Category: women in computer science
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Diversity as Performance Art
For a while now I’ve been using the phrase “diversity as performance art”. It’s a comment on the shallowness of most “diversity” initiatives. How superficial they are, and how they ignore the harder, day to day, work of inclusion. The pipeline – the PR around the “problem” of the pipeline – is a performance. Inclusion…
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Why HR Shouldn’t Own Inclusion
On the list of “things that come up a lot in Feminist Cabal meetings”, pretty high is a complaint that HR have taken ownership of “inclusion” and are being ineffective. This is not surprising when you think about it. Regardless of discussion about “employee happiness” etc, the main function of HR is to ensure that…
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Real Talk: Women in Tech and Money
This post comes from multiple requests from friends with whom I have talked about leaving tech, and returning to tech, and the way that I started to think about money relating to that. Money is a loaded topic, and I want to be up front here that this is written from a place of financial…
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The Trouble With Imposters
Tech culture doles out imposter syndrome on one side, hubris on the other. Originally published in Model View Culture, April 2015. There’s something ironic about the fact that as the deadline for this piece approached, I opened the document and stared blankly at it. Frankly, opening it was progress—I’d been intimidated to come back and…
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Ambition, Failure, and my Favourite Podcast
I was listening to the last episode of season 1 of my friend Diana’s podcast “Should We”, and the title of this one is called “Should We Actually Try?” I love Should We because I love Diana, and because there’s something about listening to a podcast where two friends who know each other well are…
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Big Co. vs Small Co. & Job vs. Career Stability
I gave a talk at Self.Conference the other week called “Some Things I’ve Learned About Color”. There’s no video, and I haven’t shared the transcript – I will eventually share this content, because people have connected with it and because I think it’s important. But I’ve yet to figure out how to do that. It’s…
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On Saying No
In the nearly four years I spent at The Conglomerate, I did a lot to try and improve the number of women working in engineering. It’s not clear how much effect this had. But I spent a lot of time and energy on it. Eyes open, I knew this wasn’t always the best career move.…
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Just Say No to Thankless Emotional Labour: The T-Shirt
Last year I turned 30 in Santiago. I didn’t like Santiago, and I felt bad about turning 30 – it’s hard when a major life milestone occurs in a time when you are feeling somewhat lost, so I dealt with this in my preferred way – I left. I went to Easter Island, and explored,…
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The Trouble With Women’s Events
There’s a theme emerging in my backchannel lately, as my girlfriends and I discuss why we aren’t doing certain events. And often, these are events for women. We used to retreat to these events because we weren’t welcome – or safe – anywhere else. But now, we see lots of technical events working really hard…