Non-Engineeing Careers at Bay Area Tech Companies

On August 25th, 2016 at the Oakland Impact Hub, the MT Lindsey hosted a panel discussion entitled "Non-Engineering Careers at Bay Area Tech Companies".

Panelists included Neal Stewart from Google, Jeunee Simon from Slack, Aisha Chiappetta from MongoDB, Rena Davis from Lyft, and Nabeela Virji from Yelp. Marco Lindsey, Chief of Staff at the Berkeley-Haas School of Business and member of the 100 Black Men of the Bay Area was the event’s moderator.

Under the 100 Black Men of the Bay Area Economic Empowerment initiative, the purpose of the event was to inform Bay Area residents and college students about the career opportunities at local tech companies that do not involve coding. This standing room only event also paired more than 250 diverse job seekers with over 30 recruiters from a variety of local tech companies. Career seekers also learned of educational opportunities at the Berkeley-Haas Center for Executive Education that would help them gain skills that would make them more marketable to employers.

Here’s what attendees had to say about the event:

“Thank you so much for organizing the event last Thursday night. It's great to meet all those recruiters in person and hear their stories with my dream companies.”

“…thank you for putting together such an informative panel and networking event. I have been eager to find ways of breaking into the tech industry and a lot of my questions have been answered.”

“Thank you guys for showing up and allowing me to learn/explore the avenues with the Tech industry. It was very enlightening to learn that the industry offers about 70% of positions to non-coding careers. Also the food provided was wonderful as well.”

“I greatly appreciated the insights from the panel discussion on "Non-Engineering Careers at Bay Area Tech Companies" and learned an incredible amount about the various career fields available to young men of color.”

Special thanks to the Berkeley-Haas School of Business, Salesforce, Lyft, MongoDB, Slack, and Yelp for sponsoring the event.