We need to fill the tech talent pipeline with underrepresented, diverse people: CodePath CEO

CodePath Founder & CEO Michael Ellison joins Yahoo Finance’s On The Move panel to break down why the tech industry needs to focus on creating a more diverse work environment for software engineers.

Video Transcript

ADAM SHAPIRO: Welcome back to Yahoo Finance "On The Move." We talked about jobs in the last segment, and future jobs we can talk about right now. We're going to do that with Michael Ellison. He is CodePath's founder and CEO, and he's here to talk with us about the future of coding and what that looks like. And it's good to see you because the future of coding and job growth, if we hire from your pool of talented students, 95% of CodePath's students are Black or Latinx or women. Are employers realizing that not only do they have to hire these folks, but they have to hire these folks who get the training that you're providing?

MICHAEL ELLISON: Well, I think there's been a big change for employers with the events with George Floyd over the past couple of months, more appreciation for thinking about diversity not just being with women, which a lot of tech companies have focused on for quite some time, but also moving to thinking about more Black and Latinx students and especially coming from low-income backgrounds where previously, that wasn't as much the case.

MELODY HAHM: And Michael, just so folks understand, CodePath is a 501(c)(3) non-profit, and you work and collaborate with over 50 colleges and universities. And it seems to be doubling in size every semester. Give us a pulse check right now. During the coronavirus pandemic, have you been partnering with more schools? How are those relationships going right now?

MICHAEL ELLISON: So we have partnered with many more schools, as well as we've been a critical source of support for those schools. We're running in-person, for-credit computer science courses across the country. In the first two weeks of the pandemic, we ended up helping 26 colleges and universities transition to online courses. We've been the first layer of support for many of our students that are losing access to different support services. A lot of students had mentorship, informal connections on the campus that CodePath has been a layer of support.

And then as we're moving into the fall and moving into 2021, schools are trying to figure out, how do I do online education and how do I do it well? Most schools are thinking about online education as let's do the same thing we've done in the classroom. But there is an extra opportunity for personalization and for support that didn't exist that we're trying to help faculty transition to and think about.

MELODY HAHM: When you think about overall the workforce in the pipeline that you're creating into tech companies based in California, in particular, what would you say Silicon Valley has gotten wrong? You know, you alluded to the fact that it was only over the last couple of months that the spotlight has shone brightly on this need to have BIPOC communities in the workforce, especially at those high-level tech, engineering jobs. Do you feel like-- you know, what was sort of the disconnect there? Why did it take so long, and will the momentum actually continue?

MICHAEL ELLISON: What the tech industry and what many large employers have gotten wrong is focusing too much on quarter-to-quarter hiring numbers as well as also not placing an emphasis on equity. When you look at trying to fill the talent pipeline this quarter, this year, you're ignoring the fact that there were only 7,360 Black computer science graduates in all 2019 and only 8% of those graduates ended up becoming software engineers. So this means only 588 career-ready Black software developers each year graduating in an industry with 1.4 million software developers. You can't fill a diversity gap with numbers so small.

And then when you look at the equity emphasis or you look at how tech companies will recruit, most of the employees are getting to tech companies based on their existing networks. And then when you talk about diversity but you don't have a lens of, am I working first-generation college students? Am I looking at low-income populations?

Guess what? You end up going to the same places that you always go to-- elite schools. You look at students with lots of resumes. The students who are the first in are the ones who have the connections. The students who are the last ones in and the first ones out in a pandemic like this are the ones from lower-income backgrounds. So we need to have that strong equity lens and shift our thinking to go beyond numbers, focus more on long-term, sustainable community change with employers.

ADAM SHAPIRO: Michael, as you track the progress of your graduates through their careers, for instance, one of the metrics that you can look at is that Black CodePath students, as you say, are 7.6 times more likely to work in tech than the national average. But one of the things we also hear is that companies, once they hire these very skilled people, have a hard time retaining them. Is there anything in your, you know, line of vision that companies could do better to retain the people you've trained so they don't have to compete and lose them to other companies?

MICHAEL ELLISON: Well, so first to just address the-- many Black computer science graduates are not prepared for the industry. They're starting behind. They're coming from institutions that may not have the support. There's a nationwide shortage of CS professors. So they're already coming in, and they need additional support that then-- and onboarding and training programs, a lot of employers don't concentrate and focus on.

Over the past couple of years, with the advent of a lot of moves and a lot of employee training gone online and it being a one-size-fits-all, let's provide everything to everyone, it's missed out on and lacked the curation and the personalization that actually really connects with people and especially people that may come into the workforce with imposter syndrome. They may have different gaps that they may not be aware of.

And so I think it's really, really critical for employers not just to think about, do I have an employee resource group? But how my thinking about the development of my employees? How am I proactively helping them to understand what their gaps are, filling them, supporting them so that then they can retain at my company, they can get extra benefit from working here?

RICK NEWMAN: Hey Michael, Rick Newman here. The value proposition for traditional, full-tuition colleges is not looking so great right now, as colleges are trying to, you know, cram kids back into classrooms and do everything they can just to keep them paying that full tuition, not discounting tuition even if it's a discounted experience. So two questions, I guess-- number one, is that an opportunity for CodePath? Are you seeing more people interested in what you have to offer? Number two, is that, like, a marketing opportunity for you to say, hey, you know, you pay-- you get what you pay for here if you're not satisfied with the value you're getting at a regular university?

MICHAEL ELLISON: So it is an opportunity for CodePath but maybe a little bit different than what you're saying. We're free for students, have always been free for students. We don't charge anything before, during, after, free for institutions. We focus on being a layer that supplements existing two-year, four-year colleges and universities to help to make sure that there's less burden on faculty. We're doing grading. We're doing student support. We're working with top tech companies to put mentors inside the classroom.

So it has been a big opportunity because we have an expertise with online education and teaching and high completion courses that are also very, very student centered, that build their confidence. But we see our role as helping to integrate with these institutions, bridging the gap with industry, and then in turn, ensuring that increasing enrollment, decreasing attrition for underrepresented minorities nationwide but by leveraging what's already here, as opposed to trying to tear something down and then replace it with something else.

ADAM SHAPIRO: Michael Ellison is CodePath founder and CEO. Good to have you here.