Episode 3

Timothy Bardlavens

Timothy Bardlavens is chaotic good in its purest form. He is a Gay, Black man from the Carolinas, the youngest son of a single mother and everything institutional trauma and oppression says you cannot be or become. He is a Design Leader, a Cultural Strategist, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) specialist, a Fellowship Co-Founder, a writer and International Speaker & Facilitator.

Transcript (interactive)

Transcript (PDF)

Transcript
Matt May:

This is InEx, a show about inclusive design.

Matt May:

I'm your host, Matt May.

Matt May:

In this episode:

Timothy Bardlavens:

I think if you are an individual contributor and you don't

Timothy Bardlavens:

believe in the work that you're doing is equitable, or you don't believe that

Timothy Bardlavens:

the organization itself is equitable, or whatever the case may be, find a new job.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Because you don't have the power to make the changes and you are going

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to create so much harm for yourself by trying to go against the grain.

Matt May:

A conversation with Timothy Bardlavens.

Matt May:

And welcome.

Matt May:

We are now into our third episode.

Matt May:

And with that, it is my great pleasure to introduce you all to Timothy Bardlavens.

Matt May:

I have his bio here, and it's beautiful.

Matt May:

Timothy Bardlavens is chaotic good in its purest form.

Matt May:

He is a Gay Black man from the Carolinas, the youngest son of

Matt May:

a single mother and everything institutional trauma and oppression

Matt May:

that says you cannot be or become.

Matt May:

He has a product design leader, a cultural strategist, diversity equity

Matt May:

and inclusion specialist, a co-founder, a writer and an international speaker

Matt May:

and facilitator on topics of design and tech culture, equity, white

Matt May:

supremacy, and systems of oppression.

Matt May:

Timothy, thank you for joining us.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Thank you.

Timothy Bardlavens:

I appreciate you for having me.

Matt May:

And we want to start with the land acknowledgement.

Matt May:

OCAD University acknowledges the ancestral and traditional

Matt May:

territories of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Haudenosaunee, the

Matt May:

Anishinaabe and the Huron-Wendat.

Matt May:

Timothy and I are presently on the ancestral and traditional lands of

Matt May:

the Duwamish and Coast Salish, peoples Kiikaapoi, Jumanos, Tawakoni and Wichita,

Matt May:

who are the original owners and custodians of the land on which we stand and create.

Matt May:

We've gone back a while.

Matt May:

I've known you for some period of time here.

Matt May:

I want to talk about your career and how you came up and out of what

Matt May:

motivates you in the design space.

Matt May:

So we can we can take it from there.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Yeah, absolutely.

Matt May:

How did you start?

Matt May:

What was your motivation for becoming a designer?

Matt May:

How did you break into design?

Timothy Bardlavens:

Yeah.

Timothy Bardlavens:

I think it started with undergrad.

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So I was actually an English major and I wanted to become the editor-in-chief

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of Jet magazine, which is like the Blackest magazine that I knew of.

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And so at that point my minor was in philosophy.

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And so basically I was like, I should take some design classes.

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So I ended up taking a couple of design classes, change my

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minor from philosophy to design.

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And then I was also at the same time working in the office of student

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activities and leadership or what you would call a student union these days.

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And basically are these two amazing people who were my

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supervisors, two Black women, Ms.

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D, Ms.

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Diane.

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And they're like, basically, you should just do this.

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Like you should just go in for it.

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And at that time I had created what we call tissue talk, which was

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basically this weekly periodical of events happening across campus.

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And then we would have student workers go and put them in all the bathrooms, i.e.,

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why I called it, I named the tissue talk.

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Funny thing about life.

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I graduated almost 10 years ago and they're still doing tissue talk.

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So I feel like that's my claim to undergrad fame.

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But yeah, that's what switched me into graphic design as a major.

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And then from there, it's kind of history in the sense that, it was

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kinda tough at first because I wasn't like an artist by trade or anything.

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I didn't draw my life or anything like that.

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And most of these people had been in their major for at least

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a good two years before me.

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So I had feel like I played catch up a bit.

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But then after I graduated I went off to, I actually, first job was like

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at a trophy manufacturing company.

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I got fired from that.

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Actually quit design for about three years and went into retail.

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I became a store manager in a couple of stores, and then it's really

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an, a, another woman this time a Latinx woman, or a Latina woman.

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She came into my store and she was at the time.

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And I think she still is the internal like vice president of

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internal communications, that bank.

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This while I was living in Charlotte, North Carolina and

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she basically was like, your life doesn't start until your thirties.

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Like your twenties are a time where you're just trying to figure things

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out and you feel like you're not moving fast enough and all these things.

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And so basically she just gave me the encouragement to keep trying.

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And he should actually even let me come to bank of America and tour and meet

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a bunch of people internally as well.

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It's like pushed me back to wanting to get back into design.

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I made a goal to find a job.

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I started off as a contract worker in a manufacturing company and

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their only marketing designer.

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And then, yeah, I was in marketing until I think 2015, 2016.

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And then I learned about user experience and I learned about what that means

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and all the pieces of his research and all this in service design.

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At the time I was working at Capital One, they had just acquired Adaptive Path,

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which was like, I guess if IDEO was the big one, like Adaptive Path was the IDEO

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of UX in a sense is from my understanding.

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And I went to their intensive in DC.

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It was a week long thing.

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And I left there like, oh, this is everything I've thought about.

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Just a totally different language.

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And so I just went down that path and I ran for it.

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And so I went to.

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A startup where it was like run by this guy who was actually a

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contestant on The Bachelorette.

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And it was a terrible company, but I joined as the senior director of creative

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and UX, which was such a BS title.

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Cause it was me and one other person.

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But that I was there for four months and then Microsoft called and I was

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like, y'all, don't want to hire me.

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This is not going to happen.

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And then I found a manager who was actually crazy enough to say,

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yeah, we want to offer you a role.

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And that's what moved me into Seattle for almost five years stint and going

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from Microsoft to Zillow to Meta.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And yeah, it's been an interesting ride.

Matt May:

So maybe it was the "senior" that did it.

Matt May:

Maybe if you had just been director, Microsoft wouldn't come calling, but

Matt May:

now you, yeah, that level, that matters.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Exactly.

Timothy Bardlavens:

It was that thing because it's so funny.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Cause I, went from "senior director" to "designer 2."

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And I was like, oh, okay.

Timothy Bardlavens:

That's cool.

Matt May:

So getting into the business, how did that evolution

Matt May:

kind of strike you in terms of the kind of work that you were doing?

Matt May:

Like the the environment that you were in?

Matt May:

What did that progression feel like from, you got a graphic design

Matt May:

degree to this sort of moment of, UX is the thing you want to do,

Matt May:

to settling in as a practitioner.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Yeah.

Timothy Bardlavens:

I don't know, like it's, a lot of, it has been a series of like partially, luck, or

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blessing, depending on what you believe.

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Part of it has been like me just being willing to take like

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risk and big leaps of faith.

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Like I wasn't, when I was in Charlotte I actually had gotten a job at Ernst

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& Young and I was supposed to move to DC as a graphic designer for Ernst & Young,

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which is for most people who don't know is like a big accounting firm.

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Is one of the big three or something like that.

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And it was a week before I was supposed to get in the car and drive up there.

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When something just told me, I was just, I'm tired of surviving.

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I want to thrive.

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Financially, especially, it was like a big thing for me.

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It was actually for a senior designer role.

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I think that when I was sitting there, I was like, you know what, moving to

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DC, making this kind of money, like I'm going to get a really small apartment.

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I'm not going to really enjoy it.

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And so in, at the time Capital One had just called in.

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I was like, you know what?

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I think this is the right thing.

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And that was like, I basically told Ernst & Young, sorry, I can't accept the role

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that y'all just gave me relocation and all this other stuff for, to go and take.

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And I sat and I waited for six weeks for Capital One to call me back.

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And then I had to fly out to Dallas to interview.

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And there was no guarantee I'd get the job.

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And then once I got the job, then I had to figure out, okay, how do

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I even afford to get to Dallas?

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I have no money.

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Cause I sat for weeks without a job.

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And so I had to go back and ask him like, hey, can you give me my bonus?

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So there's things like that, that I had to do.

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Even me leaving Charlotte was interesting, because as like my first real design job,

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true design job, like one, only reason I converted from a contractor to a full-time

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employee so quickly was because I needed to get a car, but they wouldn't let me buy

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it if I was a contractor and so I talked to my manager and they basically hired

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me that same day, and then just backdated the hire letter so that I could get a car.

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But then it turned out to be one of the most like oppressive

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places I'd ever worked.

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Like I was the only Black person in the corporate side.

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Everyone else worked in the warehouse.

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And so I had no one who really looked like me.

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And then also, like my manager was this white woman who I'd

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never engaged with people with passive aggression in that way.

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My mother is a very direct person.

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I'm a very direct person.

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So like, how do you counter passive aggression with directness when

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then you're always the aggressor?

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And I had to deal with that.

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And it was like all this other stuff and I just, it was so terrible.

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Like it got to the point where it, the final days where I just didn't know if

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that was the day I was going to get fired.

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Like everyday I just went to work thinking, today's the

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day I'm going to be fired.

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And it was a really, it was a really tough space to be in.

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Especially as someone who wanted to continue to get better and design who had

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like really lofty goals to be a creative director until doing all these things.

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And, at that time I was just trying to figure out a new way to create a email

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template for this new machine that they created or wherever the case may be.

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But I think that it was good.

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I think it was a series of the right decisions.

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Like me not going to Ernst & Young, I think it was a really important decision.

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And even learning about UX, but also being willing to say,

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okay, now I've learned about it.

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I'm going to trust myself enough to just throw some stuff together on my report.

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Like I literally, when I got back from the intensive, when I was working at

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Capital One I was an email designer basically there as well, but I was

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supporting copywriting, things like that.

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And basically what I did was I created a bunch of wireframes and stuff.

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I was like, okay, cool.

