With a few other people, I run a Slack chat group for engineering managers. We’ve made some deliberate choices—for example, we don’t have a channel for #inclusion. Every so often this comes up, and we invoke our argument: Inclusion is central to good management, so all channels are inclusion channels.
We do, however, have a channel for #advice. This came out of trying to manage the way people are so ready to dispense advice in general, often lacking any context (which is why I personally try to avoid giving advice). We encourage people, in our code of conduct, to use the Gestalt principle (a way to communicate with people in a non-threatening way to support an environment where people can share and learn). But sometimes, people want advice. So we allow it.
I hate mentoring and I don’t want to do it. This is mainly a product of me hating three things.
One-directional relationships.
Other people’s priorities not my own.
Giving advice.
One-directional relationships are so exhausting, because you can’t really be open. Being a manager has – oh the irony – made me less open to mentoring people not on my team, because those kind of relationships are inherently unbalanced, and the kind of energy I have for that goes to engineers who report to me. There’s not really much left for other people. But in general I don’t like to have unbalanced relationships. I don’t like people to ask me for things, that I can’t ask for in return. I don’t like people to expect stuff from me that they don’t offer. This makes me a great person to be friends with. And a really reluctant mentor.
I hate mentoring in much the same way I hate email. Because it’s something that arrives that you have to deal with (or not) and it’s driven by other people, not by what I want to do. Because it’s an appointment on my calendar to prioritise someone else and I already have too many of those.
I hate giving advice, and I particularly hate giving advice without context. It’s a lot of work to get that context. For instance, if I give someone on my team advice, it’s typically something I’ve spent ~2 weeks observing and thinking about. Contrast mentoring, if I spent an hour talking to someone and as a result was able to give them one useful piece of information, that would actually be good. But it’s very low ROI on an hour of my time.
This assumes that a would-be mentee has an actual problem that I can help with which is far from a given. We need to stop selling people – women – this idea of mentoring as the answer to navigating a career. A mentor is not a therapist. Or a coach. They cannot replace your shitty manager or even really mitigate the damage he does. They cannot help you with the psychological consequences of going home every day in tears. They cannot give you certainty in a situation where there is none.
I totally understand being in a situation where you just need to talk, but this is not a job for your “mentor”, it’s a job for your friend or a paid professional. A friend is much more likely to call you on your shit than a mentor. Your mentor, if they conclude you’re not actually going to do anything other than complain on the regular is liable to ghost.
For mentoring to be actually useful, you need to know who you are and what you want. You need to have met your core needs (therapy! I can’t recommend it enough!) and then you can ask specific questions and get actual helpful information in return. Or even better, practical help.
“they think they are different because they are all wearing different socks”
Some famous white dude in tech tweeted an inane remark that erased a significant portion of the population, and one of my friends was really mad.
I asked why. Because my observation is that this guy dispenses advice for white men. In long form, and in trite remarks on Twitter. He tells them what they want to hear, that they are special snowflakes for whom anything is possible. He has built a career on Advice for White Men and I expect he will die still dispensing it. Still ignoring the other 69% of the population (America). I don’t expect better from him, and so even though he periodically writes things that I find not entirely worthless, I aggressively filter through “does this apply to people who aren’t white men”, to find utility in it.
My friend had an answer to my question, and we had an interesting conversation. But I in general am irritated by the prevalence of “Advice for White Men”, especially prevalent in tech. Firstly, there are too many assumptions. Secondly, it’s hard to tell if it is any good. Thirdly, it doesn’t all apply.
Too Many Assumptions
The first big assumption made when it comes to advice is that anyone wants it. For quite some time now I have been aiming to not give anyone advice. I’ve been falling way short of this as a goal, but at least it means I do a lot better at asking first.
Mainly assumptions seem to arise between a confusion between correlation or causation. Something worked, but is it really because of actions taken? Was it really the best decision? We operate so much on partial information and we don’t A/B test life. In any situation we have a set of choices. We pick one. If things get better, that choice is so far from being isolated as a variable.
One place this is particularly jarring are tech origin stories. Where people seem to confuse “worked hard” with “worked hard, got lucky, had the right network”.
