Do free work on your own terms

Usually, I tell people not to do free work.

It’s especially important if you’re a programmer, designer, or writer and the value of your work isn’t as obvious as what someone might assign to a pair of new shoes. 

But that’s not entirely accurate. Some of the world’s best and most talented creatives do free work, and quite regularly. Free work can be a good way to stretch, to try something new, to take a risk. 

Often, where the problems arise in free work are with people who don’t understand or care about what matters to a creative. 

This is best summed up in a tongue in cheek price list that graphic designers share every now and then. Basically, if you’re doing free or low pay work, you’d better also have the creative freedom and opportunity to experiment with it. 

Someone that doesn’t understand this balance isn’t likely to appreciate your best work, either. 

In other words: it’s ok to do free work, as long as it’s on your terms. 

Doing the work is more important than celebrating entrepreneurship

There’s a great phrase that a friend of mine from Boulder uses often. 

She calls it “doing the work.”

It’s one of those things that seems obvious, but isn’t well understood by startups or founders. 

Sometimes that’s because of ego and/or too high a degree of self-awareness, and sometimes it’s simply because “doing the work” can be a slow, painful process without much worth celebrating. 

Doing the work isn’t about appearances, it’s about the value actually delivered or created. 

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A strong culture isn't about what happens when things go well

Startups and corporates both constantly preach about the importance of culture.

It's something that's supposed to attract and keep the hardest working and most talented folks, and people who lead teams or found companies like to brag about how good their culture is, and how much everyone likes working there.

But good, deeply creative culture has nothing to do with sodas in a fridge, ping pong tables, bonuses, awards, or praising people.

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Countering gender bias

Negotiation is everywhere. 

Though not always obvious, negotiation rarely happens in isolation. How you negotiate in one area (like salary) immediately affects other areas (like long work hours, unpaid overtime, and possibilities for promotion). 

One place where this is critical is the powerful, often unspoken, element of gender bias. For women and non-gender binary confirming individuals, “good” negotiation is a double bind. You sometimes have to play the game the way that men do, but you also face punishment for reasons that are difficult to call out (think Hilary Clinton being attacked for being “too aggressive” vs. criticism for being “a weak leader who cries in public”). 

It’s a very subtle line to walk, and there’s already great deal of research into how gender bias works… 

The Ellen Pao suit against VC firm Kleiner Perkins from earlier this year illustrated how troubling that double bind truly is. If you pay close attention to workplace dynamics, many of the scenarios from that case, like preference in seating charts, will sound familiar (some of Pao’s testimony is here, and the full stack of court documents is here). 

And while hidden negotiations and bias have implications for people on the unequal side of a power balance, it also, as the HBR piece from above suggests, has an effect on everyone. Creativity, productivity, autonomous decision making, and quality of work all suffer when gender bias is at play. 

But how do we realistically and practically combat gender bias when it is hidden in so many cases? Here are a few insights from a recent email exchange I had a few months ago with two of the smarter folks I know who work in technology / startups… 

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A good hiring culture / pipeline is not on demand

Yesterday one of my roommates and I talked about the lack of diversity in tech / startups. 

In particular, we were thinking out loud about pipeline problems. In plain English that just translates as: how to get a set of good, qualified applicants who aren’t all white, male, and from upper economic tiers. 

This is a fairly regular conversation for me. It’s also something I’ve worked on in startups and corporate, at times directly via hiring and at times by supporting other people involved in or responsible for the process. 

Even the best founders / tech companies struggle with this. It’s common to hear people say that they are open to having a diverse hiring culture….and then find out that they don’t know how or aren’t willing to make the effort beyond posting jobs in a few obvious places. This is usually followed by wondering why they seem to get the same type of applicants. 

Other people have written extensively about why you might want to have a diverse hiring culture with respect to race, gender, sexual orientation, and other categories, so I won’t do that here…if you are looking for stats and research for the whys, here’s a good / fairly comprehensive resource created by Brittany Laughlin, GM of the Union Square Ventures Network and multiple times an entrepreneur. 

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