Makinde Adeagbo, Pinterest engineer
and founder of /dev/color, talks about his experience and the future of
diversity in the tech industry.
SAN FRANCISCO — Ime Archibong
was eating lunch on Facebook's Silicon Valley campus with former colleague
Makinde Adeagbo last year when Adeagbo pitched the idea for /dev/color, a
nonprofit organization to bring together and grow the ranks of African-American
software developers.
"We sat outside, right in front
of the ice cream shop, and he was painting this vision for me of what he wanted
to do," Archibong recalls.
Adeagbo, who at the
time worked at Pinterest, was one of the first black software
engineers at Facebook and had forged a career path for other black
engineers to follow. Now he aspired to do the same thing, only on an
industrywide scale.
"That is something I cannot
help but get behind," Archibong, a software engineer who is
now Facebook's director of strategic partnerships, told USA TODAY.
/dev/color, a support network for
engineers of color, officially launched a year ago and has since grown to
114 members, all black, many of whom often found themselves feeling isolated
while navigating an industry dominated by white and Asian men.
On Friday, /dev/color
held its inaugural conference on Facebook's campus
— "Onwards and Upwards: Advancing the careers of black software
engineers" — headlined by venture capitalist Ben Horowitz and
Facebook chief technology officer Mike Schroepfer and featuring sessions
on such topics as how to go from engineer to manager and how to
build a business with an engineering background.
The conference marks a major
milestone for /dev/color, a reference to a common directory on computer systems
and a nod to the organization's mission. It's expanding its offerings and its
geographic footprint to New York with the backing of seven corporate sponsors
that include Facebook, Google, Uber and Pinterest. And, for the first
time, it's inviting industry leaders to become members.
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Adeagbo came up with the idea for
/dev/color while volunteering as a mentor to a couple of computer science
students and worked on the project part-time while at Pinterest with the
company's blessing. Adeagbo left his engineering job at Pinterest earlier this
year to dedicate himself to /dev/color when it was accepted into Y
Combinator, Silicon Valley's most famous — and most influential
— incubator, graduating companies such as Airbnb, Dropbox and Reddit.
"We believe one of the best
ways to inspire change is by empowering employees to be the change,"
says Candice Morgan, Pinterest's diversity chief.
The challenge before Adeagbo is
daunting. A tiny fraction of the tech work force in Silicon Valley is African
American. Only 1% of venture capital-backed start-ups are led by African
Americans and less than 1% of general partners at major venture capital firms
in Silicon Valley are African American.
Progress in changing the
demographics is slow, and yet high-tech's diversity problem has a growing sense
of urgency. The tech industry, especially in its power center of Silicon
Valley, runs the risk of losing touch with the diverse nation — and world
— that form their consumer base. At the same time, African Americans are
being shut out of one of the fastest-growing, highest-paying sectors of the
American economy.
Hence the need for an innovative
organization like /dev/color that can help black engineers form community
and gain mentors, says Archibong.
"For folks who are
underrepresented in a particular organization or in a particular
industry, their ability to build that community, their ability to find
mentorship and sponsorship from folks that look like them, it's just
challenging," he says.
Archibong says he personally
benefited from the example and the support of key leaders in the companies he
has worked: Rodney C. Atkins, a high-ranking black executive at IBM, and Sheryl
Sandberg, Facebook's chief operating officer and author of the national
bestseller Lean In.
"That Makinde is trying to
intentionally build that into the fabric of the community is a beautiful
thing," Archibong says.
He lent his own support at
Friday's conference, leading a discussion on how to make the leap from
software engineering to business leadership.
So far /dev/color's "bread and
butter" has been convening black engineers so they can learn
from one another. Now Adeagbo's opening up a new type of membership called
"boost" so industry leaders can participate in small group
dinners with black engineers.
"It helps build the networks of
black engineers, which will support their careers long into the future. It also
extends the networks of industry leaders to include black software engineers,
allowing them to really get to know folks from this group," Adeagbo said.
"'Do you know any awesome black engineers that you could hire?' We want
the answer to be 'yes' for every leader in the industry."
Jessica Guynn, Martin E. Klimek, USA TODAY, Sept. 30, 2016.
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