Diversity in startups is challenging
While larger institutions have the ability to institute policies and have resources to foster diversity in companies, startups struggle. Of the efforts that seem to work, the only thing that a startup can do is test for biased technology, while the others work at larger scales.
Startups can't always wait long enough to increase the diversity pool of candidates applying to a position, nor have enough visibility to increase their reach when seeking for new colleagues.
However, the pattern that repeats in startups is that they are highly flexible and challenging environments, which should lead to an immediate learning environment, and learning environments foster diversity. However, if I see the composition of the companies around me, most are very male-dominated, even those where there's more than a statistical number of people working at them.
The metric that I always use to judge is the gender unbalance, because it is very visible and very binary. Adding other dimensions, especially in a context where there's a large population of immigrants is very challenging.
But challenging does not mean impossible. There are things I try to increase diversity at Dispertech, although not to much success.
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