Can you hear me okay? Thank you. And thank you for that introduction by Sarah.

I was listening to it and at the end I was like, oh, she's talking about me, that's cool. So it's early. It's early and I'm also pretty nervous, so I'm gonna take a second. So my name is Marco Rogers.

I'm gonna move a little bit, but I need my notes so I remember what I wanna say to y'all. I don't have any slides, so kick back, come along with me, it'll be fun. Thank you for having me to keynote at RailsConf 2017. Let me get the work stuff out of the way, the who I am 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 and keeping them on a path to living well as 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. 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. So I'm not here to talk about programming really either. I've been a manager for several years now, so if I start to talk to you about programming,

you should probably tune out, check your email, push your production, whatever you're doing when you're not paying attention to talks. Cause that's not gonna happen. What I am here to talk about today is how it feels to be black in tech. I'm gonna let that hang for a second

so you can adjust. It's gonna happen. But don't worry, right? We'll get through this. I didn't come to start controversy on my first invitation to RailsConf. This talk will be easy for you. It'll be hard for me. Okay, I'm gonna take on all the hardness.

I've spoken at conferences before, but this is my first keynote address. And when Sarah and the other organizers kind of reached out to me, I asked them, why are you interested in me giving a talk at RailsConf? And they said what she just said. They said, we really appreciate your voice on Twitter,

blog posts that you've written, they've seen my other talks. And they said, we want you to come and talk about whatever is important to you. And we want you to share that with us. And when I asked other people, what do you want me to talk about? What would you want to hear me talk about? Like friends and whatnot. A lot of the people that I know who are not black,

they said that they wanted to hear me talk about being black in tech. That's a thing that people want to talk about. We've been talking about diversity and inclusion a lot, long time. But we kind of have to start digging into different axes on this. And we've talked a lot about being a woman in tech too, I think. I think we're really good at that.

We don't get to talk about being black in tech very much. So people said that's what they wanted to hear about. And I chewed on that for a second. I was like, nah, nah, it's not happening. I'm not that brave, right? And so I wrote a different talk.

I wrote a talk that I thought was good. My wife thought was good. Other people told me it was good. But it was a regular talk. It did not pass my bar for keynote worthy. The keynote slot says, like basically keynotes is like, there's no other activities planned right now.

I need all of y'all to come in here and hear what this person has to say. It's a lot of pressure, right? And so I asked myself, what qualifications do I have to come and ask you hundreds of people to come in and listen to me for however long? What makes me unique is what I asked myself.

I've done a lot of interesting things, I think. But only one thing really sprang up as unique to me. And that's that I have had a pretty good career in tech for like 12 plus years. Been pretty successful.

And I've been black that entire time. We're laughing, right? That's great, I'm glad y'all awake. But that's uncommon, right? It's not normal. And I mean, this is real talk today. Like I wanna have a real conversation with you about it.

We know the diversity numbers in tech are not good for black people, right? Companies are releasing their stats and they're showing like 2%, 1% African Americans, sometimes 0%, right? Sometimes it's just like a line and 0% on their pie chart. And then sometimes it gets crazy

and it's like four or 5% people start high-fiving. You know what I mean? But it's not great. It's so uncommon that I have people ask me all the time, like, how did you do it? Like, you know, they're like, Marco, like how did you make it, right? I don't know if that question is the right question,

but it seems like one that people wanna talk about. So I found some courage and I was like, okay, let's talk a little bit about it at least. We can't tell the whole story. We don't have that much time, but I'll talk to a little bit about it. So, you know, what I'm here to talk about

is how it feels to survive as a black person in tech. When all the evidence seems to point to the fact that that's actually really hard to do. If I was putting a title in this talk, it would be something like survival tips for being black in tech. And in parentheses, I would say like, if you're Marco, right, because I can only speak for me.

