I’ve seriously thought about applying, but I wouldn’t mind doing something distant. I thought it would be great to setup some type of training courses for GF. I’ve got a degree in engineering, an MBA, and a M.Ed. I’d love to do technical writing as well. I think having a training program would be great and with my experience in technical curriculum writing I think I could contribute something. I currently teach, do consulting, and own an aviation education company so I really couldn’t relocate, but like I said doing work from my home city would definitely be interesting.
@stlord:
1: I have a long list of things I wish Glowforge could invest in. Up there on the list is creating more opportunities for under-represented minorities in technology at all stages of the funnel.
Unfortunately, everything on that list takes some combination of time and dollars. And as you’d imagine, our resources of both are limited right now. While many people at Glowforge spend personal time and dollars on this (myself included), as a company, I have to focus our efforts on our one goal: delivering a terrific product on time. And sadly that means focusing our investments on things that will help us in the near term, rather than making investments for the long term. Yet.
I believe that doing the right thing has a long-term payoff for Glowforge as a company, though, and I’m excited to be able to make more meaningful investments in improving the technology ecosystem when we get our product shipped. Once we’ve fulfilled our obligations to you as backers, we have a lot more flexibility about what to do with our resources.
2: Speaking as a person who’s been very privileged over the course of my life to have access to resources and opportunities unavailable to most, I’ve been frustrated that my workplace is mostly guys that look like me. Further, I’m embarrassed that I’ve built three relatively homogeneous companies over the course of my life. The research is pretty clear that that’s not an effective way for a company to operate. I, personally, would be inclined towards and not away from a company that was working to counteract that. We get a lot of submissions from people who feel the same, which is great - white men who want to work for a more diverse company.
You may be right that some people feel left out by this and choose not to work for us as a result - if that’s the case, we’ll have to deal with the consequences of not having them here. That worries me because if it happened we probably wouldn’t even know about it. But it’s a risk we’re willing to take, because the benefit of building a diverse company is so important to us.
To your last point, I bear you no ill will as a result of our personal conversation, and appreciate you coming here to discuss this.
I viewed the referral incentive in light of the parable of the polygons. It doesn’t reduce the value of the non-minority applicant, or even referral of them (hey, you are still getting your friend a shot at a job, and getting the company a shot at a good employee). But the only way to fight back against accidental racism is to be purposefully diverse.
Speaking as a person that has been in the Technology for some time I think the referral for minority is a supply and demand conversion. In a capital society demand drives supply. In a capital society referrals are not necessary for groups that are in great supply. We all want to do good, this said we all have to run a business. I suspect that the very tool they are building at the price point it is at will allow schools to design and build things never imagined before. I have seen this with Arduino and I expect to see it here. If you believe in supply and demand then offering up the 5000 is the good incentive to building a minority labor pool. I use to attend sessions for i.c. stars in Chicago. This would be one place to go for minority talent. Good luck on your journey.
There is no lack of supply. The pipeline has been reasonably well developed and efforts on that front are making steady progress. The issue is there is usually no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow if you’re a minority, especially a POC. Every single POC I know in my field of study abandoned the standard career path due to the inability to break through the academic glass ceiling. In 10+ years of working in the field I only met a single POC head of a research lab…he also happened to be my boss. One…that’s it…in over 10 years! And other universities found it easier to try to poach him, a known quantity, than to take a risk hiring and promoting any of the hundreds of POC post-docs who were waiting and withering in the wings. I see the exact same thing happening in the tech companies I’ve worked with, where POC are always the last hired, first fired. Some magical combination of gate keeping requirements is always invoked to keep them out. Like wanting a minority candidate with an advanced degree AND five years of experience in the industry for an entry level position…good luck with that. You can’t solve the issue of lack of diversity by trawling the very same industry that lacks diversity. And when a unicorn candidate with the right training and experience turns up, other things like “company culture” can be invoked to keep the gates shut. I was actually on a hiring committee where the director wanted to hire an unexperienced white lady (still nets the diversity brownie points) over a hispanic male who had already done the job for us various times as a contractor with stellar reviews. She explained her preference (against that over every single other person on the committee) by saying the female was a better “cultural fit” despite lacking the specific skillset required for the job. Won’t say who got the job.
