a16z Podcast | If Coding is the New Literacy, How Can More People Code?

my name is Chrissy Brautigan and I lead user experience research at github one of my projects that github is T work on an event called patch work which is an event where we introduce newcomers to get and github to experts in the field and we bring them together to learn how to get started in the world of open-source hi I'm Susan Burnett I'm a former Yahoo Netscape and AOL product development executive and when I moved to Oakland I started an organization called hack the hood that teaches coding and tech skills to low-income young people of color hi I'm Laura Weidman powers I'm the co-founder and CEO of a non-profit based here in San Francisco called code 2040 we work on creating pathways into the tech sector for blacks and Latinos hi I'm John Ian the CEO of founders building code we're a national nonprofit that seeking a close the gender gap in computer science and education excellent well I know the topic that we're talking about today is code literacy and I thought a really good place to begin would be if we actually give it some meaning because when I when I was first introduced to me I thought well what does that actually mean so I'd love to go around and have everyone define what Co literacy means to you I've thought about this a lot because of all of the hype about programming languages and coding and you have to code and I think I have a broader definition than being able to write C or Ruby on Rails or have one specific language I think that everyone today more and more is going to need how to need to know how to write basic HTML to understand CSS to have some of the tools to manipulate environments but they live in and that includes different kinds of scripting so whether it's using some kind of library or assembler or it's actually learning how to write a specific coding language I think we're all going to find that more and more of those are going to become part of the toolset for being an adult in the world I mean I think it's what's interesting to me about this idea of coding literacy is that part of the concept is about being able to be a producer but even more important I think and more realistic if we're talking about having this be the fourth are reading writing arithmetic and writing code is just a familiarity with what it means even being able to understand kind of the type of language that Susan is using a lot of students say a lot of adults today that would be gibberish and as technology becomes more and more important in various sectors and the economy as a whole it's so important that we're able to speak the language even if we're not able to write in it yeah basically that Tony is a 21st century skill set right it's just like reading and writing today and you see that happens with our girls in the fact technology that they are me I think the other thing when I think this coding literacy it's about how technology can be the great equalizer one of the things that we've really learned as well be curly that regardless of socioeconomic status most of our girls are being left behind and that we have seen entire families being able to be lift up into the middle class but being like getting access to coding and technology and giving opportunities to work in these companies we're changing the trajectory of their entire their families in their community excellent wow that's um that's really powerful and when I was I was looking over everyone's backgrounds one of the things that stuck out to me was we were talking about code literacy coding literacy today together but it looks like we have you know none of us

actually seem to come from a proper engineering background so I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about it how you actually got started with your organization in this space student sure I spent many years working in New York and in Silicon Valley as patek executive with a focus on product development so I was the person who kind of sat between the engineering team the business team user experience team and really had to come up with what were the opportunities of the solutions how could we sequence and ship product where we could afford to build something significant but do in a way that really addressed the bottom line and working with engineers and discovering that I really enjoyed product vision and product development and loved the waves of attack could self problem this was very very motivating to me and when I moved to Oakland I was still doing a start-up a commercial startup but I ended up starting a nonprofit called Oakland local that was a hyperlocal news site and I also saw that all my neighbors were so cut off from the capacity to use tech as a solution that the Google buses and the Yahoo buses would go through the neighborhood and they felt so shut off and so alienated because they were there kids didn't have classes that were relevant didn't know people in the industry I didn't have any access to understanding what the jobs were how they would get there and that was a big part for me of becoming interested in hack the hood it was how can we change the pipeline so these fantastic young people don't end up working in service jobs while other people get these jobs but are really exploding the bay area you know one of the things that Reshma brought up that we think a lot about at code 2040 is that that wealth gap that income divide and how the salary of an average tech worker is more than the median household income of a black family and a Latino family combined so there's so much power for economic development by connecting communities to tech particularly communities that have been excluded that for me you know I worked at a tech startup I also worked in product development and product management and I find the engineering skill set absolutely fascinating and so valuable but for me it's it's really about it being a means to an end that this is you know Marc Andreessen talks about software eats the world and it like it's totally true you know you can just look five ten years ahead and see that happening and so this is economic development for me as opposed to being about engineering specifically yeah I mean with Walter Isaacson's book you know the innovators and it's really interesting so how much progress was made at the intersection of humanities and funny and I think you know for me I in some ways represents the boys and girls who when I was throwing up was terrified of math and science or said I hated math when I really did it you know I had a family I thought it was a family 11 years and this fear haunted me my entire life and this inability to speak to technical people to really embrace the language and it's something that when I was running for office in 2010 really decided I wanted to do something about it because I saw the gender divide I'm a mouth and a feminist with the Capitol Act you look at the trajectory of women's and the majority of our breadwinners sir the majority of our labor force but you know less than 20% of them are you feeling the technical jobs in the future and there's been a you know and that's there's been a serious reversal in the past 30 or 40 years and it doesn't make sense and it has to stop and that is where you know it's my passion where this topic really comes from so I love we're talking a lot about where we're at right now and what I'm wondering about is if we go back a