If I was trying to speak for like all of blackness, they would like revoke my membership or something. Don't, I can only talk to you about me, but hopefully we'll learn something. So a couple of years ago, I gave a talk at AlterConf. And it was called Conforming to Succeed. And that talk was about some of my formative years

growing up and how I initially found my way towards a career in tech, right? You can find that on the interwebs. You should check it out, it's good. This one basically picks up where that one left off, which is with me graduating college. I got a degree in computer science

from Georgia Tech, originally from Atlanta, Georgia. Atlanta went to tech, nice, okay. Getting my career started was pretty rocky. Outwardly, my situation upon graduating was pretty dismal. It wasn't atypical though, right?

Like I had no idea what I wanted to do. I was not a stellar student, which some people are surprised by. I've been on a long journey to getting to the point where I know how to show up and be good. I was not as a good student. I didn't have a lot of prospects, right? Like I didn't have any internships while I was in school. I applied, I got no callbacks, no internships,

no tech related clubs. I hadn't found any open source communities to start to build my portfolio. I didn't know how to do any of that stuff. I did not have people beating down my door. I was just a recent grad trying to find a job while black. Things weren't looking good, right?

Like I was searching around in Atlanta. I wasn't getting any callbacks. I didn't know any better because Atlanta was not a good place to be searching for tech jobs, but that's the only place I had ever been. And I didn't actually know how to look for jobs anywhere else. There wasn't much of a tech scene in Atlanta like there is now. It was actually a pretty good scene.

But I was starting to feel really discouraged. I had spent a lot of money on this degree. Me and my family had spent a lot of money on it. And I just wanted to get a job, right? So my first survival tip, the first tip that I picked up for surviving as a black person in tech was pretty simple. You gotta know some white people.

Yeah, I mean like, that's not really what I mean, right? Like, you know, like what I really mean is that you have to know some people already in tech so that they can vouch for you, right? So that they can like get your foot in the door or whatever. Everybody kind of needs their foot in the door. For me, it was a buddy of mine from school.

He's a white guy. He's still a really good friend of mine. He called me up. He was in the D.C. area. He was like, I'm working at this place. I can recommend you. You should come work here. So that worked out. But you might be saying to yourself, you might be thinking right now, like, when's it get to the part where, like, it's hard because it's black, right?

I mean, anybody can make the right connections and get their foot in the door. Except, like, we know that's not true though, right? Like, if you're paying attention, if you've been paying attention to this conversation about diversity, you know that most people already in tech, right?

Like most people, they make connections with people who are like them, right? Like, we tend to cluster around our racial and like ethnic identities, right? Like that's a thing. That's why they're racial and ethnic identities. White people make connections with white people. And presumably, I can make connections with people who look like me, right? Except I didn't see any of those people.

They were, they did not exist. I didn't meet any other black students in the College of Computing at Georgia Tech. I didn't have any black professors my entire time there. I was kinda on my own, right? Like, I had to reach out to whoever was around me and try to make some connections. And I didn't really know how to do that, right?

But I did my best. And most of those people around me were white. And so to me, that's what it was. That's actually how it played out. Like if I wanted to get anywhere, like how many friends are with some white people? That's kinda how it goes. But that's okay, right? Like that's actually expected. Until we make more progress with this diversity problem,

we should expect people to follow their networks, right? To kinda cluster around these racial and ethnic trends. Like that's gonna keep happening. There's nothing wrong with that, inherently. Except that it has some fallout, right? Like some realities for people who are trying to make it to a different place from where they come from.

Networking for black people in tech was really slim. So what I am saying to you right now is if you need to make connections to get into tech and you're black, you might have to explicitly be the exception to that trend of only sticking with your ethnic identity

before you can even get started, before you can do anything. You have to not be that, right? You gotta do something different than what all the statistics are telling you is gonna happen. And I got lucky, right? Like buddy of mine, he reached out to me. Like he was also a recent grad.

He got his job, you know how he got it? His dad. His dad was in construction but was friends with a guy and he knew a guy and he owned a web shop. And he was like, yeah, my son needs a job. And so they hooked that up, you know? Which I have no problem with, by the way. Like get the hookup, like do it. Like pull some strings, pull all the strings,

like get in where you can fit in. And I only had one string, that one friend who reached out to me. And it worked out, right? But I don't know how many people never had any strings. Didn't get to do anything because they weren't able to buck whatever trends were keeping them from finding the right network.

