On showing up to the table

At Etsy, we have a monthly meeting called the Engineering Roundtable. Hosted by the Staff Engineering group (members of higher levels of engineering at Etsy), this is an open meeting where anyone can show up and raise topics that they want to talk about with the wider engineering organization, rather than just specific teams. Sounds great, right?

A little background: the Staff Engineering group is entirely male. Of the twenty-odd engineers at staff level or higher, none of them are women or nonbinary, and the majority of them are white. While Etsy has women in managerial--and even executive--positions in engineering there are no women in any of the top three engineering individual contributor levels. So, despite there being 40+ women in engineering at Etsy, there were regularly only one or two--and sometimes none--present at the Engineering Roundtable. Real talk: This is not super great.

A few weeks ago, the women and nonbinary folks in engineering started discussing this, wondering why, even though there are so many of us, there are never more than maybe one or two at this meeting. Even though various members of the Staff Engineering group had reached out to some of us for advice about how to make the meeting more diverse, and taken that advice to heart, most of us still weren’t very comfortable showing up to this meeting, and we wanted to explore why that might be.

Some of us mentioned that we were afraid of showing up and having nothing to say, reinforcing the idea that only men have things to contribute in this meeting. Some of us were afraid of saying something “wrong” or “stupid” - stereotype threat is a very real thing.

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An even more common theme that came up during this discussion was that most of us felt uncomfortable being The Only One in that meeting. Being the only one is hard. So we made a plan to show up together, for ourselves and for each other. A calendar invite was sent out by the amazing Lauren Sperber so we could grab lunch and show up at the meeting room early enough to grab seats that were front and center, rather than being stuck standing or sitting on the floor at the edges of the room (which means not being visible to remote participants dialing in as well).

And show up we did. 23 of us managed to make it to the January Roundtable meeting, either in person or remotely. Sitting in the room together as the rest of the meeting attendees trickled in was a really amazing experience--as was watching people’s reactions. People did double takes. People looked around the room and said, “wow”. A few people questioned if they were in the right meeting. Let that sink in for a minute. Barely half of the women and nonbinary people in engineering showed up to a meeting open to all engineers, and the sight of that made people question if they were in the right meeting at all. We assumed those reactions were because that meeting has for the months (if not years) of its history been so utterly dominated by men, but it’s also possible that the meeting room got full so quickly people assumed they were walking into an in-progress meeting instead.

We showed up. We let people know that we’re here, that we not only exist but we have things to say. Making our presence known and our voices heard was incredibly empowering - and that’s really what this was. Showing up. We didn’t prepare some grand agenda of things that we ourselves wanted to talk about, we simply showed up to an engineering meeting that we were invited to and participated in it. It might not sound like that big a deal, but it was for so many of us.

For me, it was an amazing experience to not only have a safe space where we were able to discuss these kinds of issues but where we felt comfortable planning something like this. I certainly appreciate the things that the Staff Engineering group has already done to make this meeting more inviting, such as renaming it from Staff Engineering Open Meeting to simply Engineering Roundtable, and placing more emphasis on the agenda so people feel more comfortable raising topics for discussing. But a big part of what made this such an empowering act was that we ourselves decided to show up - this wasn’t a decision that was made for us. Everyone I spoke to during and after this meeting felt the same way, that the simple act of showing up to this meeting turned out out to be a radical act of self-empowerment.

Overall, this meeting was such a positive experience for us that we’re planning to keep going back and make this a regular thing. We all enjoyed the camaraderie that came from planning this and showing up together, and we want to have a significant representation of women at this meeting be such a regular occurrence that people are no longer surprised when engineering meetings are full of so many awesome women talking about their work. Having people encouraging and supporting each other to show up like this is certainly one way of helping these meetings be more inclusive and representative of the engineering organization as a whole, but I don’t want us to stop there.

Men, I want to talk to you for a minute now. I want you to think about the meetings that you’re in, the tables that you sit at, and I want you to count how many of the people sitting at those tables are people like you. Don’t just estimate - actually count. If you find that the majority of people present look like you, I want you to ask yourself why that is. See if you can find an answer that doesn’t involve the word “pipeline”. The answers you come up with will probably make you a little uncomfortable, and that’s fine.

Ask yourself what you can do to make the tables you sit at more inclusive of and welcoming to people who aren’t like you. Don’t simply tell these other people to “just show up”. Having 23 of us show up at an engineering meeting would have been very different had we been told to do so by men--part of what made our showing up so empowering was that we made the decision to show up for each other and help each other feel more comfortable doing so.

This means you need to do your homework. And then really ask yourself what you, as members of the dominant, privileged group, can do to make your meetings and your organizations better for everyone else. Create a table where people who aren’t like you are not only invited to show up, but feel safe and encouraged to do so.