CASE APPLICATION Gusto: Making a Difference in Gender Diversity If you were the only female engineer at a start-up in San Francisco, you could work hard and hope more women are hired. Or you could do what Julie Lee did in the spring of 2015. She asked to meet with Edward Kim, Gusto's cofounder and chief technology officer. Kim was "extraordinarily receptive" to Lee's explanation that she loved her work, but struggled being the only woman on an 18-person engineering team. ' Kim saw solving this problem as an opportunity ... and as a source of com- petitive advantage.Q Aa . . . 130 Part 2 Basics of Managing in Today's Workplace Gusto developed a plan to attract women engineers. The obvious ingredient of this plan was to get more women engineers to apply for job openings. But Gusto didn't just do the obvious. They changed phrases like "Ninja rock star coder" in some of their job descriptions that were unnecessarily masculine. Gusto was a step ahead of a recent study that found that masculine wording, sexist jokes, and presentation slides of only men were common in recruiting efforts in tech companies. 106 Gusto also recruited women applicants with an email from Lee inviting them to have an initial talk with her. Lee also wrote a blog post that publicized Gusto's goal of hiring more women engineers. Since 85 percent of jobs are filled through networking and referrals, Lee's involvement was a way to signal to other women that Gusto is a place where women work as engineers. "G s. 107 Gusto also made gender diversity a priority in other parts of the company, including hiring on the executive team and beefing up their benefits for working parents. In six months, Gusto was able to exceed their gender diversity hiring goals. Their work isn't over, however. They still have big strides to make in increasing racial di- versity. They don't have Latinos or African Americans on their engineering team. As Kim put it, "The way we make progress is by focusing on one problem and then move on to the next." DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 5-13. What were the most important steps that Gusto took to increase gender diversity? 5-14. Even though Julie Lee was so helpful to Gusto's gender diversity efforts, what demands does this case illustrate are involved in being the only woman? 5-15. Now that Gusto has hired more women engineers, what should they do to ensure that they don't leave the company? 5-16. What can Gusto do to improve its racial diversity