Hello!
I am Riley, an undergraduate student majoring in Computer Science at Seattle University. I’m hoping to get in touch with you because I am expanding on a short paper that was accepted by IEEE ICSE 2023 about workplace discrimination in software engineering. The paper, “Workplace Discrimination in Software Engineering: Where We Stand Today,” by Xin Zhao and Riley Young, found a possible link between software developers’ experiences with workplace discrimination and their communication, or lack thereof, with Human Resources. To expand, we are hoping to interview several employees who work in HR at large software engineering companies. By carrying out these interviews, we aim to reach a better understanding of how external actors within a technology-focused company perceive workplace discrimination. From these findings, we will find more concrete solutions to this pervasive issue. If HR can further reduce and eliminate workplace discrimination, we will do research to show what kinds of changes can be made and how that will constitute improvement. If we find that HR has significant barriers to improvement, we will research how we can eliminate these barriers, whether these solutions are higher up in the company or in more systemic problems across companies. This research is incredibly important to my peers and me in improving the climate we will soon be working in. Without drastic change in STEM companies, the biases that persist in our society will continue to seep into the code and technology that is moving our world forward. We must stop leaving people behind.
Please let me know if you can put me in contact with anyone in HR at your company who would be willing to interview. We would greatly appreciate it!
Best,
Riley Young
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