Confronting our own racism as white engineering managers

This one is for my White peers.

As a member of an engineering senior leadership team, I run a monthly department meeting for about 80 managers. During an otherwise unremarkable instance of the meeting earlier this year, there was one standout interaction.

I mentioned toward the end that the department’s Senior Directors and VPs were aware that between the COVID-19 pandemic and 2020’s political events, many individuals were concerned that lost productivity might affect promotions that people had been working toward. Further, I said, we wanted to be mindful that Black employees had been disproportionately affected by the pandemic and social uprising, and we wanted to figure out a way to take that into account.

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