I recently reached a few high points in my career that coincided, not coincidentally, with some of the worst harassment of my life. It made me reflect on how my career has been defined as much in terms of misogyny as technical excellence (I’ve garnered quite a CV in both), and how I have struggled t
When I was hiring a developer to come on to my all white male team I was really hoping for a woman to apply. Sadly, that never happened. I was able to cut down on the whiteness though, and no I didn’t pick a lesser candidate because they weren’t white. It was just coincidence.
I found a technique that worked well for me. I want to share with you and others, but I don’t want to come across as judging you in anyway. It’s hard to find great candidates of any sort. And I wouldn’t necessarily recommend my technique to every company, because it’s just not reasonable in all cases.
I’ve found that the best way to get a good mix of people hired onto the team is to do more than hope that it happens.
I had to get out to workshops, conferences, and meetups. Local universities had groups that I got in touch with. I had to make connections with the communities that I was looking to hire from. It was a lot of hard work.
But once you’ve developed those connections, candidates roll in with surprising regularity for a long time. After two years I had a team of 10 great devs with a 50/50 split between genders and a huge range of background and cultures. It was the most fun team to work with and we made awesome stuff.
That’s awesome. I don’t have that patience. 😇
My conflict would be between giving up my free time after work to recruiting to have more fun at work, or deal with people that aren’t as good. Am I reading that right?