Is It Any Good?
I have written a lot about technical interviewing. One might say that despite my best efforts, I have dispensed advice on technical interviewing. A lot of it is applied conclusions from research, but still – it’s an open question as to whether I am any good at it. How would you find out? There’s probably only one person in the world who could really have an informed opinion on this, everyone else is going on “that seems about right” and trust. There’s an argument that anyone who thinks and cares so deeply about it much be better than average, but when the general standard is so low, better than average doesn’t actually mean good.
This is something I have thought a lot about as I became a manager and started looking for resources. I want to learn from people who I trust are good managers, not just random people with opinions on the internet. I have read and learned from extremely popular writing on management in tech and drawn the conclusion that I would emphatically not want to report to the person (man) who wrote it.
The other thing is we can’t just take on someone else’s persona. We have to fit that advice into our mental model of how we operate. This is a big part of why specific questions are so much better than general ones. Also, when we are asking specific questions, we can segment by category. So I can go to one person with process questions, one person with fuzzy “what does a manager accomplish” questions, and another with “people are hard” questions. I get great insight from each of them on the topic that I feel most aligned with and inspired by them.
Does it Apply?
Foodwise, I’m kind of a nightmare. I’m allergic to nuts, intolerant of potato and dairy, I don’t eat fish, seafood, or deep fried food, and I don’t eat that much meat. I hate eating at people’s houses because I hate to inflict this set of (at times variable) restrictions on them.
My friends will say things like, “hey Cate, I found this sushi place with a great veggie selection let’s go together”.
People who don’t know me well will say things like “this place is amazing”, and when I go there I’ll discover that other than seafood there is only steak, they consider potato to be a vegetable, and the house speciality is peanut sauce. Then, I will throw up all night.
This is an easy analogy because it’s so clear. But here are some things to consider:
Advice on failure is different for people who are judged on performance rather than potential [reference].
Advice on saying no is different for people who aren’t appreciated for doing work for the collective… but who are punished if they don’t [reference].
Advice on negotiation is different for people who are perceived negatively when they do negotiate [reference].
Advice on choosing a new job is different for people who disproportionately experience harassment (it’s another factor to consider) [reference].
Advice on raising your profile is different for people who are recognized for their advocacy more than their work [reference].
Advice Considered Harmful
My point is this: we should be critical of the advice we take, but also of the advice we give.
Beyond that, the next time you rave about someone as being a thought leader, consider if they are only trying to thought lead 31% of the population. The uncritical hero-worship of white men who dispense advice for white men is at best boring, and at worst harmful.
Let me start by saying: I hate giving advice and I try not to do it. Typically my “advice” falls under two categories (in that order, often deployed together):
Telling people that whatever their reaction (stress, sadness, fear…) is understandable.
Suggesting books or lines of thinking that I have found helpful in related situations.
Of course the urge to give advice can be overwhelming and sometimes I find myself breaking my own rules. One of my friends was so overwhelmed recently that having had a small degree of success with strategy 1 I found myself telling her what to do. And then I apologised profusely. But at least she told me afterwards it was helpful.
The thing I really hate about advice, though, is that often people don’t need advice as much as practical help. I would prefer to offer someone practical help than advice, and failing that I buy people books.
That being said – I have a handful of friends who I started interacting with because they came to me for advice. There are people who did this so well they turned me into a mentor, and then a friend. I am fascinated by people who succeed at this approach, because I tend to go the other way. I become friends with people, and then periodically I will ask them a question. Normally just the one. Because I don’t want to impose.
But these people stand out because they are the exception, not the norm. Sometimes I get requests that just sit in my inbox for weeks because I don’t know how – or just plain don’t want to – respond to them.
One thing I’ve taken to doing this year is replying to these requests and explaining that I am never going to get to their request along with some feedback about how they made it. No-one has yet replied to one of these emails, but I like to think that offering concrete feedback on requests is probably more helpful in the long term than some half-hearted and resentful attempt at the request itself.
So what does a bad request look like?
