Category Archives: Women in Tech

Raising a Women in Tech

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I recently went on a trip with my dad, Poppa John and my youngest daughter Ana. This was the first time I traveled with my daughter separately from the family. She negotiated this trip to Disney World for spring break and was quite persuasive. That said, I knew I wasn’t going to spend every day for a week at a Disney theme park. Ana is very interested in technology – she’s the daughter who wants to learn to code, immerses herself in Minecraft and has participated in app development summer programs. Our entire family encourages this and Poppa John indulges her.  For this trip, Poppa John purchased a couple of Arduinos for us to play with during some downtime. He also compiled a selection of really cool things that Arduinos can be used for and got a book for kids, written by a kid on how to program our Arduino.

My husband is the programmer of the family. He started when he was 14 and has made this his career for the last 20+ years. I have had a much more diverse career supporting technology – project and product manager, analyst, customer success manager and software team lead.  To my father, I was sitting on the fringe of women in tech and needed to get motivated to lead Ana on her quest. If we sat around waiting for Carson it would be slow going.  These Arduino projects we had planned were as much for Ana’s benefit as it was for me to step up to the challenge.

Our downtime fun started a bit slow, with Ana not really understanding what an Arduino was and why she should care. Her attitude swung to the other extreme once she figured out that she could build a car with lights and sounds. However, she just didn’t understand why she had to do the basic lessons and not jump straight to the car. Since Ana doesn’t like to be left out, Poppa John and I started connecting the Arduino and making it light up and sing. This at least got Ana creeping over to the computer and looking over our shoulders. We knew we had her attention at least for a little while when she took her spot front and center on Poppa John’s lap.

We took a very simple approach to this, using the existing open community scripts for making the light blink or the song play. We then took the next logical steps to add blinking loops, change the speed of the blink or the manipulating the time between the blinks, slowly making the code a bit more complicated. I took my pretty standard approach of asking Ana the engaging questions, but having her work out the details with Poppa John. I also stepped in to help troubleshoot or explain something when mistakes were made.

It was during this time that Poppa John was surprised. He claimed I was holding out on my women in technology-ness. How was it that I could never have had coded anything (expect sql during my brief DBA days) but yet could read the code and make suggestions and resolve issues? In each one of my diverse opportunities working for technology companies, I have always been hands-on. When issues arise in my projects, I worked very closely with my technical team to walk through the business requirements and the code to figure out the best way to resolve these issues. I have always been willing to lend a helping hand and truly get my hands dirty. Apparently I have picked up a few technical skills.

We ended up having a lot of fun with something new. We made our Arduino blink SOS and play music. We also turned the Arduino into a finger flute. Ana still wants to build her car and thinks it’s pretty cool. Ultimately, I taught my father that I was a women in technology and had the skills to teach my daughter to be one too (in any capacity she wants).

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Are you truly confident?

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I recently met up with a friend who I have known for almost 20 years now.  I consider this woman very successful.  She grew up in NJ and has degrees from Duke University and a law degree from University of Pennsylvania.  Since she got her law degree, she spent 7 years at a top law firm and then she was corporate counsel at a Fortune 100 company.  My friend just started a new job for a global company that is considered one of the most admired in the US. What struck me as most interesting this visit is when she acknowledged doubts recently about whether she could do this most current role.  Not only is this women smart and talented, she is also the epitome of a confidence, social butterfly.  Of all my friends or colleagues who have doubts about themselves, I would never have considered that this applied to this friend too.  My friend’s experiences align pretty closely to what I have been reading about women in technology, leaning in and other topics at the forefront of my interests.

This also very much ties into a book I just finished and a keynote that one of the authors just gave at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Center for Women in Business “The Science of Success” Conference.  Claire Shipman, author of The Confidence Code gave a great overview of a challenge that definitely exists for Women, in technology and other industries.  I had purchased the book prior to seeing Mrs. Shipman speak, but didn’t read it until afterwards.  This is a compilation of my thoughts on the book and notes from her speech.

I think it is now common knowledge that diversity is key and that soft skills are becoming more and more important in the workplace.  There was an HP experiment conducted that highlights the confidence gap.  Women tend to apply for jobs where they have 100% of the skills required for the job, while men apply for jobs when they have 60% of the skills required.  Another research study at Berkeley shows that confidence is a better measure of success than competence.  Women tend to hyper focus on competence.  If this is the case and women are so focused on being competent that we’ll only stretch ourselves when we believe we have met 100% of the requirements, those opportunities just may not be available for us.  It’s imperative that women start treating confidence like a skill and incorporate into our professional and personal play books.

One of the most interesting pieces of The Confidence Code was learning that confidence is at least partially hereditary.  The majority of the brain is the same between men and women.  However, women and men differ in how the brain fires its neurons and also in the risk taking versus worrying areas.  Men have more testosterone and therefore tend to take more risks while women have more estrogen and tend to overthink or ruminate preventing the brain from building the confidence.  The good news is that the significant developments in neurology have taught that we can train our brains – the science known as brain plasticity.

