Accidentally in Code

Tag: career

Making Someplace New, Home

Credit: Flickr / D. Ferragamo

I’ve had this conversation multiple times lately, so it’s time to document it. I feel like a hippocrite offering these observations, since I don’t feel at all at home in London yet, but at least I’m mindfully unhappy about it.

Even somewhat 1-dimensional workaholics have multiple aspects to their lives (they normally have somewhere to sleep, for example). Most of us have many. Mine are:

Career: Where am I working, what am I working on, am I learning, progressing, appreciated?
Friends (and Family): Who do I hang out with? Who can I call if I need to chat? Do we have standing dates?
Life Infrastructure: Apartment, commute, food, gym, airport (where can I go for a weekend?).
Culture: Art, theatre.
Romance: Who I’m dating, or the dating scene if I’m single.

Typically, a move is driven by one of the big two (career, romance), but everything else changes too. You have to work to build up the other aspects of your life, or in the case of the Life Infrastructure category just accept that they are different.

Career

If you move for your career, that is a lot of pressure to put on your job. If your job is the major thing in your life, and it sucks, then you life sucks. Sometimes it is going to suck. I moved to Sydney for career/life infrastructure/culture reasons (I wanted to live in a city again). For the first 6 months, my career was great – I was doing exactly what I wanted to do, I got promoted, I felt stretched in the right ways. Later it kinda started to suck. And I was so grateful that I had friends outside of work, that I could call and cry on.

And then I moved to London so that I would have a better job – I evaluated the data on what helps women in tech (essentially, a sponsor), I found it. I followed it. It was a good decision. But because this was a 1-dimensional move, I had to work extra hard on all the other aspects to make them manageable.

Friends (and Family)

The book I recommend to everyone who is moving is MWF Seeks BFF. It’s a book about a woman who moves to Chicago for her husband, and how she managed to build a group of BFFs. The big thing: follow up. You ask someone to do something specific, and if they say no you have to ask again. Unless they say, “no I never want to see you again”, of course. If you suggest a theatre show and they say “just not into theatre” you suggest brunch. If you suggest brunch and they tell you they don’t eat out because gluten/money suggest a walk, or a free show somewhere.

Possibly weird behaviour, but… I read the Londonist, filter through the mass of information, and pull things that appeal to me into a spreadsheet. I add restaurants that appeal to my todo list on foursquare. This means I always have things that I can suggest someone do with me.

I have managed to get to the point that I will follow up after one rejection, but that’s it. Maybe at some point I will manage to follow up twice.

Meeting people, get intros, or take courses, I’ve met some great people via Twitter. If someone seems fun and you chat suggest that you get coffee together. Most people will be flattered, and what I’ve found is that there are very few people who already feel like they have too many friends.

Life Infrastructure

I tend to choose an apartment by deciding what is important to me, and finding something that fits those criteria. In KW, this was basically “walking distance from office, has a washing machine” – this narrowed it down to one apartment building, which made things very easy. In Sydney, I liked where my friend lived – close to downtown, walkable to work, so I just got (well, she got for me) an apartment in her building. London was harder, but also less pressing because I could commute weekly from my parents place. So, I took the train in for the week, and booked surprise (secret) hotels in different parts of town. This helped me see different parts of town, and get an idea of where I would like to live. Eventually I picked Kensington and Chelsea, now I know more people, I wish I lived in East/Central London, but it’s manageable until October.

It’s important not to underestimate the misery of the commute. This is well documented in behavioural psychology. Long commutes make people miserable. Don’t do it.

Other key things: I’m on a tube line that goes direct to Heathrow. My gym is less than a 20 minute walk away, and it’s really nice – a little oasis of calm in a hectic city. There are places to eat, and an M&S nearby so I don’t need to cook (or own plates). These are the things that are important for me.

Culture

This is the one thing about London that I have to admit is amazing. I do something cultural every week. I also did this in Sydney, but in London there’s even more. I love the small shows, and that I get to see originals of artists that I’ve seen online and loved – like Liu Bolin (the invisible man), Leonid Tishkov and the Republic of the Moon, The Architecture of Density. There is so much theatre, I got to see I Can’t Sing, which was such a disaster that I doubt it will ever be shown anywhere else, but I really enjoyed. In Sydney, I adored Cockatoo Island, and the Biennale.

