Diversity has its limits

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.