1dundundun

At some point in the (very) near future, we'll all be forced to realize that the deck is stacked against you if you're black in America.

It's just one of those inconvenient truths.

I was a technical sales manager at a fast growing ISP focused on selling T1, DS3 and "business grade" DSL. The money was good. It felt like we were on top of the world. Embarrassingly, looking back, the movie that best describes our culture/ environment back then was Boiler Room. It's one of Vin Diesel's last movies before becoming a star w/ the Fast & Furious series and it's streaming on Youtube if you're ever interested. Different industry but same vibe. Most of us were recent grads from no name schools. There were also a few dropouts and a few who never attempted college. Depending on where you live, this would be the equivalent of coming out of school in your 20's w/ very few skills to make a doctor's salary almost 20 years ago.

Towards the end, every week for a few months, we'd talk/ read about mass firings or competitors shutting down completely. The writing was on the wall when the CEO brought in the PE guy (who still maintained his role at the PE shop he came from) in as a VP to "tighten things up".I was too young and naive to recognize what that meant but his role was to come in and get the company ready to be acquired or parted out like an old car at the junkyard. Yup, we were being prepared for the slaughter.

That last day was tough. We knew it was coming but didn't know when. Working under that type of environment is a tough feeling to describe. Big cardboard boxes on everyones desk one morning, along w/ an offer to take or leave was devastating & relieving at the same time. I took the offer and used the cash to start a company.

Some never recovered. Some had picked up bad habits (cars, alcohol, coke, fast life) while the money was flowing, making it harder when the cash dried up. I always lived a low key existence. I never appreciated it more than when our world stopped spinning.

Same reason we put all of our business on Google. Convenience.

Good try Swedes. It'll take more than that to keep me from my sweet Model 3.

Thank you. That helps.

FBI head Hoover was a closeted gay man. That probably played a part.

Interesting post from the comments ...

"The FBI did not investigate writers according to their literary merits. As Kurt Vonnegut's biographer, I can tell you that, despite his publishing Slaughterhouse-Five— one of the most popular anti-war novels of the 1960s— the FBI didn't keep a file on him. But the bureau did monitor the lives and works of Amiri Baraka, Lorraine Hansberry (a 1,000-page file), W.E.B. Du Bois, Ralph Ellison, Chester Himes, and Richard Wright, among others.

What the bureau opposed was African American literature and its potential— a backhanded recognition of that genre's power to influence readers. No cultural upheaval would be coming from the likes of Roth, Updike, or Mary McCarthy, for reasons you no doubt understand."

If you were a thinking black or Native American in the USA, wouldn't you possibly feel the same hurt/ anger?

He speaks for the voiceless. He wasn't advocating violence, nor was he a violent man himself, nor are his readers- artists, academics & such...

Laughing a sinister laugh as I super glue a $20 to the sidewalk...

The Chief Diversity Officer often operates in a silo and doesn't have the ability to impact things like hiring so yes, it can be a vanity/PR role if not implemented well.

Bottom line is this...

At some point EARLY on, you're going to want to put some thought into casting a wider net for talent and wrapping your heads around the fact that people from different (age, gender, racial, ability, socioeconomic) backgrounds can be a strategic asset to developing a world class orgs.

Throw away the notion of cultural fit where you assume people have to like what you like and think how you think to "fit in". That's bullshit and extremely limiting.

Build an environment where everyone feels whole and contributes.

You WILL sacrifice some of the benefits of that frat boys club environment a lot of early stage startups have.

You will gain the type of insight that will allow you to navigate an increasingly divese workforce and (US and global) consumer base.

Be willing to make mistakes. It's a clumsy process.

Uber is going to have a hell of a hard time retrofitting a less toxic culture and the numerous leaks we're seeing points to an employee base that's begging for change.

Successful high growth orgs of tomorrow are gonna be the ones stumbling towards getting this shit right today.

Consider becoming a technical project manager. Among other things, a big part of your teams role would be to translate stuff the engineers are doing to other non technical people, departments or sometimes customers.

The salaries aren't high. It's just that you're getting screwed.

Depending on location, equity, industry, you probably should be making north of $200k.

Is this the situation with those RV's lined up just outside of Stanfords campus?