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Like I'm just going to create the journey of what this email campaign would be.

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And then map that out.

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Or I did this like landing page thing.

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So I'm just going to articulate what are the different parts of the landing page?

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It's very rudimentary stuff.

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I should not have gotten a job anywhere.

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I lucked out that the startup had no idea who like what design

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should look like, or they didn't have a high bar quite honestly.

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And I think that I'm really good at telling stories.

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And so I was able to get my way into that.

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And then I had to learn Sketch on the spot.

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Up until this point, all I've been using is Illustrator, all

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I've been using is like Photoshop.

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Like I haven't been using anything else.

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So I had to learn on the spot and rush and go.

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I had to figure out how to create journeys for this new checkout

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flow and a bunch of other stuff.

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And so I was like learning as I went along in that four months was super

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intense, but it gave me at least one portfolio piece, in addition to some

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of the stuff I worked on at Capital One to help me interview at Microsoft.

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And I lucked out that the person who I interviewed with quite

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honestly, I think that they had a very flashy view of design.

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But also how Microsoft did design was a bit more like they saw me as a pure UXer,

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not so much a visual designer, which helped me out a ton, but I was also,

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I was a solid visual designer as well.

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But I think that's what helped me was, I was a strong storyteller,

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which they really emphasized strong storytelling on that team.

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And I had a pretty good rationale around product implementation and product design.

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That's kind of what helped me slide in the door a little bit.

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So I I think throughout my whole career, if it wasn't for the storytelling piece,

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if it wasn't for having that gift of being able to connect a bunch of stuff

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together and get people to believe what I'm saying, then I don't think

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I would've made it as far as I have.

Timothy Bardlavens:

It's always been a thing that has helped me out a ton.

Matt May:

Yeah.

Matt May:

And that narrative capability is just being able to explain your own

Matt May:

designs, I think is so difficult.

Matt May:

And, the portfolio emphasis, I think, just compared to the experiences I've had

Matt May:

with interviewing where you just don't see the completion of the vision, that seems

Matt May:

to be the part that really stands out.

Matt May:

So how was your experience as an employee because you're building

Matt May:

all of these skills, right?

Matt May:

You're developing things.

Matt May:

You're learning things on the fly.

Matt May:

You're also standing out because you're showing new ways of doing things in this

Matt May:

startup and then, over at Microsoft, like how does that affect your work experience?

Matt May:

Do you feel like in these places, like everybody's all the same?

Matt May:

How do you feel that you, as a Black man in design spaces, how do you

Matt May:

feel that your performing equitably?

Matt May:

How do you feel like you have equity in that system and the

Matt May:

places that you've worked?

Timothy Bardlavens:

Yeah.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Honestly, I don't think I've ever really, I don't think it was ever fully equitable.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And it's so funny cause I've actually, I actually I got a therapist, a few,

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like a couple of months ago and we've been working through this because I'm

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in this transition point in my life.

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And one of the big things that I realized is that it was two things.

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One was that I had spent so much time putting so much energy into

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work and into sort of proving my value and proving like I'm good

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enough both to myself and to others.

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Because I think that's the thing about especially being a Black or brown in

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these spaces is that especially as heavily white and even like really heavily,

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especially in tech, heavily white and of Asian descent folks, if you don't

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look like one of those two demographics largely then it's like this proving

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of belongingness that you have to do.

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And so I'd done that for almost the past decade, but definitely

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for the past, five or six years.

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And in doing so, work became a major part of my identity.

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And an assault to me, institutionally from work was also an assault to my identity.

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Even to this point today, I'm realizing some of the trauma that I've

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experienced institutionally and some of the institutional betrayals that

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I've experienced, and realizing that a lot of the reason why they hurt even

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more was because I'd wrapped so much of my personal identity into work,

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and my own personal value into work.

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And so the results of that is also is that I've spent the majority of my career

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hustling, like constantly hustling.

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I was talking to Steve Johnson, who's the head of design for Netflix.

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He told me, you're at a level now where you don't need to hustle anymore.

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You need to be strategic.

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And it's actually been a transition that I'm trying really hard to do.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Because I'm so used to, I go into a company, I'm usually under leveled.

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I have to prove that I'm valuable and worth being at the company in general,

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and then have to prove my value and my ability to operate at the next

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level or at the level I should be.

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And I do that constantly over and over again, every company.

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And I wrote in my first article of Navigating Whiteness that I've

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never joined a company at the level I feel like I should have

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been, I've always been under level.

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That's still true to this day and it's actually funny because when I wrote

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that, especially working at Meta, they're like, can you change this

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sentence, because it makes it seem like the same thing happened to you here.

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And I was like, no, because it did.

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I'm under level.

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And even with me being promoted, I'm still under level.

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And so one of the big things that I've been trying to work through my

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life too, is how do I stop hustling?

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How do I disconnect?

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This exercise I was doing through my therapist just this morning.

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We were talking about words that define me.

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And she was like, do you know what words define you that are outside of your work?

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And I was like, I'm not really sure.

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So she pulled up this document and shared her screen and she was

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like, here's a bunch of adjectives.

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Pick out the ones that you feel like are related to you or you feel represent you.

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I started with things like approachable and communicative and leader.

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And I was like, wait.

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And I had to pause with them and say, wait, I'm defaulting to looking

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at how I want people to look at me from a professional perspective.

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And so I had to go back and start over and pick four different words that I

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felt would represent me a bit more.

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And so the ones I picked out were happiness, generosity,

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empathetic, and balance.

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And for me, I don't really know what happiness looks like.

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Happiness for me was always the thing I did at work.

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As opposed to what do I do when I'm off work?

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Cause when I'm off work, I just sit on the couch and I just like,

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I'm just like, non-existent.

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I think there's like this thought process that some people have a

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belief that you're the only real thing and everyone else is like robots.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And so when you don't see them, they just like power down until you see them again.

Matt May:

Like The Truman Show, you're the center of the universe and

Matt May:

everybody's an actor that's like you.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And how I operate is, I was the person like who powered down.

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So you'd see me and I'd be all in.

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I'll be at this conference now, speaking of this thing and I'd be like at work

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and so on and so forth, but then I get home and I just powered down and I'm

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just in my own little bubble and no one sees me until I power back up again.

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And I think that's something that I had that I've been having to

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work through is, okay, how do I create that balance in my life?

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And how do I create happiness that's not attached to work.

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And these other things, because I spent so much time proving worth, proving

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value, proving that I should be in this space, like all this proving.

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And it basically became a deep part of my identity that I now have to

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like dismantle and transition out of and become like, figure out who am I?

Timothy Bardlavens:

Who is Timothy now?

Timothy Bardlavens:

If let's say I get the title that I want, I get all these other things.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Okay, great.

Timothy Bardlavens:

But then who am I beyond that?

Timothy Bardlavens:

And that's something that I've had to work through.

Matt May:

It's fascinating because that touches on the kinds of discussions

Matt May:

that people are having about the idea of belonging at work or the extent

Matt May:

to which your work is your life.

Matt May:

And not just work life balance.

Matt May:

Like I get off at five, but I still carry this stuff with me, but to

Matt May:

feel like when I'm at work, that I'm doing things that are ethically

Matt May:

aligned with what I want to be doing.

Matt May:

That I don't have microaggressions toward me in the office, that I have

Matt May:

spaces that are mine, that are safe.

Matt May:

And I want to get into your current job at Meta, and preface it by saying, when

Matt May:

we talked about this before you started.

Matt May:

And my reaction to that was, give or take: what?

Matt May:

This is where you wanted to ply your trade, but as you become a manager

Matt May:

and thinking about the role and the work that you're doing as leading a

Matt May:

team of people, and making sure that they feel that they have a sense of

Matt May:

equity and that they have a sense of community, and that you're demonstrating

Matt May:

your value at a different level.

Matt May:

How does that change for you?

Matt May:

Like how does that change your perspective toward work, toward

Matt May:

managing people, et cetera?

Timothy Bardlavens:

Yeah, I think any manager will say the hardest thing

Timothy Bardlavens:

to do, is balance your own personal growth with that of your team.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Or your own personal happiness with that of your team.

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There's always this thing of, if you're a good leader, then you really want to

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make sure your team is taken care of.

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And I tell every anyone who's on my team I believe that it is my

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ethical responsibility to ensure that they can have a job anywhere else.

Timothy Bardlavens:

If they left next week, they would have everything on every tool necessary

Timothy Bardlavens:

to get a job at any other company and be able to be successful in doing so.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And so I feel as though there's a lot of responsibility that we have

Timothy Bardlavens:

that I have especially like even with hiring, like last year between

Timothy Bardlavens:

myself and one other person we worked on this initiative and alone, like

Timothy Bardlavens:

us alone, just two people, like two design managers, plus one recruiter.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Our once talent sourcer, actually.

Timothy Bardlavens:

We single-handedly tripled the number of Black women product

Timothy Bardlavens:

design managers at Meta.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Like when I joined the company, there were zero.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Then Joy Roberts, who I worked with at Zillow.

Timothy Bardlavens:

She was the one.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Now there's I think, eight.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And mind you, like that's still not a lot, but that's the way more

Timothy Bardlavens:

than what it was two years ago.

Timothy Bardlavens:

For me, a lot of the work that has been on the more, how do I build more

Timothy Bardlavens:

equitable systems side, or how to like, think about my team is really,

Timothy Bardlavens:

how am I actually being an example?

Timothy Bardlavens:

One of the things I did was I actually ended up switching teams,

Timothy Bardlavens:

but one of the things I did on my previous team was I hired and

Timothy Bardlavens:

built an all Black leadership team.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Black managers.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Majority were Black women.

Timothy Bardlavens:

One of the most senior people on our team that was in that see she's one step from

Timothy Bardlavens:

being a director, also a Black woman.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And not only that, but she's a Black queer woman who is younger than me.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And she is one step from director.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And when I say younger than me she's 10 years younger than me.

Timothy Bardlavens:

I think she's just hitting maybe 25 or 26, something like that, which is crazy.