So it worked out for me. And I had my first phone interview. Real quick, I think it's funny. It's not actually that important but I think it's funny. My first phone interview, I got my first job because the phone interview was useless. Like he asked me like what I was doing in school or whatever and I told him

and it was basically like nothing. We built some cruddy apps or whatever. And the one key question, I feel like, this is the one key question that he asked me that got me the job. Because I told him that the language that I used in school was Java for most things, right? And he like threw this question out and he's like, oh, so you said you do mostly Java.

Does that include JavaScript? And I'm serious, like he asked it like that. And I don't know if it was a trick question, but that's how he asked it. He was like, does that include JavaScript? And I knew that those two were not the same thing.

I didn't know a whole lot else, but I knew that those two were not the same thing. And I was like, oh, I haven't done much JavaScript, but like that's not the same thing, right? And he was like, cool, you should just come up here and work. Like I had gone through so much struggle just trying to get a callback, trying to get somebody to talk to me or whatever.

And I literally got a job because my buddy referred me and because I knew that Java and JavaScript were not the same thing. It's wild, right? Like there's no barrier except for the social ones. To me, really, that's my experience. There's no barrier except for the social ones. So anyway, I got my first job.

I'm working at a web consulting shop in DC and I'm killing it, y'all. I don't know how well I'm actually doing, but I kept getting paychecks, which for me was the only criteria for killing it. Like I was knocking it out because every two weeks they would give me money.

So I made a lot of good friends, but at the same time, like I'm feeling out of place. Right? Like I'm the only black person on my team. And this was true for a long time. It didn't bother me necessarily, but I couldn't help but notice, right?

In the same way, like I don't know if y'all know this, but like black people when we walk into a room, any room, we like immediately scan the room to see how many other black people are in it. This is the thing. Like it doesn't make a difference. Like you're not gonna do anything, but like you just wanna know. You just gotta read the atmosphere in the room, right? Like I know at least two people I saw walking here.

I could actually point to you where they're sitting too, but I won't do that. It could probably be embarrassing. But you gotta read the atmosphere, right? So, but one day this changed. They hired another black person. Let's call him Carl. Names have been changed to protect the innocent. Let's call him Carl.

And by the innocent, I mean me. Like if people recognize themselves in this talk, I don't want them to be mad at me. And so we're gonna change all the names. Carl was similar to me in a lot of ways. He was a recent grad. They hired a lot of recent grads. He had a CS degree from a decent school, you know?

And he was black. Okay, so those might be like the only ways that he was similar to me, but that's enough, right? Like that was enough. I mean, there's no other black people around. Like I hope that this crowd at least, that we've progressed enough to the point where we understand that having another person around

who looks like you, like that matters, right? It matters a lot. That's part of why diversity is important. Seeing yourself reflected around you in people being successful has a huge impact on whether you are able to be successful, right? So all of a sudden I had this other person

that could reflect back at me what was going on. If you take nothing else away from this talk, let it be that, right? Like let it be like hearing from me that being black always matters, always. Whatever it is that you're trying to do, right? Like I'm trying to do that same thing, I'm trying to do it too,

but I'm trying to do it while black. And that means that the rules might be different. They might not be, right? They aren't always different, but they might be. So I have to like tread carefully and it helps if I see what happens with other people who are trying to do this thing while also black. So even though me and Carl weren't that tight, I'm personally invested in what happens to him.

He's like the only other data point I have for what happens to black people in tech besides me. Well, it was not a good data point. Carl did not do awesome. And he was let go within six months. I have been there, I don't know, not that long. Maybe I had been there like six months

and he was let go within six months of him coming. And I remember vividly the reasons that were given. These might sound familiar to some of y'all. He wasn't really picking things up fast enough, you know? And also, right, he didn't really have the right attitude. Carl didn't have the right attitude. To this day, I don't really know

what the right attitude is. And I don't really know how fast you have to pick something up for that to be fast enough and for you to not be fired. I still don't know. But I had to put this together with what I was able to observe about Carl for myself. And what I observed is that

Carl was always asking for help, right? He was pretty upfront about what he knew and what he didn't feel comfortable with and what he didn't feel capable of. Carl, when he came in, he knew C Sharp and .NET. That was the language that he was most familiar with. But our shot was mostly Python at that time.

