Dropbox Employee #1 Aston Motes on How To Support Black Engineers
Aston Motes was Dropbox employee #1, has founded multiple companies, and now helps run /dev/color, which is a non-profit dedicated to supporting black engineers.
Here is the interview, with notes below with links to points in the video:
1:20 Introduction, going way back to MIT, and how Aston joined Dropbox.
5:20 What Aston built early at Dropbox.
6:42 How Aston and Ivan first met: at a YC poker game.
7:25 How did Dropbox develop a culture around high quality.
12:58 How Aston optimized his career around his rate of learning.
17:00 How startups are a constant stream of things to learn.
18:00 How to get more people to start startups.
19:35 How economic security impacts the founding decision
22:55 How comfort of a high salary can prevent founding a startup.
24:00 How starting a family encouraged Ivan to take more career risk.
27:15 Why tech concentration on the coasts is dangerous.
28:15 How software engineering is democratized for access.
29:40 What is the mission of /Dev/Color.
33:13 How to scale /Dev/Color.
36:00 How startups can work with /Dev/Color
38:00 How startups can make the best environment for black engineers, and generally helping people who are “the only”.
41:45 How to make your environment better.
43:53 How to improve your recruiting.
47:00 How to learn more. Go to https://www.devcolor.org/
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