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Good morning, everybody. Can you hear me okay? Thank you for that introduction, Sarah. I was listening to it, and at the end, I felt like it was talking about me in school. So, it's early, and I'm a bit nervous. I'm going to take a second.
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My name is Marco Rogers. I'm going to move around a little bit, but I need my notes to remember what I want to say. I don't have any slides, so kick back and come along with me. It'll be fun.
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Thank you for having me to keynote at RailsConf 2017. Let me get to the work stuff—I work at a company called Clover Health, and we are building a different kind of health insurance company. It's backed by technology, it's data-driven, and our goal is to focus on our members and their health, keeping them on a path to living well. This is a way for us to be successful as an insurance company. It's really cool, but I'm not here to talk about that today.
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I’m not here to talk about Rails today either; I don’t actually know Rails, and they promised me that that was okay before I came.
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So, I’m not here to talk about programming either. I’ve been a manager for several years now, so if I start talking about programming, you should probably check your email or push something to production. We are not here to pay attention to that.
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What I am here to talk about today is how it feels to be Black in tech. I’m going to let that hang for a second so you can adjust. It’s going to happen, but don’t worry—we’ll get through this. I didn’t come here to start controversy on my first invitation to RailsConf.
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This talk will be easy for you; it’ll be hard for me. I’ve spoken at conferences before, but this is my first keynote address. When Sara and the other organizers reached out to me to ask if I would give a talk, I asked them why they were interested in me.
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They said they appreciated my voice on Twitter, blog posts I’ve written, and they had seen other talks of mine. They said they wanted me to come and talk about whatever is important to me and share that with them.
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When I asked other people what they wanted to hear me talk about, many friends who are not Black said they wanted to hear me talk about being Black in tech. That’s a topic that people want to discuss. We’ve been talking about diversity and inclusion for a long time, but we need to start digging deeper into various aspects of it.
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We’ve talked a lot about being a woman in tech—I think we’ve done a good job with that—but we don’t get to discuss being Black in tech very much. So, people said this is what they wanted to hear about. I thought about it for a second, and I was not brave enough to take on that topic initially.
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I wrote a different talk; I wrote something I thought was good. My wife thought it was good, and other people told me it was good, but it was a regular talk. It did not pass my bar for keynote-worthy.
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The keynote slot says there are no other activities planned right now; we need all of you to come in here and hear what this person has to say. That’s a lot of pressure. I asked myself what qualifications I have to come and ask you, hundreds of people, to listen to me for however long.
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What makes me unique? I’ve done a lot of interesting things, but one thing stands out as unique: I’ve had a solid career in tech for over 12 years. I have been successful, and I’ve been Black that entire time. We’re laughing, right? Okay, I’m glad you’re awake.
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But that’s uncommon; it’s not normal. And I mean, this is real talk today. I want to have a real conversation with you about it. We know that the diversity numbers in tech are not good for Black people.
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Companies are releasing their diversity statistics, showing 2% or even 1% of African Americans and sometimes 0%. Sometimes, it's just a pie chart line with 0%. When it gets crazy, it’s like 4 or 5%—some people are high-fiving, but it’s not great.
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It’s so uncommon that I often get asked, 'How did you do it?' People say, 'Marco, how did you make it?'. I don’t know if that question is the right question, but it seems to be something people want to talk about. So, I found some courage and thought okay, let’s talk a little bit about it.
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So, what I’m here to discuss is how to survive as a Black person in tech when all the evidence seems to point to the fact that it’s really hard to do so.
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As I was putting together the title of the talk, I thought it would be something like 'Survival Tips for Being Black in Tech,' with the parenthesis 'if you’re Marco' because I can only speak for myself. If I tried to speak for all Black people, they would probably revoke my membership.
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But hopefully, we will learn something. A couple of years ago, I gave a talk at UltraComp called 'Conforming to Succeed.' That talk was about my formative years growing up and how I initially found my way toward a career in tech.
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You can find that talk on the internet; you should check it out—it's good. This one basically picks up where that one left off: my graduation from college. I received a degree in computer science from Georgia Tech, originally from Atlanta.
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Getting my career started was pretty rocky. Upon graduating, my situation was pretty dismal. I had no idea what I wanted to do and wasn’t a stellar student, which some people would be surprised by.
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I was on a long journey to getting to a point where I knew how to show up and be good. I did not have many prospects; I didn’t have any internships.
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I was just a recent grad trying to find a job while being Black. Things were not looking good. Searching around in Atlanta, I wasn’t getting any callbacks.
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I didn't even know that Atlanta was not a good place to be searching for tech jobs. There wasn't much of a tech scene there at that time. I was spending a lot of money on this degree, and all I wanted was to get a job.
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So, my first survival tip I picked up for surviving as a Black person in tech was quite simple: you gotta know some White people. Yeah.
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What I really mean is that you can know some people already in tech so they can vouch for you, help you make connections, and get your foot in the door.
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For me, it was a buddy of mine from school—a White guy and a really good friend—who called me up while working in the DC area.
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He said he was working at a place where he could recommend me, and that worked out. But you might be thinking when is the part where it gets hard because I’m Black?
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I mean, anybody can make the right connections and get their foot in the door, except, well, we know that’s not true.
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If you’ve been paying attention to the diversity conversation, you know most people already in tech make connections with people like them.
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We tend to cluster around our racial and ethnic identities. That’s why they're more likely to make connections with White people, and presumably, I can make connections with people who look like me.
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Except I didn’t see any of those people in tech. I didn’t meet any other Black students in the College of Computing at Georgia Tech, nor did I have any Black professors.
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I was kind of on my own, and I had to reach out to whoever was around me and try to make some connections, but I didn’t really know how to do that.