Timothy Bardlavens:

But the thing is that I saw her talent and I like saw, like I

Timothy Bardlavens:

actually, I intentionally reached out.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Or I intentionally spent time understanding her in her work before

Timothy Bardlavens:

we even hired her to make sure she'll succeed, she was going to be successful.

Timothy Bardlavens:

I even sent her profile to all of our recruiting team that we worked with.

Timothy Bardlavens:

I say, hey, if you were to look at this person's LinkedIn profile, what would

Timothy Bardlavens:

you bring them in and level them as, and hands down, all of them said two to

Timothy Bardlavens:

three levels lower than her actual level.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And she has not only met expectations, but exceeded expectations at her level.

Timothy Bardlavens:

For me, that's been a really important thing, to say hey, I'm going to prove it.

Timothy Bardlavens:

I'm going to show you better than I can tell you.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And then not only am I going to show you, better than I can tell you, but

Timothy Bardlavens:

I'm going to make sure that every single person on this team feels as though

Timothy Bardlavens:

they have what they need professionally, personally, whatever the case may be.

Timothy Bardlavens:

I think that while that's great, the downside of it is that also means

Timothy Bardlavens:

that many times I'm sacrificing myself for my team, right?

Timothy Bardlavens:

Like I'm being the umbrella for them, which means, okay,

Timothy Bardlavens:

who's the umbrella for me?

Timothy Bardlavens:

And I think that is always one of the challenges is when you have to sometimes

Timothy Bardlavens:

make the choice between you and your team.

Timothy Bardlavens:

It seems like it's an easy choice, but it's really not.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And I've had to work through the guilt of making the decision for myself as opposed

Timothy Bardlavens:

to my team and being like, look, I'm here for y'all, I'm still going to support

Timothy Bardlavens:

you, but I gotta do what's good for me.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And so those are some of the things that I've had to work through that are

Timothy Bardlavens:

just like hiring challenges, making sure people get like adequately promoted

Timothy Bardlavens:

and level of making sure that even before you joined the company, are you

Timothy Bardlavens:

at the level you re you deserve to be?

Timothy Bardlavens:

And like even getting challenged by other leaders and being, hey, you're

Timothy Bardlavens:

advocating too much for this person.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Or if I'm saying like, hey, I think you're under leveling

Timothy Bardlavens:

this person, here's my story.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And then the feedback is when you tell people that it shuts

Timothy Bardlavens:

down the conversation, it makes them not want to argue.

Timothy Bardlavens:

I was like, that's fine.

Timothy Bardlavens:

They shouldn't.

Timothy Bardlavens:

it's still the reality.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And so those are some of the things that, that I have to work through

Timothy Bardlavens:

just on the people side of things.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And that doesn't include the normal hey, because this person

Timothy Bardlavens:

is a woman how are they being treated by their male counterparts?

Timothy Bardlavens:

And are they actually supported and so on and so forth?

Timothy Bardlavens:

And how do I make sure that I'm a champion for a whole bunch of different types

Timothy Bardlavens:

of people and also be seen as impartial and fair, but also like I, it was like

Timothy Bardlavens:

this balance of having your team's back, but don't advocate too much because

Timothy Bardlavens:

I can be seen as a negative thing.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And it's like a weird dance that you have to play.

Matt May:

And this is why the conversation is, okay, so we're increasing the

Matt May:

diversity of the organization, but they're all only at the lower levels, right?

Matt May:

You have these new hires that are coming in, that are diversifying

Matt May:

the organization, but being a people manager, you have an umbrella effect

Matt May:

of the people that are below you.

Matt May:

But then you have to do this kind of grassroots effort to create a coalition,

Matt May:

not just an employee network, but one-to-one relationships with people

Matt May:

just to make sure that you've raised the volume enough about the people

Matt May:

that need to advance from there.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Absolutely, and the big thing is for me is, even

Timothy Bardlavens:

setting people up for success on faster trajectories and promotions

Timothy Bardlavens:

where I need to I've had to make sure I do that at least for my team.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Again, I can show better than I can tell.

Timothy Bardlavens:

But the other piece to that point, and this is actually why I started

Timothy Bardlavens:

focusing on specifically Black women, but Black women leaders was because I

Timothy Bardlavens:

realized that it's about network, right?

Timothy Bardlavens:

And if you're coming in as a leader, like especially people manager and you

Timothy Bardlavens:

are of a historically underinvested group, nine times out of 10, you

Timothy Bardlavens:

have a network of other people that look like you, that you can bring in.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And so if you have the power to hire or influence in any way, then most likely

Timothy Bardlavens:

that's going to drive more people who like you coming into the organization.

Timothy Bardlavens:

I really realized, especially when it comes to a lot of these efforts is like

Timothy Bardlavens:

it has to be a top down kind of thing.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And actually, no, it has to be a sandwich, has to be bottoms up and tops down.

Timothy Bardlavens:

But I think that.

Timothy Bardlavens:

You have to get a bunch of the middle managers who are like Black

Timothy Bardlavens:

women or Black, gay or whatever the case may be because that's

Timothy Bardlavens:

where you get that, that closer connection to building up the teams.

Timothy Bardlavens:

I think where it can fall apart though, is one, it's really tough

Timothy Bardlavens:

to get people of color executives.

Timothy Bardlavens:

We're just not promoted quickly enough as our counterparts.

Timothy Bardlavens:

But also I think that the other part is just we also run into some of

Timothy Bardlavens:

those folks who are of historically underinvested or marginalized

Timothy Bardlavens:

backgrounds who feel as though they can't, or shouldn't do the work.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Or don't want to do the work when it comes to diversity, or whatever the

Timothy Bardlavens:

case may be, because they're like I just, I don't want to do that.

Timothy Bardlavens:

I just, I don't want to be known as the Black manager.

Timothy Bardlavens:

I just want to be known as a manager.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And I think the downside of that lack of intentionality is one, we always have to

Timothy Bardlavens:

pay the tax as leaders if we do the work.

Timothy Bardlavens:

But if we don't want to, that also means that the impact of that is

Timothy Bardlavens:

we end up upholding the status quo.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Like we end up wholly upholding white supremacy or whatever

Timothy Bardlavens:

the case may be because of it.

Timothy Bardlavens:

So it was kinda like this, it can sometimes be a damned if you

Timothy Bardlavens:

do damned if you don't scenario.

Matt May:

Yeah.

Matt May:

On the one hand, the bring your whole self to work, but then there's a lot of

Matt May:

baggage that goes along with that too.

Matt May:

So that's actually a good place to pause here so we can start getting into what

Matt May:

an equitable environment looks like.

Matt May:

And then start talking about kind of UX not just from the career

Matt May:

perspective, but from from the inclusivity of user experience across

Matt May:

racial divides for example, across like the, all forms of human difference,

Matt May:

as we say in inclusive design.

Matt May:

So we are going to take a break.

Matt May:

We'll be right back with Timothy Bardlavens.

Matt May:

InEx is a major research project by me, Matt May, as part of the master

Matt May:

of design degree program at OCAD University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Matt May:

Episodes and transcripts of this podcast can be found at inex.show.

Matt May:

That's I-N-E-X dot show.

Matt May:

Follow InEx on Twitter at @inexpodcast.

Matt May:

All right.

Matt May:

We're back with Timothy Bardlavens.

Matt May:

In the first segment of this, I think was there was a lot of career stuff.

Matt May:

And I wanted to connect this back to inclusive design because one of the

Matt May:

key principles in inclusive design is about there being equitable interactions

Matt May:

and having people in the room.

Matt May:

That we're making decisions collectively.

Matt May:

And when you don't have an organization that's diverse and more importantly, the

Matt May:

diversity doesn't get to express itself.

Matt May:

The actual division between like diversity and inclusion used to be the, at first

Matt May:

they were just juking the stats, right?

Matt May:

Trying to increase, basically women and ethnic diversity in the workplace,

Matt May:

but not really giving them any power in changing the system as it was.

Matt May:

Equity comes in here as not only do we have a workforce that sort of reflects

Matt May:

the population of where we're at but that there's an equal amount of power being

Matt May:

shared among all of the people in the system or participating in the system,

Matt May:

whether they be customers or people that are in user groups or what have you.

Matt May:

So talk to me about the role of equity from kind of an

Matt May:

advocate's perspective on that.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Yeah.

Timothy Bardlavens:

So there, I guess there's so many ways to look at it.

Matt May:

I guess let's start off by defining our terms here.

Matt May:

Like how would you define equity in this context?

Timothy Bardlavens:

I think equity, equity in this space of let's say organizations.

Timothy Bardlavens:

So how I think about it is to look at a few ways, but let's say you look at

Timothy Bardlavens:

the entire employee journey, right?

Timothy Bardlavens:

You have sourcing, recruiting, hiring, onboarding.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And then it is development and performance, things like that all

Timothy Bardlavens:

the way around to off-boarding and leaving the company.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And mixed in there is of course conversations around pay, around

Timothy Bardlavens:

growth trajectory, all those things.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And I think that when you think equity, I think...

Timothy Bardlavens:

It's not just fairness.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Cause I think a lot of people, they say, hey, we just wanna make sure

Timothy Bardlavens:

things are as fair as possible.

Timothy Bardlavens:

But I think fairness in my mind lends itself to equality.

Timothy Bardlavens:

It's like, hey, we both have the access to the same resources, but in having access

Timothy Bardlavens:

to those same resources, one part, one set of people are going to have a better

Timothy Bardlavens:

experience than the other most likely.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Ultimately equity within the space of let's say an employee's experience

Timothy Bardlavens:

is, not only do they feel like they are getting paid equivalent to their

Timothy Bardlavens:

counterparts, but also they have access to sponsorship, and clearly

Timothy Bardlavens:

articulated, intentional sponsorship.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Cause I think intentionality is a super key here.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Is it set up in a way that is specifically made for this person or

Timothy Bardlavens:

set of people or is it serendipitous and just so happen they have access to it.

