Author: Megan Rose Dickey

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Google’s treatment of AI ethics researchers continues to stir up controversy

You’ve landed on the web version of the weekly Human Capital newsletter. Sign up here to get this in your inbox every Friday at 1 p.m.

Welcome back to Human Capital. A lot happened this week pertaining to on-demand companies like Uber, Postmates, DoorDash and Instacart, and their respective gig workforces. Meanwhile, New York’s attorney general hit Amazon with a lawsuit over its warehouse labor practices and Twitter made some new commitments to increase diversity at the leadership level by 2025.

But that’s not all. Google fired another AI top ethicist, Margaret Mitchell. The company also internally published the results of its investigation into what happened with Dr. Timnit Gebru.

Apologies in advance for a slightly lengthier than usual newsletter but it’s all worth knowing, I promise.

Quick note: Human Capital is getting a new name because it seems to be causing some confusion, so don’t be alarmed when this hits your inbox next week with a different name. Name TBD. 

The essential workforce

New bill aims to regulate Amazon warehouses

California assemblyperson Lorena Gonzalez, who was behind gig worker bill AB 5, introduced new legislation that would regulate productivity quotas from companies like Amazon, Walmart and others. Called AB 701, the bill aims to better protect warehouse workers by implementing statewide standards. 

“While corporations like Amazon are collecting record profits during the pandemic, employees in their warehouses are being expected to do more, go faster and work harder without clear safety standards,” Assemblywoman Gonzalez said in a statement. “It’s unacceptable for one the largest and wealthiest employers in the country to put workers’ bodies and lives at risk just so we can get next-day delivery.”

NY AG sues Amazon

New York Attorney General Leticia James filed a lawsuit against Amazon for allegedly failing to provide adequate health and safety measures for its workers. As part of the lawsuit, James alleges Amazon retaliated against workers Christian Smalls and Derrick Palmer after they complained to Amazon about the company’s lack of support during the COVID-19 pandemic. James’ suit came after Amazon’s preemptive lawsuit against her office, alleging that workplace safety is not something she has authority over.

James’ statement:

While Amazon and its CEO made billions during this crisis, hardworking employees were forced to endure unsafe conditions and were retaliated against for rightfully voicing these concerns. Since the pandemic began, it is clear that Amazon has valued profit over people and has failed to ensure the health and safety of its workers. The workers who have powered this country and kept it going during the pandemic are the very workers who continue to be treated the worst. As we seek to hold Amazon accountable for its actions, my office remains dedicated to protecting New York workers from exploitation and unfair treatment in all forms.

Meanwhile, of course, Amazon warehouse workers in Bessemer are actively seeking to form a union. This week, reports showed Amazon was altering traffic signals as a way to prevent workers from being able to effectively talk with each other. 

Ex-Postmates VP speaks out about the gig economy

Vikrum Aiyer, the now-former vice president of global public policy and strategic communications at Postmates, penned a memo to his former colleagues and other stakeholders in the gig economy outlining what he thinks needs to happen next in the industry.

In his letter, Aiyer says “it would be a mistake for us to think that mild tweaks to worker classification, or a single state ballot measure, create a durable path forward for meaningfully addressing what Americans truly worry about: the chance to work, take care of their families, and not fret about what comes next.”

Postmates drivers say they’ve become prey to scammers

A new report in The Markup showed scammers sometimes target Postmates workers. In one instance, a scammer stole $346.73 from a worker. You can read the full story here.

In related news, Uber, which owns Postmates, recently hired labor researcher and Uber critic Alex Rosenblat to lead the company’s marketplace policy, fairness and research efforts. 

Uber drivers demand PPE and compensation for time spent sanitizing vehicles

Uber drivers shut down Market Street outside of Uber’s San Francisco headquarters to demand the company provide them with enough personal protective equipment during the COVID-19 pandemic. They also want to be compensated for time spent sanitizing vehicles in order to keep themselves and riders safe. 

Uber lobbies in the EU for Prop 22-like legislation and loses key battle in the U.K.

Meanwhile, over in the EU, Uber is lobbying for Prop 22-like standards. In a white paper, Uber proposed a “new standard” for platform work, where it outlines the need to offer some benefits to workers while simultaneously steering away from the possibility of collective bargaining among workers. From TC’s Natasha Lomas:

A universal standard for platform benefits may sound progressive, but the notion of “relevant” benefits for gig workers risks fixing this labor force to a floor far below agreed standards for employment — closing off any chance of a better deal for a class of workers who are subject to persistent, algorithmic management.

In the UK, the Supreme Court ruled Uber drivers are employees and therefore entiteld to minimum wage and holiday pay. Also from Lomas:

The case, which dates back to 2016, has major ramifications for Uber’s business model (and other gig economy platforms) in the U.K. — and likely regionally, as similar employment rights challenges are ongoing in European courts.

DoorDash drivers are banding together to decline low-paying orders

The strategy, reported on Vice, is designed to beef up the base pay for drivers by working together to game the system. 

