Helping Tech Companies Look Like the World
A conversation with Sidney Miller, Strategic Sourcing Lead, Equinix
I spoke with Sidney Miller about her experience as Strategic Sourcing Lead at Equinix. We spoke about her mission to help companies look like the world and how to break legacy thought in hiring.
This interview has been light edited for clarity and length.
Can you tell me a bit about your background in the tech industry?
I started in tech by accident. I did corporate fashion after school. I went to school for it, moved to Dallas, Texas to work for Neiman Marcus, found out I didn't want to do that. And then literally fell into the industry after sending out a million resumes. I was selected to interview for a technical recruiting job. I knew nothing about it. I smashed the interview and got the job. That was the start of my journey in tech recruiting Java engineers on the backend. I did that for about 10 years, I was on the vendor side supplying contract work to large organizations and whatnot. And then, Google called me. So, that was started where I kicked off my career on the corporate side doing and building teams internally for large organizations like Google, Microsoft twice. I was at a company called Brocade Communications for a small stint. I've also worked at Apple and a couple startups. I had a small stint at another Seattle-based organization and found out that that was not where I wanted to work. My most recent highlight was building out the entire infrastructure from interface layer to the data center for GitHub. And then, I ended up at Equinix.
Google, Microsoft, Apple, GitHub and then some smaller companies — that’s a nice array. Where was Equinix in their cycle when you joined?
I came to Equinix through an acquisition. Let me back up first. I was at GitHub from 2017 to 2019 while they were in hypergrowth. I worked at a place for six months and then left for a lot of reasons but mainly because I was tired. I'm a mom. I'm a mom first and you know you forget about that. So, I took some time to be a mom. And that was really hard to do because when you're at a certain level in tech, you can't take time off.
So, I had taken some time off. And I took my own advice because I'm out there going, "You can do this, you just got to find your voice and I'll help you get there." And then in here I am in my house in Phoenix going, "Oh, I got to find a job. I don't know how to find a job." So, I was like, "You know what, there are some cool people I know on Twitter. Why not?" So, I basically just threw my name out there and said, "Hi, my name is Sidney Miller, and I'm looking for a job. And my most proud accomplishment was when I worked at GitHub." And then I took chunks of my resume and said, "I grew the company this percentage and I was responsible for this amount of the hypergrowth. And I built the Actions team, like that team was nothing and I built that entire GitHub Actions team from scratch with the leader."
So I took my own advice because I tell people, "Put yourself out there a little bit. It's very scary. Oh my gosh. But you know what, you'll be seen, you will be. People like me will help you." So, I got picked up and it started getting retweeted. And those people that I helped support at GitHub started affirming me saying, "She really did that," and would retweet it. And so, I got a lot of really amazing visibility.
Dizzy Smith was with a company called Packet. He contacted me and said, "We need a recruiter." Then I got to meet Jacob and Zach Smith who were the founders of Packet. They hired me in March of 2020. So, not only was it brand new for me and all of that, COVID hit literally the week before I started my job. And I also found out the week that I signed my offer letter that Equinix was buying Packet. So, my journey to Equinix was through the acquisition.
When you joined were they still Packet when you officially came aboard or were they already integrating all of that?
When I first initially started, we were still acting independently. And of course, there's a lot of behind the scenes, a lot of operational stuff that I was not privy to, thankfully. The acquisition took until October/December of 2020 for us to be fully integrated, and then with the name change and branding of Equinix Metal. So, Packet became Equinix Metal.
What’s your role at the company?
I think I had three different versions of life while I was there. I came in as the only recruiter. I was going to build that recruiting for Packet. When we started hyperscaling I added to the team, eventually becoming a team of four. I was Talent Acquisition Lead fro Equinix Metal. So, I was managing all of the hiring for Equinix metal in the business and working with the leaders and Zach and Jacob, Dizzy and Shweta Saraf and all of these amazing folks that we had to hire a lot of people. When we fully integrated, they pulled me more to the Equinix side to build a strategic sourcing team. So, my title is Strategic Sourcing Lead here at Equinix right now.