Everywhere has stuff going on. KW was surprisingly vibrant for such a small town – Ignite was a big deal, for example. Find out what’s going on, and go.

Romance

The second big reason to move, not that I have ever moved for this reason. If you move for your partner, you have to find a way to create a life for yourself there too. Otherwise, it’s a lot of pressure to put on your relationship, and them.

If you move for other reasons and leave someone behind, or go long distance… it’s so hard. This I have done. I felt sad, and guilty. They can be resentful, angry. Everyone gets to have their own emotions here. It’s hard to leave; it’s hard to be left.

The last date I went on was the one with the misogynist that I live tweeted, after which I decided to take 6 months off dating. But typically if I’m single, I try and go on dates. I have to put myself out there, and it’s a good way to see things and meet people – even if you don’t end up in a relationship with them. The thing, I think, is not to let it become a distraction. It’s easier to find date-dates than friend-dates, so don’t focus on it to the exclusion of other aspects of your life.

In Summary…

Your life has more than one dimension! Think about what these dimensions are. The dimensions that suck the most after you move are the places which require the most effort. Don’t neglect them.

June 16, 2014
On Appreciation

One 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 glimpse of what you see behind you if you are fortunate enough to find something better.

Being appreciated is the opposite of being taken advantage of, which still involves doing good work, but someone else benefits without being willing to acknowledge they’re benefiting from your skills.

But in hindsight those are doomed relationships because it would kill him to acknowledge that — massive ego blow, his professional success rides on someone he doesn’t respect or understand doing important work he’s not capable of doing, and if he had to admit that to himself, his head would explode, so he never can — you can never fix this; at best you can hope to survive it and leave scent markers for the other worker ants to know to avoid the poison.

Credit : Frank

May 30, 2014
5 Undervalued Skills in Tech… And Why You Should Master Them Anyway

Credit: Flickr / John Tann

Prioritising

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, and when things don’t go to plan, you can drop features instead of pushing deadlines.

When projects slip by the wrong order of magnitude, like something that was estimated in months that slips by quarters, my observation is that it is usually poor prioritisation. Doing things that are interesting rather than important, failing to eliminate known unknowns.

Summarising

Summarising relates to prioritisation. It’s been able to take all the information that you ingest to make a decision and say these are the most important pieces, and not overload everyone else with all your information. It’s being able to pull out of a meeting, or a document, or a workshop, these were the key points.

Being able to draw out the conclusions from a larger thing shows your understanding, and saves everyone else time. Almost everyone will thank you for this.

When people can’t present the key points of their work, it’s vastly more work for anyone else to try and pull them out. They are also more likely to get lost in the details when trying to communicate it (more on that below).

Running a Meeting

I know, we all hate meetings. But sometimes they are inevitable. And actually well run meetings in limited quantities can be really useful.

There are two key things for a good meeting. First: respect people’s time. This means, come on time, and prepared. Secondly: keep it moving, and actionable. Make sure that you kill discussion that is better taken offline, and leave with clear action items, that are communicated back within 24 hours (i.e. an email that says “this is what we are doing next”).

When your meetings are time-efficient, and productive, people might not be enthused about them, but they will appreciate their effectiveness, and thank you for respecting their time.

When meetings are badly run, or lack followup, they are a waste of time, and cause resentment. We all have better things to do than have a pointless discussion that goes nowhere, or worse, results in an unresolved argument.

Presenting

Sometimes it seems almost a point of pride amongst scientists and engineers to present badly. But if you’ve mastered summarisation and prioritisation above, they will be your friend here. Summarise you content rather than trying to fit everything in, and prioritise what is most important. As for meetings, be prepared and respect people’s time.

Presentations are an opportunity to demonstrate your expertise, and influence people’s behaviour. Give a good one, and you’ll stand out as an expert, and a leader.

Bad presentations overload with information, often losing the audience well before any conclusions are offered. The way to demonstrate your knowledge is not to try and cram it all in and expect people to read your slides, even if it convinces of your knowledge it doesn’t convince that you know what to do with it.

Writing

Very similar to presenting and builds upon summarisation and prioritisation as key for what (and what not to!) include.

