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Towards more diversity–Becoming a more inclusive IT industry

As a priviliged white male, it is maybe not up to me talk about diversity. But I want to help and I try to move from being unconscious incompetent to (at least) conscious incompetent when talking about diversity.  My eyese are opening slowly and I start to be aware how lucky I am and how hard it must be for people with different color, religion, background, gender,… to work in our industry.

Working in a male dominated industry(IT) where we are continuously looking for new talent, being more inclusive will be an important part of the solution. It is our responsibility to make this possible.

I want to share 2 talks that helped me open my eyes:

One is by Kent Beck, titled “XP as an incentive system”. The title doesn’t match the content as it is a shout out to everyone to become more inclusive and forces us to think on how we are behaving and how maybe we (unconsciously) contribute to the problem instead of being part of the solution.

The second video is a TED talk “Why do so many incompetent men become leaders? by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic. I think the title says it all…

Here is the related article: https://hbr.org/2013/08/why-do-so-many-incompetent-men

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