From Vice:

The fundamental principles of the official #DECLINENOW movement rely upon all drivers in the movement to exercise their right to use the decline button to decline lowball offers for higher, more feasible ones,” reads a pinned post on the main Facebook group. “Declining lowball offers forces the algorithm to raise the base pay UP on the declined offer for the next driver as the need for DoorDash to service the order increases. In turn, Dashers will see an increase in higher paying offers, many times doing less deliveries for more money and a much higher paying ‘Per mile rate.’”

Turning jobs into gig work

Bloomberg had a really good feature about how the tech industry’s gig economy is impacting workers in other industries. It’s a must-read, but here’s a snippet:

Companies in a range of industries could use the Prop 22 model to undermine or eliminate employment protections. A week after the election, Shawn Carolan, a partner at early Uber investor Menlo Ventures, wrote an op-ed heralding the potential to spread Prop 22’s vision of work “from agriculture to zookeeping,” including to “nursing, executive assistance, tutoring, programming, restaurant work and design.”

President Biden nominates Jennifer Abruzzo to lead NLRB as general counsel

Abruzzo is currently the special counsel for strategic initiatives for the Communications Workers of America. For those unfamiliar, CWA has been making a name for itself in the tech industry by helping tech companies like Glitch and Alphabet unionize. Her appointment could prove to be quite beneficial for tech workers and gig workers alike.

In a statement, CWA President Chris Shelton said:

There is no one who has a more thorough grasp of the National Labor Relations Board and the purpose of the National Labor Relations Act than Jennifer Abruzzo. She is a brilliant attorney who understands how the actions of the NLRB impact the daily lives of people at their workplaces. President Biden’s selection of Jennifer as the NLRB General Counsel shows that under his watch, issues affecting working people will be handled by people like Jennifer who have dedicated their lives to helping workers — and not union busters like we saw during the Trump administration. We hope Jennifer’s confirmation process is speedy — working people need her at the helm of the NLRB now more than ever.

Instacart at odds with workers again

The company has reportedly suspended workers’ accounts for cancelling orders. According to Vice, these workers said they had good reason to cancel some of these orders, citing things like fears of safety and someone providing the wrong address.

Instacart, however, said it’s part of a fraud prevention policy that places accounts on pause if they suspect fraudulent or suspicious activity. 

Stay woke

Twitter commits to increasing diversity at leadership level

Twitter has committed to the Silicon Valley Leadership’s Group 25×25 pledge, which challenges companies to do one of two things:

  • Either make underrepresented employees 25% of its leadership team by 2025
  • Or increase the number of underrepresented people in leadership positions by 25% by 2025

Currently, Twitter’s leadership team is just 6.5% Black, 3.9% Latinx, 2.8% multiracial and less than one percent Indigenous, according to its most recent diversity report. 

Examining the “pipeline problem”

As I mentioned last week, I had the pleasure of chatting with Dr. Joy Lisi Rankin, a researcher at AI Now, about her research pertaining to the pipeline problem myth in tech. The story also features some insight from Uber Chief Diversity Officer Bo Young Lee, as well as Paradigm Director Courri Brady.

You can check that out here.

Tech engineer alleges sexism and bullying at Mailchimp

Kelly Ellis, a now-former principal engineer at Mailchimp, left her job earlier this week, alleging she was paid less than her male counterparts. In an email to employees, a higher-up at Mailchimp said the company “thoroughly and independently investigated the allegations and found them to be unsubstantiated.”

Glassdoor lets you filter ratings by demographics

Despite efforts from companies to create equitable environments, it’s clear that employees of certain demographics, like Black women, sometimes have very different experiences from their counterparts. Glassdoor aims to better surface those experiences through a new feature that allows folks to filter ratings by demographics.

Justice Through Code teaches returned citizens how to code

Justice Through Code, a semester-long coding and interpersonal skills intensive that takes place at Columbia University, aims to provide alternative paths for people once they reenter society.

The program has support from tech companies like Amazon Web Services, Coursera, Google and Slack.

Promise raises $20 million Series A round

Promise, a platform that makes it easy for people to navigate payments for child support, utilities, parking tickets and more, raised a $20 million Series A round. This round makes Promise founder Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins one of a handful of Black women who has raised more than $1 million.

Hey, Google…WTF?

Google fired Margaret Mitchell, the founder and former co-lead of the company’s ethical AI team. Mitchell announced the news via a tweet.

Google confirmed Mitchell’s firing in a statement to TechCrunch, Google said:

After conducting a review of this manager’s conduct, we confirmed that there were multiple violations of our code of conduct, as well as of our security policies, which included the exfiltration of confidential business-sensitive documents and private data of other employees.

News of Mitchell’s firing came shortly after Google internally announced the results of its investigation of Gebru’s exit, according to Axios. The company did not reveal what it found, but said it would implement some new policies to enhance diversity and inclusion at Google.