Timothy Bardlavens:

But there's also things of like, when you're on the team,

Timothy Bardlavens:

what is your experience like?

Timothy Bardlavens:

Are you actually heard, when you say here, this is a problem I'm having a problem.

Timothy Bardlavens:

If you actually take action, do they actually look into it or are

Timothy Bardlavens:

you saying hey, it'll be okay.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Just give it time or wherever the case may be and they're gaslit.

Timothy Bardlavens:

So I think there's an experiential piece of it, of course.

Timothy Bardlavens:

But then I think there's also the actual, tangible things, like pay, like equal

Timothy Bardlavens:

voice at the table, quote unquote and equal voice when it comes to deference.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Will people actually listen, but also not only listen, but actually take action

Timothy Bardlavens:

and in taking action where they come back and give you credit for the things that

Timothy Bardlavens:

work really well, so that you have that promotability, trajectory, et cetera.

Timothy Bardlavens:

It's a very long-winded definition, but it's just so all encompassing, it's

Timothy Bardlavens:

hard to define it in one specific way or another, like it's more than belonging.

Timothy Bardlavens:

You can belong at a place and still be underpaid and underleveled.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And you wouldn't know unless someone tells you, so it.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Yeah, it depends.

Matt May:

I think a part of it is, a lot of the discussion that happens

Matt May:

around this is about just the working environment, the money situation.

Matt May:

But to go back to your own story or earlier on about things like paying for

Matt May:

relo, or even allowing work from home, that the working environment itself is

Matt May:

something that has barriers to it, coming and hiring somebody new into San Francisco

Matt May:

is just one of the most expensive places in the world, has implications.

Matt May:

Not only if you have to move away from your family, if you have supports

Matt May:

that you use at home that you're not going to have somewhere else.

Matt May:

That's a part of it too.

Matt May:

Sometimes just the structures of an organization dictate

Matt May:

who is going to work on it.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Yeah.

Timothy Bardlavens:

So I think about this a few different ways.

Timothy Bardlavens:

I was working with this person who they worked in the Bay for years,

Timothy Bardlavens:

because that was where work was.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And so they'd been at the company for some time, but they worked with in the Bay and

Timothy Bardlavens:

then they realized, this is a Black man.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And he realized, I want to be around more of my people.

Timothy Bardlavens:

I want to get married one day.

Timothy Bardlavens:

I want to have kids.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And I want to be in a place where I have access to that population of

Timothy Bardlavens:

people, because the Bay doesn't have a lot of Black people in general.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And he made a decision to move from the Bay to Atlanta, but in doing

Timothy Bardlavens:

so, he was forced to transition from being a manager, to being an IC.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And he was basically held back from a levels perspective.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Like he didn't get the same kind of growth and development over the subsequent,

Timothy Bardlavens:

three, four or five years as his peers who were directors and even some VPs, because

Timothy Bardlavens:

he wasn't in the center of power really.

Timothy Bardlavens:

He wasn't in the Bay.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And it wasn't until pre post COVID where they actually had to correct his

Timothy Bardlavens:

pay to make it more equitable based on new policy, where he was able to then

Timothy Bardlavens:

transition back into being a manager, to get promoted up relatively quickly to

Timothy Bardlavens:

level that he believed he deserved to be.

Timothy Bardlavens:

But if it hadn't been for COVID, he probably would not

Timothy Bardlavens:

have this same opportunity.

Timothy Bardlavens:

When you have these companies that are based in a specific area, but then they

Timothy Bardlavens:

say, hey, we want to increase diversity.

Timothy Bardlavens:

But then in doing so you're ripping people out of areas of comfort, and

Timothy Bardlavens:

you're wooing them with all this money, but then you realize that the money is

Timothy Bardlavens:

actually, maybe it doesn't go that far, because in the Bay it doesn't go that far

Timothy Bardlavens:

because you realized oh, like I'm making $130,000 a year, but my rent is $4500.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And so I only have enough to maybe buy groceries after that.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Or I can never buy a house because I don't have enough money

Timothy Bardlavens:

or whatever the case may be.

Timothy Bardlavens:

It's really interesting to see how companies have become more

Timothy Bardlavens:

equitable from the perspective of especially location, thanks to COVID.

Timothy Bardlavens:

While also understanding that, what they perceived as equitable was the I'm

Timothy Bardlavens:

going to pay for you to come to this or travel across the country or whatever,

Timothy Bardlavens:

to get set up and work in this place.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And in my mind, like something that was always weird to me was, especially

Timothy Bardlavens:

when it comes to teleworking is you would have people let's say who,

Timothy Bardlavens:

let's say there's an office in Menlo Park, but there's also offices in New

Timothy Bardlavens:

York and Seattle and other places.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And so for whatever reason, A person could have a team that's

Timothy Bardlavens:

across the entire country, but still be based in one location.

Timothy Bardlavens:

But for some reason I was very different than you working from your home office and

Timothy Bardlavens:

having a team spread across the country.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And for some, whatever reason, people never really seem to understand that

Timothy Bardlavens:

those are the exact same situations.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Only thing that was different was whether you go into an office or not.

Timothy Bardlavens:

But it's interesting how a lot of folks sort of, their mindset shifted so quickly.

Timothy Bardlavens:

But they were also very stuck in this very one dimensional way of work.

Timothy Bardlavens:

I think what I appreciate with these changes are things like being

Timothy Bardlavens:

able to work from where you want.

Timothy Bardlavens:

So me, I moved to Dallas and I work fully remote.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And for me that's great because my money goes much further here.

Timothy Bardlavens:

I can get a nice size house.

Timothy Bardlavens:

I know I can build a family.

Timothy Bardlavens:

I know I can pay for things and not be worried about well, is it

Timothy Bardlavens:

going to take a vacation, or saving money to buy a house or paying rent?

Timothy Bardlavens:

Like I don't have to make those choices as much.

Matt May:

So this is funny.

Matt May:

I did the same thing.

Matt May:

I moved to Texas after having been working at the same company for a

Matt May:

few years, from Seattle and just the oh, wow, this is very different.

Matt May:

What my lifestyle was like in this place that was cheaper, changed dramatically.

Matt May:

And yeah, spot on, that feeling of, why can't I have this level of compensation

Matt May:

for the place that I want to live?

Timothy Bardlavens:

And I think even now though, I still struggle with

Timothy Bardlavens:

companies who do this whole hey, we're going to shift your pay based

Timothy Bardlavens:

on where you live in the country to make it more market appropriate.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And it's...

Matt May:

Yes.

Timothy Bardlavens:

I hate that because ultimately what you're telling me is that

Timothy Bardlavens:

I can do the exact same work as another person, because I don't live in the same

Timothy Bardlavens:

area, all of a sudden I'm less valuable.

Timothy Bardlavens:

It doesn't really make sense to me.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And it doesn't matter how you slice it.

Timothy Bardlavens:

It just doesn't make sense.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Because let's be honest, I feel as though on some level, even people who work in

Timothy Bardlavens:

the Bay, in Seattle, in New York, places that are higher cost of living, they still

Timothy Bardlavens:

don't really make enough to really thrive.

Timothy Bardlavens:

That being said, I do think that's the one thing that is still, left to be desired.

Timothy Bardlavens:

If knowing me moving from.

Timothy Bardlavens:

San Francisco to North Carolina is going to change my pay by 20%.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Do I really want to do that?

Timothy Bardlavens:

Do I want to take that much of a hit?

Timothy Bardlavens:

I think that's something that some people are struggling with is, I

Timothy Bardlavens:

don't want to take the financial hit.

Timothy Bardlavens:

I want to be able to take my same paycheck and go in somewhere else.

Timothy Bardlavens:

When I bought my house, one of the conditions they had for me closing that

Timothy Bardlavens:

home was showing that me moving from Seattle to Dallas, it wouldn't patently

Timothy Bardlavens:

changed my pay in the way that would make owning my home more difficult.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And so it still is some issues from an equity perspective that I think are tough

Timothy Bardlavens:

and that needs to be worked through.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And I think at least people being able to work from whoever

Timothy Bardlavens:

they want is a good start.

Matt May:

Yeah.

Matt May:

There are lots more pieces to that we can discuss about the working

Matt May:

environment, and the cohesion.

Matt May:

How people end up working together.

Matt May:

But what really struck a lot of people in the disability community

Matt May:

about this was that these discussions were a non-starter before COVID.

Matt May:

Anything that required anything out of the ordinary for you, even if it was

Matt May:

something that was legally obligated for an employer to provide, was something

Matt May:

that was just technically far too complex.

Matt May:

If somebody needed to be working from home regularly, it was like, oh, we'll find

Matt May:

some other accommodations so that you can come in and work in the office for this.

Matt May:

And then suddenly everybody's, oh yeah, you can work from home.

Matt May:

Your kids can go to school from home.

Matt May:

And then now we're actually seeing these things start to be peeled away in

Matt May:

the return office discussion as well.

Matt May:

And so if you had this opportunity to provide a working environment

Matt May:

that people were satisfied with, then what gives you reason other

Matt May:

than economy to take it all away?

Timothy Bardlavens:

I think even with that, like one of the things that struck

Timothy Bardlavens:

me as so interesting was when there was this transition to work from wherever you

Timothy Bardlavens:

want, these leaders who maybe just a year or more ago were so adamant against it.

Timothy Bardlavens:

All of a sudden they're like these big proponents.

Timothy Bardlavens:

It's almost like the work-life balance thing.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Oh yeah, you can work wherever you want.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Like I'm going to go.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And I bought a house, I'm living in Hawaii.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Like a fad or a fashionable thing to do, to work remotely and to pick

Timothy Bardlavens:

some random place like, oh, I'm going to go to Utah and work from

Timothy Bardlavens:

there, from now on or whatever.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And it boggles my mind because y'all were so adamant against this.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Or aw, man, I miss people so much.

Timothy Bardlavens:

I miss people so much.

