Category: women in computer science
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From Visibility to Representation – Rethinking DEI
When I talk about Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), I’m typically coming at it from an angle of systematic change. The purpose of DEI, as I see it, is to dismantle a rigged system and move to something more equitable. This is why the concept of “no politics at work” is seen as antithetical to…
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Sharing the Data: How Technical Women Navigate Their Career
In May, Automattic’s engineering hiring team launched a user research study to better understand how our approach to tech hiring resonates with women and non-binary folks who may experience similar gender discrimination in the workplace and are experienced developers. We asked participants questions about how they saw their careers and next opportunities, as well as specifically asking…
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Addressing Hiring Gaps Through User Research
The hiring hot take is a regular feature of every tech conversation. Newsletters. Conferences. Blogs. Twitter. We talk about hiring a lot, because the market is competitive, and hiring well makes a big difference. Hiring effectively goes well beyond the “quality” of people you hire – it sets them up for an experience inline with…
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After the Toxicity the Toxicity Remains
Every so often, the conversation about leaving tech resurfaces, and things I wrote in ~2014 get referenced. I wrote a lot about leaving tech around then. I thought a lot about leaving in tech in 2014. And 2013. And in 2015, I thought a lot about what it had meant to be willing to leave,…
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Book: Brotopia
I ordered Brotopia (Amazon) after reading an extract I’d been quoted in. It was pretty interesting, and I appreciated the way that it tied together the things that I knew – and the things that I didn’t. It was pretty fascinating to read about the early Google culture, after experiencing first hand how far away things had…
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Remembering the Eloquent Woman
Nearly ten years ago, I found a blog called The Eloquent Woman written by Denise Graveline. I read it diligently, and reading it I learned so many things. I learned about speaking in general, about structuring talks, clarity in scientific communication. I learned about the way women have historically been excluded from speaking, the way…
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Inclusion is a Hack
I wish more people understood that (in tech) inclusion – as we talk about it – is a hack. Firstly, “inclusion” is a shorthand for “inclusion of the historically under-represented”. The “historically under-represented” piece is the reason why we need the hack. What started with the deliberate exclusion of people of color and white women from a…
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That Time I Was an Imposter
I was reminded, recently, how much I have come to hate the phrase “imposter syndrome”. Not because I don’t think it’s a helpful concept (I do). But because it’s overused, and used harmfully. My post The Trouble with Imposters resurfaced, and I was in a BBC program about it. Then Rachel Smith wrote an awesome…
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On Improving Diversity in Hiring
Caveat: Diversity is more than gender. I’ve used gender in some of these examples because I have enough anecdotal data to support these theories wrt to gender but I don’t want to extrapolate beyond that. In general my policy is to test and measure women because we can actually have data for that, but then…