We should not get too bogged down in blaming our genetics as there are also societal impacts that influence confidence in girls.  We subconsciously initiate the confidence gap for girls by raising our girls to be perfectionists and people pleasers.  Girls are taught to follow the rules, be good listeners and do what they are told.  Boys are given a bit more leeway to try things, take risks and ultimately fail.  Ultimately as women transition from school into the workplace, it becomes very difficult for them.  They are still seeking the rewards and praise they got in school, whereas the workplace is really recognizing the confidence, risk taker who is willing to take on increasingly more responsibility.

There are a few recommendations for what we can do differently.

  • Fail fast – do, learn, move on.  Start acclimating yourself to risk taking.
  • Act more, think less – ruminate less. Come up with an explanation that is not a failing on your part.
  • Be authentic – this is critical.
  • Play competitive sports – there is a huge link between confidence in girls and competitive sports.  Not everyone is a winner.  You need to work hard, develop competency and ultimate become confidence.

Confidence is what turns your thoughts into action.

 

The On-Demand Workforce

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It is true that there is some critical mass at which real problems get solved.  The evolution of causes has proven this.  I find that the constant chatter and conversations about women on boards, women in technology, women in STEM jobs, women in senior positions are all good.  The more we talk about, the more it is seen as a critical issue and the more ideas batted around will result in long term solutions.  While some might argue that some conversations are healthier or more positive than others, even the extreme points of view can drive further conversation and creative thinking around the problem.

One of the more interesting commentary I found has come from Jody Greenstone Miller, Founder of Business Talent group.  She has been promoting her viewpoint that time is the real issue for women.  She promotes moving away from quantity as a deciding factor in “A Team” designation, as well as a critical factor in project workload.  Once you remove minimum time as a requirement for professional or project success, you must think about and plan work accordingly.  This is not to say that professionals would not be available outside the defined times.  It is the requirement of time that is removed.  Ultimately, jobs must be designed around how much someone is willing to work, with a structure so that the job or project can get done in that allotted time while still helping those individuals meet their professional goals.  Ms. Miller has validated her approach in her business model.  She works with top talent to define their constraints and find work that matches their skills and limits.

I’m living this approach right now.  I’m choosing my projects and setting my goals on my terms as a consultant.  I provide my expertise in technology operations, process and project management to a small company that needs those skill sets.  The number of hours I work shift depending on the shift in workload at the company and the lifeload of stuff that happens outside of work.  I make myself more available when my family is at work and school, and less available when they are home.  This does not mean everything ceases.  I will still take calls, and periodically scan and respond to emails, but I’m not sitting in front of my computer actively acting on my task list. I add value to the organization for which I’m consulting.

Wingham Rowan, Founder of Slivers-of-Time, spoke about this new type of job market at a TedSalon Talk in November 2012. His premise is that employers can absolutely use a pool of extremely flexible, talented, skills workers.  While his focus leans toward service oriented businesses, however I think the premise can be expanded to our entire economy.  Business fluctuates and it would be beneficial for organizations to have access to talented, skilled employees to fulfill projects and processes.  The ability to have access to this pool of people on relatively short notice would be incredibly beneficial.  This would allow businesses to stay lean and enhance skills and talents as needed.  This model is being supported by services like Guru and oDesk (I’m sure there are several others, but these are the ones that come to mind).

At the end of the day, does it really matter how or when you complete tasks or accomplish your goals?  It does require that the expectations are clear and goals are aligned.  It’s all about the on-demand workforce to support the on-demand economy.

Do we have to “sexify” tech?

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Last night I attended the keynote address for Social Media Week DC “smwdc” where Linda Abraham, founder and CMO of comScore; Steve Case, formerly CEO AOL; and Aneesh Chopra, formerly CTO of America and currently candidate for Lt. Governor in Virginia, all spoke.  While everyone had something interesting to say, there were clearly a few different spins taken.After the event, I met up with a friend and her colleague, a technical project manager and a social media/marketing manager, and we had some really interesting conversations about what we had heard.  This post is about what stuck with me, how that differed from them and the subsequent conversation.

One of the first things that Ms. Abraham mentioned is that startups require scrappiness.  This made a lot of sense to me if you look at being scrappy as willing to use all the resources at your disposal and aggressively pursue your goals.  There also might have been a little personal affinity for the word, given that it has been used to describe me (in the context of martial arts training).  Interestingly the initial impression of my colleagues was that it was the wrong word.  The negative connotation was overpowering the message.  