Timothy Bardlavens:

You miss people so much, but at Meta, at least, we always had the ability

Timothy Bardlavens:

to fly to different office locations.

Timothy Bardlavens:

That's never been taken away.

Timothy Bardlavens:

So what exactly is the excuse now?

Timothy Bardlavens:

With the return to work, really does the excuse boil down to, hey, we have these

Timothy Bardlavens:

leases and these buildings and we have to justify keeping them for some reason,

Timothy Bardlavens:

because this sort of stuff feels like.

Matt May:

That's the only thing that's come to mind for me about this, that

Matt May:

it was, there was a certain amount of a face to face interaction and a

Matt May:

certain amount of surveillance that people were going to do their job.

Matt May:

Because you look in the business magazines and you see all these

Matt May:

articles about everybody's doing a side hustle while they're in the office.

Matt May:

It just scares people into thinking that they're being cheated out of labor.

Matt May:

And that the only way to avoid that is manual oversight, which

Matt May:

has a lot of implications as well.

Matt May:

It's still a thing that, that sticks in my craw.

Matt May:

I want to change gears and talk about the discussion of equity at a product level.

Matt May:

We were talking about my model for how this works, which is when we talk about

Matt May:

all forms of human difference, which we do in inclusive design all the time, that

Matt May:

when we talk about disability inclusion, we're talking about we're talking about

Matt May:

accessibility, like software accessibility and that when we talk about any other

Matt May:

form of racism, gender, LGBTQ, language, literacy, culture, all of that is not

Matt May:

considered to be a software issue.

Matt May:

It's considered to be more an HR, hiring, promotion kind of issue.

Matt May:

But that leaves two huge gaps, right?

Matt May:

There's the disability employment that remains a major problem.

Matt May:

And there's also the sense of inclusion at a product level.

Matt May:

One of the reasons that this is so important, the career path and making

Matt May:

sure that everybody is spread out within the organization that is at all

Matt May:

levels of the organization, is that it affects what you create in the end.

Matt May:

That the decision-making is filtered through all of these lived experiences.

Matt May:

And, can you talk about that?

Matt May:

Can you think of issues that you run into or that you can see, that a white

Matt May:

designer that's only ever lived in San Francisco doesn't see in the way that

Matt May:

they are developing UX, portraying users in imagery, what have you?

Timothy Bardlavens:

Yeah, one thing that we've been pushing on for a while,

Timothy Bardlavens:

there was like this stronger transition of focus on product development through

Timothy Bardlavens:

the lens of social identities, right?

Timothy Bardlavens:

When I was in communities, we were looking at how to just help people join.

Timothy Bardlavens:

But then when you start thinking through, what does safety look like

Timothy Bardlavens:

and how do you think about safety from the lens of communities on

Timothy Bardlavens:

Facebook, but also through the lens of, let's say the most marginalized,

Timothy Bardlavens:

let's say a Black trans woman.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Hell, you can layer on a Black, trans, disabled woman, and then you have the

Timothy Bardlavens:

most marginalized of the marginalized.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And so you can say, okay, what does that experience look like?

Timothy Bardlavens:

And you start to think through, there's examples where you know, a

Timothy Bardlavens:

couple of years ago when we had the killing of Breonna Taylor and everyone

Timothy Bardlavens:

else, like all those folks that were murdered and so on and so forth.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And we had the whole social uprising and things and what we found, we actually did

Timothy Bardlavens:

the research it's happened to me as well.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Like I actually had personal experience, but also we did, we saw it come up in

Timothy Bardlavens:

research where we saw these Black folks who were in these plant lover groups.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And in that plant lover group, they're like, we don't want

Timothy Bardlavens:

to talk about social issues.

Timothy Bardlavens:

That's not what we're here for.

Timothy Bardlavens:

We here only talk about plants.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And some people were like, we're still humans.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And there were a group of people who have built some level of relationship.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Shouldn't we have these conversations about what's happening in the world?

Timothy Bardlavens:

You have this big dichotomy and where people like even myself, like I felt

Timothy Bardlavens:

unsafe all of a sudden because like wait.

Timothy Bardlavens:

So we can talk about one thing, but when we talk about social issues

Timothy Bardlavens:

that are deeply affecting us, then all of a sudden this group is in a

Timothy Bardlavens:

safe space and isn't right for us.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And this is something that especially Black folks do, but I think most people

Timothy Bardlavens:

do who are of a marginalized identity, is like they bifurcate what part of

Timothy Bardlavens:

themselves shows up in what spaces and to have to do that through digital

Timothy Bardlavens:

experiences, it makes it even harder because the assumption is that through

Timothy Bardlavens:

a digital experience, you actually can be more of yourself because it

Timothy Bardlavens:

takes away some of that judgmental barrier as in human interaction.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And so it becomes really tough.

Timothy Bardlavens:

I think another good example is, we were looking at some potential

Timothy Bardlavens:

product experiences and these folks, they were getting really excited

Timothy Bardlavens:

about doing focus on humor and in the space of communities and groups.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And there was a suggestion around hey, what if we gave people

Timothy Bardlavens:

the ability to create memes through the composer on Facebook.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And I was like, nope!

Timothy Bardlavens:

Not going to do it.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Not at all.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Nope.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And people are like, no, this is so great.

Timothy Bardlavens:

I was like, I can see the New York Times article now, that says that

Timothy Bardlavens:

Facebook has allowed someone to create some misogynistic, xenophobic,

Timothy Bardlavens:

racist, sexist, whatever post.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And it's being shared across the whole world.

Timothy Bardlavens:

I can see that headline it right now.

Timothy Bardlavens:

No, we do not have the mechanisms in place to be able to effectively

Timothy Bardlavens:

read what it is on an image and assess whether or not it's harmful.

Timothy Bardlavens:

We can't do this.

Timothy Bardlavens:

This is a no.

Matt May:

An attractive nuisance.

Matt May:

Microsoft had, that AI, that they put out on the internet and it was trained

Matt May:

to be racist through a chat interface.

Matt May:

There was the Snapchat filters.

Matt May:

All of these things that you see pop up and you're like, was there one

Matt May:

person of color in the room where the decision was made to do that.

Matt May:

Did you think fully about the consequences of this?

Matt May:

I think Facebook, the app as supposed to Meta the company, like Facebook has

Matt May:

this as probably one of the biggest issues, just because it's a blank slate.

Matt May:

There is content moderation all over the place, but then the discussion of

Matt May:

what's in and what's out tends to be the important part, the user generated

Matt May:

content is 99.9% of what Facebook is.

Matt May:

And then you have these sort of debates and discussions of who's allowed to

Matt May:

say certain things in what spaces.

Matt May:

And that to me is why there needs to be more voices that speak up

Matt May:

and that like in those rooms so that there are more of those nopes.

Matt May:

You're like, instantly, let me give you the list of why this is a bad idea.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Yeah.

Timothy Bardlavens:

I think even that though is and this is where, like I said, this damned if you

Timothy Bardlavens:

do, damned if you don't scenario comes in for folks under represented communities.

Timothy Bardlavens:

People always ask this question was there at least one person of color

Timothy Bardlavens:

in the room or so on and so forth.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And it's one, does there have to be?

Timothy Bardlavens:

Do I always have to be in the room for you not to do something stupid?

Timothy Bardlavens:

Or if I'm in the room, do I always have to be the one to speak up?

Timothy Bardlavens:

Then what happens is I'm always willing to speak up and push against it, then I

Timothy Bardlavens:

become the contrarian, which means I'm now the troublemaker, which means it's

Timothy Bardlavens:

now affecting my growth trajectory and my promotion ability and like my likeability.

Matt May:

Yeah.

Matt May:

The culture fit, that kind of argument.

Matt May:

Oh, you didn't fit with the culture and yeah.

Matt May:

And this gets to another issue of this.

Matt May:

So if I'm talking about something, cognitive, something that relates

Matt May:

to my ADHD or neurodiversity, there are things that I bring to it

Matt May:

that it's this is actually for me.

Matt May:

I'm self-advocating.

Matt May:

And there are lots of different people that are representing one or more

Matt May:

marginalized communities in this space.

Matt May:

Ultimately, there needs to be some cross-pollination, that people need to

Matt May:

start to understand more deeply that this is happening because for all of

Matt May:

the other privileges that I express, I get to be in a lot of rooms and surprise

Matt May:

people with the fact that I'm not going to go along with whatever racist, anti

Matt May:

trans kind of decision that's being made.

Matt May:

How do how do you foster an environment where people stop only

Matt May:

listening if there's one person in the room doing this, but instead

Matt May:

start sticking up for one another.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Yeah, I honestly, and it's something that somebody wrote

Timothy Bardlavens:

about in part two of Navigating Whiteness, which was really around addressing

Timothy Bardlavens:

sensibilities and your own sensibilities.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And it's a thing that.

Timothy Bardlavens:

There is no way to create a system around it.

Timothy Bardlavens:

It's, there's no way to create a framework for it.

Timothy Bardlavens:

There's no checklist for it.

Timothy Bardlavens:

It legit takes people being intentional introspective and doing the work.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And I think that's what makes it so hard, is because you are asking people

Timothy Bardlavens:

to have a level of humility to say, it's not about me, it's about this

Timothy Bardlavens:

other person, this other thing, this other group, or let me go and learn and

Timothy Bardlavens:

understand and do my best to do that.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And again, have enough humility to make myself uncomfortable, to be able to

Timothy Bardlavens:

learn, and then in learning, be able to take that and move forward with it.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And I think that's the thing we struggle with the most.

Timothy Bardlavens:

A good example at the most basic level is masks, right?

Timothy Bardlavens:

Some people are like, I don't want to wear a mask.

Timothy Bardlavens:

It's against my freedom.

Timothy Bardlavens:

I don't care.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And other folks like, no, you need to wear a mask and it's not just

Timothy Bardlavens:

for you, but it's for everyone around you, it's for your family.

Timothy Bardlavens:

So on and so forth.