What is a Strategic Sourcing Lead and how big is your team?
I have a team of three individuals underneath me right now and I lead strategic sourcing. Now, when you think of recruiting, there's the people that you engage with about like, "Hey, I've got this great job." And they're more on the operational side. They are business as usual. "I'm going to talk to you. I've got this opportunity. And we're going to put you in interviews and whatnot." And that's great. There are people like me who are in talent acquisition but have a specific focus. My bread-and-butter has always been on infrastructure just because that's where I started. I started with Java engineering and it's grown into this amazing thing now. But strategic sourcing is really about not going on LinkedIn and sending 500 emails, because we all know what those look like. Those look like somebody's not trying.
We’ve all gotten “dear fill in the blank” the formal letter, right?
This is my favorite because I get it all the time. "We are looking for a software engineer to build a Kubernetes." And I'm thinking, "Did you even look like?" Yes, I've worked with Kubernetes but I'm not an engineer. I'm not even close. Like, delete ...
It's like the spray-and-pray method that we've seen. Not that all recruiting is like that for sure, but we see that.
Most of it is. I'm going to call that out because I can because I've seen it. It's awful. I'm old school. I'm all about relationships. I don't forget people. It's my thing. And I don't know if it's the old school kind of my dad learning from my dad that integrity is everything and make sure you know people's names because that's important, that makes them feel like a human.
And my dad was a really good salesperson but not like that, "Hey, hey, hey," kind. People trusted him because he had his word. That's where I feel like I am. More than anything, I feel like I'm kind of an agent and I've played with this idea. And Amy Tobey will laugh because I'm like, "Can I just be your agent?" Like she's the star, "I can go negotiate all the things for you for next time that you're going to" It's about taking care of the person, as well as taking care of the company.
When I'm working with somebody and I have an opportunity, let's just say I'm building an infrastructure team, I'm going to see that person as a human being. I think that's the difference. Of course, I'm going to go out and I'm going to look for them, but the way that I engage with somebody is going to be the difference. Strategic sourcing is about meeting people and maybe having a job for them or maybe having something for them three, six, nine months from now. But when that happens, I know exactly what Suzan Bond needs. And if that opportunity is that right one, that's what I'm going to talk to about. And just see, I'm not going to be like, "Suzan, I've got this done for you and it's so great."
Right. It’s very different from “I have to fill this requisition right now” assembly line kind of thinking.
Butts in seats, headcount right? Does anybody even realize that headcount is what people use for cattle? Let's think about how we're actually using language around here, too. We're not cattle. Butts in seats, yeah sure, that makes me feel really good about going to work. So, I'm one of those people that I'm like, "Yeah, that smells like total shit and that needs to stop right now." I was told by my VP that I have enough courage to see that stuff through, bold enough to talk about the things that don't smell right.
Strategic sourcing is that real fine art. It's like a matchmaker. That sounds gross to say but it really truly is like that. I know exactly everything about the company that I work with. I know about the technology stack. I know about the people that run them. I know who's in the team. I know who's not in the team. And that is what drives me in strategic sourcing is to go find those voices that are not in the team. That could be identity. It could be colorful faces. It could be different parts of the world. It could be someone who lives in a different culture, lives in a different space. So, that's what I go out and do.
You've talked about you want to build cloud engineering teams that look like the world. I just love it. Can you tell me what you mean by that?
Yeah, for sure. Oh, gosh. And I learned this over time, but I think it really like smacked me in the face at GitHub because we started on a mission. And I remember, I'll never forget it, I sat down in the bottom of GitHub with Sam Lambert, who was CVP at the time. But we were at that point where we decided, "Okay, something big is about to happen." And this was before Microsoft was even in the picture or maybe it was and we didn't know it. But we knew that we had to get from here to here.