Ms. Abraham spoke about women using technology differently, and really driving social media use and e-commerce.  Men, however, are primarily running these companies or providing the necessary seed capital.  This has led her to the next logical question of women in tech.  Her biggest insight was that women just don’t throw their hat in the ring the way men do.  They tend to focus on their actual skills rather than their potential.  The discussion after the event leaned toward Ms. Abraham having been a more uninspired speaker than Mr. Case or Mr. Chopra.  It was a common opinion that we as a group (my colleagues and me not the entire audience of DC tech meetup) didn’t often think about women in tech, or being a woman in tech. After explaining my involvement with Women in Technology, the DC non-profit professional group with the goal of advancing women in tech from the classroom to the boardroom, it was easier to talk about it.  There was some chat about how most of the women who talk about the issue are on the dowdy side.  Marissa Mayer and Sheryl Sandberg were called out specifically as two fresh faces on the forefront of the conversation about women in technology.  It was noted that Yahoo might be a little dowdy in nature, a company not really seen right now as on the cutting edge.

So the question then became “Do we really need to ‘sexify’ tech?”  This was a little bit counter intuitive and I think concerning for the three of us.  There was some concern that we might be falling back into the “binder full of women” type scenario.  This isn’t the first time this has come up.  The European Union released a video in June 2012 called “Science: It’s a girl thing” that highlights women in short skirts and stilletos surrounding by images of lab equipment, formulas, etc.  This was immediately attacked as an affront to women.  It was also immediately parodied by Dartmouth graduate students in one of their science programs.  Three pacific northwest tech women, known as LadyCoders, created a kickstarter project to teach women how to be more successful in technical organizations and roles.  They identified “unconscious biases that marginalize and undervalue the female perspective” as the true issue.  Critics attacked them stating the women were “antifeminist and bowing to a corrupt system rather than working to blow it up. (Seattle Met 012313)”

The one positive is that everyone is talking about this.  With enough people talking, we can generate some critical support and find a disruptive way to increase the pool of technologist, and therefore increase the pool of women in technology.

Women hold more college degrees, but still elusive in tech

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I continue to ponder the issue of women in technology as I plan the WIT job fair.  Several things have happened recently that have added to this mystery.

1.  I searched Meetup.com for female tech groups in DC and found 5 out of several hundred that specifically target women.

2.  I was recently networking with a female computer engineer who said that she was one of a few women in her program and was also one of the few that wanted a life outside of computer science.  She socialized while her fellow classmates did the extra credit or personal programming projects on weekends.

3. I asked my husband, who has 20+ years of software development experience how many female techies he knows and he said that he has known 2 in his entire career.  When I shared the statistic that approximately 1/3 of techies in DC are women, he asked if that included technical project managers, database administrators or technical writers.  These are all questions for which I do not know the answer.

4.  I have been reading the “The End of Men: And the Rise of Women” by Hannah Rosen.  There are definitely some interesting perspectives in this book that have me thinking if these are the reasons there are not more women in tech. (statistics and speculations come from the book.)

  • Women earn more than 60% of all bachelor’s degrees
  • Of women 65 and over, women make up 23% of degrees in science and engineering while those 25 to 39 account for 45.9%

There begins to be speculation about why girls are more successful at graduating from college.  One theory is that boys and girls are wired differently and boys as a general rule prefer systems and movement while learning.  Girls are most successful because of their self-discipline and delayed gratification.  Boys are more likely to spend their time playing video games, rather than doing schoolwork.

Now I feel like all I’m left with is questions.

Does this mean that girls focusing on school and going off in college getting degrees, while boys are playing with video games, and leaning towards computer skills and programming?

Are women who get science and engineering degrees getting them specialties other than computer science and programming?

Are women dissuaded by the perceived culture of techies sustaining on pizza and beer in a dark office cave?

I know that I’m not the first one to raise the question, but these are the questions that come to mind as I focus on my most immediate projects.

Where are all the Women in Technology in DC?

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As Co-Chair of the Workforce Development Committee (WFD) of Women in Technology (WIT) for the past 6 months, I have had the pleasure of being introduced to several local companies as part of WIT’s Meet the Company series.  For each of these events, WIT partners with one organization in their facility to showcase, the business, technology and culture.  The hosting organization invites executives to speak to attendees and provides opportunities for attendees to get the know the company, the recruiters and executives.  WFD meets with company representatives before and after the event for planning, setting expectations and lessons learned.  One of the recurring themes of these interactions is women in technology – where are they and how do companies hire them?

According to Women Who Tech, “women account for 32.3% of the IT workforce in Washington DC.” Women in Technology, a non-profit with almost 1000 members and a mission to advance women in technology from the classroom to the boardroom, identifies 22% of members as current holders of technical roles.  I know there are many members who previously held technical roles, but have since moved into more managerial or strategic positions.

So what makes it so hard to deliver women in technology to these companies, at these events?  I don’t think it is the event itself, as the companies are clearly interested in attracting women in IT, and are trying multiple methods, of which the WIT event is only one.  So, what is it about women in tech that makes them so scarce?  Is it that most of these events are in the morning before the workday or in the evening after work, times women are usually with their families?  Is it that women in tech are secure in existing jobs and therefore are not networking as much as they should?