Lucia Smith

HR, social justice, cookies. HR Consultant @ Gray Scalable, genius behind @personweekly. Prev: Paperless Post, LimeWire. As always, special thanks to Sid Meier

[Lucia Smith @Luc_io]

My tell-all is going to be 90% surgery gossip and 10% secrets of baking. The inside flap will just be things college interns have said to me.

[Lucia Smith @Luc_io]

What a shameless and gross example of someone centering himself instead of the people he (supposedly) serves.

Hope @samswey is able to reclaim MPV and as always big ❤️ to anyone quietly doing the data work that fuels movements.

[Samuel Sinyangwe @samswey]

🚨After @Nettaaaaaaaa and I called for accountability for #CampaignZero, @deray is trying to forcibly take over the Mapping Police Violence database that I and my team have built for *years* - redirecting it to a COPY he has no capacity to maintain in an act of retaliation. 🚨

[Lucia Smith @Luc_io]

@ashedryden Hurricane Heist (if you like your heists to be ridiculous)

[The City Reporter @THECITYNY]

Which Mayoral Candidates Agree with You? Here’s Why We Made a Tool That Tells You https://t.co/5fVkb5MstT

[Danez @Danez_Smif]

Oooooh say can you seeee if you had my love and I gave you all my trust would you by the dawns early light

[Lucia Smith @Luc_io]

I have given my time, energy, and boy toy to this election. Nothing left to do now but bake some pies 🥧

[Lucia Smith @Luc_io]

My dad's latest book comes out tomorrow! It's called CHICAGO'S GREAT FIRE and one review said: “It is, simply put, the best book ever written about the fire..." I'm just so proud and impressed. If you like popular histories, buy it!

https://t.co/OmQjo49p0d

[Lucia Smith @Luc_io]

Well, it's still phone banking season and I'm making calls tomorrow to make sure folks in PA know how and where to vote. Take some direct action and sign up!

https://t.co/SMuAUMLUXC

[Lucia Smith @Luc_io]

It's phone banking season and folks have nowhere to be so they're actually picking up! If you want to be cool, join me tomorrow to make calls to voters in my problematic fave: Florida. Sign up here: https://t.co/MToql3XaV0

[Lucia Smith @Luc_io]

@fwbrantley Perhaps join me where I am instead, in the “obsessively watch behind the scenes footage of The Greatest Showman” phase

[Lucia Smith @Luc_io]

We are whatever no. of days out from the election so let me send out this salty reminder that buying stamps does not count as you doing your part. Sorry!

[Lucia Smith @Luc_io]

Agree with this all but the one I face the most is about managers & leaders wanting to avoid sensitive or difficult convos. There is nothing I am asked to do more than write a policy so that someone can point to it and thus avoid actually talking to someone else.

[Project Include @projectinclude]

So many problems in tech are related to mismanagement. Train your managers. Make sure inclusion and anti-racism are part of the training. Teach them to confront with hard problems and how to have difficult conversations.

[Lucia Smith @Luc_io]

I am very stressed right now and all my impulses for how to cope are a disturbing arrow pointing directly to how stressed I was as a tween.

[Lucia Smith @Luc_io]

Also leaders rarely hide their problematic beliefs so it’s easier than you think to vet a job. The easiest tell is asking the goal of reviews. A lot (a lot!) of execs say some version of “To be able to put a formula to who should be fired.” 🥴

[Lucia Smith @Luc_io]

This is why I tell HR job seekers to vet leadership and basically nothing else. If leadership has beliefs you don’t agree with, get out b/c there’s no future where you’ll convince them of better practices - they got into power with those beliefs and def aren’t changing them.

[Sebastian Adé @sebastianxade]

Also, this is not to discredit the work HR professionals do. It is to say that if your company REALLY cares about people the priorities of HR will match because their commitment is to the company. If your company has toxic people at the ‘top’, tell me wtf HR gone do?

[Lucia Smith @Luc_io]

One of the big issues I see is orgs ignoring the identity & lived experience of candidates when trying to hire. Your FE dev or lead designer role is not that interesting & certainly not unique. The differentiator is what it’s like to show up every day & do those jobs at your org.

[Lucia Smith @Luc_io]

Truly boggled by all the companies asking only how they can find a more diverse set of candidates. Why do you assume they would they want to work for you? What else are you doing other than writing new people the same old pitches? Sourcing differently is maybe 10% of the work.

[Karla Monterroso @karlitaliliana]

There are players in the tech space like Palantir and FB that everyone gets are not good at inclusion and have little interest in it. There is a whole other category of companies that have done good work with one aspect of inclusion and develop good reputations about this work...

[Lucia Smith @Luc_io]

Honestly your company culture is who you hire, fire, and promote. Any other commitments are icing so you need to start with the big three before you move to committees, trainings, etc. Bake your cake!

[Lucia Smith @Luc_io]

Remember when Google made these exact pledges in 2014, spent $265 million on the effort, and saw...no change? Wondering where the post on how they’ll hold themselves accountable is...

[Sundar Pichai @sundarpichai]

Today we are announcing a set of concrete commitments to build sustainable equity for Google’s Black community, and make our products and programs helpful in the moments that matter most to Black users.
https://t.co/6qcDBHOU61

[Lucia Smith @Luc_io]

And while we’re here, @BrooklynDA has also made the same distinction of not prosecuting as long as the protestor was not part of an “act of violence.” One guess on who gets categorized as violent and who as peaceful. These are sham distinctions from supposedly progressive DA’s.

[Lucia Smith @Luc_io]

Don’t clap for @ManhattanDA for saying he wouldn’t prosecute peaceful protestors. He’s also asked Cuomo to allow him to upcharge & jail others. Separating “nonviolent protest” and “looters” is a racist dogwhistle that he loves to blow. And PS he’s up for re-election next year!