To be clear, no one is accusing GF of any of these failings. But the trends are difficult to fight if they aren’t openly discussed. I applaud GF for casting a wider net, and paying people to head hunt is not an uncommon tactic for finding talent. If you don’t know where a certain type of talent is, then paying someone to find it makes a certain amount of sense. However, I sincerely hope that your hiring managers can see diamonds in the rough who might not have the level of experience of more advantaged candidates. Some things can be learned, some can’t…please select for the latter. The University of Texas at El Paso has a great engineering department and we’ve met a lot of very smart, very eager new graduates who are having trouble finding good work. Will certainly send some of them your way.
The direction of the discussion is a pleasing one. I am glad to see that we can all have our differences and speak them freely in light of what is going on at universities. I can not speak of all other companies, but we run multiple programs, both intern ( paid) and full time. It is hard to understand what one might be going though based on discrimination that exists in the work force today, this said I do feel the world changing on all fronts for both gender and race inequality. This said I feel that programs designed to help may end up hurting each of these groups in the long run. I install a massive amount of faith in companies such as mine, and people like myself that push to hire people not as fortunate and from all walks of life. Up in till last year our company’s main hiring strategy was through existing employees, with this sort of incentive. I think this company is doing what they can at their age. It took us many years to get to this point. I suspect continual support to this company in these efforts to make them more “sustainable” will come all in due process.
Congrats on the great hire, that form of organic connection is so very rare. @Kusmeroglu you’ve got a great team to make great things with!
In regards to the focus on providing opportunities for under-represented minorities, I’ve found balancing the issue is tackled in two ways. One is simply working on something that appeals to them and getting it in front of their face, or making a specific ask to everyone else, with or without incentives. People don’t know how they can help if the ask is unclear, and from what I’ve seen, Dan and team is going about it in the right way.
If I wasn’t knee deep in operating the most amazing kids makerspace on the planet then I would most certainly apply to work at GF. As it stands now, I’m simply content in teaching some cool stuff to some super cool kids! And we look forward to having a GF to add to our space! Perhaps I could serve as your SouthEast USA development rep one day.
I’ve been a technologist for 20 years. Until recently I was a triple play minority–older disabled female (thanks to some great doctors the disabled part is now history). No matter how you slice it, it takes a lot of doing to outshine the young white male techie in this industry, and I’ve had a heap of practice.
I certainly understand stlord’s frustration over the news that the Glowforge hiring practices aren’t–by design–a level playing field. After a steady diet of EEOC promises such an announcement sounds like heresy, and it’s no fun to be on the outside of an exclusion. (I should know)
But here’s the thing: The promises have never really matched reality–the level playing has never really existed. I’ve worked for some fabulous companies, fabulous people, good friends…and I can count on both hands the number of minorities I’ve worked with in true leadership roles. I’ve been on many senior hiring committees with very, very good people. I know in many cases the resumes and interviews demonstrated that the minority candidate was as good as, or better, than the candidate that got the job. But overwhelmingly, the candidate chosen would be a white male under the age of 45 (usually, under 40).
Nobody was deliberately excluding minorities. Instead, they were hiring friends, people just like themselves. I heard the words “known quantity” more times than I care to think about, and was outvoted a lot.
That’s why, when I was asked to help my Fortune 500 company with a datacenter photoshoot that demonstrated company diversity, I had to DIG for employees. I found exactly 11 minorities; 3 refused to be included because they were tired of being singled out as tokens.
So, stlord, when you imply that there’s a problem explaining why minority candidates are worth $5,000 more, well…that’s the reason. They are a rarity, and rarities really are worth more. Glowforge is eliminating the “known quantity” from its hiring criteria. I find that refreshing.
Dan - Please let us know when you are ready to hire sales and marketing personnel. I’m a sales professional, working remotely, and I’m pretty excited about the direction of GF. I find when I’m given a product to work with that I love, and a company I can stand behind, I’m pretty unstoppable. Plus, I live in Bellingham, so not too far. I’d be interested in updates.
