversations, help mentor one another, and play an active role in shaping an inclusive culture.

Renan and Bruno, Senior Software Engineers (first and second from left) with other CareMessage colleagues at our Disneyland company retreat circa 2019.

We’ve worked hard to build a culture where everyone feels they belong.

As we grow, we’re committed to building a workplace where every single employee feels safe, welcome, and empowered to do their best work. Our diverse experiences and viewpoints allow us to build the best product possible. If you don’t have a traditional CS degree or come from a different technical background, that’s not a barrier at all. One of our team members, Vicky, started her career as an accountant before pivoting to engineering at Upduo. She’s now our Head of Product. We also have a couple engineers who switched from mechanical and aerospace engineering to software engineering.

Our product allows for conversations that create a safe space for employees to ask questions, practice skills, and learn, and we take that to heart internally as well. We use our own platform to get different team members to teach each other about their areas of the company (i.e. our Head of Marketing might explain an upcoming partnership announcement to one of our engineers, or a UI/UX designer might discuss a new feature with our Chief Revenue Officer).

We’re a highly empathetic and collaborative team where you’re more than just your title or role. Whether you’re an intern or a senior engineer, if you’re leading a project, you’ll have the full support of everyone on the team. That means even Wei (co-founder and CTO/COO) might be your direct report for that project. If you’re passionate about learning, you’ll feel right at home. Come grow with us!