little bit in each of your personal histories to a time before you have the organization that you're leading right now could you share a story about somebody who helped you get started I you know I think a lot back to my freshman year of college actually when we were all gathered and kind of the first week of school and the Dean stood up and said something that you all should know is that you should never take no for an answer and I thought that was a pretty bold statement given that now there were 1600 freshmen who are gonna be running around doing exactly what they wanted on campus and not listening to Authority but I've really carried that with me thinking about what is possible and who defines that and I think that you know being an entrepreneur starting an organization requires a healthy dose of not taking no for an answer and so I wish I could even remember the name of that Dean I have no idea who the person was that delivered that message but I remember hearing it and I remember thinking about it and internalizing it and I think it's really impacted how I've made choices in my career at a lot of steps along the way yeah I want I mean I think Rosie called success is really about who are believers working very early you know those first articles and so we couldn't get a foundation to support us and our first seed money came from the shop our ham who is a female eBay and that contact the CEO of GE and Dikshit sell it Twitter or Jack Dorothy and people who just a new lifetime knows an idea in your head but that idea and it may not work but I'm gonna give you a little bit of seed capital see if it dies and so much of our journey as ionization has been people you know want Sheryl Sandberg on the house atomic email sent me an email being like oh my god this is awesome how can I help you and and that's really kind of been the story of our journey in terms of people really saying this is awesome this needs to happen and like what can I do to really make make this possible and I think that's why over the past three years we've been able to grow from 20 girls in 2012 to 3,000 today I think I had trouble answering that question because in my own career well I've had incredible advocates and allies I don't really feel that there was anybody who really helped me if like I kind of battled my way into it because there were very hard problems that people had to find someone who had a more synergistic perspective to come in and help solve so when you asked me that I can think of lots of wonderful people I loved working with I don't think actually have had a mentor in tech or someone who helped me and in fact I think that you know part of the reason I'm doing what I do is as a woman and as an executive in Silicon Valley I experienced a lot of feelings of being the other and as someone who wasn't an engineer I had to really fight for my ability to you know make the decisions that my role called for

so you know I think we need to grow a lot more authentic mentors for women and for young people of color because I think it can actually be very challenging wow that's really powerful that plays into you something that I personally wonder a lot about and what we work with at patchwork which is helping people to develop confidence and so maybe another way to ask this question thinking about mentorship is where does your confidence to run these organizations come from you know it I think for me it's interesting to think of it as far as my confidence come from because I think there's often a thin line between what I'm feeling confidence and what I'm feeling fear and the confidence really comes from other people validating the organization choices that I've made my team support but at the same time I you know every decision that I make I'm like I don't know if this is the right decision how do I know if this is the right decision and so there's this constant kind of back-and-forth between when I'm feeling confident and when I'm feeling like you know I have no idea what I'm doing and we think about that a lot as an organization I mean this field is pretty new thinking about diversity in tech when we first started talking about code 2040 there wasn't a dialogue about this and now there is and so a lot of the choices that we were making at the beginning there wasn't much of a stage it didn't you know it mattered but nobody was paying attention and now that's really different and so having kind of communities of support is really important to feeling confident because there's a lot of kind of validation in the field that I feel like I draw strength from now that that wasn't available at the beginning I think for me it's that I'm very focused on outcomes and on user centered design and with hack the hood we started to iterate and it violet in 2012 that funded in a program in 2013 and I felt this incredible sense of responsibility and opportunity we've gotten such a tremendous explosion of support in the past six months for what's a very young program I feel like you know I can't screw this up I can I can make mistakes but they have to be mistakes that we can afford to make they have to be manageable risks and I don't want to be the person who had so much opportunity and then it didn't work so I'm always looking at you know where should we pivot are we on the right track how do we minimize the risk so we can try new things but at the same time we're not making fatal errors and you know I think I think the confidence is really driven by the need to go forward I liked what I liked what Laura said because I also joke that I'm driven by fear like a lot of my drive comes from wanting to avoid certain things that you know are bad outcomes so it's like well how do I go over there it's gonna be good because I don't want to end up over there Susan and I have already decided to have lunch next week to support