Google has a new ethical AI lead

Meanwhile, Google appointed Dr. Marian Croak to lead its responsible artificial intelligence division within Google Research, Bloomberg reported earlier today. Croak was previously the vice president of engineering at the company.

In her new role, Croak will oversee the teams working on accessibility, AI for social good, algorithmic fairness in health, brain fairness, ethical AI and others. She’ll report to Jeff Dean, SVP of Google AI Research and Health.

TC Sessions: Justice is almost here!

Also, we’re a little over a week away from TechCrunch Sessions: Justice, which takes place March 3. Be sure to snag your $5 ticket here to hear from folks like Backstage Capital’s Arlan Hamilton, former Amazon warehouse worker Christian Smalls, Congresswoman Barbara Lee and others.

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Google fires top AI ethics researcher Margaret Mitchell

Google has fired Margaret Mitchell, the founder and former co-lead of the company’s ethical AI team. Mitchell announced the news via a tweet.

Google confirmed Mitchell’s firing in a statement to TechCrunch; Google said:

After conducting a review of this manager’s conduct, we confirmed that there were multiple violations of our code of conduct, as well as of our security policies, which included the exfiltration of confidential business-sensitive documents and private data of other employees.

In January, Google revoked corporate access from AI ethicist Margaret Mitchell for reportedly using automated scripts to find examples of mistreatment of Dr. Timnit Gebru, according to Axios. Gebru says she was fired from Google while Google has maintained that she resigned.

Earlier this month, Mitchell published the email she said she sent to Google’s press team the day her corporate email access was cut off. The email spoke about Gebru’s firing and how it appeared to be “fueled by the same underpinnings of racism and sexism that our AI systems, when in the wrong hands, tend to soak up.”

Mitchell’s letter, which you can read in full here, details the different ideas and structures at play that led to Dr. Gebru’s departure from Google. Mitchell argues what happened to Gebru “appears to stem from the same lack of foresight that is at the core of modern technology, and so itself serves as an example of the problem.”

Mitchell adds:

The firing seems to have been fueled by the same underpinnings of racism and sexism that our AI systems, when in the wrong hands, tend to soak up. How Dr. Gebru was fired is not okay, what was said about it is not okay, and the environment leading up to it was — and is — not okay. Every moment where Jeff Dean and Megan Kacholia do not take responsibility for their actions is another moment where the company as a whole stands by silently as if to intentionally send the horrifying message that Dr. Gebru deserves to be treated this way. Treated as if she were inferior to her peers. Caricatured as irrational (and worse). Her research writing publicly defined as below the bar.  Her scholarship publicly declared to be insufficient. For the record: Dr. Gebru has been treated completely inappropriately, with intense disrespect, and she deserves an apology. 

The letter went on to discuss the ethical artificial intelligence approach to developing technology, how Mitchell came to lead and then co-lead the ethical AI team with Gebru and what ultimately happened. Within the next year, Mitchell said she wanted “those of us in positions of privilege and power” to come to terms with “the discomfort of being part of an unjust system that devalued one of the world’s leading scientists, and keep something like this from ever happening again.”

Mitchell’s firing comes shortly after Google announced the appointment of Dr. Marian Croak to lead its responsible artificial intelligence division. When we reached out to Google yesterday the company did not have a comment on Mitchell’s fate.

Google has a new responsible AI lead

Earlier today, Google internally announced the results of its investigation of Gebru’s exit, according to Axios. The company did not reveal what it found, but said it would implement some new policies to enhance diversity and inclusion at Google.

TechCrunch has reached out to Mitchell and will update this story if we hear back.

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Google fires top AI ethics researcher Margaret Mitchell

Google has fired Margaret Mitchell, the founder and former co-lead of the company’s ethical AI team. Mitchell announced the news via a tweet.

Google confirmed Mitchell’s firing in a statement to TechCrunch; Google said:

After conducting a review of this manager’s conduct, we confirmed that there were multiple violations of our code of conduct, as well as of our security policies, which included the exfiltration of confidential business-sensitive documents and private data of other employees.

In January, Google revoked corporate access from AI ethicist Margaret Mitchell for reportedly using automated scripts to find examples of mistreatment of Dr. Timnit Gebru, according to Axios. Gebru says she was fired from Google while Google has maintained that she resigned.

Earlier this month, Mitchell published the email she said she sent to Google’s press team the day her corporate email access was cut off. The email spoke about Gebru’s firing and how it appeared to be “fueled by the same underpinnings of racism and sexism that our AI systems, when in the wrong hands, tend to soak up.”

Mitchell’s letter, which you can read in full here, details the different ideas and structures at play that led to Dr. Gebru’s departure from Google. Mitchell argues what happened to Gebru “appears to stem from the same lack of foresight that is at the core of modern technology, and so itself serves as an example of the problem.”