If you can quickly put together a well-thought through document and circulate it, or formulate a reasoned email response (or request) you’ll have a head start on your peers who are still wondering what to write, or not saying anything at all.

When writing is hard work, a lot of things (design docs, email discussions, review season) become exponentially more stressful and much more work. All of these things are pretty unavoidable, and only get more important as you progress.

Why Bother?

I have to say, that some of the things that I’ve done that have really been the most thankless have fallen under these categories. But! So have many of the things that I’ve done that have been most appreciated, and that have helped me get ahead. A document became a presentation, became… so many other things. Prioritisation and shipping on time translated into a number of benefits. Being able to run a meeting reasonably well, regardless of any other benefits, has at least saved me a lot of time.

I’m not an expert on any of these things, really. I’d say I do them all slightly better than average for an engineer (and for presenting at least the bar is set low). There are plenty of resources out there for getting better at each of them.

What ~~soft~~ non-technical skills do you take advantage of?

April 9, 2014
Crisis of Conscience

Credit: Flickr / Jessica Garro

At some point, my doubts about whether it was the Right thing to do, to encourage high school girls to go into Computer Science crystallised, and I accepted – I just cannot do it anymore. I cannot tell them that it is a good idea, that they will be treated well, that there are plentiful opportunities for women. The data suggests that having a Bad Time is statistically… at least not unlikely.

This was probably around the time I got really fed up of people in the industry pointing to schools as the problem.

University students I’m more conflicted about. The closer to graduation, the more committed they are. Prep them as they go into the Real World. Earlier… I don’t know. I found watching, even from afar, a girl switch into, and then be driven out of CS heartbreaking.

Because I don’t need to talk to her to have a good idea of what happened.

I’ve heard the same stories, again and again, I’ve told them too. It is hard. The diminishing remarks (see this thread on Quota), being patronised – when will it stop? Personally, I’m still waiting. Feeling other. Being sidelined, marginalised, left out.

So more and more I’m focused on the women who are still here. I reach out to them (usually via Twitter), especially if I have some inkling they are having a Bad Time. I encourage them to go after opportunities, or to be selfish and focus on looking after themselves, and cheer them on when they succeed. And I get all of these things back from this network, too.

I got some interesting advice the other day, which was that when (the assumption was when) I have kids, I’ll be too busy to care, or to notice the micro-aggressions, outright aggressions, and other BS. Which is an interesting perspective, but one that I’ll leave others to explore.

But one thing I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, is where is the middle ground between doing all the things, and Fuck you, I got mine? There is an emotional toll to noticing, a time-tax on needing to act, that maybe we can’t always afford. Not-noticing something can be an act of self-preservation, not malice. Although denying someone else’s observations is invariably unhelpful and often harmful, where does denying our own fall?

I’ve been spending much more time talking to men lately, and I’ve discovered that they are often awful to each other, too. I basically had no idea of this, and my unproven theory is: most guys being jerks comes from insecurity, they pick the easiest target, women are (in general) easier targets than other men.

Also, the men who are the targets (for the most part) don’t have the added burden of stereotype threat that women face. The guy is just a jerk, whereas for women there is always the possibility that he is a jerk and a misogynist.

Now, not noticing, makes so much more sense to me. Not only as a way of self-protection, but also because it is less glaring.

All I’m concluding is: I can’t judge people for their (non-harmful) protective methods (I wish I was better at them) and I’m no longer so surprised when other women haven’t noticed things. And I can’t sell this industry to any more high school girls.

March 19, 2014
6 Things I Look For When Considering Projects and Teams

Credit: Flickr / emisss

Women in senior roles (I am ignoring the presence of new grad women as a metric – it’s a meaningless measure of diversity).

A manager with some kind of work life balance. Does he (sadly it’s always a he) talk about his kids? Make an effort to moderate his travel for the sake of his wife? I’m not very interested in children but it’s normally a good sign if he’s involved in their lives. Managers are important for many, many other reasons though, and I try to get a sense of these too. Although I will start with, can we have a conversation?

Shipping. What have they shipped lately? Dy they ship regularly? What do they plan to ship next?