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Most of the people around me were White, and that’s how it played out. If I wanted to get anywhere, I had to connect with some White people.
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That's expected until we make more progress with this diversity problem. We should expect people to follow their networks.
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So, networking for Black people in tech was really slim. What I’m saying to you is if you need to make connections and you’re Black, you might have to be the exception to the trend of only connecting with your own ethnic group.
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Before you can do anything, you have to go against the statistics—it's going to be hard. I got lucky; my friend reached out to me.
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He was also a recent grad, but he got his job because his dad knew a guy who owned a web shop.
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They got me hooked up, and I have no problem with that. If you can pull strings, do it, as long as you can get in.
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I had one friend who reached out to me, and it worked out. But I don’t know how many people never had any strings to pull.
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They didn’t get to do anything because they weren’t able to buck the trends keeping them from finding the right network.
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That worked for me. When I had my first phone interview—this is not that important, but it’s funny.
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In that phone interview, I had to tell them about what I did in school, and I said I basically didn’t do much.
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I told them we built some cruddy apps, but one key question got me the job: the interviewer asked,
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‘Oh, so you said you mostly used Java. Does that include JavaScript?’ I knew those weren't the same thing, though I hadn't done much JavaScript.
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He said cool, you should come here and work. I had gone through so much trouble to get a call back, and I got a job because my friend referred me.
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There was no barrier except for the social ones to reach me, that was my experience. I got my first job at a web consulting shop in DC.
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I didn't know how well I was doing, but I kept getting paychecks, which for me was the only criteria for killing it.
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I was making a lot of friends, but at the same time, I noticed I was the only Black person on my team.
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This didn’t bother me necessarily, but I couldn’t help but notice. You know, when Black people walk into a room, we immediately scan for how many other Black people are in it.
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One day, that changed when another Black person joined the team. Let’s call him Karl—names have been changed to protect the innocent.
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Karl was similar to me in certain ways. He was a recent grad with a CS degree from a decent school, and he was Black.
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That was enough of a similarity. There weren’t many Black people around, and having another Black person on the team really matters.
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Diversity helps because it allows us to see ourselves reflected in people succeeding. That's a huge impact on your ability to succeed.
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Suddenly, I had Karl, who could reflect back at me what was going on.
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If you take nothing else away from this talk, let it be this: being Black always matters.
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Whatever you're trying to do, I'm trying to do the same thing but while Black, which means the rules might be different.
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I need to tread carefully, and it helps to see what happens to others who are trying to do the same thing.
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But what I observed was that Karl was let go within six months. His performance wasn’t picking up fast enough; they said he didn’t have the right attitude.
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To this day, I don’t know what the right attitude is.
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But I had to put this together with what I was able to observe about him, and it was clear—Karl was always asking for help.
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He was upfront about what he knew and what he didn’t. However, my next survival tip I picked up was the opposite.
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Don't ask for help. Don’t admit you’re having a hard time; keep your head down and just make it work. This is not good life advice.
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It took me a long time to unlearn it, but remember—these are tips for survival. I was trying to adapt to my environment.
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I saw people like me dropping out of the workforce. The first Black engineer I ever worked with took a hit because he couldn’t prove he deserved to be there.
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I tried to learn from that to ensure that wasn’t going to be me.
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Long story short, I started doing well and began leading larger projects, interacting with clients. I built a reputation.
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Years later, I was contracting with a big tech company, and another Black developer, let’s call him Trey, joined the team.
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He was the fifth or sixth Black dev I had encountered in my four years. So, I didn’t even get excited anymore—it was almost standard.
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Trey and I began working closely, and his work directly affected mine. I found he didn’t move fast enough, and it frustrated me.
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I figured I needed to talk to higher-ups to express my concerns. I didn't single him out but said things weren’t materializing fast enough.
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Next thing you know, though, Trey was gone within a week. That was a shocking reality check.
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When you’re the only Black person left on a team, it hits you hard how easily folks can get rid of you.
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This was not a situation I wanted to be a part of, so my next survival tip is: Never help them get rid of us.
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The only reason I’m here and able to talk today is that I managed to stay on the right side of relationships. I was often lucky to be just awesome enough.
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To this day, I find it incredibly difficult to give negative feedback to other Black people. It doesn’t feel right.
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There are not that many of us who even get a chance to get hired.
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I want to be clear that this isn't what you might expect when talking about being Black in tech.
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I want to talk about how it feels for us in this industry. For the longest time, being Black in tech felt like walking a tightrope.
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I had to concentrate because everyone else walked around freely while I attempted to get to the end of that tightrope.
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When something went wrong, it felt like I couldn’t look away to help someone who might have fallen.
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Carl slipped and fell one time, and I couldn’t do anything. And then Lester, who rode a unicycle, sped around me—showed me what could be.
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But, as soon as I tried to boost my speed to play catch-up, Trey fell, too.
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Watching people throughout this experience, that’s how it felt at times, being on that thin rope.
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It can be difficult and daunting. In many ways, I still feel like I’m walking that tightrope—and let’s face it—the industry’s track record is far from ideal.
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Being made aware of that history isn’t just a conversation starter; it’s reality for many of us.
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I know many people, like me, want to build towards something better—where we can thrive without constantly fearing we're on the chopping block.
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I wanted to spend more energy learning Rails and less on survival. It’s just that simple.
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One of my younger cousins has just started college and told me he wants to do computer science. He said he wants to do what I do.
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He thinks my life is great. So, I’ve begun introducing him and his brother to this world.
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Every conversation is an opportunity to help them navigate better than I did.
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And we should all want that. So thank you for letting me share today.
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I’ll be around for the rest of the day, so feel free to come chat with me. Thanks!