fbpx
Subscribe
Menu

I’m Black. I’m #UnqualifiedForTech: How The Equifax Breach Has Re-Energized The Inequality Conversation

I’m Black. I’m #UnqualifiedForTech: How The Equifax Breach Has Re-Energized The Inequality Conversation

Written by Ebony Grimsley-Vaz

Sep 19, 2017

Subscribe

There has been a longstanding debate in the coding community about the qualifications of developers.

Many people in the industry feel that you must have a traditional degree in computer science or engineering in order to have a job in the tech industry.

In fact, this was one of the main opposing points of discussion for the now-defunct U.S. coding schools — The Iron Yard and Dev Bootcamp. Many felt that graduates of relatively short-course programs did not receive a formal university degree and were not as suitable as their four-year degree peers to become developers or managers of tech departments.

Fast forward to the Equifax security breach — not the biggest of all time but maybe one of the worst. It has brought the conversation about qualifications back into play.

It came to light that Equifax’s Chief Information Security Officer Susan Mauldin was a music major. Her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music composition raised the question as to whether she was qualified to lead a team responsible for keeping 143 million identities secure. Her work history shows no direct tech position and yet she was an executive at a large billion-dollar company. Now Equifax is being accused of trying to cover up Mauldin’s background.

Twitter users are providing a great snapshot into a number of people successfully working in the tech industry without formal tech degrees. The Equifax security breach has led to the trending topic on Twitter, #unqualifiedfortech. Alice Goldfuss, a speaker and tech worker for GitHub, helped start the discussion. The conversation has spilled into other social media platforms.

Professionals like Mauldin at Equifax would be categorized as unqualified by some of her peers and employers.

While at first glance, the online discussion #unqualifiedfortech looks like a show of public support for those in the tech industry without years of formal tech education, things are taking a turn.

Various users are also taking the time to discuss a lack of diversity in people being able to work in tech without formal credentials. Tweets from around the world are calling attention to the privilege a white male may have over others.

Ria Persad, a woman of color who started a leading U.S. weather analytics company, is part of that conversation.

“You can be a dumb-as-a-doorknob older white male from a family with money and be successful. Whereas for us, we must have the IQ of Albert Einstein and come off as strong as Elon Musk to get the same level of clout,” Persad said in a Moguldom interview. “You must be that much better and stand out. You must be to a point where they can’t pick holes in what you’re saying before they believe you. But if you want to get ahead, you must work so much harder. I don’t believe I would have to work as hard if I just looked different. But I’m a hard worker so this doesn’t deter me.”

This sentiment is further supported by the U.S. government’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on 2014 tech statistics:

In the tech sector nationwide, whites are represented at a higher rate in the executives category (83.3 percent), which typically encompasses the highest-level jobs in the organization. This is roughly over 15 percentage points higher than their representation in the professionals category (68 percent), which includes jobs such as computer programming. However, other groups are represented at significantly lower rates in the executives category than in the professionals category:

  • African Americans (2 percent to 5.3 percent)
  • Hispanics (3.1 percent to 5.3 percent)
  • Asian Americans (10.6 percent to 19.5 percent).

There is an obvious gap in diversity in technology and this recent online discussion provides additional support for it. While many of the Twitter users in this discussion are more than likely smarter than a doorknob, the conversation about privilege is in play and many whites are bringing it to the online discussion.

Reading #unqualifiedfortech today is fun and interesting, but also very revealing of how much white privilege many of us have.

While Equifax’s Mauldin does represent the often-overlooked woman, the online discussion for #unqualifiedfortech is displaying a very small percentage of people who are minority and are able to hold positions in the industry without a formal technical education.

https://twitter.com/cdcarter/status/909861979904344065

https://twitter.com/emilybaselt/status/909779572140511235

This trending hashtag probably started out attempting to reaffirm that there are people who can work in tech without a degree. It has led to having a bigger conversation about the lack of diversity in tech and how people of color would not have the same opportunities to obtain a job without the formal background.

Who knows, maybe Google’s recruiter, Juan Montoya, will find some diverse candidates through this hashtag:

Not likely. Relatively few black Twitter users have responded to Montoya saying they were not qualified to be in their current tech position.

✖