Large or undefined in size – a vague “help me with X”, or a long email where I need to decipher the question.
Requires research – asking for something that is not a core expertise. Memorably someone wanted me to watch a (long) video in order to understand their project.
Impersonal, generic – it’s not clear why they are asking me, or it’s clear they are only asking me because I used to work for $brandName company.
Inconsiderate – the best example here is one a friend gave me, people who ask her to travel across town to meet them because they are “too busy” to come to her.
Entitled – this comes up most frequently when someone who I barely knew or haven’t spoken to in a long time jumps in like we spoke in the last month. Bonus: they introduce me to someone without consent.
Of course no-one goes into these things thinking they are making a Bad Request. And I’ve procrastinated writing this blogpost because I don’t want to seem like a monster, and I don’t want the people who send ~good (we all have off days, including me) requests to feel bad about it.
Note to people I know: if I reply to your emails, we’re good. If you have my phone number, we’re BFFs.
So what makes good requests different?
Concrete – they ask for a specific thing.
Concise – it’s a short email, distilling the essence of the problem.
Small – it’s manageable, doesn’t require me to look stuff up they could easily find using their favourite search engine.
Personalised – they have done their research on me and their request builds on things that I have written / blogged / tweeted about.
Builds a connection – they find a commonality and use it to connect us.
Contextual – they consider the context of what’s going on with me. One, this is a great way to open the email. Two, it’s a way to figure out when to send the email.
Followed up – they let me know what happened! Periodic updates regardless of whether or not someone wants something is even better.
Appreciated – there are a number of ways to show someone appreciation. Supporting projects, sharing work, or recommendations. There’s one person who was an absolute pro in turning me into her mentor, and her friend. My favourite thing that she does? She sends me books. Books that aren’t the kind of things I usually read, but that I end up loving.
The word “mentor” gets thrown about like it’s a magical pancea. The original meaning, from Greek, is “wise advisor”. The question of mentoring is not is it good (it is), or how do you find one (anywhere), but how to you get someone to want to be your wise advisor? And the answer, I think, is that you make it very easy and worthwhile for them to do so.
Which is a simple answer, but a lot of work. The thing is though, the people who do that work, are the most worth helping. Because as in so many things, the advice? That’s the least of it. Advice is easy. Execution is hard.
I’m lucky to have a large and broad network, internally and externally. Well, I say lucky. I work at it. I stay in touch, ping people to say hi, schedule lunches, arrange to meet up when I’m in the area, or they are in the area, ask how they are doing, take an interest in their achievements and lives.
Here, I wrote about different kinds of people who give helpful career perspectives, and I assembled a list of mentor and mentee tips (thanks to some wonderful people for suggestions).
Friends
I include friends here because: your mentors are not your friends. They are not the people you unload all your crazy on. But, it’s really good for you to have someone to unload your crazy on, talk to, vent. Even better if these people will give you some perspective. If you leave work in tears, you need to have someone you can call.
It’s good to build your network outside of the office too, because there are things that it can be hard to talk to someone who works at the same company about without legal ramifications. For example, someone who is sexually harassed may want to process it before taking it to HR, or not take it to HR at all (article on the failings of HR in the tech industry) but if someone who works with them knows, they may be legally obliged to do something about it (I am not a lawyer, but I have been told this is the case in Australia and the US).
It’s helpful to have internal people to talk to, because they have company context, although your colleagues are not your friends either. But I’ve found having work friends I hang out with outside of work is really beneficial – there are things that are just too much of a pain to discuss otherwise: “I’m working on this project, which I can tell you nothing about, and this guy working on this other project, which I also cannot reveal any details of, and I clashed about the meaning of this company priority, which I have to keep to myself”.
One of my friends in Sydney, we would vent to each other, and that was fine, but when the vent was over we’d challenge each other to take a positive action. It was really helpful – these kind of friendships are golden.
Benefits:
Maximum context (the people you speak to most often, they’ll get the mostly irrelevant details you won’t bother other people with).
On your side.
Watch out for:
Especially if they are more senior to you, friend’s first, career advice second.
They may not want to give you “tough love”, and might tell you what you want to hear, rather than what you need to hear.
