Hi! I'm Nate, another one of the Lever founders here. Have any questions about our efforts here? I'd be happy to respond.
Just 4 years in, we are far from done building our culture and achieving our values. In truth, we will never be done; there will always be more room to improve and grow.
Yes, we currently have many younger workers. However, we already do take steps to welcome all workers, such as healthcare plans that include dependant coverage, maternity and paternity leave, and clearly defined work expectations. We also increase opportunity for experienced candidates to demonstrate what they can bring to the team with bar raising interview formats like our engineering project interview and career trajectory interview.
How many of the Lever employees are openly Republican or conservative?
We do not ask employees about their political affiliations.
> For two years, Sarah Nahm was the only woman at Lever, the company she co-founded and now runs as CEO... has roughly 100 employees... has a roughly 50–50
In any company, the first X hires are likely doers - e.g. for different companies, all software developers, all plumbers, all landscapers, all accountants, all lawyers. Then the roles you hire for start to change. Lets say hire say 5 is a sales person, 6 is an accountant, 7 a marketer. Then a company starts to hire lower-skilled support staff like personal assistants / people to answer phones, a gopher maybe, then say cleaners. These lower skilled jobs are easily filled with either gender, but pay a lot less.
So my question, in a company with a female founder, and a proud 50-50 gender ratio, this seems the best chance to hit pay parity, and I wonder, has that happened? Is the ratio of pay $1-$1, or does Lever have the classic $0.77 on the dollar pay gap?
The parent comment is basically asking "do you have men in higher-paid positions (Software devs) and women in lower-paid positions (receptionists, secretaries, etc)?"
We believe that inclusion is worth the investment. At the core, creating an inclusive environment is about employee engagement. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employee_engagement) One company that studies the importance of employee engagement consistently is Gallup. Here is an interesting article on the intersection of diversity and engagement: http://www.gallup.com/opinion/gallup/190103/using-employee-e... "Engagement and inclusiveness are closely related. Gallup has also found that engaged employees are more likely to say their company values diverse ideas."
When our company was very small it felt reasonable to say "We need to hire more women and underrepresented minorities", but after the team grows a bit I worry people might view that as "affirmative action" of some sort in a negative way - and I don't think I know how to handle that conversation.
Not to mention how this might interact with US employment laws around discrimination - I think I'm misguided in worrying about this because so many tech companies (like Lever) are vocal about their desire to hire more people from these groups, but it does feel a bit like there are landmines when discussing this topic.
I feel like I don't know what kind of language / goals I should be using. I DO feel like there's a distinction between good diversity efforts and accidentally shutting out some over-represented groups that don't deserve it - but I don't really know where that line is drawn.
My recommendation would be to check out Project Include; they've invested a ton in putting resources together: http://projectinclude.org/