one another I think the real question we want to ask is when so many women are being accused of being imposters or people worried about having an impostor syndrome how do you kind of move forward in that context of a society might see you that way well I mean I think it's about embracing failure you know I think that our early snorkeled when we don't wait line and part of what I feel that this merely holding women back is is that we've been taught to not you know not solicit risk and to not fail and to be afraid of failure you know for me personally I've lost two elections I feel all the time like every day you know I get what I set myself up for and so that in many ways I think has really built my confidence I'm not afraid to do anything anymore look I know what it's like to like be in the ditch and it feel really bad and I questioned everything about myself and not know what tomorrow's don't look like and like since I've walked that journey like everything else you know so much more frightening and like who's less frightening and like that's really what I've really tried to teach our girls at close to code is to is to say oh I'm coding is about feeling like it is I mean I'm I'm learning how to code I've been learning how to look it is so frustrating you know especially the type a woman who wants to get my code right all the time and that is what I love about the work that we do is that it's almost by learning coding they're learning how to fail and you learn to accept failures in right field because when we get it right like there's no other but there's no other offensive than that I think it's important to you I mean just having conversations like this and understanding our relationships

with failure and with risk and with our communities a big part of what we try to do at code 2040 for our students who you know are some are women they're all black or Latinos so they're all in statistically other in the organizations that they're in is try to build community amongst them so that there is a base of support that allows them to feel like they can go out and try and maybe fail it's really hard to feel like failing is an option if you don't feel like there's a net to catch you and so sometimes that's that's real that's you know it could be an economic safety net or family but sometimes it's really just perceived it's feeling like your community is still gonna be there for you even if you don't perform the way that that you wish that you did I also think that one of the things that happens in our culture is that when people fail it validates this internal sense of themselves but they're not really qualified to do something or they're not really good at it and one of the things that we do with the hack the hood young people who come in with a lot of internalized racism a lot of feeling of I couldn't do this I wouldn't fit in people won't accept me is really work with them to give them confidence by helping them do development and the fact that when they start to meet people who actually are working in tech in companies and real jobs they can say wow that person is writing them as coding language well I'm using Weebly and I'm building websites and it's a lot simpler but it's actually on the same continuum it's in the same family of skills it's just more complicated and I think that we all need that we all need to have a discipline where you're building a muscle if you if you fail you've done something once you failed 100 percent of a time so you know if you're working at something and you fail you know 10 percent of the time well how many times is that you know it's it's a small percentage and I think that's really really important for everybody who's fighting obstacles in building a career to know that not only is it ok to fail but like what percentage is gonna be a success and what percentage is gonna be get up and do it again and to expect that you're not gonna succeed 100% at the time exactly that you know it's I was about to try to make a baseball analogy but I I I can't pull it off but you know a good batter is not batting a thousand and we expect people who are good at about a thousand in real life it's just not how it works and you also see that there are serial entrepreneurs for me a giant transformative experience was having my tech stars startup fail I was one of the most senior experienced people in that class and I was one of the people decided to not take any money and you know I spent a lot of time afterwards saying what can I learn for this experience so I don't end up in this spot again and the next two things I did were both really successful by my standards but it was such a it was such a painful experience to not end up where I thought I would is like I have to find a way to learn from this or it's just gonna be too hard so one of the things that we do when we're teaching git and github actually like we're sort of teaching some of these basic skills for people is we we have something called a merge conflict which ends up being a situation a technical situation where you've actually introduced a conflict into code and it turns out that that's a thing that people are really afraid of and it keeps them from feeling like they can succeed when they're trying to actually get involved in an open-source project so what we try and do and what we're hopeful to do is actually teach through guided errors where we we actually take you into a merge conflict we teach you how to get out of it instead of having

you avoid avoid it entirely so I'm curious when we think about each of your organization's like what's one thing that you do to help students or to help participants actually build confidence you know we teach a lot of who do a lot of public speaking in our program so we make sure they're almost get up into that you know if I'll never forget last year also an opportunity to just like basically present Facebook that that's what they had so you can Facebook API to Sheryl Sandberg's and I'm mouthing at watching their was through your eyes conference room you know Cheryl comes out when really cool like black leather pants the girl starts screaming when she's Beyonce you know and they and she walks in and they stand up you know one by one she likes you influence you know these the fact that they had meant to Sheryl Sandberg and they weren't shaken they weren't nervous they were fierce in my soul and it is so amazing to watch the confidence that they had and there were 16 years old but I don't know if I kids I'm not back then and it was just you know we make sure that we create these opportunities in our program to get them prepared to like