Mitchell adds:

The firing seems to have been fueled by the same underpinnings of racism and sexism that our AI systems, when in the wrong hands, tend to soak up. How Dr. Gebru was fired is not okay, what was said about it is not okay, and the environment leading up to it was — and is — not okay. Every moment where Jeff Dean and Megan Kacholia do not take responsibility for their actions is another moment where the company as a whole stands by silently as if to intentionally send the horrifying message that Dr. Gebru deserves to be treated this way. Treated as if she were inferior to her peers. Caricatured as irrational (and worse). Her research writing publicly defined as below the bar.  Her scholarship publicly declared to be insufficient. For the record: Dr. Gebru has been treated completely inappropriately, with intense disrespect, and she deserves an apology. 

The letter went on to discuss the ethical artificial intelligence approach to developing technology, how Mitchell came to lead and then co-lead the ethical AI team with Gebru and what ultimately happened. Within the next year, Mitchell said she wanted “those of us in positions of privilege and power” to come to terms with “the discomfort of being part of an unjust system that devalued one of the world’s leading scientists, and keep something like this from ever happening again.”

Mitchell’s firing comes shortly after Google announced the appointment of Dr. Marian Croak to lead its responsible artificial intelligence division. When we reached out to Google yesterday the company did not have a comment on Mitchell’s fate.

Google has a new responsible AI lead

Earlier today, Google internally announced the results of its investigation of Gebru’s exit, according to Axios. The company did not reveal what it found, but said it would implement some new policies to enhance diversity and inclusion at Google.

TechCrunch has reached out to Mitchell and will update this story if we hear back.

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Uber extends work from home policy through mid-September

Uber today notified employees that it will extend its work from home policy through September 13.

“In considering the extension, we took into account the latest scientific data and experts’ views; the fact that different countries are at different stages of recovery; and the start of the school year,” Uber Chief People Officer Nikki Krish wrote in an email, viewed by TechCrunch, to employees. “[…] We know that some CommOps, IT, or other roles require physical presence in an office, so please continue to work within the policies your teams have developed—however, as always, we won’t force anyone to go into the office if they have medical concerns.”

Uber is also encouraging employees to get vaccinated when it’s possible to do so. In the email, Krish said Uber employees will be able to take time off in order to get vaccinated.

In August, Uber notified employees that they should expect to work from home through June 2021. As for other tech companies, Google in July extended its work from home policy through the end of June 2021, while Facebook in August extended its remote work policy until July 2021.

Post-COVID, Uber will likely have a hybrid work model, Krish said, but it’s still a work in progress.

“We’re taking a number of aspects into consideration, such as how being physically together benefits or reduces productivity, collaboration, and engagement,” she wrote. “We’ll update you on where things stand in a few weeks, and along the way as we make progress.”

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Google has a new responsible AI lead

Google has appointed Dr. Marian Croak to lead its responsible artificial intelligence division within Google Research, Bloomberg reported earlier today. Croak was previously the vice president of engineering at the company.

In a Google blog post and video confirming the news, Croak said:

This field, the field of responsible AI and ethics, is new. Most institutions have only developed principles, and they’re very high-level, abstract principles, in the last five years. There’s a lot of dissension, a lot of conflict in terms of trying to standardize on normative definitions of these principles. Whose definition of fairness, or safety, are we going to use? There’s quite a lot of conflict right now within the field, and it can be polarizing at times. And what I’d like to do is have people have the conversation in a more diplomatic way, perhaps, than we’re having it now, so we can truly advance this field.

This all comes after the departure of Dr. Timnit Gebru, the former co-lead of Google’s ethical AI team, as well as the corporate lockout of researcher Margaret Mitchell, founder of Google’s ethical AI team. In January, Google revoked corporate access from AI ethicist Margaret Mitchell for reportedly using automated scripts to find examples of mistreatment of Gebru, according to Axios. Gebru says she was fired from Google while Google has maintained that she resigned. In a statement to Axios at the time, Google said:

Our security systems automatically lock an employee’s corporate account when they detect that the account is at risk of compromise due to credential problems or when an automated rule involving the handling of sensitive data has been triggered. In this instance, yesterday our systems detected that an account had exfiltrated thousands of files and shared them with multiple external accounts. We explained this to the employee earlier today.

Mitchell is still locked out of her account, and tweeted today about how she only found out about the reorganization through the Bloomberg story.

TechCrunch has reached out to Google to try to determine what this means for Mitchell. We’ll update this story if we hear back.

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Outfit wants to make DIY home improvements easier to tackle

Doing home renovations yourself can be more cost-effective than hiring a contractor, but many people don’t know where to begin. Ian Janicki, the founder and CEO of DIY home renovation startup Outfit, has always wanted to make architecture and design more accessible to people.

“I realized I could leverage my knowledge of being handy to create a product that scaled,” he told TechCrunch.

For those who want to go through the Outfit process, the first step is submitting information about the space they’re looking to renovate, such as dimensions and photos, as well as the maximum amount they’re looking to spend. Outfit then provides information about the expected cost of the project, the handiness level required to complete the project and everything that would need to be done in order to complete the project.

