Photo by Felix Mittermeier.
By Melissa Nightingale
[Content Warning: sexual harassment at work]
Johnathan‘s post is worth reading first as it provides context for what I’ve written here.
Last week, Jane Doe wrote a Medium post that described a truly awful experience at a local startup. I was pretty sure I didn’t know any of the people named in the post. But I recognized the company’s name because the CEO is a regular poster on LinkedIn. His specific flavour of broetry gets shared in many of the private, women in tech slack groups I’m in.
I remember when the Justin Caldbeck stuff hit. Several friends in VC reached out. They wanted to know, “Do these things happen in Canada?” It was a statement phrased as a question. “Surely they do not or we would have heard about them” tucked just beneath the surface.
Of course they do. There’s been a marked lack of investment in having it be any other way. Why would it be better here?
A love of maple syrup and deep passion for hockey do not together form some sort of magical harassment prevention shield.
Canadians like to talk about American exceptionalism. And they aren’t wrong. But there’s Canadian exceptionalism too. The idea that living in Canada somehow makes you less likely to be racist or sexist than your neighbours to the south. It doesn’t. But the belief that it does makes you less likely to hear it when people tell you they are experiencing racism or sexism. It makes you more likely to assume they misunderstood or are over-representing. Because that kind of thing is stuff that happens in Silicon Valley. It’s stuff that happens on Wall Street. Not here.
But this isn’t a single blemish on an otherwise flawless startup community. Shortly after the anonymous post came out, many women in Toronto tech shared their own stories. Times they, too, had been harassed, abused, or exploited.
Many people were quick to say that they believed Jane Doe.
Believing survivors is a powerful and important first step. But it’s insufficient. We need to see our community as a place where this can and does happen.
Only then can we start the real work.
Raise the bar
In the months following #MeToo, I found myself replaying Every Bad Thing that happened. Across my entire career. Every unwanted sexual advance. Every stretch of office harassment. Every boss who said I was aggressive. Every client who told me to smile more.
I’d list them out.
Goffrey. The Hound. That creep in Mountain View. Cersei. The reporter who tried to kiss me. The Mountain.
The thing about working in an industry where everyone knows each other is that most of the perpetrators on my Every Bad Thing list still work in tech. They have progressed in their careers. Whatever power they had when we worked together, has only amplified over time.
Power begets power.
Privilege begets privilege.
Creeps in charge beget creeps in charge.
I keep thinking about this mystery bar. The idea, repeated time and again, that hiring a diverse team means lowering the bar. That hiring from marginalized groups means changing the standards for a role. That somehow you’d end up with surgeon who never went to med school or a CFO who doesn’t understand finance.
Somehow, our fretting about low bars goes silent when it’s about sexual predators. The abstract hand-wringing, somehow absent. Why is that? What would happen if we asked men for references from the women they used to manage? Or interviewed not only for technical skill and management acumen, but also the ability to adhere to local labour laws?
And if you’re wondering what that might look like in an interview, don’t worry. I’ve brought some examples.
- Name a situation where it would be inappropriate for colleagues to develop a relationship at work, even if both parties consent.
- Give me three examples of when, in the course of leading and managing people, one might need to pull in internal or external HR support.
- How did becoming a manager change how you socialize with your team? If at all? How has this evolved since you first began managing teams?
It’s time to swap out the whiteboard coding and brainteasers and actually raise the bar. These are the people who have massive power and a direct impact on the employment experience in your company. It’s worth getting it right.
This shit is learnable
A few weeks ago, I was on a call with a woman who was prepping an event around inclusion. The idea is that women and people from marginalized groups talk to (mostly) white, senior members of the tech community to teach them about diversity.
I take a deep breath.
How are we still on the 101 stuff? It’s 2019. And there’s an abundance of material on the internet about how to build more inclusive companies. The people attending this event are smart and esteemed for their technical prowess. They collectively have raised billions of dollars.
And the thesis here is that they managed to miss the whole conversation around workplace equity because… What? Because they are incapable of entering search terms into Google? Because they can’t read any of the plentiful 101-level shit available for free on their own time?
