What is Product’s Role in Equity and Inclusion?

Written By Jen Swanson
inclusive teams.jpg

There was a ruckus at Basecamp a few weeks ago, and I can’t stop thinking about it. Perhaps you are also following along. The moment that made the news was a blog post published by CEO Jason Fried that prohibits "societal and political discussion" on internal company forums. With a public offer of a generous severance to anyone who disagreed with the changes he announced, nearly one-third of the company resigned - many of them long-term, senior executives that have been through thick and thin with this company. 

But that’s not why I can’t stop thinking about it. (Though seeing what the limits of that kind of employee loyalty are is interesting - many of the people leaving cited the handling of diversity and inclusion conversations, not the elimination of wellness and education benefits, as their reason for leaving.)

Rather, it’s the overall tone of “we know better” coming from the CEOs that is really not sitting well with me. Last year, I heard Fried talk at a product conference about their new email platform, Hey.  He was talking - bragging even - about how they don't do a ton of user research because they are building to their own standards (which they purport to be higher than anyone else's). 

Since this was a virtual conference, there was a lot of back and forth talk in the chat thread about this. A few of us raised concerns about the fact that the no-research-we've-got-it-all-figured-out practice is precisely the kind of echo chamber that ends up cranking out exclusive, rather than inclusive, code. 

Stop for a moment and reread that phrase - exclusive, rather than inclusive, code. 

I'm going to unpack that in a minute, but let me finish the story.

Now, we find out that these same Basecamp leaders are shutting down all internal chat channels and eliminating committees, because they’re taking people off track of making decisions and moving on. But given the nature of the origin of the conflict - employees were grappling with an internal practice of tracking "funny client names," most of which were non-white, foreign names - this strikes me as precisely the opposite of what’s needed.

I’m all for decisive action, but when your employees are telling you that the very nature of how you work is creating exclusivity and hurt, there needs to be a venue for processing and working through that anger and frustration. Listening to others with an experience other than your own is the ONLY way to design a new path that does not recreate the injury of the past. 

Look at the Facts

It’s easy to toss around personal experiences about the evolving diversification of the tech space, but let’s speak from a basis of fact. Here are some nuggets to get us started: 

  • According to a study done by the U.S. Equal Opportunity Commission, titled "Diversity in High Tech": "Compared with overall private industry, the high-tech sector employed a larger share of white workers (68.5% vs. 63.5%), Asian Americans (14% vs. 5.8%), and men (64% vs. 52%), while a smaller share of African Americans (7.4% vs. 14.4%), Hispanics (8% vs. 13.9%), and women (36% vs. 48%). Men occupy 80% of executive roles in tech, 20% by women.”

  • According to a 2018 report from the National Center for Women & Information Technology, “57 percent of the U.S. workforce is made up of women, but women hold only 26 percent of technology-related positions.” 

  • According to the Center for Talent Innovation: “Women who work in technical fields leave their jobs at a 45% higher rate than men. Most exit reasons relate to corporate culture issues, lack of inclusion, pay inequity, or other forms of individual or institutional bias.”

 In summary: we know we can do better with diverse teams, but the industry is still being led, with a significant majority, by white men.

Why Does it Matter

Let's start by going back to that phrase I mentioned above -creating exclusive, rather than inclusive, code. 

 What does that mean? It's code - how can it be exclusive or inclusive?

The same way a car can be. Standard vehicles are not built for people who use wheelchairs. They are exclusive. An accessible van is built for people who use wheelchairs or who have other mobility constraints. It's inclusive. 

Exclusive code assumes that it is done to serve the "norm." Since we've already shown that the majority of people in tech are white men, we can consider the "norm" is white men.

There is even a new name for this type of exclusive code. At the 2020 International Neuroethics Society, keynote speaker Ruha Benjamin, Ph.D., called it "the new Jim Code," stating that it is today's version of the old "Jim Crow" laws, used post-Civil War to segregate black people in southern states. 

It’s not a purely academic concept. When products are created with exclusive code, bad things can happen: 

  • In 2015, Google's A.I. identified black people as gorillas. Three years after this was reported, Google hadn't fixed anything; they just blocked their A.I. from identifying gorillas at all.

  • Healthcare systems are being exposed for the bias their software programs have against black people. In 2019, an algorithm was uncovered that was less likely to refer black people to special services to support complex medical needs.

  • In 2019, Apple’s new credit card offering was investigated by regulators, saying the algorithm that determined creditworthiness was biased. IRONY ALERT: David Heinemeier Hansson - David Fried’s co-CEO at Basecamp - was the one who alerted the media to the fact that his wife, Jamie, was denied a credit line increase despite having a better credit score and other equal if not better qualifications than he did, yet he was offered nearly 20 times the credit line she was offered. 

  • The United Nations, in a report on gendered tech, ruled that the familiar female voices of digital assistants, like Siri, are sexist. The report claims that the voices are programmed to be submissive. They even respond calmly and politely to insults.

 All of these things could have been prevented if their product teams had been diverse and inclusive, and if the testing and validation of their code had included people of all genders, races, ethnicities, etc, etc, etc. Instead, the designers, developers, and testers all reflected the norm (remember: white men) and as a result, the exclusive code was released and real people suffered as a result. 

The Bottom Line 

Inclusive product practices are a threat to the current power dynamic in tech, in general, and in product particularly, because we can get caught coming and going: when our teams are not diverse, we’re less likely to seek out feedback from customers that don’t look like us or occupy our same status in society. There’s no gate at which we are forced to check that we haven’t sinned by omission (since I generally believe that most product people set out to make the kinds of mistakes we saw in the cases above.)

This means that our teams must be more diverse. The customer panels we use to validate ideas must be more diverse. The problems we are trying to solve must come from sources we’re not familiar with, that exist on the edges of the data that comes to us through traditional channels. 

After the chat discussion during the talk Fried gave at the virtual conference last year, a male colleague told me I was overreacting by feeling that his “I know better” approach to product development was dangerous and negligent. The colleague told me that "these were some of the most brilliant minds in product and not everything has to be about diversity."  

I think that’s the nugget that I can’t let go of in the Basecamp cautionary tale: the more we glorify some people as "brilliant product innovators," the more we protect the environment that fosters exclusive code and removes any possibility of identifying and removing applications of code that hurt and further oppress those that don’t fit the norm.  

And you know what? Everything in product IS about diversity. Or rather, everything in product is about inclusion. Every product person I know is deeply curious about the challenges and opportunities that they might be able to solve with their product. No one I know would ever say, “I want to make X experience easier for white people.” But if your team, and your customer panel, and your testers, and your designers, and, and, and….. If those people are all white, then that’s - by default - what you are engaged in.

If you are in product design or management, look around. What active steps is your team taking to make sure your products are inclusive, out of the gate? More than just hiring diverse talent, how are you ensuring your customer feedback is breaking - not reinforcing - the echo chamber? Have you looked upstream to where your product ideas come from, to ensure those sources are as diverse as your customers are?

Look, I don’t have this all figured out. But I do know that the path to a better, more equitable world is by more conversation, not less. More interaction with people and customers that don’t look like you do. More time spent thinking about the worst-case scenario, and honest reflection about our role in making sure that doesn’t come to fruition.  

Want to learn more? Here are some articles to get you started:

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Jen Swanson
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