Diversity is important to Alignable’s Engineering team, and here’s what we’re doing about it

Diversity can show itself in many shapes and forms. Evidence indicates that diversity is good for everyone - both businesses and people.

The small business community is a great example of diversity in action - small business owners are what shape the culture of our communities, bringing their different backgrounds and experiences to life in our town centers and beyond. This is also something you’ll see reflected in our membership base here at Alignable. Small business owners on Alignable have created places to call their own through affinity groups such as Black-Owned Business Owners, Women Business Owners, LGBTQIA Owned Businesses, and 70+ Entrepreneurs, representing a broad range of race, age, income, and identity perspectives.

It’s our mission to help small business owners be successful by creating an amazing platform to support this complex and important community and ensure that each and every person feels at home on Alignable. One of our customers recently shared that she “enjoys the fact that it’s the type of platform, where they are looking to make you feel comfortable wherever you fit in”.

So how do we capture diverse perspectives and experiences and make them a part of the decisions we make? And why is diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) so critical to our platform and to us personally here at Alignable?

Below, I’m going to share why diversity is important to me, a woman in tech, and what the Engineering team at Alignable is doing to bring in more diversity to our team.

Why Teams with Diverse Perspectives Build Better Products

Understanding and appreciating diversity is critical for all software engineers because it gets to the heart of what makes a great engineer…and by extension, a great team, leader, and customer-centric company.

A good software engineer can program fast and efficiently, but a great engineer also seeks to build solutions that solve the problems people have—and that requires understanding and empathising with what people are trying to accomplish.

Each individual has a unique perspective and interacts with the world in different ways, yet we often share common goals. If we want to build a system that works for millions of people, we need to identify those similarities and differences and find solutions that work across the spectrum.

Right now, the field of software engineering in the United States is primarily composed of young white men. There are some high profile examples such as facial recognition software not working for minorities, or women being stopped by airport security software because scanners didn’t distinguish underwire from a weapon, that show that not having diversity in tech can lead to products that don’t meet the needs of a diverse population, and applications that won’t scale or truly meet your customer needs without significant additional investment.

On the flip side, when you have a diverse team of people (different genders, ages, races, identities, and backgrounds), you have a wider range of perspectives that will allow for a more inclusive solution. Reports show that teams composed of diverse individuals make better decisions and deliver better products.

How Different Perspectives Make You a Better Person

Working with a diverse group of people helps us make better software; it also makes us better people.

An engineering team with diverse skills and perspectives will complement and challenge each other in useful ways. Consider a team with the following individuals:

• Focused on cohesive coding practices and code reviews
• Passionate about new designs and user experience
• Driven to get things out quickly and has excellent problem solving skills
• Prioritizes accessibility; has or is close to someone with a visual or physical impairment

This team may struggle at first to find common ground and satisfy each person’s focus area. And they might disagree on when it’s important to focus on speed versus spend extra time de-risking an extra complex part of the application.

Exposure to different perspectives can force conversations that can bring about understanding and tolerance—not just in work topics, but also the greater social-economic sphere as well.

With a focus on celebrating our differences, the team can leverage the strengths of each colleague, find unique compromises and solutions to problems, and challenge each other to grow in exponential ways.

What We’re Doing to Be More Diverse, Equitable, and Inclusive

Alignable’s engineering team is committed to DE&I and we’ve created a three-pronged approach in place to diversify our Engineering team.

Recruiting

• We’ve expanded our hiring funnel to include platforms that specifically target diverse candidates.
• We’ve improved our job postings and hiring process to be more inclusive so we don’t unintentionally push away diverse candidates.

Internal process

• We have a mentoring program and also share information on interviewing and working together with diversity and inclusion in the forefront.
• We’ve prioritized diversity in two of our company’s core values: STRONGER TOGETHER, and DIFFERENT TOGETHER work in sync to recognize and celebrate differences, while also building up stronger teams, relationships, and working habits.
• We conduct agile practices of bi-weekly retrospectives to create forums for every individual to share learnings, offer challenges and changes, and celebrate each other’s contributions.

Social Impact

• We’re active in clubs, groups, and networking events that encourage diverse networks.
• We’re partnering with colleges that have diversity groups in order to provide mentorship and speaking opportunities, and grow our incoming funnels for coops and college hires.
• Our platform is a fantastic tool for social impact. We’ve brought together some amazing diversity groups for our small business owners and have actively onboarded and encouraged group leaders to drive and recruit business leaders into these groups. The discussions and networking that members experience there is meaningful, targeted, and impactful to not only these business owners, but the communities that they belong to.

Are we perfect at it? No, but we’re really excited about the progress we have made in the last year and will continue to invest in making Alignable a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive place to work.

Want to read more?

• https://hbr.org/2017/03/teams-solve-problems-faster-when-theyre-more-cognitively-diverse

• https://tech.cornell.edu/news/tech-experts-share-the-importance-of-diversity-and-how-to-foster-inclusion/

• https://www.talentinnovation.org/_private/assets/Athena-2-ExecSummFINAL-CTI.pdf

• https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/diversity-and-inclusion/diversity-wins-how-inclusion-matters

• https://www.asanet.org/sites/default/files/savvy/images/journals/docs/pdf/asr/Apr09ASRFeature.pdf

• https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/why-diversity-matters

• https://www.cloverpop.com/hacking-diversity-with-inclusive-decision-making-white-paper

• https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/321516