I’m having a hard time buying it. If it were about agile or scrum, they would have consumed entire subreddits already. Maybe it’s because they haven’t received a handwritten invitation. But more likely it’s because they don’t see how it impacts them.
This isn’t a set of people who are incapable of learning. This is wilful ignorance.
The question for the CEO in Jane’s post is not how did harassment happen on your watch. Though that’s worth some time and soul searching. It’s how the hell did you not know what to do when it was reported to you? That’s your job. You’re the chief executive. The buck stops with you, bud.
One of the things I love most about technology is that we work at the edges. That many of us are building into the unknown everyday. We’re tasked with creating things that don’t exist. And in the course of doing this work, we bump up against things we don’t know. And that’s OK.
The sin here isn’t in the not knowing. The unforgivable bit is in not getting real curious in a hurry to go figure it out. You’re a tech CEO — your whole job is untangling complex problems. And if it were anything else. If it were raising a new round. Or optimizing your homepage. Or building partnerships with major financial institutions. If it were anything else, you’d have pulled in experts when you were out over your skis.
In their response, Planswell shared that they did eventually pull in experts. And that they made changes following a third party investigation. It would be great to see the company share those learnings publicly. Other organizations who want to proactively address harassment could then build on the foundation Planswell put in place. And ideally they would release it under an open license so others can add to it or fork it.
No startup CEO in Ontario could ever again claim they didn’t know where to turn, what to do, or how to get started. Imagine that.
Yes strings attached
When I started managing people in California, I got mandatory harassment prevention training. It was delivered via a Flash app and it was precisely as dull and basic as state mandated harassment prevention training would be.
I like the idea of everyone getting some baseline, mandatory training. I do. But if I’m being honest, I don’t know how effective it was. I worked with managers who went through the training and still harassed people. I, myself, took the training and was woefully ill-equipped to report harassment when I saw it at work.
What I do know is that right now the provincial and federal governments are throwing money at the knowledge economy. They are building centres of excellence. They are funding incubators and accelerators.
I know that the Canadian venture climate is more active than it’s ever been. I know that the global business community has taken notice. I know the world is paying attention to what happens here. And I know that most young tech companies run on those sweet, sweet pre-revenue dollars.
You could move the entire market and alter the experience of women and marginalized groups in tech if you put strings on the money.
Strings that:
- Require CEOs to report all harassment complaints to the board, regardless of the outcome of those complaints.
- Require harassment prevention training for the founders. And all the people managers. And all the people.*
- Eliminate the worst wage gap offences for people at the same company, doing the same job.
I get how scary this is.
Most venture capitalists will adamantly defend a founder friendly model. As a founder (albeit one with no outside funding), I do understand the mentality here. You don’t want to mess with the magic. Founders are a strange breed. Money is cheap. Investing in hot companies is a competitive space.
I can enumerate all the reasons why it’s a bad idea to put strings on money. But all of them boil down to the prioritization of dollars or ego over the lived experience of women and marginalized people in tech. All of them net out at complacency.
When asked, the money people will talk all day about the hoops their portfolios jumped through to get the investment. Either the growth trajectory. Or the early revenue experiments. Or the market opportunity assessments. Or the pitch process itself. It’s not that we have no working models for putting up barriers to capital. It’s that we are choosing not to apply them here. Around this issue. Around this set of risks.
I know of no Canadian VC who does this today. I know of no government funded innovation programs that do this today. I know of no Canadian incubator who does this today. I know of no Canadian accelerator who does this today. And not because we, as an ecosystem, don’t need it.
*I shared an early draft of this post with Jane. One where I called out bosses and founders, but not employees. She pointed out that all people should get harassment prevention training. Regardless of seniority. Bosses and founders have more power, and different legal and moral obligations. But she’s right. If we want things to change, we’re gonna need everyone.
Postscript: On November 6, Jane Doe identified herself. I’ve left the references to Jane Doe intact in this post for historical continuity, but part of supporting Davinia is calling her by her name now that she’s made it clear that’s what she wants. When referencing this post, please bear it in mind.