And so he was kind of expected to transition. He was picking up a new language. And he was humble enough to ask for help with it. And within six months, he was gone. So the next survival tip that I picked up, don't ask for help.

Don't ask anybody for anything. Don't admit that you're having a hard time. Keep your head down. Just make it work. Don't tell people that you're struggling. Y'all, this is not good life advice. This is not a good lesson. It took me a long time to unlearn it, right? Like I don't give people this advice. It's not healthy.

But remember, right? Like these are tips for survival, right? Like I was trying to adapt to the environment that I found myself in and I didn't have any guidance, right? Nobody was telling me how this worked. I just saw people who looked like me dropping like flies. So, you know, that's kind of how it worked out. The first black engineer that I had ever worked with,

he took a hit because he didn't prove that he deserved to be there. And all I could do was try to learn from that to make sure that I wasn't next. Carl is not in tech anymore, as far as I know. He bounced around to some other jobs. He didn't really recover from that. I don't know what that does to your confidence.

And he had to find another profession, right? So we're like one down. Like two black engineers, one of them already off the table. Fast forward a couple years. I'm actually doing well now. Like I know the computers, right?

Like sometimes people ask me questions about computers and I know the answers to those questions. So like it's lit, right? Like I feel pretty good about it. I'm like, okay, I might deserve to be here. I'm going out to client sites now. We got contracted out.

And I'm contracting for this big company, big tech company. They got a lot of in-house devs, but they also like bring in contractors to kind of enhance their internal teams. And we worked with them a lot during that time period. So I walked onto this team and we were building a web-based RSS reader. This is like 2007.

So it was like really awesome projects. And so that's where I got to work with my second black engineer, second one I had ever met. Yeah, so like, and that's not an exaggeration. Like years into my career in tech and I've worked with exactly two black devs.

So you can see that like there's not a lot of opportunity for me to observe what's supposed to happen here. I'm just trying to like make my way. So the second guy, let's call him Lester. Lester was different from me and he was different from Carl too, right?

Like Lester seemed comfortable, right? Like Lester would come in at like 10, 30, 11 o'clock sometimes. He wouldn't even apologize. And I was like, you know, whatever. His clothes were pretty disheveled most of the time. Like this was contractor land, right? Like I had to wear a button down to sit at a desk and type, right?

But he was like wearing t-shirts and like wearing t-shirts was like a big deal to me. I was like, I want to wear t-shirts. I don't like, I don't like collars. Make my neck itchy. Lester was even like, he was like even sarcastic and snarky with people, even his bosses, right? Like even the people who were like running the project, he would get his own crap all the time.

But everybody seemed to be okay with it, right? Like they were just like, yeah, whatever, that's Lester. You know, he does what he does. Let me tell you y'all, this was fascinating to me. I didn't really understand. Like, keep in mind, my whole career had been about like, like I don't even supposed to be here.

Like I got in, I was really lucky. Like I'm hustling hard to prove that I deserve to be here. And here was a guy, he seemed to not give a crap, right? But he was still respected. For all intents and purposes, Lester has somehow managed to achieve the confidence of someone who was black in tech, but not feeling like they were struggling to survive.

And I was like, what is this magic? I need it, right? Like I need that. I don't know where you get it from, but I need that. So I got to know Lester a little bit. This was tough, right? Like I had to be careful because I was still a junior member of the team. I was a contractor, right? Like you gotta play your cards close to the chest.

Remember, you can't let them know that you don't know what you're doing. Like that's not cool. But Lester and I got friendly enough that one day I was able to ask him, like, why are you so comfortable, right? Like how? So it was a conversation that I've only been able to have with black people, to be honest, right? Because I was using very few words,

but he knew exactly what I was talking about. Like we were right on the same page. I'm gonna give you the dramatized version. It was pretty close to this, but you know, it was like, Lester, man, like, how do you do it? Like, I mean, you walk in here and you just post up, like it's all good and like, what is that?