“We make sure it’s transparent and that you understand the amount of time that might be required,” Janicki said.

Once someone decides they want to move forward, Outfit then sends all the necessary tools and materials to the customer. Through the app, Outfit offers a step-by-step guide for completing the project. In the event someone gets stuck, they can chat with Janicki or someone else from the Outfit team for support.

Image Credits: Outfit

Outfit has had a small set of pilot customers — some who have completed their projects and some whose projects are still underway.

“The millennial generation is now starting to purchase their homes and has been accelerated because of remote work and COVID,” Janicki said. “They’re the Ikea generation and can put together bookshelves and are really used to digital experiences and now demanding this digital solution.”

So far, the projects have ranged in cost from $1,000 to $15,000, but it really depends on things like how invasive the project is, how big the space is and more, Janicki said. The rendered after photo below would probably cost about $9,000. In general, Outfit charges customers the cost of the actual materials (e.g. power drills, wrenches, cabinets, tiles, etc.) and then adds a percentage of the total on top as a surcharge to the customer.

outfit before and after kitchen renovation

Image Credits: Outfit

Down the road, Outfit envisions offering rentals of the tools themselves but Janicki said he just wanted to streamline everything in the early days.

“Reverse logistics is complicated to we’re trying to take it one step at a time,” he said.

There are a number of home improvement startups out there, such as Eano, Renno and others, but Janicki said he’s not aware of any direct competitors. He said he recognizes that there are some people who are fully capable of buying all the necessary items themselves, watching a video on YouTube and then completing the project. Meanwhile, homeowners are also just as capable of hiring someone to do the project for them. But with Outfit, however, Janicki sees it as somewhere in between. He calls it “DIY plus.”

“In terms of being handy, it’s a rare trait that everyone appreciates,” Janicki said. “If we can elevate people in their handiness level, i’m going to be super happy. It’s that pride that you were actually able to accomplish that.”

Outfit is currently available nationwide. To date, the company has backing from Y Combinator, and previously raised about $700,000 from investors like GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, B Capital Group’s Crissy Costa, Gumroad CEO Sahil Lavingia and others.

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Glassdoor now lets you filter company reviews by demographics

Despite efforts from companies to create equitable environments, it’s clear that employees of a certain demographics, like Black women, sometimes have very different experiences from their counterparts. Glassdoor aims to better surface those experiences through a new feature that allows folks to filter ratings by demographics.

Up until now, Glassdoor only presented an overall ranking for a specific company, so there was no way to easily determine if, for example, Black women feel the same as white men, or if Latino men feel similarly to Asian men. In addition to race, Glassdoor now allows people to filter by gender identity, parental or caregiver status, disability, sexual orientation and veteran status.

Overall, Black employees are less satisfied at work in comparison to all employees, according to new preliminary research from Glassdoor. The research is based on the more than 187,000 employees across more than 3,300 companies who have provided demographic data.

Image Credits: Glassdoor

That same research showed Apple had the highest overall company rating among Black employees, with an average rating of 4.2 out of five. Apple’s overall company rating from that sample size is 3.9.

“Because these data are so new — having been collected within just the last four months — it’s important to resist the urge to make sweeping claims based on early data,” Glassdoor Data Scientist Amanda Stansell and Chief Economist Andrew Chamberlain said in the report. “The averages we’ve reported above are not derived from representative probability samples of company workforces — they represent data shared anonymously by Glassdoor users at this time. Readers should therefore take some caution in making conclusive, company-wide inferences about the state of race and employee satisfaction.”

Glassdoor: Best tech companies to work for in 2021

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Justice Through Code is a free coding program for those impacted by the criminal justice system

People who have spent time in jail or prison often face barriers to accessing stable jobs, housing and financial services. These types of barriers are a key driver of recidivism for the more than 600,000 people who are released from prison each year. Between 2005 and 2014, an estimated 68% of people released in 2005 were arrested again within three years. Within nine years, 83% of those released in 2005 were rearrested, according to the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Justice Through Code, a semester-long coding and interpersonal skills intensive that takes place at Columbia University, aims to provide alternative paths for people once they reenter society.

Throughout the semester, students learn the fundamentals of Python and other computer science basics. They also receive career coaching, public speaking training, and learn negotiation skills and how to write a resume. Once students complete the program, Justice Through Code, which held its first cohort last year with just over 30 students, puts them in touch with its partners for paid internships and jobs.

Of the students in the first cohort who were interested in finding jobs or internships after the program, more than 80% of them were placed in relevant roles within six months, Justice Through Code founder Aedan Macdonald told TechCrunch. Antwan Bolden (pictured above) is one of the graduates who secured an internship after the program. Bolden has been interning full time at Columbia in the school’s IT department since December.

“It was just amazing that within one year of me coming across that flyer [for Justice Through Code] on Facebook, I’m actually working an internship at Columbia,” Bolden told TechCrunch. “And it’s just been tremendous. I mean, it’s been nonstop learning every single day.”