A focus on UX. Less applicable for things that don’t involve front end work, but I’m obsessed with creating great experiences, and whether it’s worth it is not an argument I want to have anymore, I’m bored of it. As far as the user is concerned, the UX is your application. It needs to be good.

A hole. I look for places where I can come and add value, some kind of expertise or focus that is missing. I’ve reached a point in my career where I know what I’m good at and what I want to focus on. I want something that aligns with that. This doesn’t need to be purely technical, I’m exploring the idea it shouldn’t be – the team I’m on now, I got a piece of advice from a friend that made me consider it entirely differently. I was stressing about how I didn’t think I knew enough about javascript, and he said: “This team has leadership, a user focus, and a conscience if they have you”. This framed my thinking completely differently.

Honesty. There is nowhere where everywhere is completely hunky dory. There have to be things people are working on improving, or feel they need to address. Anyone pretending otherwise, I just wouldn’t believe. I want to know what they think their biggest problems are, how they are addressing them, progress they have made, and next steps.

Here’s a web-dev centric, but still widely applicable article on this.

February 26, 2014
10 Ways to Develop Your Plan B
Credit: Flickr / knitwick

Following on from The Disillusionment of the Early Career Engineer, I could write a number of different things, but the thing that I find people having the biggest trouble with, that I am continually nudging people on, is the finding of other options and opportunities.

I don’t know why. Do people view this as disloyal? There’s a big difference between having one foot out the door and knowing you have other options. Feeling trapped, I maintain, is not loyalty.

Meanwhile, the process of having options looks a lot like having a good network. This is actually really helpful, even if you stay put. Knowing what other people are up to can help you get ideas, and contacts, and help other people – those who haven’t yet mastered the art of the plan B.
- Broaden your network, be part of a club. There are the people you work with day to day, but other people that you can artificially create some kind of connection with. Taken a personal development course? Connect with someone or a group you were part of, afterwards. Catch up with the people you did your induction with periodically. For me, I find the groups of women I’m involved with invaluable for broadening my network.
- Take an interest. Talk to people about what they are doing, why it’s interesting, what the biggest problems they have are.
- Offer information. Don’t assume they must know already, an email that says, “Hey I thought of our conversation last week when I saw this <link>. Wonder what you thought about <point from article>. Anyway, hope you’re doing well.” is at best useful, and at worst shows you are thoughtful and that you remember them.
- Say thank-you. I think it’s easy to assume that someone knows they did a great job, or that everyone really appreciated the course they ran, or whatever. But no-one tires of hearing they helped.
- Send a complement. Similar to saying thankyou, send a brief note when you see someone recognised for something, or get promoted – “Saw your recent promotion! Well deserved, very happy for you” takes seconds to write. I’m pretty sure a email correspondence I have with a senior person comes from me regularly saying thank-you and complementing them on great stuff that they do. Try complementing speakers for talks that you genuinely love. Everyone gets nervous when they speak in public!
- Have an abundance mentality. If there’s an opportunity but you’re not keen to move right now, or it’s not the right next move for you, recommend someone else instead. It shows that you’re connected, and helpful. Even if 6 months later it turns out you want it, it wasn’t going to be there anyway. If the timing is wrong, there’s no saving for later.
- Stay in touch. New opportunities come from people you’ve worked with. Catch up for lunch periodically, or send an email from time to time if they are further away.
- Ask for others. Hiring manager to someone looking for their next opportunity. Someone needing a mentor, with someone who has a similar background. Women especially I hear complaining that they don’t have a mentor, for example, but I think we could fix that for each other, if we tried.
- Be a go to person for something. This broadens your reach. I’ve met a surprising number of people as the designated repository for depressing statistics. But I also have a lot of experience on mobile, with a depth on iOS, and people ask me for help there, too. If I can help someone, I do.
- Reply to recruiters. Possibly controversial, but I maintain a polite “I”m happy where I am right now” or “I’m not actively looking, but I’m happy to chat” is not a bad thing. It’s a reminder that you have options, and keeps things warm. They’ll probably email again in 6-12 months, and maybe then you will be looking. It’s easier if you are sought after – I doubt I’ll put my resume through an automated screening process ever again.
When