How do you get away with it? That's what I said, that's all I said. And then, but he was right with me. He didn't miss a beat. He was like, nah, I hear you a little homie, right? Like he didn't call me a little homie. It was a dramatization, right? Remember. He was like, nah, I hear you, man. But it is what it is.

He was like, you know, I'm not worried about it. Like they know they couldn't do this without me. Y'all, this blew my mind, okay? Like, this blew my mind. I mean, like I had met people who had this kind of like nonchalant confidence. Like you can't be in tech without meeting those people.

But I had no idea you could do that while also black. I didn't know, I didn't think. Like everybody since the beginning of time had told me, if you wanna be successful, you have to be like straight laced and you gotta be on top of your stuff and like you have to be very personable and like all that stuff.

Like you gotta be twice as good. I know y'all haven't heard this, right? Like that's real. Like black people tell each other that all the time, passed down in our history. Like you better get your stuff together because they're not gonna let you hang around acting like that. That's what we hear all the time. And then like, there's Lester, right? Well, so I had talked to him about it. I had to find out more about it.

And I found out that Lester had been doing this for a long time, right? Like he was already 10 years into his career. He had 10 years under his belt. A lot of it with this same company. He had paid his dues already. He was senior. People respected him because he had already spent years and years proving that he deserved to be here. So at this point, he like leaned on that reputation

and he made himself comfortable, right? Came in late, wore whatever he wanted. He got paid a lot, you know what I mean? And like, man, I wanted to be Lester. Like I really wanted to be Lester when I grew up. So my next survival tip came from Lester. This is the first piece of advice that I have ever gotten

from another black person in tech. It's like years after I started. And I don't get to talk to any other black person to tell me like what it's like. And I finally met one person and I was like, what's up? Like, what do I do? He's like, nah, you can't be like me. He's like, don't do that. He's like, you gotta earn this. You gotta, I had to work for a long time.

I used to be like you. So you do that until you could be like me and it takes a long time. The advice that he gave me was always be better than they expect you to be. Never let them see your confidence waiver because if you don't believe you're worth it, they won't either, right? That was his advice. And this resonated with me.

It matched exactly with what I had just seen happen to Carl, right? Like not just happened, but you know, like that matched up. I was like, right, like, right. Like Carl was like trying to be honest with him. He's like, I don't kinda know what I'm doing. And they were like, sorry, that's not how it's gonna work. So this is kind of a big deal, right? When we talk about barriers to diversity and inclusion,

a lot of us are starting to recognize the pervasiveness of imposter syndrome, right? People feeling like they don't belong or they're not good enough. Like no matter what people tell them, they always feel like an imposter. And we need to talk about it

because a lot of people struggle with it. It's a real thing. But that's not my life. To survive in tech while black, I never felt like I had the luxury of not believing in myself. Like that was just not a thing, right? Like I always had to show up. Like I was ready to be better than everybody else. Otherwise they would tell me to go home, right?

So, so far, like I have two examples of people who look like me in tech. One of them was honest and open about his shortcomings and they told him to go home. And the other one, he said, never let them see you sweat. And he made more money than any black person I had ever met. And I don't just mean in tech,

I mean like anybody ever, right? And I grew up in Atlanta, I knew a lot of black people and he made more money than all of them by far. So it was a real easy choice for me to try to figure out who to emulate, you know? Like today, when people talk about imposter syndrome, I have a lot of sympathy for them.

Like I know it's a real thing, but I'm not telling black people that getting comfortable with imposter syndrome is gonna help. Cause I don't believe that. Like that has not been my experience. And so I can like participate in that conversation like a little bit, but not a lot. Like it doesn't work that way for me and a lot of people that I know.

You gotta bring your A game, right? Like you've got to impress people early and often. Otherwise you might not be around long enough to get comfortable. You know, you don't have that kind of time. So fast forward a few more years. This is the last story I think.

