The US semiconductor is designed around designers, and those designers are well compensated via stock options. Simply, if you join a company today, and the share price is $10, and they give you 1000 units of the shares, and  if in the future, the share price appreciates say to $50, you have made $40,000 when you exercise the agreement! The idea there is to incentivize engineers to come up with product innovations which will drive the appreciation of the company valuation.

Sure, it is not exclusive to engineers and designers, but if two employees, designer and non-designer, are at the same level, if you look deeper, both may be getting paid the same dollar amount, but the designer likely has a more generous stock  option.  

When I was in the industry, we attended a meeting and towards the end of the meeting, one of the designers asked the Vice President what was his major concern with the group; he responded: the stock is going up, and if this continues, these seats may be empty, explaining the challenges he faced before the dot-com bubble, on how people cashed out and left the company.

In other words, if the stock price continues to rise, people will become rich, and can just retire. According to him, the problem was so bad during the dot-com era that many projects were canceled as they could not find people to do the work!

Good People, Nvidia seems to have that problem now. Some of its technical staff with stock options are becoming very rich as the company continues its valuation ascension, to the extent that some mid-level engineers have made $20 million on stock options. Watch out, most will retire! That is a huge problem for Nvidia!

The wealth that can be gained from helping to propel a successful company is vividly illustrated by a recent Tweet/X by Barron’s writer Tae Kim. One “mid-level” Nvidia employee accrued a fortune of $62 million, claims Kim. Thus, company share schemes can be a great incentive for employees. However, as a counterpoint, the senior Barron’s reporter also knows of at least one Nvidia employee who made a “half billion dollar mistake,” after their ‘green-gold’ slipped through their fingers.

Imagine a tech boardroom where every voice is heard and every perspective matters. This is the ultimate goal of equity, which every organization should be striving to achieve. However, there are unconscious biases that indirectly bring about boards that are largely tilted towards a dominant community, leaving several diverse groups underrepresented or unrepresented.

Just in case you are not sure what are the benefits of a diverse board, here’s what you should know. Every tech company is designing and putting out products that target a diverse customer base and audience with varied interests and tastes. If you do not have a board that mirrors this variations, how do you expect to perform in the market? A diverse board brings with it diverse opinions that will contribute to making a richer product that enhances customer satisfaction and, consequently, a larger market share.

Think of it this way: it should make home-planning easier for women, and you don’t have any woman on your board. What do you think would happen? Or you are designing an app that should help graphics designers across the globe, but you only have one race represented on your team? I will let you decide for yourself what the end results of those are likely to be.

If you want better business outcomes, you need to have the variety of the human race represented on your team of decision-makers—the board. When we label people and put them in different boxes, we don’t see them for who they are or the value they could bring on board.

If we want a board that promotes equity in tech leadership, there are things that need to be in place for this to happen, and I think that UK Equality Act 2010 detailed just what and what these things are.

1. Protecting Diversity

The first step is protecting the diversity of the board and, by extension, the workplace. The Equality Act 2010 protects against discriminations based on race, gender, age, disability, and more. This, I think, is crucial to ensuring fair treatment in any workplace and an inclusive environment at all levels of leadership, including the board.

2. Taking Positive Action

The UK Equality Act takes the drive beyond mere talk and encourages positive action to address underrepresentation. Organizations have to take action by creating pathways for candidates from diverse backgrounds to seek, be recommended, and appointed to board positions. When recruitments or appointments are being made into the board, the job descriptions must be free of gendered language and actively promote the roles in underrepresented communities in tech.

3. Getting rid of unconscious bias through conscious trainings

The tricky thing about unconscious bias is that you hardly know when they is driving your decisions and choices until you consciously take a second look. They could be in the side remarks people make to fellow employees or board members or the underlying thought in the way they treat each other, but often they are not obvious on face value. That is why the staffs and board members have to participate in regular training sessions to recognize and counteract such biases. This directly fosters a culture of respect and inclusivity, ensuring that decisions are made fairly and equitably. For instance, organizations that implement this bias training see a significant increase in diverse hiring at senior levels afterwards.

4. Setting Diversity Targets

A wise speaker once asked, How do you hit a target you cannot see? If there are no clear diversity targets, it is easy to miss the way. You need to set clear diversity targets to ensure the board represents a variety of backgrounds and experiences, mainly focusing on underrepresented groups like black professionals. For example, you could set a goal to have at least 30% of board positions filled by individuals from minority backgrounds within the next two years. This, of course, does not mean compromising on the qualifying standards; it means ensuring that you get qualified hands and minds from those groups.

5. Mentorship Programs

The drive to have representation across minority groups may prove difficult if some groups consistently have fewer qualified people, and this is where mentorship programs can help. Have inclusive mentorship programs that help prepare young people from diverse backgrounds to be able to rise to leadership roles in the future. This will give you a larger pool of underrepresented groups, so that you have your pick.

6. Have a Transparent Reporting Process and Template

Once you have targets, the next step is to create an accountability process by reporting on your diversity metrics at intervals. It could be annually or quarterly, but you need to keep stakeholders in the loop as to how much progress you are making on the goals. This also shows that you are committed to them and builds trust with the stakeholders.

Let us all commit to making tech leadership inclusive and equitable, rather than an industry that is dominated by a certain group and other groups are tagged outliers. This is tech, afterall. Everyone should have a voice and a seat at the table.