This White Tech Guy Has an Idea to Make Tech Less White
Coding schools haven’t dented tech’s diversity problem. The founder of one hopes the Boys & Girls Clubs might—that is, if enough employers bite.
Photographer: John Taggart/Bloomberg
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Bjorn Freeman-Benson is a little embarrassed by his 200-person engineering team: It’s overwhelmingly white, and it’s overwhelmingly male. He says he wants a more diverse staff for his digital product design company, InVision, but doesn’t get the applicants. “If I just have a bunch of young white men from Stanford, I’m not going to get a good result for my customers.”
Next month, two Latina engineers from Portland, Oregon, will join his team as full-time apprentices making $15 an hour, plus benefits. After three months, if all goes well, they’ll be hired full-time at full pay, as junior engineers.