you know those things are like no John you don't like their API we both stand up like you know you know tighten and give them advice on what they think that they can technically do differently me and I think it prepares them for when they get into their cs101 class and they're invariably going to be you know one in a 20% or 30% of the class or when they get to you know a tech company and there are a lot of women in the room they have no question about their ability because we've already created and they've built something and they've presented it before we focus a lot on using scrum and agile development technique teaching teamwork so the kids learn that they can be play to your strengths participants where they're accountable for their work they're checking in with what they're doing but they also can say what they need help with either from the scrum master or from a teammate and I think that's been very powerful because most of them are coming from environments where they haven't had a chance to experience teamwork except maybe where it's been kind of boy stood on them and kind of monitored but this is much more organic and much more transparent and that's been that's been great for the kids to actually see themselves succeeding an environment where they have a lot more control and they're learning how to work with each other I think - we do two main things at Code 2041 is try to show the students that there's a large group of people that care about them and want them to succeed and so over the course of the summer that they spend with us there's literally a parade of people from the industry mentoring them doing workshops speaker series hosting them for networking events and the message that that sends is that there are people out there who care who want you here you're welcome and that is a big confidence booster and the second thing is provide some actual tangible tools so I'll never forget the first summer we had a coach working with the students who said how many of you want to succeed in your internship this summer they all raised their hand how many of you want to complete all your projects successfully they all raised their hand how many of you know what your manager thinks is success for you silence and they suddenly realize that they've been thinking from their perspective and not from the company's perspective or their managers perspective and so the next half-hour we spent role-playing what it looks like to have that conversation with your manager to understand the organization's expectations for you not just your own and that was a really tangible tool that they could use the next day that led to a really high rate

of success and their internships that summer so and Laura I want to kind of off of that I'm wondering about we're talking about different entry points for especially young people or people who are career changing who want to get into the industry into the tech industry and I'm wondering like what do you think companies are lacking right now to help newcomers be successful it's that's a big tough question and it's something that we think a lot about and that companies frankly should be thinking a lot about as well I think there's a bit of a kind of Wild West individualistic culture out here in Silicon Valley and in startups which is part of what makes Silicon Valley successful and what makes startup successful but it also means that there's a bit of a reliance on everybody kind of finding finding their own way to fit in and not a lot of concentrated effort on how do we create a culture or an environment that is inclusive I'm gonna bungle the statistics but I read that the percent of Silicon Valley tech startups that actually have an HR function at a point when you know most organizations elsewhere in the country do is like 6% it's there just is very little thought or input early on put into what is the culture that we're creating and how do we make it inclusive and the burden then becomes on the individual to fit in as opposed to the company to figure out how to create a welcoming environment so I think companies need to really think about how what choices they make on a day to day basis whether its policies or parties or what-have-you that are thoughtful culture creators as opposed to just a default or what's easy or what happens because you don't think about it it's human nature to hire people who look like you or you're comfortable with or who you wanna go grab a beer with and I think that really being conscious about diversity you know Melanie house exhibits great TED talk on being color belief rather than colorblind but but you know having a really open honest conversation about race and gender and setting some goals and figuring out how you get there and I think you know so the new champion cannot please and so having more people who look like the diversity that you want to teach actually making those HR decisions and making a lot of the common sense sitting on your board you know all of that can really make a difference and I think if you're intentional about it these numbers can shift quite quickly because there isn't an aptitude problem you know there isn't an interest problem you know but you can build in to the extent there's a supply-side problem when it comes to women in people of color you know as you've seen with the legal and medical professions in the nineteen seventies only ten percent of doctors and lawyers are women and today that number is 25 percent so it's possible to do that in our lifetime you just have to be committed to it I agree with what everyone said but I have some reservations hack the hood is working with very low income kids of color and I think it's very important for tech companies to understand but it's not just about increasing the pool of people of color and women who go to Stanford and get out and have the opportunity to do an internship at Google actually think there's a lot of creativity and innovation and talent and people who find it really challenging to go to Community College because they can't get childcare and I'm really focused on how do we create opportunities at elite tech companies and in startups for people who have lives that don't fit into a nine-to-five that is about doing an internship where there is no childcare provided and what are you going to do or is about just piping more people into an elite school I think that's super important but I also see there are a lot of people who have tremendous ability and I don't want them to get lost so for for hack the hood we're very interested in how do we kind of funnel people from our program to the right place where they