Nolan Caudill on the Slack blog:

At Slack, we want to work with people that have the skills to do their job and the gumption to do it well. They possess great empathy, as designing and building a great product is made up of countless acts of empathy, not only for the users but for those you do the work alongside. Diligence, persistence, an unrelenting bull-headed pursuit of Quality - this drive is what compels the kind of person we look for.

These traits are not intrinsic to any category of sex, creed, origin, race, or any of the other petty reasons others have used to determine who is able to do this kind of work. We believe that the above qualities are a deeper, better, and truer measure of what makes someone successful at Slack.

Specifically, our industry has for decades been directed and built by a mostly homogenous group, and has downplayed the accomplishments of others not in this group. We recognized our own shortcomings in this area and thus wanted to be explicit about what Slack stands for, what we are trying to build, and who we want here to help us build it. By focusing on how we build Slack first, we can hopefully improve the greater industry, in whatever measure.