Dysfunctional friendship dynamics (e.g. being threatened by you succeeding).
Peer Mentoring
I have a peer mentoring group from a leadership course I took, we try and catch up roughly monthly, which is super helpful. This is the main place where I get the male perspective, as my network is pretty female-dominated.
There’s a certain amount of chit chat, but typically one or two of us have some pressing problem that they bring to the group to talk through and get some thoughts on. Pretty often we can make connections for one another, which is great.
Benefits:
Variety of perspectives.
Broadens network.
Watch out for:
May not always have the experience to give good advice.
Scheduling conflicts are hard.
Time management – one hour session, 6 people = 10 minutes each if you start on time.
Role Models
I have a mentor who has the job that is medium term goal – Staff Software Engineer, not a manager (regular readers may have gathered that I lack the tact or emotional capacity to be a manager). I try to catch up with her roughly monthly, although this can be hard with timezones and schedules.
She’s amazing, she was the mentor who gave me this advice about Confidence. In general, I talk to her in some amount of depth about what the 1-2 biggest immediate challenges I’m facing, and she gives me some insight, and some encouragement.
Benefits:
Inspiring: a relatable person, who career-wise is where I want to get but worry I won’t make it to. Getting to know her humanises her, makes it seem more possible.
Less close, she’s also more likely to notice longer term trends – that I seem more confident lately, for example.
Often overcame similar challenges, relatively recently.
Watch out for:
They are awesome because they have a lot going on – be prepared to do the work to schedule with them.
Time management: don’t ramble, give highlights.
Not all advice is right for you, it’s not a silver bullet.
Oracles
This is the far away mentor, like one of my mentors is just way beyond where I ever hope or expect to be. She is seriously amazing, and seriously successful. I catch up with her maybe quarterly, and I’m careful to be super respectful of her time (this quarter I know she’s extra busy and I’m pretty happy, so I will just send her a highlights email).
Her, I ask the high levels questions of and then use her answers to guide me for the next couple of months. So when I was deciding what to work on in London, I ran my decision by her, and got her thoughts on that and some general advice for things to do to when starting on a new team. At the end of last quarter, I talked to her about things I was focusing on over the next few months, and how to demonstrate I’m at the next level. I’ve also had really helpful conversations with her about things like how to deal with engineer arguments, casual undermining, being ignored etc. She’s great at cutting to the core of the problem and giving me a heuristic to use.
Benefits:
Career visionary (think like, Product Visionary) – great for the big picture.
Again, longer term trends. She was the first person to notice how much more confident I am since I moved, “I think you learned more last year than you realise… [key achievement], that took confidence”.
Can open other doors: get you into programs (this is how I got my other mentor).
Watch out for:
Very little time, make sure you plan in advance, no emergencies.
No time to understand your day to day, make questions strategic.
Can be too removed from where you are.
Don’t ask them for too much: time, favours, whatever.
Specialists
I’ve written before about my experiences with getting coaching for public speaking (1, 2) – this has been super helpful to me. A long time ago now, I also hired a professional to create my resume. Mentors give general advice, but sometimes we have a specific task that could benefit from specialist help. You can find that online, and you can find people who offer that as a service.
I think it’s often helpful to allocate money, not just goodwill to building your confidence and skills.
Aside from that, there are people in my network who encourage me just on certain axes. For example, a friend who pings me CFPs (thanks Chiuki!), and who recommended me to speak at a conference (2 of my 6 talks this year wouldn’t have happened without her).
You don’t have to have your One And Only Mentor, you can have different people you turn to for different aspects of your career. And some of them you my also pay.
Benefits:
More in-depth expertise on specific things.
Fresh perspective.
Watch out for:
Lots of people offering various kinds of coaching online, make sure you determine who is a good fit for you (personal recommendations are good, or the writers of blogs you love).
Whilst sometimes you can sign up to be mentored, that is not the case for sponsorship. Sponsors you have to find, and cultivate. Look to work more closely with the person who is most supportive of you, highlight your achievements to them (not in an annoying way), and if they do anything for you appreciate it. They used their reputation to help you, that is an amazing gift.