When I started at GitHub, there were 417 people. And when I left, there were just about 1,000. So, there was some rapid growth within18 months. I think it brought to light that it matters when you have different perspective, different vernacular, different challenges, different organisms, different human beings that make up teams. Because when you have a product and it's made in a very vacuumed way, sure it's going to be great product, but is it going to appeal to every single person on this planet? Is it going to be leveraged? Is it going to make sense if it's built in one zip code by the same people that all went to the same school? I'll pick on Stanford because I always do. They all want to CS degrees from Stanford.
And there's that whole tech, I want to say bro-thing, but that's the only thing I could say. "I know you. I know your son. I know your friend. I know you're this. You're a referral." This is where it gets into my world and I can actually speak to this. The amount of referrals that come in, it's talent acquisition's job to say, "Yo, hold the phone. There's not enough inclusion here because what about my people in Washington, D.C., that aren't cis white males?" What about those people? Do they use the product? Yeah, they do. They should be included. What about the people that are in South Korea or those that are in Africa, or those that are using software out of Amsterdam, or in the middle of the Ukraine? You never know. These are important things because when you start to get myopic about it and you don't diversify, it's not only just about the product, it's about humanity. Why aren't you bringing in all these different things that make us human into your product?
Because as soon as you get here and that's all you see, you will only get here and that's all you will see. And over time, it will erode the innovation. If you pull in different kinds of people, you get a smarter product, you get a better product, you get a worldly product.
The product that GitHub had version control software that was free and open and open-sourced that helped people in Africa identify where there were clean water wells. I learned that when I was at GitHub and I told that story to every single person that I talked to. I said, "You know, this is why this is important and why everybody's voice matters." Because if you can just for half a second, who was it that thought, "I'm going to use GitHub to start reporting which well is clean and which one is not in." And here's the other thing. People were riding bicycles to go to a generator-run library to get online to find said GitHub repository would have. I mean, that's the reach. That's how something as we all in America are thinking, "I'm going to put my code out." Well, there's actually people using it to find water.
You’ve done a great job articulating the power of hiring and the role it ultimately plays in the business and product decisions. I love that you drew that conclusion because I think people forget. It's not just getting butts in seats, that it plays a really important role in the business.
Yeah, everybody deserves a chance, regardless if they're somebody that just graduated community college and this is their first InfoSec internship, or if they've been on the Board of Trustees of all these amazing prestigious things. They still weight the same. They should. They should. And I've seen that in action. There's something that can be said for giving people the opportunity to shine or say one thing without fear of repercussion.
I had an instance once that I witnessed that was super cool. We were at KubeCon. This is back when I was at GitHub and there were some leaders that were discussing something at the end of the table. We had somebody who had just joined the organization sat down at the table with us. And there was probably 20 people at this big long table.
Some senior leaders were discussing an infrastructure problem. And everywhere just people chatter, chatter, chatter, chatter, chatter. I was sitting across from this person who's just started and had a long history of really cool work. They spoke up, "It's a really interesting problem set. Have you thought about this, and this, and this, and this? And then maybe if you do that, and that, and that, and that?"
They all looked at this person and were like, "No, we haven't. We just didn't see it from that side." And they worked together in his first week to change something that was a really big issue. It was just about giving that one person the seat at the table. That changed the direction and the trajectory of the technology in that one moment. If he didn't say one thing, they wouldn't have done it.
And if he wasn't there.
If he wasn't there. He had enough confidence to say it because of his experience coming into the organization. So, his candidate experience led him to believe that he was important enough that he could actually say something to a senior leader being the new person.
I love that. I want to bring this to Equinix. When you came in, was that an initiative that they wanted or was this something you brought in to them?
I think everybody's got the goal. It's 2022. Throw a dart and someone's talking about inclusion, but who's walking that difference? There's a lot of chatter but there's people that aren't quite implementing it yet. And I think I bring that. I bring inclusion because that's all I talk about.
Were they open to that? Did they want that?
