On Being a Technical Woman
Note: My perspective here is solely based on my experiences as a white, cis-gender, heterosexual, middle-class woman. I do feel these would also relate and extrapolate to other minoritized groups, and this isn’t meant to ignore or exclude other minoritized groups, but I do not feel comfortable pretending to know since that is not the context I come from. I do believe the entirety of inclusivity and diversity is an issue and all minoritized groups deserve a platform and voice. If you have any constructive feedback, you can contact me through my About page. Shop my data designs & handmade data products here!
In preparation for this endeavor, I read a lot of information on the internet. My question - “What are successful women telling younger women about being in a male-dominated field?” My intention and hope was to find resources I could point to and say, “I’m not the only one who feels this way” and “Data backs this up.”
Instead what I found was disheartening.
I found a lot of advice in the form of “learn to speak man”, “track your hormones / moods / emotions”, “keep learning, stay curious, do personal projects so you’re always staying on top of a fast-paced field”, “find a mentor”, “know your value”, and “earn respect / prove yourself / know what you’re talking about.”
I didn’t have the intentions of having such strong [negative] feelings reading those pieces, and yet, they evoked a sense of disempowerment, disdain, and frustration. It’s my hope to address these advice, maybe adding clarifying touches, so that women pursuing technical careers might have guidance from a place of more strength and empowerment and less of the “assimilation” and “over-compensation”.
Credentials as a “Woman in Tech”
I’ve left tech. I was in various technical roles for over a decade. Experiences I struggled with, very specifically:
Feeling as though I had to introduce myself with a list of credentials before starting a call in order to “prove myself” when male counterparts would say their names / job title alone.
Feeling isolated, unable to find a woman to be a mentor in technical leadership because they quite literally didn’t exist, or if they did there was 1 or maybe 2 in departments with hundreds of employees. Are they to mentor every junior woman employee?
Feeling as though I can’t say “I don’t know” for fear of losing any semblance of credibility. Alternatively, disagreeing with or correcting a male counterpart, for the same reason.
Being tasked with the stereotypically feminine roles within a group - planning parties, gift organization, etc.
Pay inequality.
Any display of emotion was met with discomfort or defensive responses as a form of gaslighting.
Regularly being interrupted or talked over in meetings. I’ve had meetings I was supposed to lead actually be taken over by male counterparts.
It’s important to note I’ve had many more amazing experiences working with some of my favorite, some of the smartest people I know. This piece will inherently focus on the negative aspects, but do know that the positive does much outweigh the negative.
I am not looking for sympathy, or for people I’ve worked with in the past to doubt their support / companionship with me. Instead it’s my hope to drive awareness. I was a highly-regarded, “high-potential” employee with loads of experience, a strong work ethic, and the desire to do things a lot of other folks wanted nothing to do with. I was often being tasked with learning new coding languages, exploring new databases, and hacking together an automated, deployable solution. I was a woman in a technical field, doing technical things, for more than a decade, before leaving tech to start a handmade, design and crafting business.
I don’t think the gender-discrepancies are what pushed me out of tech. I made my final transition, leaving what I thought for sure was going to be my dream job, for a completely unknown idea of a business, with the only known being: “not data”. I assured everyone: “really, it’s not you, it’s computers.” I very much believe my reason for leaving was me being tired of technology. I was tired of data. I was tired of code. I was tired of non-stop Zoom calls. I was tired.
I left my technical jobs, all of them, because I was tired [read: burnt-out].
Ironically, I fight printer drivers more than ever after having tripled the number of printers I have. I fight software updates that are seemingly randomly pushed onto me, breaking processes I fully depend on for my business. I have more Google Sheets than I ever would like to admit. I manage my projects using JIRA and Confluence for documentation. I have the full Gsuite experience. I’ve done 4 full-on, complete, top-to-bottom, redesigns of my website, writing HTML in some cases, Googling CSS code, transferring domains all around, and generating hundreds of 301 redirects.
I use tech just as much now as I did before. Dare I say more because now I’m not distracted by back-to-back hours of video calls. Now all I have to do is make and create, and often times that requires learning / using software and hardware to help me create. Or at the very least, printing a knitting pattern out on my perpetually “ink is low”, OG printer.