The answer to this is – always. Always always always be creating opportunities and options. But sometimes it is more pressing than others.
- You don’t remember when you last learnt something.
- You can’t think of anything you (your team) achieved lately that you are proud of (or, at all). A sign of your own disconnection, or that there is Trouble ahead.
- You notice time more than you used to.
- One morning a week you always seem to get up later… and it’s a day with a meeting you dread.
- You imagine yelling at whoever seems to be the cause of your misery.
- You are out of empathy for people causing you stress (they are no longer humans, they are problems you are forced to interact with every day).
- You leave work frustrated and internally (or externally) ranting, every day.
- People seem to be asking you if you’re OK a lot.
- Your unhappiness if affecting important relationships.
- You leave the office in tears, regularly.
- You find yourself realising that 15 minutes has gone by, and you’ve just been staring at the wall (you can replace “wall” with “bathroom door”.
- You can’t come up with realistic action steps to improve your situation.
- You can’t imagine a successful outcome to what is currently your #1 problem.
This is a good article on toxic jobs.
February 5, 2014
Book: The Male Factor
This book – The Male Factor: The Unwritten Rules, Misperceptions, and Secret Beliefs of Men in the Workplace (Amazon) has to be one of the most depressing books I have ever read. Sometimes, surrounded by men, I think that I don’t understand the rules of the game that is on.

Having read this book, and had so many “ohhhh” moments… I understand better. And some of these rules really suck.

I found this book conflicting in the same way that I am conflicted about Lean In. What I would do if I wasn’t afraid is not work more and more hours for The Man. But I recognised that there is a lot of good advice in there, if that is what you do want. Early-on in The Male Factor I realised that this book is the same. I don’t like the dude-centric culture. I am tired of the casual misogyny rampant in the tech industry. But this is where I am, and my options are to leave, or make the best of it.

Much as I love the joke (maybe at this point pipe dream is a better description) a friend and I have about starting a Feminist Hacker Commune in Berlin… we are not moving to Berlin anytime soon. So I have to ask – how do I take it less personally? How do I find ways to cope better, and even to get ahead? More money buys freedom sooner, at the very least, even if it doesn’t stop me from getting patronized as much (another long term goal). How do I cry less over how hard it is? Working. Living. In a man’s world. Maybe understanding the rules better will help. I hate that is the answer – but this is the world we live in, it is as it is. I don’t know how much we can change things, or how fast. Extending time to burnout has to be a goal.

Women have to tell themselves, in business, it’s still a man’s word. That’s changing slowly and you shouldn’t accept it. But you do have to accurately evaluate the landscape. The better the evaluation, the better the results. You have to conduct yourself accordingly and say ‘I won’t compromise, but I will understand the rules.’ And remember that the only way to change the company is to get higher up.

“But many of us think that competence should be the most important thing,” I protested. ‘That’s the way it should work. If we are highly competent we should be able to succeed, period.’

Geoff shook his head. “No,” he said. “Think about it. Generally, especially as you rise through the ranks, no one is incompetent – so it falls to those other factors. It’s not just talent, because everyone has that. Instead it’s the boss valuing trust, valuing people who fit with his own style, and valuing loyalty. It’s so hard to break into those teams. You can have talent, but you have to earn loyalty.”

Three chapters in, the book was already making me so angry, even more disillusioned. And I already appreciated how helpful it was going to be.

There’s a thorough methodology in this book – thousands of anonymous surveys, carefully designed. Hundreds of interviews. I dislike many of the conclusions, but I think the methodology is sound enough to be insightful into the male approach.

Notes From The Book

What men mean by “it’s not personal, it’s business” is that they see these as distinct worlds, not part of one world – which is how women tend to see it.

There is some discussion of brain science – multitasking. Except that studies show that women don’t actually multitask that well either (less badly in some situations, hardly a big win). Also I’m in general dubious of any neuroscience claims since reading Delusions of Gender.

Being “emotional” is mixing these worlds. Not being a “team player” is mixing these worlds. And not being a team player includes not taking your personal self out of it.

People (women) who aren’t respected, who are seen as unpredictable or “high maintenance”, will be marginalised. Key quote here: “When you get the first signals your opinion isn’t valued, there’s time to repair the damage, or at least switch to a different position. Once you feel belittled, it’s time to leave the company.”