Timothy Bardlavens:

But the vast majority of us are very, whether you know

Timothy Bardlavens:

it or not, we're all selfish.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And so unless you've grown up in a society that is innately community oriented.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Honestly, if you look at like places in the Middle East or Africa or

Timothy Bardlavens:

Latin America, like these quite honestly nonwhite countries, that

Timothy Bardlavens:

there's more of a community orient.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And so it's less about I, and more about we.

Timothy Bardlavens:

But us as Americans, we're all about American exceptionalism

Timothy Bardlavens:

and about us and our individual liberties and our individual rights.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And we forget that there are other humans around that we have

Timothy Bardlavens:

to think about and care about.

Timothy Bardlavens:

It's a dilemma of innovation.

Timothy Bardlavens:

To be innovative, you have to do a thing in the corner by yourself and

Timothy Bardlavens:

don't let anyone see it and then rush it to market as quickly as possible.

Timothy Bardlavens:

But in actuality, what you're doing is completely cutting

Timothy Bardlavens:

out a whole subset of people.

Timothy Bardlavens:

We should actually have opinions and thoughts and perspectives on

Timothy Bardlavens:

that thing because it then becomes not only effective and successful,

Timothy Bardlavens:

but also it reduces the harm of it.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And I don't think people really understand yet how to get out of their own way.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And like you remember, like there was a whole wave of empathy in design empathy.

Matt May:

We actually already had this conversation before.

Matt May:

I bring up empathy in these interviews because I have a particular

Matt May:

perspective on it, but the word humility has come up just as often.

Matt May:

And I think even if you have cognitive empathy.

Matt May:

Not just that you're putting on the outfit of somebody that has been

Matt May:

expressing their lived experience to you.

Matt May:

Like that the movie is playing for you, right?

Matt May:

Like the, we were talking about earlier, but that you, from your perspective

Matt May:

can genuinely see and understand the perspective that's aside from you.

Matt May:

That can be beneficial.

Matt May:

But, without the humility to understand how limited your perspective on that

Matt May:

is, when you turn empathy into something that gives you pride or gives you

Matt May:

status or something that makes you different or better than anybody else,

Matt May:

then you've completely lost the plot.

Matt May:

Right?

Matt May:

You're now basically just acting out all of these different kinds of people whose

Matt May:

experiences yet that you've never had.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Yeah.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And it also becomes this thing of I've seen it two ways, but a lot of it really

Timothy Bardlavens:

ends up landing on the area of saviorism.

Timothy Bardlavens:

I learned about these people, I'm going to help them because I

Timothy Bardlavens:

understand how to help them best.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And it's worse.

Timothy Bardlavens:

It becomes really paternalistic.

Timothy Bardlavens:

I think that is the biggest struggle when it comes to this.

Timothy Bardlavens:

People ask all the time, hey, how do we create more equitable products?

Timothy Bardlavens:

How do we do this?

Timothy Bardlavens:

How do we do this, how do we do this?

Timothy Bardlavens:

I can't help but always answer the same way, which is you

Timothy Bardlavens:

need to do some internal work.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Like you need to be introspective.

Timothy Bardlavens:

You can literally have all the questions that you would ever ask about racial

Timothy Bardlavens:

justice and equity and all these other things to make sure you're doing the

Timothy Bardlavens:

right thing from a product perspective.

Timothy Bardlavens:

You can answer all of them thoughtfully.

Timothy Bardlavens:

You can have a whole 600 page dissertation and still create

Timothy Bardlavens:

the most harmful products.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And you will look at it and someone will say, hey, you harmed me.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Or you harmed this whole group of people.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And they'll say, I don't understand how, we did all this work.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Look at all what we did.

Timothy Bardlavens:

It can't be possible.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And then they'll be in complete denial.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And it's because people just don't understand how to do the work.

Timothy Bardlavens:

It's not just doing the work internally, but I think there is always still that

Timothy Bardlavens:

external component of, do you need to have the right people in the room because

Timothy Bardlavens:

you should be able to gut check and be like, hey, these are my thoughts.

Timothy Bardlavens:

What are your thoughts?

Timothy Bardlavens:

Or, do you see this differently?

Timothy Bardlavens:

And you can have a conversation about that as opposed to sometimes being the

Timothy Bardlavens:

token in the room and you having to be the voice of, hey, Black person.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Do you think this is okay?

Timothy Bardlavens:

Is this racist?

Timothy Bardlavens:

No, it's not.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Okay, great.

Timothy Bardlavens:

We're going to do it.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Here's another thing you're forced to one person to be the

Timothy Bardlavens:

monolith for the entire race.

Timothy Bardlavens:

So you have to have an internal work which is paired with having the right

Timothy Bardlavens:

people in the room who have an actual voice that is valued, that has deference,

Timothy Bardlavens:

and that will actually move the needle.

Matt May:

I think there's this idea of needing to be validated for the for the

Matt May:

work that if you are, if you're saying that you're an inclusive person and

Matt May:

you're very empathetic and you've done this thing, and then you're sitting

Matt May:

there waiting to receive your laurels for being a good person, that any criticism

Matt May:

of this just takes the mask right off.

Matt May:

That suddenly I had a tweet about this, of the the woman's screaming

Matt May:

at the cat of the, like the empathetic person does something and

Matt May:

says, actually that's problematic.

Matt May:

And then immediately they're like, oh, I am a good person!

Matt May:

That just shows the ego that's involved in that whole interaction that, it's

Matt May:

not about the person that you ostensibly were supposed to be helping at all.

Matt May:

It's about how good that makes you, and that ends up making

Matt May:

things worse in a lot of cases than if you had ever left it alone.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Yeah.

Timothy Bardlavens:

I was talking to my little brother who's technically my stepbrother

Timothy Bardlavens:

and he was just lamenting on, like he really wants to help his sister.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Cause she she wanted to go to law school, but now it seems like she

Timothy Bardlavens:

just goes to work and then goes home and then that's all she ever does.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And his mother who has a visual impairment and like trying to help her and he like

Timothy Bardlavens:

decided to move back in and make sure he can cook for them and this and that.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And he was like, I just want to make sure they have a better life, they do better.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And I told him like, I just want you to realize that while you think

Timothy Bardlavens:

you're doing the right thing, but what you're really doing is you're selfish.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And what you're doing is that you're saying that this is my view of

Timothy Bardlavens:

what I think they should be doing.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And because of that, I'm going to push them to do the things that I

Timothy Bardlavens:

think, as opposed to saying hey, are they happy with where they are now?

Timothy Bardlavens:

If yes, then let them be happy.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Allow them to live.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Because you feel bad, you feel anxious.

Timothy Bardlavens:

You have this guilt for having some level of success yourself because

Timothy Bardlavens:

you're selfish and you want to reflect yourself in your other family members.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And so in doing so, if they're not reaching that, then you feel

Timothy Bardlavens:

the obligation to help them.

Timothy Bardlavens:

The equivalent of oh, look at these savages, let me help

Timothy Bardlavens:

show them the word of God.

Timothy Bardlavens:

It's the same thing.

Timothy Bardlavens:

I think that we do it in product design and UX all the time.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Like we always had this thing of, oh there's a predetermined path that we

Timothy Bardlavens:

tell people, this is the right path.

Timothy Bardlavens:

This is the golden path.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And that's what you should take.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And then someone comes back and takes a different path and

Timothy Bardlavens:

say, hey, that path is broken.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Or that path doesn't feel right.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And you blame the user.

Timothy Bardlavens:

You blame the person as opposed to understanding that actually,

Timothy Bardlavens:

maybe you did the wrong thing.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And it's like a math class, I used to hate this.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Whereas you have an equation.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Teacher tells you to solve it, you solve it and you get the exact right answer.

Timothy Bardlavens:

But because you didn't use the specific equation that they gave

Timothy Bardlavens:

you to solve it, then it's wrong.

Timothy Bardlavens:

But is the ultimate goal to get the answer or the process to get to the answer?

Timothy Bardlavens:

Because I'm going to get to it as quickly as I can.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And so I think we certainly do look at people who like humans

Timothy Bardlavens:

who use our products the same way.

Timothy Bardlavens:

They will navigate and find things, specific and unique ways.

Timothy Bardlavens:

So how do we create as many avenues to get there without over-bloating the

Timothy Bardlavens:

product and making it overly complex?

Timothy Bardlavens:

And I think there is a balance there.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Like I think Adobe is a good example.

Timothy Bardlavens:

I use Illustrator all the time.

Timothy Bardlavens:

I know there's two ways to get to the the arrow tool.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Either I can hit A, or I can go over to the left bar and click on the thing and

Timothy Bardlavens:

then I'll select it, but at least there's a couple of ways for me to get there.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And whichever one makes sense for me is.

Timothy Bardlavens:

But it doesn't force me down just one specific pathway.

Matt May:

Yeah.

Matt May:

Having multiple different ways to complete something, and that takes

Matt May:

time to understand, to absorb.

Matt May:

And it doesn't happen all at once.

Matt May:

It requires listening.

Matt May:

If it had just been invented and here, it's this is what we have to

Matt May:

offer you, this, that sort of the cathedral model of developing systems,

Matt May:

the results are you get what you get.

Matt May:

And I think that just the fact that software is easy to evolve

Matt May:

compared to construction of buildings or things like that.

Matt May:

That we have a lot more of a responsibility to make sure that we're

Matt May:

reaching people where they're at.

Matt May:

So I want to take one quick break and then I want to come back and talk

Matt May:

about hopes and dreams for the future.

Matt May:

We'll be right back with Timothy Bardlavens.

Matt May:

On the next episode of InEx:

Aimi Hamraie:

Every year I go and do a little talk on

Aimi Hamraie:

neurodiversity for the first year psych residents at my university.

Aimi Hamraie:

And this is the kind of stuff I talked to them about.

Aimi Hamraie:

It's like, no, you have to like, actually talk to people who have

Aimi Hamraie:

lived experience about what we want.