Before that, Bolden spent time at Emergent Works, where he helped build a no-police alternative to 911.

“It really gave me my first opportunity of using the theory that I learned in the program in a work setting,” Bolden said.

Justice Through Code works with a handful of tech partners to support its program and its students. Amazon Web Services, for example, provides laptops to students who need them while technologists from Google, Slack and Coursera speak to students on their experiences in tech.

AWS has yet to hire folks from the program but AWS Senior Manager of Corporate Reputation Sofia Mata-Leclerc says the company is excited to present opportunities to graduates.

“It’s definitely our intention to hire individuals from this program,” Mata-Leclerc told TechCrunch.

Justice Through Code is now accepting applications for its third cohort, which Macdonald says he hopes will have a class size of up to 60 people. While Justice Through Code does not require applicants to have any prior coding experience, the program does want participants to be comfortable using computers. The application process also seeks to determine how well someone may be equipped to deal with the frustrations that come with learning how to code.

“So much of learning how to code is being in a kind of state where you don’t know everything,” Macdonald said. “And it can be highly frustrating. And so I think seeing how the process of how people work through problems [is beneficial]. We do a couple logic problems in the interview, and it’s really not a matter of does somebody have the answer to this, but we actually have questions in pairs. So if somebody struggles on one question, we’ll go through in detail how to solve that and then see what their process is of applying that same principle of logic to the subsequent question that utilizes the same principle. So … how people are responding in a learning environment, as well as kind of curiosity about the the industry and just a real drive to succeed if they’re selected to participate in the program.”

Justice Through Code is not the only program that serves folks impacted by the criminal justice system. The Last Mile teaches folks business and coding skills while incarcerated, and similarly has partnerships in place with tech companies to help returned citizens find jobs.

What it’s like at San Quentin’s coding school

Macdonald, who himself spent time in prison, says he hopes Justice Through Code can help to shift “the negative stereotypes of the formerly incarcerated as not having any future beyond a minimum wage job.”

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Ex-Postmates VP of global public policy on the future of gig work

Vikrum Aiyer, the now-former vice president of global public policy and strategic communications at Postmates, penned a memo to his former colleagues and other stakeholders in the gig economy outlining what he thinks needs to happen next in the industry.

In his letter, Aiyer says “it would be a mistake for us to think that mild tweaks to worker classification, or a single state ballot measure, create a durable path forward for meaningfully addressing what Americans truly worry about: the chance to work, take care of their families, and not fret about what comes next.”

He goes on to say how tech platforms, labor advocates and other stakeholders “are not willing to evolve and give an inch on their respective models,” which means “we’ll never see progress that both empowers on-demand work and improves the social safety net.” Aiyer wants “this uncivil war that pits workers against capital, tech against labor unions, conservative versus liberal” to end.

In the letter, Aiyer puts forth a handful of recommendations for on-demand tech companies. He proposes, for example, that companies give board seats with voting rights to workers, embrace portable benefits “that can close the gap between what’s available to W2 and independent workers” and consider sectoral bargaining for gig workers.

Sectoral bargaining for independent workers would be an innovative reform that could provide sector-wide floors on earnings and benefits, while retaining IC classification. Some in organized labor have suggested extending the right to bargain for all workers –regardless of classification. Before industry dismisses this outright, and since this has not been done before in the US, it warrants critical examination by Congress, the GAO, or university labor centers to explore how card check rules, antitrust laws, and federal preemptions would be accounted for. In concept, this could empower workers and prevent less scrupulous companies from gaining a competitive advantage with a race to the bottom.

While Aiyer, along with Postmates and Uber, was a proponent of California’s Proposition 22, which legally classified gig workers as independent contractors, he says he does not want a carbon copy of it to be implemented throughout the country.

“While Prop 22 was a step forward when it comes to the argument that tech is making of balancing worker flexibility with more benefits on top of the 1099 status, there are two issues that need to prescribe the rest of the path forward,” he told TechCrunch.

The first is that this type of work has become rather popular, especially as the COVID-19 pandemic has led to millions of lost jobs throughout the country. Secondly, Aiyer says it’s important to get input from workers as companies push similar legislation either in other parts of the country, or at the federal level.

Aiyer pointed to a key difference in Postmates couriers in Los Angeles versus New York. In Los Angeles, Aiyer said many Postmates couriers are in cars while in New York, many are on bikes. Prop 22 put forth a new floor for insurance standard, but “that might not be the same type of coverage someone on a bike wants.”

“Prop 22 established a floor for California, but it certainly is not the ceiling of broader safety net reforms and what a nationwide policy should look like,” he said.

But for some gig workers, they have long said they don’t want to be independent contractors — even if that does come with some extra benefits. Instead, some have said they want to be employees and be entitled to the full range of benefits that W-2 status provides.

An even bigger battle for gig worker rights is on the horizon

Ultimately, Aiyer thinks it’s a false dichotomy to have a binary in our society where there are workers with benefits and independent workers without.