When I think about the difference in my job now, versus my job a year ago, sponsors made all the difference. It’s transformational.
Benefits:
Biggest career-impact.
Best way for women to get ahead.
Watch out for:
Resentment from peers.
Focus on bringing them your achievements, not your problems (if they are not also a mentor or friend).
Being A Mentor
I think the best way to get people to want to help you, is to demonstrate that you are the kind of person who pays it forward. I know that me writing a blog for example, and being open about my experiences, makes more people keen to help me.
Also, I wholeheartedly subscribe to Madeleine Albright’s “There is a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women.”
I think mentoring can be a formal thing, but it can also just be a relationships you build, where over time someone reaches out to you, and you reach back. Even in the case of the more formal relationship, the mentee needs to keep reaching out to build it. Someone doesn’t care about your wellbeing because they got allocated to you, they care about your wellbeing because they get to know you.
Sometimes people take a while to warm up, ask questions (I once thought that someone didn’t really need to talk to me at all, but the actual concern came up at about 20 minutes. She just needed more time).
When you can do more than mentor, sponsor (e.g. help find that intern her next project, promote their work).
When someone reaches out (e.g. friendly email, question buried within it) respond.
Ask questions that get mentee to address broader context and consequences.
Be open about failure; those stories are more useful than those of success.
Praise, showcase their achievements, be encouraging.
Being a good mentee:
Expect to be the person who reaches out, and schedules.
Don’t take it personally if they are busy.
Ask what frequency and format they prefer (Walking meeting? Times of day? I schedule as much as possible over lunch, because Efficiency).
Be respectful of their time.
Take notes! This will help you retain the conversation.
Come with concrete points to discuss. Get to them quickly.
Take anything with a grain of salt. The more senior you are, the more this is necessary (if you are super junior, the advice is easier and the situations are less unique than the junior person thinks they are).
Say thank-you. Send follow up notes if their advice was particularly helpful.
No blame if their advice sucked, you are responsible for what you do.
Don’t expect miracles. Mentors aren’t coaches. They can’t hold you accountable, only you can do that for yourself.
Look for ways where you can also be helpful (information, introductions).
If they do you a favour (e.g.introduction) follow up! Follow up on the favour, and let your mentor know that you did.
Don’t ask “will you be my mentor”, build a relationship based on shared interests, ask for specific advice. “I’d love to chat to you about X” is much lower key than asking for an ongoing relationship up front.
I was having a conversation with one of my mentors last week about a specific challenge I was facing, and she made this observation, and gave me a brilliant piece of advice that completely transcends that discussion and put so many things in context for me.
If it’s affecting your confidence, then we have a problem.
The tech industry is stressful. That’s just how it is, and you have to manage it. Expectations get overstated, priorities get changed, deadlines get missed. Most programmers seem have a degree of control freakery, and yet what we have control over (our own code) is the least of it. Writing code is invariably the least stressful part of my day. A day when I do nothing but write code is by definition awesome.
And how much of the external stress matters? Some, but not all of it. A lot of it, I just need to let it go – and that’s something I need to get better at. I care, deeply, about the things I build, and the process and standards that are part of that process. In many ways that’s a good thing, but it’s also often a source of angst.
This advice, I see it as a framework for evaluating stress. OK, that sucked. OK, that was hard. That, yeah, that annihilated your confidence, that’s the real problem.
She’s completely right – at a functional level, nothing has ever been more damaging to my productivity than having my confidence shattered. Unhelpful feedback that has left me not knowing where to turn or what to focus on. Having my decisions second-guessed and having to endlessly justify them. Getting steam-rollered in a discussion, when it seems like my points aren’t being heard. Gaslighting – because nothing makes me question myself like questioning my view of reality.
In fact anything gendered, or historically-gendered – it strikes at my core fear that I am not a nerdy boy, and thus don’t really belong. Maybe that bit is impossible to avoid, but for my own sanity it needs to be minimised.