I left my technical jobs, all of them, because I was tired. The new question becomes: “What types of behaviors did I nurture that allowed me to get so tired? What would I change?”
Advice, in the Form of Changes I Would Make
Boundary Setting
Forget “work-life balance.”
This is the hardest part, in my experience. Most advice given to me from early years on is to work harder, prove myself, earn their respect, know my stuff before speaking up, and so on. All of these things tend to lead to long days, holding back for fear of being wrong or not knowing something, and underestimating my potential because maybe I haven’t “earned it” in the form of official credentials or degrees.
I found myself very susceptible to boundaries being disrespected. This might be my perfectionism schema or my people-pleasing issues. I’m unsure. But if I were to compare myself to most of my male counterparts, I can list off an endless amount of examples where they were unfazed by saying “no” to things, where I would let any minor guilt-trip ruin days off, get me out of my sick-bed, or interrupt a Saturday. I envied people who would just say “no”.
Boundaries lead to freedom. If there are boundaries, we can exist within them without guilt, without pressure, without fear we’re over-extending ourselves. For example, once I knew I had a budget for eating out each month, I began to actually enjoy eating out with my friends more because the old sense of credit-card-swipe-dread no longer rained on my parade. As long as I swiped within my boundaries, I could enjoy the money I spent. This is the same thing as setting workplace boundaries.
Work was EASIER when I knew I had boundaries. Knowing I had certain days off, actually off. Knowing I didn’t have to sign on over the weekend or after dinner. Knowing that if someone Slacked or emailed after a certain time, it was perfectly acceptable for them to not hear back until normal business hours.
Yet, boundaries need to be empowered. I as an employee and individual contributor can’t always be the boundary-setter. Otherwise it’s easy to be labeled “difficult to work with” or “lack of work ethic.” This particularly is a problem when women in tech are already not being promoted (Google it). I felt I couldn’t afford to have these marks on my record, and therefore did not feel “empowered" to set and honor my boundaries.
The best boundary setting experiences I’ve had were with managers that also set boundaries, and made them entirely visible. It’s one thing to say: “You should feel empowered to do X” (which entirely puts the burden on the individual instead of the corporate culture as if to say: “if you don’t feel empowered, well that’s on you.”). It’s entirely different to receive an out-of-office message from your boss that clearly states they will not be responding and then have them NOT RESPOND!
As individual contributors, we have to be very clear about our boundaries, and stick with them, guilt-free. Taking time off? Put it on the right-peoples’ calendars, and push back on calls / emails / Slacks that come through during that time. Signing off by 5 every night? Then sign off. Even if you’re still working. Shut down Slack. Don’t respond to emails. Schedule responses as needed. Say “no” more often. Whatever boundary you have - share it with your stakeholders and hold them and yourself accountable, guilt-free.
As managers and leaders, don’t say “you should feel empowered” to your IC’s. Instead, actively empower them. Live and breathe your own boundaries. Honor and respect theirs. Ask them about it. Document the boundaries in your one-on-one notes. If you receive feedback from an IC implying boundaries aren’t being respected, defend them tirelessly. The fastest way to lose an employee, especially a “high potential” employee that is busting butt to make everyone happy, is burn-out. The fastest way to burn-out is reckless abuse of boundaries.
Unabashed Self-Awareness
I find self-awareness to be the key to so, so much. Specifically here, in order to set appropriate boundaries, one must know oneself. Study, ruthlessly, your work habits, your personal traits, and how you navigate relationships with others. Don’t pass judgment, necessarily. Instead, identify what provides you energy and what depletes it. Those things that deplete your energy are the things to be aware of in order to reduce / slow the path towards burn-out.
What are your emotional / habit triggers? How do you respond to those triggers? How do your responses impact your energy?
For me this showed up a few different ways in my technical roles. For example, I hate coding. I’m fine-enough at it. I have a proclivity for piecing together Stack Overflow answers and troubleshooting. I’m good at teaching myself new things through trial and error. Yet, I found it entirely draining to be stuck in code with a “`” instead of a “‘“ or a lower-case “L” instead of an upper-case “i”.
Trigger: Code isn’t working. Response: Stare at it. Rerun it. Try new Stack Overflow answer. Stare at it again. Rerun it again. Energy Impact: Complete depletion.
Self-awareness let me examine this pattern. Also let me short circuit this by re-evaluating my “Response”.