Aimi Hamraie:

And don't assume that psychiatric medication is like

Aimi Hamraie:

the end all be all of access.

Aimi Hamraie:

Cause it's, it's really not.

Matt May:

A conversation with Aimi Hamraie.

Matt May:

All right.

Matt May:

We are back with Timothy Bardlavens.

Matt May:

And, um, we're going to start talking about speculative futures.

Matt May:

As we were talking about creating inclusive and equitable environments,

Matt May:

creating inclusive and equitable products, there comes a question of,

Matt May:

how do we create those structures?

Matt May:

Where would they need to be created?

Matt May:

And I broke these up a little bit as, how do you take an organization that's

Matt May:

already operating in a certain way and make the changes that are necessary to

Matt May:

have something where everybody feels that they are participating equally, equitably.

Matt May:

And that's kind of the hard one.

Matt May:

I think maybe we should tackle that first.

Matt May:

Because this is probably if people are listening and thinking about their

Matt May:

organizations, the question that's probably on most of their minds is, what

Matt May:

do I do as an individual contributor?

Matt May:

What do I do as a lower mid-level manager?

Matt May:

Somebody that's not the CEO that could just say, hey, guess what?

Matt May:

We're going to change our way of working to this.

Matt May:

From that bottom up, grassroots, how do we start to instill a sense

Matt May:

of equity in the work that we're doing, in the work that we output?

Timothy Bardlavens:

Okay.

Timothy Bardlavens:

I'm giving you a transparent response.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And it's you don't.

Timothy Bardlavens:

The reason why I say that is I think the problem with the eye is that it

Timothy Bardlavens:

is always aggressive effort, right?

Timothy Bardlavens:

Like it's always a small set of people who want to grow it into a bigger thing.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And then there might be a program that's created, but then HR takes over it and

Timothy Bardlavens:

then it gets bastardized or whatever the case may be, same narrative all the time.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And so, you don't.

Timothy Bardlavens:

I think if you are an individual contributor and you don't believe

Timothy Bardlavens:

in the work that you're doing is equitable, or you don't believe that

Timothy Bardlavens:

the organization itself is equitable, or whatever the case may be, find a new job.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Because you don't have the power to make the changes and you are going

Timothy Bardlavens:

to create so much harm for yourself by trying to go against the grain.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And you might be successful.

Timothy Bardlavens:

You might find allies or you might just be disillusioned or want to leave anyway.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And that's what happened with me the first time I tried to do this work.

Timothy Bardlavens:

I think that if you're a middle manager, then you have a bit more power.

Timothy Bardlavens:

I would think about what is your power within your circle, being your core

Timothy Bardlavens:

team that you're supporting as well as maybe your peers in other allies

Timothy Bardlavens:

that may be around your peers, as well as folks who are within your direct

Timothy Bardlavens:

leadership chain, you could potentially influence in some meaningful way.

Timothy Bardlavens:

I think that where the real change happens, isn't in middle management.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Like at first I thought that was like the layer that was really broken.

Timothy Bardlavens:

But in actuality, I think the layer that's actually broken is in upper

Timothy Bardlavens:

management in like the director level.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Cause VPs are too far.

Timothy Bardlavens:

They don't really know.

Timothy Bardlavens:

They can't really see, they have aspirational visions, but they're not

Timothy Bardlavens:

actually tracking progress usually when it comes to these types of

Timothy Bardlavens:

things and they like the things that they're graded on a very different.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And so where it makes the most difference to me is that director level, because

Timothy Bardlavens:

they do have a closer look at the results.

Timothy Bardlavens:

They have a closer look at the work while also being able to see pretty

Timothy Bardlavens:

broadly across an organization, as opposed to middle management.

Timothy Bardlavens:

They are so deeply focused on the work itself that many times they have to

Timothy Bardlavens:

figure out is this a choice of the work or the people or something else.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And so I think that's the thing to assess is like these

Timothy Bardlavens:

directors, what are you doing?

Timothy Bardlavens:

And how are you setting the example and how are you hiring leaders who

Timothy Bardlavens:

should be doing the work and how are you advocating using your power?

Timothy Bardlavens:

Because directors have a very broad set of powers that aren't, that isn't given

Timothy Bardlavens:

to everyone managers, senior managers.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Okay, can you do within your circle, your sphere of influence

Timothy Bardlavens:

and how can you drive that forward?

Timothy Bardlavens:

Whether it's through your teams or through your peers in their teams sees,

Timothy Bardlavens:

how can you, if you would like, if you feel safe, how do you bubble up concerns

Timothy Bardlavens:

or feedback, and in doing so, see if you have leaders who are responsible of this.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And I see all those things as a preface, but in actuality, again, you

Timothy Bardlavens:

go back to the like the employee life cycle this is a multi-pronged effort.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And so to build equitable products, that means that you have to

Timothy Bardlavens:

not only look at who are you hiring, promoting, or letting go.

Timothy Bardlavens:

But also excuse me, you have to look at that in addition to looking at

Timothy Bardlavens:

where does the work actually come from?

Timothy Bardlavens:

Who's building.

Timothy Bardlavens:

The priorities.

Timothy Bardlavens:

How are those things being gauged?

Timothy Bardlavens:

How are we building metrics?

Timothy Bardlavens:

Do the metrics support, or do they come against what you're trying to achieve?

Timothy Bardlavens:

If they go against it, then how do you build it and bring in other metrics?

Timothy Bardlavens:

So some folks you have, like some companies, you have a

Timothy Bardlavens:

quantitative and qualitative metric.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And so how can you have balance between those two things?

Timothy Bardlavens:

The right organization has done the work to understand what is the quantitative

Timothy Bardlavens:

and qualitative metrics that we want to associate with more equitable products,

Timothy Bardlavens:

as well as more equitable organizations.

Timothy Bardlavens:

We have directors who are hiring leaders who have that right focus and they're

Timothy Bardlavens:

leveraging their power to enact real programs across the organization.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And then we have middle managers who are continuing to grow their sphere of

Timothy Bardlavens:

influence in being able to both bubble down the things that needs to go downward,

Timothy Bardlavens:

but also bubbling up the information that's coming from their teams.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And ultimately That should hopefully influence VPs in the C-suite who

Timothy Bardlavens:

many times aren't telling you what metrics attract and they're

Timothy Bardlavens:

asking you to develop them.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And so the directors should be able to bubble up and say, hey, this is where

Timothy Bardlavens:

we believe it's important and what we believe we're actually doing really well

Timothy Bardlavens:

and where we believe we have gaps in, they can work with VPs to build out that

Timothy Bardlavens:

strategy and then build out the narrative, the corporate narrative around that, which

Timothy Bardlavens:

is then ultimately it becomes external to shareholders, to users, to whomever else.

Timothy Bardlavens:

In my mind, that's actually the right way to approach it.

Timothy Bardlavens:

When it comes to this sort of organizational shifts, it has to

Timothy Bardlavens:

be at the director level which then has the power to drive up and down.

Matt May:

Yeah.

Matt May:

As you were talking about this, I was thinking about the NFL's Rooney rule.

Matt May:

The idea that for hiring a head coach that you needed to basically interview

Matt May:

one racial minority candidate.

Matt May:

And the effect of that has been a lot of, I guess, drive-bys, like courtesy

Matt May:

interviews that have resulted in head coaches' times, if they were Black

Matt May:

and they were hired as a head coach in the NFL being short and not having

Matt May:

the same kinds of opportunities.

Matt May:

These little ideas of quick fixes are the things that stick with me.

Matt May:

There's a culture problem in the league.

Matt May:

And finding one kind of bandaid over that problem.

Matt May:

Doesn't make it go away.

Matt May:

It doesn't get to the heart of the problem.

Matt May:

It's complicated and it takes time to change cultures.

Matt May:

It requires a lot of people to put effort in.

Matt May:

And as you were talking about what it takes out of you and

Matt May:

encouraging people to quit, that's something that I do too, actually.

Matt May:

My number one advice to people who are stagnating in their

Matt May:

careers is, don't set yourself on fire to keep other people warm.

Matt May:

If you are the only one that is trying to make this work inclusive, to try

Matt May:

to diversify an organization, to try to make them focus on something other

Matt May:

than making more money, then, you know, there comes a certain point where you

Matt May:

just have to realize you're beating your head against a wall, and that there are

Matt May:

other places that you are going to be more receptive to that kind of work.

Matt May:

What that resonates most with, in the people that I talk with, are basically

Matt May:

gen Z and the newest generation of people that are coming into the industry because

Matt May:

they have an ethical point of view, generally, that is really well evolved.

Matt May:

They want to be doing work that aligns with their ethical values.

Matt May:

And I don't know if you've seen the same kind of thing, but if you are looking

Matt May:

for a culture change, finding it in people who actually have that passion

Matt May:

and represent an entire generation of people that are going to coming into to

Matt May:

the workplace that you it's going to be hard to pick apart the overall groundswell

Matt May:

of that need for the work that you do to have some kind of ethical alignment.

Matt May:

Have you seen that too?

Timothy Bardlavens:

Absolutely.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Even I'm trying to get better about.

Timothy Bardlavens:

I've heard people talk all the time around hey, I love this company, it's

Timothy Bardlavens:

so mission driven, it's mission driven.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Like I love the mission, its mission.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And for a long time, even personally, I'm like, I don't

Timothy Bardlavens:

really care about the mission.

Timothy Bardlavens:

I just care about am I going to get paid well?

Timothy Bardlavens:

And is it generally just not like killing babies and stuff?

Timothy Bardlavens:

Is it like just generally an okay kind of environment?

Timothy Bardlavens:

But I'm seeing more and more there is this phrase of mission driven and

Timothy Bardlavens:

caring about the mission and caring about the impact that I'm seeing.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And when I'm talking to especially new grads it's so interesting.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Because of course working at Meta, there's a ton of opinions about the company and

Timothy Bardlavens:

its impact on society and et cetera.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And part of the conversation I have to have with people is usually around it's

Timothy Bardlavens:

usually something is around hey, It's sometimes it's not where we are, but

Timothy Bardlavens:

where we can go, or where you want us to go or where you believe we should go.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And you're like, I don't know, it's this dance that I see a lot of

Timothy Bardlavens:

people having to do now of, okay.

