Layoffs, venture capital and performance bias — the intersection

Have you ever felt like your challenges and struggles in the workplace are magnified because you’re not part of a dominant group?

What we’ve seen over the last few days with Arlan Hamilton’s Backstage Capital has triggered some of the Hustle Crew Team. This VC fund is on a mission to put money in the hands of underrepresented founders and is doing what it needs to survive, yet some outlets and commentators relishing their current challenges. We break down how ‘performance bias’ might be driving some of the naysayers…

Is this another case of underrepresented founders being over-scrutinised?

Arlan Hamilton recently announced that her venture capital fund Backstage Capital would be shrinking from 12 employees to 3.

This became a headline for Tech Crunch, one of the tech industry’s leading news outlets, which triggered some questionable commentary online:

Could it be that as a queer, Black woman, Arlan’s successes and challenges are judged more harshly? We’ve seen it before…

In media, in school and in the workplace, the idea that underrepresented groups need to be ‘twice as good’ persists. ‘Performance bias’ the assumption that certain groups are just ‘better’ than others, lies below the surface and affects how challenges and failures are judged depending on your demographic

Some Twitter users have come to her defence to call this out:

…and Arlan went further to explain her position

If Arlan kept the entire team, the business wouldn’t survive — which would have been deemed a failure

And yet, Backstage still comes under fire for making the difficult decisions to save a business that is serving a huge need — underrepresented founders

It’s almost a lose-lose situation, which is so frustrating to see — especially when much larger companies are doing far worse to underrepresented staff.

What do you think? Have you been on the receiving end of performance bias? Do you know how to navigate it in your workplace? What do you think? Have you experienced a version of this in the workplace? If so, do you know how to deal? Join the conversation.

If you’d like to learn more about how we help companies how to understand and navigate biases in the workplace, click here.

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