So I'm pretty confident in my skills at this point. I'm leading like big projects, like I'm making real good money. I even tell other people what to do occasionally and they do it, right? Like which was weird, right? I liked it, it was kind of weird. And I took on a project for a really big client

that had real deep pockets that are paying us a lot of money. It was a big like multi-phase software project, had multiple teams on it, different contracting companies participating in it. And I'm leading the team that was building the website out. It was a lot of fancy features with search and e-commerce and stuff.

And so we were building a website and the other teams were building datasets and web services for us to use. So as things ramped up, I started interacting with other teams. And another black dev shows up. This was Trey.

And Trey was like the fifth or sixth black dev that had come across at this point. It was like, I don't know, four years into my career or whatever. But I don't even get excited anymore now, right? Like I'm like, man, one of us pops up like every six months, right? It's not even special anymore, you know what I mean?

So plus like I had a persona now also. I was about business, you know what I mean? Like I was actually killing it. Like actually I was working long hours, never asked people for help, always acting like I knew what I was doing.

Never let them see you sweat, right? Always be better than what they expect. I was probably a jerk to a lot of people. It was not a good period for me. But it seemed to be serving me well, right? Like I had been here for years. I was still here, right? Like I had proved to people that I had deserved to be here. And I started to think like

maybe it wasn't so hard to survive in tech while black. Maybe people were making it harder than it needed to be, right? Nah, that was about to come crashing down. Like that was false. I never found out how Trey actually got onto the team. If I was speculating based on the limited data points

I had, I would probably say that he had a white friend from college and like his dad got him a job and then that white friend called him and got him onto the team. But that's a very limited data set. So like I'm probably projecting to a certain extent. That's all I know about how black people get into tech at this point.

So, but you know, I should tell you like what was mine. What was my relationship with Trey, right? Trey was in charge of web services. So in this world, like me getting my work delivered was directly dependent on him getting his work delivered, right?

Like he had to deliver me the web services so that I could integrate. This is like the mid 2000s, right? Like there ain't no agile. Like we got Gantt charts and waterfalls everywhere. Like, you know, there's dependencies and he was first and then I was second, like on the chart. And so like I had to work with him and I needed him to give me his stuff. And I didn't like Trey very much.

I didn't like working with Trey because he didn't move fast enough for me. You know, I was constantly waiting on him. Now in hindsight, I was missing something about this project that a bunch of other contractors like Trey seem to understand already. When you have a big client with deep pockets,

it pays to not move very fast, right? And I mean like literally it pays, like you're hourly, you're billing them. So like the longer you take, the more money you get. And everybody was doing that on this project. To be honest, like my boss was okay with me doing that too. Like he didn't really say that,

but he was just like, you know, I was telling him about timeline. He was like, nah, it'll be fine. So, but like that didn't sit well with me. That was never the kind of attitude that sat well with me. For one thing, like my work ethic is too strong. It didn't really allow it. It felt dishonest to me. Like we were still billing them, right? Like I wasn't in charge of billing. So somebody would bill them whether I did work or not.

And I just didn't feel good about that. But also, also remember that, like I'm still trying to survive. Like I'm doing better. I'm feeling more comfortable with it, but I'm still trying to survive. And that depends on me constantly showing other people that I was awesome, right? That I deserve to be here. Cause there's still, there's no other black people.

It was like me and Trey. There was like dozens of people on this project and it was just me and Trey. So working with Trey bothered me. You know what I mean? Like I didn't see him check things in very often. Like he would take days on something that I felt should be much easier than what he was making it out to be. And he was throwing all the Gantt charts off, man.

Like we worked a lot. We worked hard on those. So he was throwing them all off. If I was going to hit my deadlines, like he had to hit his. I needed Trey to step up. I started to feel like Trey was kind of lazy, you know? So I just feel like Trey wasn't picking things up fast enough. You know what I mean? Like maybe he didn't have the right attitude.

So you, I mean, you see what's going on here, right? Like I'm becoming that guy, you know? You know what I'm talking about? That guy, he's like a little bit too full of himself. He starts to undermine the people around him, you know?