“What about having both a W-2 full-time employee model and you can raise the standard of independent work to a new height of benefits and you can have both,” Aiyer said. “But to do that in a way that is inclusive to workers and labor advocates, you need to have a reset of those conversations, which haven’t really been taking place since AB 5.”

Aiyer, whose last day at Uber-owned Postmates was in early January, told me he hopes for his letter to reinvigorate conversations between the different stakeholders in the space. As for him, Aiyer told me his next professional move will be doing public interest work.

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Examining the ‘pipeline problem’

The tech industry has long grappled with an overwhelming lack of diversity among employees, executives, venture-backed founders, venture capital firms and board members. And despite recent efforts to increase diversity throughout the industry, tech still remains predominantly white and male.

Over the years, many have argued that the lack of diversity in tech is caused by a so-called pipeline problem: that there is little diversity in tech because there is not enough qualified talent from diverse backgrounds.

Today, there is well-established data that proves the lack of diversity in tech cannot be attributed to a pipeline problem, Uber Chief Diversity Officer Bo Young Lee told TechCrunch.

“If we want to claim that it’s a pipeline issue, we would first have to claim that we’ve hired what is available in the pipeline,” she said. “It’s not a pipeline issue as much as it is a recruiting process challenge.”

But the notion that there is a pipeline problem, despite the evidence showing there is not one, at least partly remains in the public psyche. Courri Brady, director at diversity, equity and inclusion consulting firm Paradigm, recognizes there are still some folks who have yet to rid themselves of the myth of the pipeline problem.

“There’s still a perception to some degree that there’s a pipeline problem within some companies that I’m personally supporting,” Brady told TechCrunch. “But there are a couple of dynamics at play. 

One of those dynamics, Brady said, pertains to recruiting processes, which are relatively fixed inside tech companies. 

If companies are convinced only certain schools, programs or other companies are the only places that produce good talent, and those people are not diverse, Brady said, “then those issues are going to perpetuate themselves.”

Dr. Joy Lisi Rankin, a research lead for gender, race and power in artificial intelligence at the AI Now Institute, is actively researching the history of the pipeline problem. In the next six months, the plan is to publish it as a report and potentially turn it into a book. Rankin was kind of enough to give TechCrunch a sneak peek into some of her research so far.

“The very high-level view is, people have been talking about a pipeline problem in some form since the seventies,” Rankin told me. “And before that, often, it was like a quote, manpower problem, by focusing on who has PhDs or master’s degrees in a field or who has elite jobs in a field. But that focus is always on individuals. It’s on tracking people, not institutions and not structures. So this is why I think it continues to be a convenient excuse for a host of sins, because talking about a pipeline makes it seem as if all things are equal in the United States, and we just have to find a way to keep people in. But the truth is, when we think about a STEM pipeline, we don’t talk about the fact that education in the United States is by no means equal from birth onwards.”

There are, of course, programs like Black Girls Code, Girls Who Code, Code.org and others that aim to step in to help introduce kids to technology. But these issues go deeper than just STEM education, Rankin said.

“For a long time, it was you had to have a certain SAT score to get in somewhere or a certain GRE score for graduate school,” Rankin said. “But we know, literally decades of research have shown SATs correlate in no way with how you’re going to do in college or how you might be as a student, but correlate everything with how wealthy your family is, which also then correlates with race and access to all other sorts of things like tutoring and etc. But that same time of credentialing pops up time and time again.”

The entire education system has historically functioned as a gatekeeper to knowledge through credentialing, she said.

“Credentialing is a form of gatekeeping and protecting who has access to power and who doesn’t,” she said. “There’s this term that I think was coined a few years ago about how Silicon Valley tech companies are not meritocracies, but ‘mirrortocracies,’ so you’re hiring people who have similar credentials to you, had the same sort of schooling, etcetera. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re more qualified. We know that all sorts of diversity often yields better work and better outcomes in a variety of situations, but focusing on certain types of quote, qualifications and credentials, don’t reflect that.”

Beyond education, however, there are also other pipelines at play. There’s the cradle to prison pipeline, which I’ve referred to as “the other pipeline,” as well as “the revolving door of H1B visa workers who are treated with lower status,” Rankin said.

The other pipeline

“The pipeline is a way to silo all of that out and say, ‘we just need to get more Black women in tech,’ as opposed to saying, ‘actually, these companies are and have been racist and white supremacist and misogynist, and it’s those institutions and larger societal and global capitalist structures that need to change.”

What the idea of the pipeline also doesn’t capture is the fact that women were often tasked with doing manual computing in the 1950s and sixties, Rankin said. Back then, many considered coding to be a woman’s job.

“And it was only as it became clear how socially and economically and politically important that computing would be, that the profession over a decade or so became masculine. […] It clearly shows that as certain types of computing and programming became culturally valuable, more of those jobs that were better paying went to men. And it wasn’t that the work was any different but that because there was a prestige shift, there was also a shift in how it was gendered.”

