Career
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On Appreciation
→: On AppreciationOne of my friends laid down some wisdom recently, which they allowed me to post anonymously here with instructions that it was to be illustrated with a picture of ants. I hope it reverberates with you, as it did with me. We don’t talk about the slow fade of being ignored, being unappreciated. This is a…
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Your Guide To Undermining Women Whilst Being “Nice”
→: Your Guide To Undermining Women Whilst Being “Nice”With the rise of political correctness, it’s become so much harder to undermine women. One can no longer tell her to get back in the kitchen, or express appreciation for her physical attributions through unsolicited touching. These things have – bizarrely – become frowned upon. Why does no-one have a sense of humour any more?…
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Reasons Why It’s Hard to Find Senior Women Engineers
→: Reasons Why It’s Hard to Find Senior Women EngineersPeople ask me about this topic sometimes, especially as I’m no longer close to being a “new grad” but at the point where I look for bigger opportunities. I’m collecting it here for reference – reasons and observations from my own experience, of why it’s so much harder to find senior women engineers. Universities are the…
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5 Strategies For Making Progress on Side Projects
→: 5 Strategies For Making Progress on Side ProjectsI get asked on a regular basis how I manage to maintain a blog (and other side projects) on top of my job, especially since I almost never write anything specifically about my job. I actually wish I was better at and more productive on my side-projects, but that might be step zero – to let…
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The Burnout Equation
→: The Burnout EquationI wrote about burning out, and the aftermath, and my post-burnout-phase. But the other day a friend and I were talking about burnout in general terms, and seeing other people burn out, why that is, what it looks like. It’s interesting, because we know it when we see it, but we don’t talk about what it…
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Sponsors, Mentors and Allies
→: Sponsors, Mentors and AlliesI don’t think we talk enough about sponsors in general, whereas at every woman in tech event, oh, another mentoring opportunity. I’m all set for mentors, and have enough women who I offer support too that I can’t actively look for more. They are super helpful, but as I observed to the fabulous Jo Miller recently,…
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5 Undervalued Skills in Tech… And Why You Should Master Them Anyway
→: 5 Undervalued Skills in Tech… And Why You Should Master Them AnywayPrioritising There is a tendency amongst engineers to try and scope out the whole problem, and understand it all, and then work on fixing… all of it. Being able to say this is the most important thing, and then doing that first – even when it is not the most interesting thing, is a super-power. Do this,…
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Things To Say Yes To
→: Things To Say Yes ToI got invited to something really cool – KiwiFoo. It’s in New Zealand, and my schedule for April is hectic but when have I let little things like long flights and jetlag stop me? So I did what I usually do, booked a flight and told myself I would figure it out. That I could…
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The Bubble in The Swamp
→: The Bubble in The SwampI watched the GitHub fallout the other week, and was particularly stuck by this tweet, apologising for defending the culture to feminists. Don’t we all do that? Say that where we are is fine, but there are these general problems. I think there are two main reasons for that. 1) It’s politically infeasible not to,…