Oh yeah. I was really lucky, although I will say, and this goes for any company that's transitioning into a larger organization and this was said to me, Equinix looked to Packet for some of these core changes because we were fluid. We're agile. We're software-run. We're in the cloud. We're open source. We've got project Tinkerbell. We've got all these things. And then you look and there's Equinix. You're looking up at the fortress with the dragon and the eye scanner and the barbed wire and the moat. It's like this huge fortress.
They really looked to us as to impress upon them in their hiring practices and their everyday, in their leadership. I'm really proud of Equinix for doing that because they could have shut a lot of stuff down. They could have shut a lot of stuff down and just said, "This is the way we do it. We've been doing it for this year, these many years." But they were like, "No, you belong. You matter."
Company inertia is hard. What was the change process like?
Yeah. So, there's something to be said of I just didn't see it because they didn't have it in their frame of reference yet. And you force it. I mean, I force it, I do. I mean, I'm a native New Yorker. I call it like it is. When people see me come in, they either start walking the other way. No, I'm not that negative, but they know something's up if I'm coming to them and saying, "Yo, we need to talk about something." Because I'll be the first one to stick my neck out on behalf of the correct way to treat a human in this process and make sure that they have the opportunity to shine just as bright as the referral or the person next to them in this process.
What were some of the organizational shifts or changes? Were there any systems or bigger initiatives? What were some of the things that you did in order to help proliferate that vision?
I've told this story, too, but it's so powerful. It's so powerful and because it's about trans rights. I have the wonderful fortune of having hired the first two principal trans engineers at Equinix. And they came in and it was interesting for me because when you're onboarding in an organization, who even thinks about what onboarding is going to be like? It's going to be painful. It's going to be bad. It's going to suck. I have to do benefits. I have to fill up my I-9. Who wants to waste the time on the time suck of that, right? There's all these things. Do we read all of the disclosures? People that have come from underserved populations read all of that.
It's a very privileged thing to just assume everything is going to work out. And onboarding one of my dear friends and a transfemme and senior principal engineer, pinged me and it was like, excuse my French, but I'm going to use, it was like, "What the fuck is this?" Because when they were going through onboarding, it was male or female. And the dropdowns were not trans-friendly or non-binary friendly. And that was a very bad experience. We were able to identify those pieces that sucked in the process for them.
I had them write how it made them feel. I sent that straight to our CHRO and our VP. It was changed in like three days. That voice was seen and heard because it fixed for every single other person that has come since her. And that was a huge thing which also blew up in our benefits because we also then looked at our benefits to make sure that they were kind for trans individuals that were in transition, that were thinking about transition, that were already through transition. So we were able to revise our benefits through this conversation. Sending that kind of feedback was hard.
What was hardest about it?
I thought I was going to get fired. I mean, it had foul language in it which felt like a huge grenade. It was about a protected class which people get really weird about. They get nervous. I think, why get nervous? They're human beings. Just listen. And that's what they did. They listened and heard. And for me, going through all the experience I've ever had the first time, change was made.
It sounds like you've been able to help make some shifts where the company really wanted to go and walk their talk as we might say. Do you think the organization was ready to make changes?
I think they just didn't see it. It was a hole. It was their gap. It was their gap. I covered their gap.
But they were open.
Oh my God. Were they ever! They reached out to her individually and said, "Thank you for this. This has been so impactful for us. It's a great learning experience." I mean, I was floored because normally, let's be honest, you bring anything to HR and it either dies or then you all of a sudden are like, "Am I getting fired?" It's a weird touchy place sometimes. It's hard to get involved in some of these things and put yourself that far out there. But for me, I was like, "Go ahead and fire me over this," because this matters to this person and that person trusts me. This person came here because of me. So, you bet your ass I'm going to be all the way to the end on this because it's right. Find me someone that tells me it's wrong and I'll make sure that we have a conversation.
Note: Equinix was recently listed on Best Places to Work by the Human Rights Campaign.
Is there anything that we haven't talked about yet?
Legacy thought.