can go whether that's a four-year college or it's a training program or it's some kind of apprenticeship but there are too many people who are talented who have the ability to do this work who were just shut out and that's what kind of keeps me up at night so along those lines Susan I'm curious said if I if I were to be able to if I could grant you three wishes for the students in your program what would you how would you use those I'm probably gonna pick the three wrong things because this is off the top of my head but I'd like to have the facility to provide child care for young women who are young parents because I hear over and over how much the lack of stable child care interferes with internships and training programs in school that would be one thing - I'd like to see community colleges improve the kinds of certificate programs that they're doing so they're a lot more relevant so students who don't have the means right now is in their view to go to a four-year college can stack up certificates more quickly that are more relevant and I think a lot of them are not really current and in three I think I agree very much with what Laura said about how important relationships is showing what you care how much you care is so I would just like every student that I work with to have a mentor who is not only engaged with them at the moment but who helps introduce them to other people who really show them that yes they can belong intact and they have people want to help them get there Laura I'm curious by we're able to give you

three wishes for the students and learners in your program how would you use them it's a great very hard question you know I I think about the focus of code 2040 and of our Fellows Program is career readiness and that last transition from education to employment so all of the students that have access to these amazing programs or don't but kind of come up and know that they're interested in tech how do we make sure that they actually get in the door at these companies and then succeed once they're in them and I think we're actually pretty well equipped on that side when I think about kind of the wishes that I would have it's about continuing to broaden the pipeline of students that are in that last phase and ready to get an internship so some of what we're working on is how do you think about what makes you look like an attractive candidate you know going back to what Susan was saying before so much of hiring is referral based here and our social networks statistically speaking are pretty homogeneous there was a really amazing study published after Ferguson showing that white people social networks are 90 plus percent white and so you know if that's your social network that's when you get a job description in your inbox that's who you're going to for it it along too so thinking about how to create kind of structural ways to broaden that I would wish for the ability to do that work for the you know nearly 20% of computer science grads each year that are black or latino around the country which means creating those networks at HBCUs at state schools at community colleges which requires a lot of faculty relationships I'll spend my three wishes on relationships with colleges and universities amazing Irishman so you know all of our girls take your technical survey once they finish our program and like like a lot of the folks that seasonal or serve you know half our calls are from three reduced lunch 80% minority and what's so incredible is that you know the median school and the Technical Services the equivalent of basically a college cs101 exam is an 89% and so when they're walking out of our classroom they're so confident and so we need so much in themselves and I want to make you know my gift to them is to have that really continue and to make sure that they are those two other them as we talk about their own struggles so powerful we have more of the craftsmanship you need to talk to about girls in New York and she did a totally awesome to talk about her own insecurities of her own struggles and like her journey and watching them look at more and see how this amazing woman who's also struggled and just like them you made them feel as they could do it too so you know really making sure that they continue their confidence and opposing themselves is very important you know the second thing is really opportunity you know a lot but my biggest fear in life is you have all these amazing Building Code program and then the various companies that we're partnering with don't actually go hire them you know so we need to make sure that you don't become on work as charity but speaking while work that's basically a pipeline of talent and that's the results of that are very evident you know very shortly and so you know I want to make sure that these girls are now have your actual opportunity to go work in these places and a lot of them at a certain point they're not going to Stanford or MIT to lachan afford it even if they could get it so you know I think you need to change what it means to quote the qualified in this industry and shrimpie like your educational background and so I think the Bachelor important lasting a communication you know so much you know I do this work not because of gender parity for the sake of gender parity because I truly believe that women over the create products and are going to change the world and our girls are undoing it and when I see the things that they've done like acts about health fight obesity or you know algorithms to help the attention with our cancer is benign or malignant or a game called tampon run that shoot stamp out that you sort of Gardens because you don't talk enough about menstruation with so many girls across the world out of school because of it you know that's why you need more women and people of color that access to technology because accessible skills because they're going to create the products that are going to make our community no world a better place thank you so much that was powerful and wonderful and I have I'm just so glad to have been a part of this today and when we when I was researching the conversation when I was asked if I would talk with everyone today I thought I would love to but I'm not and here and so I don't know that I'm the right person to have this conversation and then in researching everyone's backgrounds I'd notice none of us are actually engineers but we're all in this together trying to create entry points for other people and I just want to thank you for your time today and I want to go do amazing things with all of you right now thank you sure Thanks thank you