This article pairs with the latest episode of the HubSpot podcast Culture Happens, featuring HubSpot Campus Recruiting Manager Colleen Grant, VP of Engineering Jared Williams, and Engineering Lead Zoe Sobin.

Hiring a diverse team is critical to building good software. The advantages of diversity apply to all teams, of course, but when you’re building software, having diverse perspectives in the room leads to a stronger product. Your customers aren’t homogenous, so why would your team be? More importantly, building a diverse team is simply the right thing to do. 

Have you ever gotten the call? 

You know, the call that heralds a seismic shift in the life of someone you love, or even yourself. Last year, I received the call from my panicked mother, and she told me that my father had gotten into a serious bicycle accident, and because of the severe spinal cord injury (SCI) he sustained, had lost the use of his arms and his legs. 

My father had become quadriplegic. 

In April of 2020, we launched HubSpot’s CMS Hub. As the UX leader responsible for CMS Hub, I had to answer a simple question:

Was it ready to launch?

In the field of User Experience (UX) Research, we apply a lot of rigor and methodology to designing and executing research projects, but often not as much on how to analyze our results. On paper, the “synthesis” phase can sound very simple. You just review your findings and come up with major takeaways to incorporate into your work.

At HubSpot, we know just how hard it can feel to break into UX. Many of us remember those days of scrolling through job postings not being sure how anyone ever got started when every posting said “3-5 years experience required.”

Many of us can identify with using business software that has a robust feature set but is painful to use. Or perhaps it’s easy to set up and configure with the help of a support team but becomes a guessing game when you’re actually trying to get the job done. Either way, setting up a business’ tech stack can seem like a no-win game of “or” where you have to choose either power or usability, but rarely both.