Tell me more about that.
Legacy thought is everywhere. I even have it. It's blind spots where you think, "Oh, yeah, back when I did this or even last year when I did this." Times have changed away too fast. And unless you're up on current events and you're still practicing hiring even back in the late 2000-teens, you got to be better than that because the world has evolved. And hiring practices need to be current with current events.
How did you overcome legacy thought and blind spots?
I've been in some pretty precarious scenarios where I've been like, "Oh, maybe I should have set it that way." But then I'm like, "Well, it's out in the open now, let's talk about it." So, I think it's scary, it's scary for legacy thought people like me because it forces the dark into the light. It forces the problems into solution. It forces latency into innovation. You know what I mean? And that's where I go.
It's like force the dark into light, have the conversation. Just bring it out into the open so that we can talk about it and sort through it.
Yeah, it's almost easier to run around and cause more problems on the exterior and the fray. And when the fray is like holy, you can't even keep up with the fray. When all you have to do is go right in and say, "Look, person, because you are one, I'm struggling with this. Can we talk about it? My good friend Ross says the only way to get through conflict is to experience ego death.
Until a team or a leader or somebody that's coming to you with a solution experiences ego death, it will not be solved.
I think people would be surprised by how many leaders are conflict averse. And so many of the problems I see are people running around issues and I’ll ask if they talked with the person they’re having a conflict with. The answer is often no. So I suggest they just start a conversation.
They worry they’ll get fired if involved. And then it's like, "Nope, nope, nope."
Right. Or it will be uncomfortable. Okay. You've never been uncomfortable in your life? Let's get uncomfortable because it might not be as bad as you think. Uncomfortable conversations are hard but they almost always say they are better because they resolve the ambiguity and uncertainty. Then we can move forward, get unstuck.
If you want to break legacy thought, look at your leader line. Who's in it? And who is holding accountability to that ego death? And then, who is their line leaders? Because it often happens in the in-between, in middle management.
So, if the accountability isn't at the leader line, it's not going to be in the middle management line which is always going to compress down to marginalized populations because they haven't quite caught up yet because they're only in that zero to three to five-year gap. You know what I mean? Because they're just entering into the workforce now because they've got tools and things are coming more available.
So, the innovation either has to be plastered right into the middle management or it needs to come up from the teams because the innovation is coming in. That's where your teams that look like the world are now, because education layers and boot camps and things are starting to become a thing. And people aren't like, "You must have seven years of Java with a master's degree," because that's a barrier.
I once saw a job description and I can't remember what language it was for, but it was like, "Must have seven years," and no one had really even been using the language for five years.
Right, like Go. Go is really hot right now. It's like four months ago. They just released it, but yet you need seven years. Yeah. And you know what? That is recruiting's fault. That's all messy, lazy, ego-driven recruiters that they don't give a shit about the human. They don't. They just want to make placements. They want to make money on the placements. And they just want to be the cog in the machine. I'm like the antithesis of that.
How people can make hiring more inclusive teams a reality? I think one of the things you said was shifting legacy thought. Are there any other ways or things that you can recommend leaders can do?
Get involved in something that is not their norm. Branching out and working with people like me and listening. Listening is the one thing they can do because you can have leaders that are passionate about it, but then they're like, "Okay, where's the OKR on it?" It's like you'd miss the point completely. How do you put an OKR on somebody that's from a boot camp that identifies as Latin? How do you put that?
I get it, in theory, because you got return-on-investments and stuff like that. But I think people need to listen to those that are different to them in orientation, and color, and socioeconomic, and language and continent and country and all of those things. And then, it will start to bubble. Or they need to make a conscientious choice to say, "I'm going to open myself up to something that I really am uncomfortable with today."
It's a personal choice. It's a personal choice in every single engagement, not even day. So, if people start to listen to things they may not agree with, they may find something in there that they're going to learn from because people aren't learning anymore. They're just stuck inside. So, listen, listen, listen and listen to underserved populations.
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