To be clear, this isn’t every interaction where I am in some way, lacking; it’s those interactions where I am some way lacking, and I have nowhere to go with that information. I got some really helpful, constructive feedback on Wednesday. It was so clear – this is what you should be doing, here’s something realistic to aim for. And then, I was so productive. Things just seemed to make more sense as a result. Knowing that there’s something I need to do better, or more of, is not a confidence annihilator. It’s helpful.
Anyway, that’s what I am doing and thinking about with this piece of advice, and I’ve found it really helpful – passing it on in the hopes that someone else might, too.
On the way to Toronto my friend is telling me I need to give up bagels, and I say, there’s enough change in my life right now without introducing more. But that I think it will be better next month. She says, “you always think that; you said that in August, too”.
She’s right. This month’s major source of stress has been the number of talks I’m giving. But – what have I agreed to in the first week of November? Another one. And at a Catholic school too, when I oppose religious schooling. So now I feel stressed and guilty.
Then at ONCWIC, someone gives the advice – track your time, noting that sometimes trying to please, and agreeing to something means that you’re not doing another thing that is actually more important to you.
It’s amazing, you go to these things and you hear the same comments from different people, with different stories behind them, even things you have concluded yourself. And yet – almost every time I am inspired and motivated, and grateful to have heard it again.
The impostor panel at GHC is always one of the most popular, perhaps because it’s so hard to believe that these awesome women, who seem so successful and together, are wracked with doubt the same way we are. Every year (at least!) we need this reminder. I was talking to an amazing colleague who mentioned the panel, and how much she enjoys it every year, saying it gives her hope that she can be that awesome one day – whilst I look at her and think, woah you are so awesome, I will never be as awesome as you.
In the same way that reminder is helpful, so is the one for saying no. It is hard to say no. You want to make people happy. You want to take advantage of opportunities. You don’t want to let people down.
The reminder – if we don’t let other people down, we often do that at the expense of letting down ourselves, and our true priorities.
Meanwhile, for me, a bet I placed a little while ago has proven successful way beyond what I expected. And I feel a little overwhelmed, like, I know I aimed for this but I never thought it would happen and now it’s reality and… I doubt myself. I’m nervous to do it, but also nervous that this opportunity will disappear. Particularly with so much else going on, I feel like I would have liked to clear the way a little, so I could focus on this and only this.
But, it never works out that way, does it? When there’s not much going on I seem to have to seek out my adventures, but when life is chaotic adventures are thrust upon me. All you can do is set your priorities and try hard to stick to them. Work hard, but not so hard that you burn out.
Go and get that same advice again, in the hope that this time you’ll do a little better following it than before.
Today, I wore a mini-skirt (gray) over leggings (black) with ballet flats (gray) and a plain tshirt and cardi (both black). I wore my hair down, and (naturally) curly.
I know, I don’t normally share the details of my wardrobe, but bear with me – I have a point.
It was an ideal outfit for today – I just wore the leggings and tshirt when I was working from home in the morning and chilling out in the evening, the flats were fine to drive in, and when I went out to Girl Geek Dinners in the evening I didn’t feel under-dressed. Oh, and my friend totally loved my skirt.
And… it’s an outfit that I love. I got the skirt in San Francisco. The tshirt on a shopping trip with a friend in Ottawa, and the cardi when I was in Winnipeg for a women in Science and Engineering conference with the other girls from WISE.
The other week, I was at a panel about life as a woman in technology. And I was not wild about how it started with “you earn a LOT of money” (yes, I like nice handbags and tend to buy expensive jeans, but that’s not why I love my job), but then the woman said, here’s some advice – don’t wear a skirt.
Not – don’t wear a skirt to interview. Good advice, I spent much of my first round interviews sitting on the floor to reach the low whiteboard.
Not – don’t wear a skirt at first. My extremely scruffy friend was wearing flipflops and had wild hair… and was still asked if she was a PM. Someone asked me if I was a PM last week. I think it happens more if you’re dressed better. As you’re finding your way, dress more plainly? I can see some sense in that. It was definitely something that I – consciously or unconsciously – did.