Timothy Bardlavens:

I want to be a change maker.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Can I join a company and be able to be the change should that I see.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Or can I'm not really sure about, the more like the ethics of this

Timothy Bardlavens:

or the impact of this on people.

Timothy Bardlavens:

How do I like make that decision?

Timothy Bardlavens:

Or a lot of folks are like, hey, I don't want to go into big tech

Timothy Bardlavens:

because I just don't feel like it does great things for the world.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And I want to do work that is more impactful and so on and so forth.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And then I have to the biggest challenge that I've been having is

Timothy Bardlavens:

really in explaining how to get people, to shift their perspective on it.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Like for example, there's one person who I was talking to, who recently accepted

Timothy Bardlavens:

an offer to Meta on the stories team.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And at first he was like, I'm not sure if I want to join that team because I

Timothy Bardlavens:

really care about helping support people who want to build community, and to help

Timothy Bardlavens:

people build community and connect with people like them, so on and so forth.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And so one thing I had explained to him was if you think about stories, you

Timothy Bardlavens:

think about most young adults between the ages of 18 and 25 give or take.

Timothy Bardlavens:

They're using stories because they like they like the quick sort of access to

Timothy Bardlavens:

like quick snips of sharing their life restore or their journeys, whatever.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And most people, especially small businesses are leveraging stories

Timothy Bardlavens:

as a way to get their workout or get their products out in the world.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And so by you actually supporting that team, there's actually a trickle effect

Timothy Bardlavens:

or like a connection to actual people in the real world who are leveraging the

Timothy Bardlavens:

product in this specific way, to be able to connect with community, to be able to

Timothy Bardlavens:

articulate their story, to be able to sell their products and build their business.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And so I think the biggest challenge I've seen is getting people

Timothy Bardlavens:

to understand a level deeper.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Because I do see gen Z is especially as being really anchored on ethics,

Timothy Bardlavens:

morals, and like the impact on the world.

Timothy Bardlavens:

But I think that part of the challenge is that sometimes they look at in a very

Timothy Bardlavens:

surface level and it's like, how do we, how do I help you take it a level deeper?

Timothy Bardlavens:

Like how do I be a good custodian of the work and have the opportunity

Timothy Bardlavens:

to say there's one level deeper?

Timothy Bardlavens:

And if you go one level deeper and you're doing the work and it doesn't

Timothy Bardlavens:

feel right, then how do you make a decision on what you want to do next?

Timothy Bardlavens:

Because the other part that I try to explain to folks, especially Black

Timothy Bardlavens:

folks who tell me, hey, I just don't want to work for another company where

Timothy Bardlavens:

I'm the only Black person on the team.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And I tell them all the time, sorry, that's just always going

Timothy Bardlavens:

to be the case for the most part.

Timothy Bardlavens:

That's just going to be what it is you have to live with it.

Timothy Bardlavens:

The thing is what does it feel like being on that team?

Timothy Bardlavens:

Are you actually going to be supported, developed, grown, or not?

Timothy Bardlavens:

Have these conversations that these folks want to have they're anchored on.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And I don't think we talk about power enough when it comes to equity, when

Timothy Bardlavens:

it comes to ethics and all these other things, like it's just a power thing.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And so as much as you see this groundswell of gen Z as, especially

Timothy Bardlavens:

who and really I'll say gen Z and the younger millennials, I think you see this

Timothy Bardlavens:

groundswell of these folks, like asking these really hard questions of preexisting

Timothy Bardlavens:

structures and organizations, and like really wanting them to have impact.

Timothy Bardlavens:

But also they get really frustrated quickly because they don't have the power

Timothy Bardlavens:

to enact the change that they believe in.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And that's where the next thing is how do you identify leaders who are doing that

Timothy Bardlavens:

and say, hey, I want to work for them or model myself around them or whatever.

Timothy Bardlavens:

I think that's the thing that has helped me be successful as a hiring manager.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Model what a lot of people want to see.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And so they feel more comfortable with taking a week to come to a place like

Timothy Bardlavens:

Meta that they feel like isn't for them because they see someone like me working

Timothy Bardlavens:

there, who's still doing the work.

Timothy Bardlavens:

So then it becomes, okay, we have a groundswell that they don't have power.

Timothy Bardlavens:

So how do we, as older millennials, gen Xers, boomers, all those looks like,

Timothy Bardlavens:

how do we, and the higher generations or older generations actually start

Timothy Bardlavens:

modeling those behaviors that give them sort of that, that hope that things

Timothy Bardlavens:

can shift and that people do care.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Cause I don't think we communicate enough about how much we do care.

Timothy Bardlavens:

We just do the work in silence and no one really knows that

Timothy Bardlavens:

we're actually doing the work.

Matt May:

Yeah.

Matt May:

Yeah, that's true.

Matt May:

I think it's hard really to even open up to talk about that with

Matt May:

people as they're coming in.

Matt May:

Because there's a sense of the party line, right?

Matt May:

There's the things that you say to your employees and not

Matt May:

getting into the personal stuff.

Matt May:

And that kind of reinforces that barrier.

Matt May:

The safety to actually extend yourself in that space is one thing.

Matt May:

But also if everybody is kind of in their own box, having their own

Matt May:

issues and everyone is uncomfortable expressing them to one another, then

Matt May:

the stagnation there can be unbearable.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Yeah.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Yeah.

Timothy Bardlavens:

It's such an interesting thing.

Timothy Bardlavens:

This is such an interesting phenomenon and sorta like shift that we're

Timothy Bardlavens:

seeing happen in the workforce and how people approach work.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And I'm curious to see how it shows up in like in the near future, because

Timothy Bardlavens:

I would say in the next decade, not near future, I say the next decade,

Timothy Bardlavens:

because I feel as though a lot of us in the like millennial generation.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Are like really many of us are like really annoyed with, let's say,

Timothy Bardlavens:

especially folks who are in the more baby boomers, boomer generation, and

Timothy Bardlavens:

even like the older gen Xers because we're like, hey, get out of the way.

Timothy Bardlavens:

We want to be there now.

Timothy Bardlavens:

We are ready to take the reins.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And then again, interested to see how, when millennials are more solidly

Timothy Bardlavens:

in those executive and C-suite roles and you have more gen Z who are in

Timothy Bardlavens:

those like middle management roles.

Timothy Bardlavens:

It's just to see how the industry changes, or if it changes, or if there's some

Timothy Bardlavens:

kind of reversion that happens of, I learned from this leader what to do.

Timothy Bardlavens:

So now I'm going to do that thing.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And it just becomes like a continuation.

Matt May:

Yeah, I'm fascinated about this.

Matt May:

And I think that as long as we're not sort of ruled by crypto barons by that point,

Matt May:

I'm really interested in the evolution.

Matt May:

Like, what are the structures that need to stay, and what need to go?

Matt May:

I want to wrap up by giving you the opportunity to highlight people that you

Matt May:

think of that our listeners should be looking into, people you think are doing

Matt May:

great work, that are doing inclusive, equitable work, advocacy, research?

Timothy Bardlavens:

Yeah.

Timothy Bardlavens:

There's so many people out in the world.

Timothy Bardlavens:

I would say of course I'd always shout out.

Timothy Bardlavens:

My best friend first and foremost, Antionette Carroll.

Timothy Bardlavens:

If people don't know her, then you're living under a rock

Timothy Bardlavens:

because she is literally the best.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And then I'll also say there's a really, an amazing person named Demma Rosa

Timothy Bardlavens:

Rodriguez, who she's the head of community safety, trust and safety at Meta.

Timothy Bardlavens:

But even before that she'd built the team and the equity engineering team

Timothy Bardlavens:

at Google, like amazing person to just know of and then, there's us co also

Timothy Bardlavens:

Vivianne Castillo, who's like the best.

Timothy Bardlavens:

She, she's now leading full time, HmntyCntrd, and which

Timothy Bardlavens:

is an amazing organization.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And I think it's really great if nothing else, like I've learned a ton just about

Timothy Bardlavens:

like, how to think about organizational trauma, organizational betrayal.

Timothy Bardlavens:

What does that even look like?

Timothy Bardlavens:

How do you heal from it?

Timothy Bardlavens:

How do you like all those things are just like really interesting.

Timothy Bardlavens:

It's just like different.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Like, she approaches a lot of these topics, especially when it comes to

Timothy Bardlavens:

people's lived experiences within organizations from the place of therapy,

Timothy Bardlavens:

because she used to be a therapist.

Timothy Bardlavens:

And so she has a very clinical way of looking at it while also mixing in

Timothy Bardlavens:

her experience, coming from a theology background will also look coming through

Timothy Bardlavens:

like her research background and working in these big corporations and so amazing.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Like even just go to LinkedIn or to Twitter and just look at some of the

Timothy Bardlavens:

video clips from it, just amazing and really intriguing conversation.

Matt May:

We'll put links in to the show notes.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Yes.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Three amazing Black women.

Matt May:

Thank you so much for participating.

Matt May:

I really appreciate all our conversations, but I think this is

Matt May:

the first one that's been recorded.

Matt May:

So, thank you.

Matt May:

And we have more to come.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Yes.

Matt May:

I'm looking forward to seeing what's next for you and,

Matt May:

yeah, we're going to keep in touch.

Timothy Bardlavens:

Thank you, thank you.

Matt May:

That's our show.

Matt May:

Show notes and transcripts for all InEx episodes are available at inex.show.

Matt May:

That's I-N-E-X dot show.

Matt May:

All episodes are released under Creative Commons Attribution,

Matt May:

4.0 International license.

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About the Podcast

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InEx: a show about inclusive design

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About your host

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Matthew May

InEx is Matt's major research project for his Master of Design in Inclusive Design degree at OCAD University.