Like subtly at first, like I'm not trying to be a jerk, right? Like I just want to get things done, you know? Like I'm trying to be awesome. And you're kind of like cramping my style right now. That guy, I was that guy. So I decided I was going to talk to somebody about getting things back on track. Yeah.

Unfortunately, I did what that guy does. Like I went to the higher ups and I expressed some concerns about the timeline, you know? I didn't call Trey out specifically, but I made it known that it didn't feel to me like the web services were materializing fast enough. Like I had the business jargon down, y'all,

like I was on it. Like I didn't say Trey's name at all, but they knew what I was talking about. So, you know, I mean, this would be cool, right? Like, you know, Trey will get like a kick in the pants and then we'll get things rolling. I'll be able to be awesome again. But nah, right? Like this story is about survival. So, you know, that's not how it went.

In my vague recollection of this, which may also be dramatized for this story, but I had this conversation on a Thursday and by next Tuesday, we were informed that Trey was no longer on the team. Y'all, when I tell you that like that took all the air out of me, right?

Like I didn't know how to process that. Like we were a team. Like we had been working together. Like, it's not that I ain't like him. He was just bothering me, like, you know? But he was gone. That like snapped me right back into reality, right? I was right back to being keenly aware that I was the only black dev from miles around here.

And I got reminded how quickly they get rid of folks who look like me. At the drop of a hat, dog. Only this time it was my fault. Remember at this stage,

we're still clocking in at like less than eight black devs that I had ever seen in my career, including me. And had just helped one of them get fired. I didn't even have the courage to ask what happened.

Like I knew what happened, right? They probably pulled Trey aside and they were probably like, not really picking things up fast enough. Doesn't really feel like you have the right attitude for this project, so I'm gonna have to let you go. That was the end of me being that guy. Nipped in the bud, like quickly.

Cause my, this last tip for surviving in tech while black never helped them get rid of us. Never. The only reason I'm here and able to like, talk to y'all today is because I managed to never get on the wrong person's bad side.

Or like I managed to make the right kind of white friends who would step up and like put in a good word for me. Or I managed to be just awesome enough to offset whoever else was trying to undermine me. But it doesn't feel awesome. It feels lucky. It feels really lucky.

I mean, like my confidence is still intact. Like I know what I can do. I know what I'm capable of. But right alongside that, that's just a healthy respect for still how lucky I am to be able to be here. So that has some fallout, right? Like these lessons you learn to have fallout. Like to this day, I feel it's extremely difficult for me

to give any kind of negative feedback to other black people. It doesn't feel right. Can't do it. I'll pass, bow out. I'll like, I won't say anything. There's not enough of us who even get a shot at all for me to be making it harder. Like one step harder at all.

I can't do it. So I've given you a few survival tips. This is a bunch of them. We won't have that much time, like I said. Maybe this talk is not what you expected. Like even when I told you we were gonna talk about being black.

You might've expected talk about like discrimination and microaggressions and stuff. And that stuff happens too. I got a lot of those stories. Like if you got some more keynotes, I'll fill them up. But that stuff is what happens to black people in tech, right?

But what I wanted to talk about is how it feels to be a black person in tech, you know? Cause like that's what I feel like I want people to walk away with is like understanding that those few people that you see dotted around, like there's a lot going on for them to be here. There's a lot going on.

For the longest time, being black in tech, it felt like being on a tight rope, you know? So like I'm out there by myself because like most people didn't even get to get started. They didn't even get shown where the tight rope was. So they didn't even get a chance to try. I'm out here by myself and I'm concentrating, right?

Because like everybody else is walking around, right? Like nobody else has to walk on the tight rope but I still have to make it to the end at the same time they do, or maybe even faster. So I'm concentrating. And then like Carl comes up behind me, right?

And I like, I hear him and he slips and falls. And I can't turn around. Like I had to keep my eyes trained on the rope. I don't feel safe yet. Like, you know, I don't feel like I even have my legs under me. So I can't do anything about that. And then like Lester comes up and like Lester's riding a unicycle. He's like, you know, he's doing laps around me and stuff.