But the advice that – pick this career ‘cos it pays well but you better subsume the part of yourself that likes pretty clothes, and fabulous shoes and charming handbags and accessories. That sucks. A lot of the time I wear jeans and tshirts, and tie my hair back, but a couple of times a week I want to not do that, and it’s important to me that I’m comfortable experimenting with clothes and wearing something fun.
The other week I wore wedge boots with this fluffy cuff. They are adorable. Only my female colleagues appeared to notice, although one of them did start stroking them.
Last winter I came into work wearing a white fluffy hat with two dangling pompoms, and bright pink snow boots. No-one commented. The following day I wore brown boots and a (still beautiful, but less noticeable hat – I do love winter hats) and one of my teammates said “you’re wearing different boots today”.
I don’t meet customers. I’m not presenting an image. I’m just being myself. I might worry about what I’m wearing for the thing that happens after work, but aside from not wanting to wear heels on days when I’m running around a lot, I don’t really think about what I wear at work. I’m Cate, Software Engineer on ___, not that girl, you know? The one with the curly hair.
I’m on board with don’t wear a skirt to an interview. I see the sense in dress plainly at first. But, I’d say, wear a skirt if you want to. Don’t feel like you have to check part of yourself at the door in order to be accepted. Some of my colleagues no doubt don’t get my choices of outfit, but y’know, I don’t get their love of board games. It’s not about being one of the guys, it’s about being one of the engineers. And that, I find, has sod-all to do with what you wear.
I can’t tell you how happy this xkcd made me. It’s a powerful statement on women in science (and engineering) but also contains this snippet of amazing advice.
You don’t become great by trying to be great. You become great by wanting to do something, and then doing it so hard that you become great in the process.
Timely cartoon for me, because every week I do something to try and make a dent in the huge problem that is the lack of women in CS. Last week, actually, it was 4 things. The week before I gave up a piece of my weekend. It’s easy to get tired, and feel like I’m not making any kind of difference. Some advice I got not long ago – don’t let this burn you out on engineering. Don’t leave because you feel that you have to fix it, but you can’t.
I thought I wouldn’t get discouraged, but the person who gave me this advice was completely right and soon enough after I had a bit of a crisis. Because I felt that I was slogging away at this and a couple of things happened that were upsetting personally but also, I thought, impeded what I was doing. I could have screamed in frustration at someone’s thoughtlessness. Like, I’m plugging away at this, week in, week out. And you just set me back, damnit. How many f*cking weeks did you just set me back?!
My calendar beeped at me, and I went where it told me to go. And I met a girl, whose mind had been changed and was excited to be an engineer because of a program – the kind of thing that I spend so much time trying to support. It had made a difference.
We talked about a few things, but in part her doubts about being an engineer.
What if you build a bridge, and it collapses, and people die?
I happened to be in Minnesota when the bridge collapsed. We were terrified that people that we knew had been hurt, and later we went to see the aftermath. It was chilling. In Canada, engineers wear the Iron Ring – a symbol of the responsibility of being an engineer. If you screw up, people die. Take it seriously.
But you don’t design a bridge in a locked room, send it out into the world, have it built with no impact from other people. Don’t not be an engineer because at 16 or 17 you worry that you can’t be responsible for building a bridge all by yourself. (I would be more worried about the 17 year old that was confident he could build a bridge by himself, frankly).
Be it a bridge, or some other scary project – you’ll never do it all by yourself.
What if I’m not completely sure what I want to do in 10 years time?
I think it’s insane to plan for 10 years from now. The world is changing so fast, how can we know what it will look like? What will excite us?
I love my job, and I feel tremendously fortunate to get to do what I do. But, I know if I were 10 years older computer science would not be as appealing a career. 10 years ago the problems that were worked on were very different. The constraints of memory and performance more severe. The opportunities to make things pretty less abundant. I took the grounding from university, not all of which was interesting to me, and I get to turn it into a career I love where I work on things I’m passionate about.
You won’t know all the options you’ll have 5, 10 years from now. So why decide before you have to?
Just two pieces of advice for potential future engineers, with the standard disclaimer that YMMV. If you have more advice, please – leave it in the comments!
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