Trigger: Code isn’t working. Response: Stare at it. Rerun it. Ping co-worker for “fresh eyes”. Energy Impact: Neutralish. Maybe a little gain because of commiserating on shared-screen video call with a buddy.
I don’t know if it’s because I’m a woman, or if it’s an entirely different cause, but I struggled to ask for help, impose myself on others, or admit failure. I also struggled (as stated above) to set boundaries, which meant I was constantly taking on soul-sucking tasks, afraid to ask for help, and sinking in energy-depleting, habitual responses. I also wasn’t willing to allow my self-awareness to trickle into anything that might be labeled as “negative,” leading to some missed opportunities for adjustment.
If I had let myself own certain aspects of myself more authentically, with less fear that it would show weakness or make me a less-desirable employee, I think I would have been able to short circuit more of those Trigger / Energy Depleting Responses. I’m learning a lot about Buddhism of late, and I’ve noticed one of their tenets is to know ourselves, truly, all parts - to shut down dissociative protection responses, to stop ignoring parts of our minds. I’m wondering how much of my career would be different if I let myself admit the less-celebrated parts of my personality.
If I could have minimized the energy-depleting responses through unrelenting self-knowledge, could I have mitigated my burn-out better?
Continued Strong Communication Skills
People communicate in different ways. This can be based on various things: culture, gender, status in a minoritized group, whether or not they ate lunch, or learning styles. Remember learning-styles? In the 90’s (no idea if this is what they’re still teaching), we were taught people can be visual, auditory, or kinesthetic learners. It’s my experience these translate to how adults effectively communicate when they’re older. I’m a combination of visual and kinesthetic. This means when I communicate, it tends to be through writing or through working sessions. I had managers that are auditory and I found myself often feeling frustrated and / or ignored. They wouldn’t respond to emails, but if I caught them on the phone or in the hallway, I’d get what I needed. I began to shift my expectations and communication methodology and it worked.
Let’s stop teaching women to “speak man” and let’s normalize teaching people to communicate with one another effectively, regardless of cultural background.
For me this showed up through:
Training on trauma-informed language
Communication self-help books geared more towards psychology and less around how to “manage up” to a predominantly white-male leadership team.
Practice.
Communicating about communication. One of the most effective ways to learn how to communicate with a coworker: ask them how they like to be communicated with. This takes the drama out of figuring it out yourself.
Communication directly impacts:
Giving and receiving feedback, especially tough feedback
Managing expectations and boundaries
Working through self-awareness and habitual emotions that may arise from triggers in feedback or disrespected boundaries
One of the best pieces of advice I received or read or heard or maybe extrapolated (source entirely unknown) was to communicate with the guidance of the "Platinum Rule”.
Communicate unto others how THEY want to be communicated with.
When I learned this I became so much more impactful moving the needle on projects, getting IT tickets through the system, and managing impossible tasks. It wasn’t about being a woman learning to “speak man”. It was an individual contributor trying to get decisions out of overly-scheduled VP’s. It was a technical person attempting to present complex technical things to a room full of non-technical stake-holders. It was someone who has been doing the job for 5 years training a junior coworker, having to break down processes and trouble-shooting step-by-step for the first time. Each of those scenarios are very different communication skills, all of which are likely to come up in a technical career.
Learning how to communicate in each of those is imperative to successfully influencing your agenda in your career, whatever that agenda may be.
Standing Firm & Nurturing Allyship
Along the lines of boundaries, self-awareness, and communication, comes “standing firm.”
I know that with the slightest bit of pushback I immediately second-guess all of what I thought I knew. Sometimes I’m wrong. 100% I understand I’m not perfect and I make mistakes. I also know when I know something. So why is it that as soon as someone questions me I immediately default to: “well you must be right about me then!”
“Be confident” is terrible advice in and of itself.
Know myself, know what I know and where that knowledge needs more research, and live within those boundaries. That’s better advice.
“Be confident” is awful advice in and of itself.
Confidently, respectfully, and assertively communicating boundaries to appropriate stakeholders so as to set reasonable expectations is much more reasonable and actionable advice.
“Be confident” is useless advice in and of itself.
Providing tough feedback to colleagues when they are inadvertently falling into man v. woman stereotypes, educating them, and offering them ways of being allies, is much more empowering advice.