I don't even know how you do laps on a tight rope but he's doing it like, you know, damn it Lester. And I, you know, I like, I reach out to him and he's like, nah, little homie, like don't try this yet. You're not ready, but don't fall. That's not good.

And he just speeds off. Like I never see him again. So I'm getting a little bit better, right? But then like, I come up behind Trey, right? On this tight rope. And I'm like, I'm just starting to feel like I'm gaining my momentum, right? Like I'm getting the hang of this. So I'm like, I'm trying to move a little bit faster.

And Trey is like, he's slowing me down. You know what I mean? Like I gotta get to the end, remember? I gotta be at least as fast as everybody else. And he's slowing me down. So like, you know, I don't have no ill will but I like nudge him. I'm like, get out of the way, man. I'm here to play. I'm about to do it. And he loses his balance and he falls.

I lose sight of Trey. He's gone. It's just me now. Like I can make it to the end but like it's watching people, dropping. That's what it feels like all the time. It felt that way a long, long time. It's still in the back of my head now. But like for a long time, that's how it felt. It's like, I was still here.

Like I got to show up every day, right? They didn't pull me into a conference room. So I'm gonna have a bad attitude, right? But I'm watching everybody around me dropping out. I know this got real depressing. I apologize for starting your morning off this way but like, this is real talk, right? Like I wanted to have a real conversation with you

about what it means for this industry to have such a poor track record for black people. Those of us who are making it feel like we're running a gauntlet a lot of times, you know, like just to be here, just to stand in this room. I had to go through a lot. I got into talking about diversity and inclusion more

because I know this is not what it should be like. I think we all know, like at this point, we all know this is not what it should be like. I wanna work towards a world where black people can stop getting this advice. It's terrible advice, right? Like maybe you can't get a callback

without knowing a white person who already works there. Like that should be possible. That should be a thing that happens, right? Maybe you don't have to hit the ground running all the time. Maybe you can show up and like ask for help and have people like support you while you grow. Maybe one day we'll like have enough black people that it's okay for us to point to somebody

who's not doing too well and be like, you need to do better and like not feel like we might be like killing their career by saying that. Like that should happen, right? That should be a thing that's possible. I mean, it's simple, it should be simple. All I want is to have enough black people around

that it doesn't feel like survival for me to be here, right? Like I want this talk to be stupid because nobody believes that this is a thing. I want us to be able to put that tight rope away. I want us to stop pushing so hard so we can spend our time and energy on something better. You know what I mean? Like I wanna spend my time on something better.

I'm gonna learn rails at some point. Like as soon as I get a minute, like that's gonna be a thing. So anyway, I'm gonna wrap up, but just a couple things like, and this is recent, it wasn't really even part of the talk, but my cousin, I got a little cousin and he just started college.

And he's reaching out to me, he's like, I'm gonna do computer science, right? And like, I know this kid, so I'm like, right, bro. Like cool, yeah, that's gonna happen, right? But he keeps coming back to me, he's like, nah, nah, I'm doing it, right? And I'm like, all right, I'm not being a very good cousin. I'm like, all right, why do you think this is what you wanna do? I should be encouraging him,

but I'm like, you're not that reliable. So, but he's like, I wanna do what you do, right? He's like, you know what I'm saying? Your life is great. Like you get to do whatever you wanna do and like you make more money than any black person I've ever met.

He's right, I do. Like, for real though. I make more money than any black people he and I have ever met. And so I was like, oh, well, he must be serious about it, right?

And so I gotta start helping him, right? Like I'm bringing him and his brother out here, flying him out to California and hang out with me a little bit so we can talk about it. They ain't never been nowhere, they ain't never been to California, but I gotta do it, right? I gotta bring them out and try to figure out how to get them going, try to figure out how to help them, try to figure out how to give them a leg up where I didn't have one, right?

Like they already know a black person in tech, at least one, right? So maybe that'll work out. That's all, that's all I got, y'all. Thanks so much for having me and letting me get this stuff off my chest to you today. I'll be hanging around the rest of the day. Feel free to come and chat with me. I'm open to it.

And thanks. That's it. Thank you.