MOUNTAIN VIEW — Howard Sueing has found a place in an
industry that’s largely closed off to people like him. A black employee
at Google, raised on food stamps in Section 8 housing, he’s a relative
rarity in a company and a sector where African Americans make up a very
small percentage of the workforce.
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| Howard Sueing |
And now he’s doing his best, as a software engineer and
instructor in Google’s new “Howard West” computer science program for
students from historically black colleges, to make his company more
diverse and inclusive to people of color.
Howard West takes its name — and for now its students — from
Washington, D.C.’s historically black Howard University. The 12-week
program puts students through courses in software engineering,
algorithms, machine learning and mobile app development. The initiative
was unveiled earlier this month in a two-story building near Google’s
headquarters complex in Mountain View.
Each class is co-taught by a Google employee and a Howard
University computer science professor. Students receive course credits
toward graduation from Howard. Google plans to involve other
historically black colleges in the future, and expand the student cohort
beyond the current number of 26.
Sueing sat down with this newspaper at Howard West to
discuss the program and his work. His comments have been edited for
length and clarity.
Q: Google is 2 percent black overall and in leadership roles, only 1 percent in tech jobs — what causes these low diversity rates?
A: This is an industry challenge. If you
look at (Google’s) actions, if you look at our diversity programs, if
you look at the fact that we were the first company to release our
numbers in the first place… we’re definitely one of the leading
companies in taking charge in solving this problem. The industry, in
Silicon Valley and the Bay Area, it’s kind of blown up quickly, and it’s
done so, I’d say, without necessarily the input or feedback from folks
like myself. It’s created an environment and processes and systems that
sometimes are a challenge for people like me to navigate.
Q: To what degree, if any, is racism a factor in the low number of black people in tech?
A: What I’ve found from my personal
experience is not necessarily overt racism but more … unconscious bias.
You have a group of individuals who are not necessarily used to maybe
thinking about working with or considering the perspectives of a
minority group. The recruiting strategies and practices that are
developed can sometimes negatively impact the minority group.
It’s taken me a long time to learn that, because in many
areas of this country overt racism is the cause for some of the
challenges that I have and some of the opportunities that I’ve been
denied. There’s always this mental stress that folks like myself have to
deal with where we’re trying to figure out, “OK, if something happens
to us is it because of overt racism? Is it because of unconscious bias?
Is it because maybe I didn’t actually deserve the opportunity and I need
to work harder?”
Q: What challenges did you face, because of your race, while coming up in your education and career in tech?
A: I think of times (when) there’s not
necessarily a motivation of the majority demographic to learn about me
or to understand me or my background. There’s an aggressive need and
burden put on me to then learn more about them and be able to integrate
myself in their world, and to take on things that are of their culture.
Trying to do that while simultaneously also being excellent in your role
and in your job, it kind of sets many people up for failure.
There’s this thing called a black tax: this phrase is
essentially the notion of a black- or brown-skinned person coming into a
corporate environment and in addition to needing to perform strongly in
their core roles, having the tax of needing to also support that
company’s diversity and inclusion initiatives, or mentor people, or work
with others like them to help them get to the same space. That’s
something that many people like myself enjoy doing and are passionate
about. But it … gives us even a lower amount of resources to work with
as we’re competing against some of our peers who are not black.
Q: What role does Howard West have in improving Google’s diversity?
A: The goal of Howard West is not only to
improve Google’s diversity and empower these students but also just to
do our part in chiseling at the problem that the industry as a whole
has. We’re totally OK if these students come to Howard West, they do a
great job, they learn a lot, and then they go to a competitor. At the
end of the day we had an opportunity to be involved in that student’s
life, and to empower them and support them as they grow academically and
professionally. We also hope that they fall in love with our campus and
our Google culture, and so therefore are able to more easily see
themselves in an environment like Google, and develop a goal of
potentially working at Google if that’s what they want.
Q: To what extent is Howard West a
recruitment instrument — will a significant number of residency
graduates end up working at Google?
A: We would Love to hire each and every one of them. More than a
recruitment initiative this is us having a long-term perspective,
understanding that there may not be immediate tangible “wins.” This is a
tough problem, it takes time. The primary goal would be to teach, to
empower and to provide the students an opportunity to immerse themselves
in the Bay Area, in Google, in the technology industry in general.
Q: What else can be done to get more black people into tech jobs?
A: Diversity and inclusion needs to be made
more of a core component of the companies that are in the technology
industries: their mission statements, their processes, how they get
things done. It shouldn’t be an afterthought.
Name: Howard Sueing
Job title: software engineer/Howard West software engineering instructor
Age: 28
Education: BS in computer science, Howard University, 2010
City of residence: Mountain View
Family: single, no children
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Five things about Howard Sueing
1. My first job, I was a janitor at a high
school and a car dealership and to date it’s probably one of the best
jobs I’ve ever had. I like to clean. I had my alone time. It was really a
great opportunity to think, decompress.
2. I am kind of a Pokemon freak. That was a big part of my childhood. I randomly name things that I’m working on after Pokemon.
3. I’m the oldest of five, a very proud older brother and very aggressively involved in all of my siblings’ lives.
4. My favorite artist is George Michael. My mother used to
play his music in the house when I was growing up. When I got older I
started to really appreciate his music.
5. I’m annoyingly about seven minutes off a Boston
qualifying time for running the marathon. It’s a goal that’s really
important for me. Since I’ve come to Google I’ve actually become
significantly faster — year ’round training, consistent weather, also
Google’s super-flexible.
Sources: Mercury News
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