A couple of days ago, for my Ada Lovelace Day post, I
briefly discussed the
Grace Hopper Celebration, the Anita Borg Institute and the issue of age when
talking about diversity in the high tech arena.
Specifically, I mentioned that the main thrust of even
the organization and event at the forefront of the drive to increase the
numbers of women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) has
a blind spot when it comes to including women of a certain age. A number of attendees
of previous GHC conferences reported with some degree of wonder that at the
much-ballyhooed recruiting expos, if you look like you have a few product
launches on you, you become invisible to recruiters. And, likewise, apparently
to ABI event planners, who have also ignored them when they expressed concerns
about this.
It doesn’t seem to occur to anyone involved in this
equation that if you’ve acquired some grey hair and wrinkles in the course of
your career in tech, that means you have not only skills, but also experience—valuable experience—in your field, in
designing, building, testing, marketing or supporting your product or service.
Back in the mists of time, I was hoping to be able to
attend GHC this year, and I registered in the pre-conference job-seeking
database. As a result, I’ve received a number of emails from all kinds of
companies touting their presence at the conference and proclaiming their
eagerness to meet with me and talk opportunities. Hardware, software, services;
telecoms, finance, consumer goods; startups, legacies—the whole megillah.
Here’s one of the most recent ones, and it illustrates
that age-is-the-best-cloak-of-invisibility principle. The consulting firm
Deloitte sent this email urging me (and everyone else who registered) to meet
with them during the next few days and see what they can offer me.
Pretty positive, right?
Well, not so much. You’ll notice that the price of
admission to the opportunity discussion is taking a “survey”. Well, fair
enough. Except:
Yes—if you look at the “survey’s” (it's a registration form, really) required fields, they
clearly are expecting to speak exclusively with current students or recent
grads. (The “Expected Grad Year” only goes back to 2010; that gives you an
idea.)
It’s also interesting that the (required) “Position of
Interest” includes three essentially entry-level categories and only one “experienced”
one. Clearly no mid- or senior-level women need apply to Deloitte.
What a complete joke! But, sadly, it’s a joke that obviously
pervades even the gold-standard women-in-tech conference. Deloitte’s recruiters
sent this out with the expectation that they’ll be perceived as real supporters
of “diversity”, when in fact they’re just perpetuating the well-established
canard that tech is for Millennials only.
Also, sadly, they aren’t the only company at GHC and in
the workplace who are operating under that misapprehension. Welcome to my
world.
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