Bitwise Industries: Supporting the Whole Person, One Action at a Time!

Bitwise Industries: Supporting the Whole Person, One Action at a Time!

Written By: Erin Hustings, Senior External Affairs Manager at Bitwise Industries

Transforming personal and organizational commitment to equity into action can feel much like the first day back on the job after a long vacation, particularly when it follows intensive reflection on the long history of institutionalized prejudices that led to present circumstances. Although a sign that one’s work and relationships serve important ends, this sense of being overwhelmed by the enormity of a task can also be powerfully demotivating.

Two tactics have helped me forestall mental paralysis, and can help us all as we operationalize equity in our workplaces: zoom in from the big picture down to priority actions that feel more doable; and look to people and institutions that have been there for role models and ideas.

I’m proud to work for a company, Bitwise Industries, that recognizes its stake in peers’ diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, and invests in sharing what has worked for it along the way to building one of the most representative programs in the country. We urgently need more voices contributing to a public-access catalog of solutions and concrete action steps.

Bitwise Industries’ business model combines accessible and affordable workforce development programming, technology services for anchor institutions, and placemaking through building revitalization. Students in our pre-apprenticeship classes and apprenticeships, many of whom we’ve hired for permanent positions, have been more than two-thirds BIPOC individuals, and on average were older than 24 years and didn’t have a college diploma. They have been largely members of groups underrepresented among working technologists. In our ecosystem, they have succeeded, and our company has prospered because of their great work. Of our job seekers, 80% have found permanent employment in tech, and many have gone on to extend their education and start new companies.

Here are some of the most important actions we took to achieve these results.

Screen people in instead of screening them out. Breaking barriers to entry is a foundational task that demands thoughtful work, led by members of underrepresented communities, to identify procedures that block or dissuade people and methods of neutralizing them. Bitwise Industries proactively recruits the people whose talents we know haven’t yet been developed or leveraged in the tech industry, including women, justice-impacted individuals, and BIPOC and LGBTQ+ people, to overcome the psychological barrier of not seeing many peers working in the field. We eschew entrance exams and prerequisites in favor of seeking traits like determination and concern for the collective good. Many of our instructors and our outreach managers, who are aspiring technologists’ first point of contact with our company, are former participants in our workforce development programs and people whose personal stories mirror trainees’. These kinds of features prove that we value the abilities of people who’ve faced hurdles to working in tech, and they go a long way in bringing a representative group of community members through our doors.

Consider the whole person both within and outside the workplace and provide holistic support. People can’t thrive at work unless they maintain stability in their personal lives. All of our people, from pre-apprentice to permanent employees, have access to services and an informal support network primed to address needs ranging from mental healthcare to affordable childcare. We’ve mobilized to work around direct logistical challenges like insufficient public transportation services and inadequate supplies of affordable laptops and mobile internet services for pre-apprenticeship students. We’ve come together as a community to share leads on affordable housing, speak to the good character of colleagues with past involvement with the justice system, find and create resources in response to mass shootings, and much more. Our paid registered apprenticeships are a particularly important support that make it financially feasible for people who couldn’t otherwise afford to forego income while pursuing education to hone skills that we can leverage and that are in high demand. Broadly speaking, these kinds of services help eliminate barriers to doing effective work that have disproportionately impeded members of communities historically underrepresented in our workplaces and C-suites.

Recognize and celebrate a full spectrum of talent. Diplomas and test-based certifications don’t always demonstrate the full breadth of a technologist’s skills, and the formal education they typically document is not the only path to acquiring this skill. Intuitively we all know, but workplaces continue to underappreciate, the value of life experiences in developing abilities that fuel professional success, like creativity and persuasiveness. For example, a team of our developers with diverse backgrounds consciously created a simplified, mobile-friendly interface for OnwardCA.org, a public service job search and basic needs assistance platform, so that it would be an effective tool for people likely to have limited internet access and user experience. Within one week of its launch, 200,000 people had used it to connect with services, far surpassing expectations of around 10,000 weekly users. Most of them were between the ages of 40-50, listed high school as their highest level of education completed, and reported earning under $20,000 per year in their most recent jobs. Managers need to critically reexamine the necessity of often-exclusionary credential requirements, and credit characteristics and experiences that give teams well-rounded insight.

Make physical and mental space for people to connect across dividing lines. Belief in the importance of fostering community and human connections, and the ability to form them, informs everything Bitwise Industries does. We leverage the buildings we rehabilitate to bring people together - our people, coworking customers and tenants, and curious members of the public - for events like DJ’d lunch hours, food and drink tastings, and live performances. We cultivate ecosystems of support around our people with public-facing showcases of their work that are intended to ensure that their loved ones appreciate their accomplishments as they progress in their careers in tech. We also encourage our people to meet one another socially by randomly pairing employees for 30-minute chats during working hours, and by prompting them to consider reaching out to one another informally. Creating community takes effort and persistence, and we repeat Bitwise Industries’ mantra frequently: “No one belongs here more than you.”

Please join us in this movement, and share your thoughts and strategies so we can learn from you!

This blog is part of a blog series featuring authentic voices that highlight the three key learning areas— Ownership, Allyship and Action—of this year's DEI Summit.