Using boundaries, self-knowledge, and communication, inclusivity and diversity can bring about positive corporate cultural shifts and changes. It needs to be done thoughtfully, strategically, and in ways that are empowering to others. I do believe it can be done. I’ve worked in environments where it has been done.
That said, not all corporate cultures are safe. This is where I like to remind people that employers aren’t doing us favors by hiring us. We entered a contract, typically an at-will contract here in the US, and with that, there are obligations on both sides. But if it’s not working out for one side, the contract ends. “At-will” means either side can end the contract with minimal notice and minimal reason. If the culture isn’t the right fit, move on.
If I’ve learned one thing it’s that I as an individual need to know what I can control, impact, and change, and what I can’t. If something is draining on me and I’ve done everything in my power to change, control, or impact what I could, then it’s not the right fit. It’s okay to admit, quit, and move on.
Talk About Pay
If I was paid a million dollars for every time I was told to “know my worth” or “know my value” I’d be a BILLionaire.
Problem with pay equality is the obscurity and black-box algorithms around it. It’s in a company’s best interest to pay you as little as they can. As employees, it’s incredibly difficult for us to know and research reputable sources for expected salaries. Add into this calculation things like experience levels, cost-of-living in different areas of the country, and other benefits that might offset lower pay, it’s an intricate process to know “our value”.
I don’t have a solution for this, and it seems as though not many people do, since it’s still such a prevalent issue amongst every minoritized group, not just women.
The best thing I can think of is to talk about it. It’s illegal for an employer to tell you to not talk about pay, and this includes if there’s an NDA in place.
Do not assume or expect anyone else is advocating for you on this. It might be the case you are being paid fairly, but if you’re not, it could be off by as much as 30% in some cases according to various data, which could easily be tens of thousands of dollars a year. These thousands in the form of a discrepancy carry over year-over-year as cost-of-living or promotional raises are awarded.
If you make $10,000 a year and the counterpart makes $13,000 a year, and each of you receives a 3% raise annually for 5 years, then at the end of those 5 years, you’d be making ~$11,600 and he’d be making ~$15,100. This expands the absolute value of the gap from $3,000 annually to $3,500. 30% might not feel like a lot of difference at the $10,000 level, but it’s the difference between $75,000 and $97,500 annually, which isn’t a far-fetched salary in tech. After taxes that could easily net $1,000 a month. Rent for some people in some parts of the country.
It matters. Pay matters. Not because we “know our value” but because it has real-life consequences.
Actionable advice:
Let them tell you the expected pay range, empowering you to then accept or deny. Do not be the one to plant the initial seed of a dollar amount.
NEVER tell them how much other companies paid you when interviewing and negotiating pay. They shouldn’t be asking. If they do, it’s a red flag.
Have trusted men as counterparts you can talk about pay with in a constructive way. This transparency and knowledge into how they’re being compensated empowers employees to speak truth to power if something is unfair.
Advocate for yourself. Every couple of years, research and audit your pay yourself. If you can’t do it alone, ask HR or a trusted manager to help you.
Conclusion
This is was a much more emotional piece of work than I expected. I found a lot of resentment, anger, and feelings of powerlessness come up while I was composing it. I really want it to be empowering. I want others in minoritized groups to feel seen. It’s my hope that while we, as a society, have gotten better (try watching a movie set in the 1950’s and you’ll understand what I mean), we will not stop improving. We will keep moving forward, empowering diversity and inclusivity.
I found myself researching this piece because I was asked to talk to college-aged women about being in a technical field. I’ve found myself in this type of position before, jumping in front of groups of 20-somethings just starting out their career, part of minoritized groups, and trying to tell them how to “make it”.
Previously my advice had been exactly what I saw on the internet: “speak man”, “work harder to prove yourself”, and “tout your accomplishments so they know you’re worthy”. This is how I established myself growing up in my career in the early 2000’s.
It’s my hope that those who come through after me don’t have to do this. It’s exhausting.
I can’t change the culture I grew up in, or the choices I made to fit into it. I’m grateful for all the things I learned in all my technical roles. I’m grateful for the network of amazing allies / friends and skill set it brought me. I’m grateful for the space to reflect and gather my thoughts around how I could have worked better or made better choices during my technical career.