Those are just some of the ideas Rankin will outline in her research paper, which she hopes will help to change the conversation happening in the tech industry about diversity, equity and inclusion. Instead of relying on the pipeline as an excuse, Rankin said she hopes the tech industry will focus more on inequities, structural racism, misogyny and how micro-inequities can lead to macro problems.

Rankin’s report will also have some recommendations, such as working to make education truly equitable and addressing surveillance, as well as the school to prison pipeline. She also believes salary data should be public information.

“As soon as we have more transparency around salaries, we can have more meaningful conversations,” she said.

Last week, former Pinterest employee Ifeoma Ozoma introduced legislation with the backing of California State Senator Connie Leyva to empower those who experience workplace discrimination and/or harassment. The Silenced No More Act (SB 331) would prevent the use of non-disclosure agreements in workplace situations involving all forms of discrimination and harassment.

“That’s certainly a step in the right direction,” Rankin said.

The proposed bill would expand the current protections workers have through the Stand Together Against Non-Disclosures Act, also authored by Leyva, that went into effect in 2019. Ozoma, along with former co-worker Aerica Shimizu Banks, came forward with claims of both racial and gender discrimination last year. They eventually settled with Pinterest, but the STAND Act technically only protected them for speaking out about gender discrimination. This new bill would ensure workers are also protected when speaking out about racial discrimination.

“It would be huge and not just for tech, but for your industry as well,” Ozoma told me earlier this week. “I believe that we don’t have real progress unless we approach things intersectionally and that’s the lesson from all of us.”

Meredith Whittaker, AI Now Faculty Director and co-organizer of the 2018 Google walkout, said this type of legislation absolutely necessary.

“From a structural perspective, it’s really evident we’re not going to change toxic, discriminatory tech environments without naming the problems,” Whittaker told TechCrunch. “We have decades of failed DEI PR, decades of people blaming the pipeline and decades of brilliant people like Ifeoma, Aerica and Timnit being harassed and pushed out of these environments. And oftentimes, people aren’t able to speak about their experiences so that the deep toxicity of these environments — the way it’s built into the structural operating procedures of these companies and workplaces — doesn’t get aired.”

There also needs to be more transparency around hiring and corporate recruiting, Rankin said. Pinterest, which was one of the first companies to set goals around diversity, disclosed last year that its hiring rates for women engineers, underrepresented minority engineers and underrepresented employees. But there’s room for even more transparency, like how many new hires come from those programs.

In Uber’s most recent diversity report, Uber talks about university recruiting, diversifying internship programs and more but the company’s reported data does not disclose how many hires came from those efforts.

Uber’s Bo Young Lee says the company is working on better tracking its top-of-funnel pipeline to ensure it’s representative of the available talent. This is called the Mansfield rule, which takes the Rooney Rule a couple of steps further. If Uber gets this right, then 14% of its recruiting pipeline would be Black and Hispanic, Lee said, citing a 2016 New York Times article about engineering graduates. It’s early days for Uber’s implementation of the Mansfield Rule, but the plan is to publish some of the data, Lee said. Though, she hasn’t yet decided exactly what that will look like.

Meanwhile, in Google’s latest diversity report, the company outlined how more than 1,300 women in Latin America were trained on web development and UX design with the help of Google volunteers and a Google.org grant. As a result, Google said 75% of the women who participated found jobs in tech. What Google did not mention, however, was how many women found jobs at Google.

In that same report, Google mentioned that it hired from 15 Historically Black College and Universities (HBCUs), 39 Hispanic-serving institutions and nine women’s colleges in the U.S. That all sounds good, but in December, former Google diversity recruiter April Curley came forward about how she was fired after she “became aware of all the racist shit put in place to keep black and brown students out of their pipeline.”

“We have a large team of recruiters who work incredibly hard to increase the hiring of Black+ and other underrepresented talent at Google, including a dedicated team that partners and strengthens our relationships with HBCUs,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement to TechCrunch. “This work is critical – in 2019 we welcomed graduates from 19 HBCUs and over the past decade, we’ve expanded our recruiting efforts to more than 800 schools. At the same time, we are absolutely committed to maintaining an inclusive and supportive workplace.  We don’t agree with the way April describes her termination, but it’s not appropriate for us to provide a commentary about her claims.”

Despite what may have happened at Google or what happens at other tech companies, it’s the overall lack of transparency around recruiting processes with which Rankin takes issue.

“It’s its own form of pipeline that is problematic and inequitable,” Rankin said. “[…] But how do you break down the scale of the problem so that it’s not just focusing on individuals.”

Rankin does not work inside tech companies and can’t speak to the inner workings of DEI departments, but said she does believe there are good people who are trying to make things better.

“I think this is a larger problem of education and perspective and how you can get to a point where you have an engineering degree or you get hired by a tech company and you’ve never had to think about race as a deeply rooted historical, structural problem,” she said. “[…] I think it’s convenient to disregard some of these larger issues and at some point, ignorance isn’t an excuse, especially given the events of the past few years.”