Men are keen to stress how extraordinarily valuable women who “understand the rules” are. Which I guess is a point about how much men value “diversity” that is on their terms, and arguably, isn’t actually all that diverse.

Women are seen to have problems with “letting things go”. Getting on board is expected, even if you think there are going to be problems. Document in an email, and then let it go.

“In business life, personal feelings shouldn’t be a consideration, except to the degree that they are going to affect the business.”

I have a hard time believing this – I’ve often seen men personalise things! It seems to me like an example of how men are presumed to be rational… and women are not. Think of Marissa Mayer being lambasted for banning working from home when the data showed that most people working from home were not even logging on to the corporate network. I think it is, men don’t just personalise, they rationalise too. In this light, even hiring a golf buddy can be “not personal” because they think he will be good at the job, and this saves time which they can use to do other things.

Many men have worked hard to suppress their emotions – this is how they are conditioned by society. As a result of this, they think that being emotional means someone isn’t thinking. Men can’t think clearly when experiencing strong emotions, so they think women can’t either. I want to factcheck the neuroscience here, but what I can believe is that men view strong emotions as a crisis, and as a result experience a rush of adrenaline, followed by exhaustion – that is a classic crisis response.

There is a long list of things men view as too emotional. Crying – obviously, Getting upset and/or defensive. Overreacting, or blowing something out of proportion. Jumping to conclusions – this includes perceived knee-jerk reactions, being rapid to judgement, even if logical, can be perceived as emotionally driven. Having strong opinions and refusing to be swayed. Personality conflicts, and this is what interpersonal problems are dismissed as. And finally – anything they don’t understand.

So many of these things seem to be things that men are allowed to do. When judgements are made quickly, men are being decisive, but women are being emotional. When taking a strong stance, men are showing confidence, but women are being emotional. “Personality conflicts” are a handy way to dismiss the mistreatment of women, and importantly, allocate a portion of the blame to them. And when anything that isn’t understood can be labelled as “emotion” – how is this a game that women are supposed to be able to succeed at?

Once a man views someone as being emotional, their interactions with them change.

When emotions mean not thinking, men worry that a woman being “emotional” means she is missing what is happening. They also worry that not thinking is contagious (this sounds like a completely rational, and not at all “emotional” response). Men think that emotions do not serve a business purpose, and are therefore redundant. They do view other men as being “emotional” as even more problematic – but I suspect other men get a much wider leeway on what “emotional” means than women do.

Men (try to) compartmentalise emotions, and then harness them to be effective. The need to edit emotions shown, like we edit the words we used is discussed – take a step back before reacting.

“Men or women who can’t disassociate from the emotional trauma of business end up leaving or failing.”

First time reading this and making notes this section made me so angry – so much of this chapter is ways men can rationalise the fear of women and how we operate. It’s infuriating, but better to know. Rereading my notes and writing it up, my heart breaks for the emotionally stuntedness of this representation of American Masculinity.

Men fear everything falling apart and being unable to provide for their family. For men, even success doesn’t provide much breathing room. To me, this seems completely bizarre. Most of the men I encounter are so confident, and some are really very arrogant. But it does explain some things, and the data and the quotes are compelling.

Part of this is needing to be seen to be “all in” to the team. This includes adapting to the culture – just getting work done is not enough. Results are above everything else, as it could all fall apart tomorrow. Being part of a team means experiencing the same pain, so leaving at 4 to pick the kids up (even if all the work is done) is not looked upon well.

When communicating, men want the conclusion up front – if they want more information, they will ask for it. They don’t want to listen to the details. He wants the end, so that he knows what he is listening to. Don’t overreact – men can blow up, but they will have forgotten about it 10 minutes later. Don’t be seen to hold a grudge, as unwillingness to let something go is viewed as a character flaw and bad for business. The data suggests that they see women in these situations, but not just women, women engaged in a conflict with a man.

I find this really difficult, because of the women I know who “hold grudges” these often come from instances of clear and harmful sexism. Of course they don’t want to encounter that person again – I wouldn’t either. I’ve seen “personality conflicts” that happened between a man and a woman where the guy was (or was later shown to be) clearly acting out of misogyny. This is part of why that kind of behaviour is so traumatic – there is the event itself, the effect it has on how she feels, and then the effect it has on other people’s perception of her.

