Thanks @kiikoblak for sharing your story about applying to @webflow. It’s super f*cked up and totally unacceptable discriminatory behavior from a hiring manager. It happens all the time and we NEED to talk about it. Companies, you should hire Khari. https://medium.com/@kh4ri/remote-hiring-at-tech-companies-is-racist-e9bd8c5dcd24

Khari’s story makes me really angry on a few levels. First, Khari is an EXCEPTIONAL candidate. Amazing portfolio. 6yrs of mostly remote professional design experience. Accepted into a world renowned master’s design program. Standout personal reference. https://dribbble.com/kh4ri 

Also @ryryjmo SPECIFICALLY encouraged BIPOC candidates to apply, and for candidates to DM him with questions, only to ignore them. If you’re not going to respond to Black candidates who apply, telling them to apply anyway is psychological abuse and wasting their time. WTF

By doing this and @webflow by enabling this behavior you’re actually stealing time from the very same people you and your company claims to be supporting. It’s been almost 2 weeks since Khari shared his experience with you, and you haven’t addressed it publicly at all.

And here’s another thing that pisses me off. By not addressing your company and employee’s racist discriminatory behavior, you’ve created pressure for your Black employees to address their coworker’s racist behavior. That’s f*cked up and exactly what they DON’T need right now.

@webflow if you were really watching out for Black people in your company and community, you would have taken swift action to release a public statement and apology condemning Ryan’s behavior and outlining the consequences & changes to come from that.

@webflow your inaction on this has also created an environment where your employees both naturally want to speak out in support of Khari, and also are unclear if they will face retaliation for speaking out. If you condemned it and took action early, they wouldn’t have to wonder.

Also to be crystal clear. Hiring discrimination is illegal, and @ryryjmo should definitely not be in any position to make hiring decisions based on his behavior here. My opinion is he should be fired and @webflow should hire a 3rd party to overhaul their hiring practices.

Ok another thing that I’m mad about. There is zero legal liability involved in giving constructive feedback to rejected candidates. Companies lie and say there is. There IS liability in having racist hiring practices revealed, which many of these companies are hiding.

There is no reason why Khari would be rejected for this role without even an intro call. This is clear evidence of racist discriminatory hiring practices, and like Khari said it’s not just @webflow. Tech’s network-based hiring is racist by design. White people know white people.

Most of these companies just have random employees hand picking people they want to work with. There is very rarely a clearly defined process and hiring criteria. There’s usually a fast track if you know someone and a trash bin if you don’t. And zero effort to reduce bias.

And many of these hiring managers are racist racist. And most companies do not care or fire them for it. This industry will never be less racist until we address deeply racist hiring practices and racist people. Every application that comes in should be reviewed.

It makes me so mad that Khari hasn’t even gotten a phone interview at the companies he applied to. Any company would be lucky to have him. He should have gotten at least a phone interview at EVERY SINGLE ONE of those companies. All those companies’ hiring practices are trash.

And these racist hiring practices give a real advantage to every white person like myself. And we’re not loud about it because it benefits us. It’s not just hiring, but funding, promotions, and everything else. Y Combinator, which funded @webflow, also has a huge racism problem.