The expectation is to suck it up. Accommodation is fine, but not equal. This is driven by how much men see work as a competition. Men are “highly attuned to how hard everyone is playing the game and how well – and whether everyone is playing the game by the same rules”.

Complaining does not count as sucking it up. If a you mention institutionalised bias, you are complaining. If you complain, you are seen as not capable of winning on your own merits. This can also include even mentioning a personal problem, like a divorce.

Asking for help, or asking why the (the bosses rule is law) is looked poorly upon. Taking time to ask questions when there is a deadline is even worse – even if these questions allow you to work more effectively.

This whole chapter is full of rage inducing reasons as to why the male dominated workforce is an inefficient one.

Women don’t see flexitime as a different standard, or special treatment, but men do. One of the things I found really telling was a male manager talking about how he was happy to accommodate female staff because he hopes his wife’s boss will do the same for her.

Men are very sensitive to any suggestion they are inadequate. If a woman is direct, or appears not to be sure that a decision was based on a legitimate reason, or asks “why” questions – basically anything that suggests she are questioning his judgement. If a woman pushes too hard on a decision she disagrees with, or shows signs of exasperation (men are much more tuned into female body language). Micromanaging, which includes writing a longer than necessary email. Direct disagreement, which can include making a suggestion in a group setting.

To keep a man happy in the workplace, you have to be non-threatening and encourage him to come to that conclusion himself – I think similar advice was given to keeping men happy at home.

This was so illuminating to me, I have actually said “how am I supposed to deal with someone I can’t ask a direct question of?”, and been baffled by someone (a man) taking what I thought was a statement of fact to be some kind of undermining of them. Many of these things seem so weird. Not being able to ask “why”? Is it really so necessary to tiptoe around the man’s fragile ego? Do they really have to operate like this with each other? This seems especially unfair when some of these things – like over-explaining – come directly from women not being assumed to be competent, the way men are.

The answer – some men are more sensitive to signs of disrespect from a woman. Roughly 20%. Which basically means for a woman in an 80% male environment, probably about 16% of the people she encounters are going to find her objectionable. Which might be something to help depersonalise – anything less than that is a win, I guess. But that is enough of a proportion to make it really hard. When we walk the line between being a bitch, and being a pushover, these are the men who make it so much narrower.

There is a full chapter on dress, which is (like basically every chapter) rage-inducing, and invokes men’s visual nature to make the argument against fitted clothing, because of the way it distracts them. And I really like to think that men are better than this, but in a test of retention from two videos – with the same woman, wearing the same outfit, only in one with her top arranged to display her breasts, and the other with it arranged to cover them up, men retained 25% less when her breasts were on display.

Possibly the worst part of this, is that men don’t view this as their own failure, or society’s failure to create a culture where women are completely objectified, they think that women who dress in a way that emphasises their figure, are trying to be “distracting”. Surveys of women reveal – this is not their goal. The gap here is huge – three out of four men think women dressing to emphasise their figure want to be noticed sexually, but only 16% of women had that intent. Because of this disconnect, men view women who wear close fitting clothing, or lower cut tops, as being less savvy, or think she is clueless because she doesn’t realise.

Takeaways
- Be less personal.
- Watch out for my opinion not being valued (have definitely seen this as a warning sign for a while, but it takes on additional importance).
- Practise forced calmness – try to present a facade of calm, even when upset.
- Look out for situations where responses can be labelled “emotional” (e..g. a decision men don’t like) and try to head it off at the pass.
- Focus on results, but be aware of feeling the same pain.
- Communicate the benefits of up front thought and discussion.
- I may want to rethink my wardrobe.
January 24, 2014
3 Things I Learned on my Burnout Break

Credit: flickr / Vicente Villamón

I can live with less internet.

Note – this is no no internet (although I survived my 6 days in NK), but less. Most of the time when traveling I’ve had some connection, but there has usually been a limit. Maybe it’s not on my primary (favorite) phone, or it’s really slow/intermittent (Bali! Portugal), or I have 15mb limit (Europe, O2 roaming data is 1.99 GBP for 15MB daily).

It’s annoying, but I just drafted blog posts in the notes in the notes app instead. This was actually helpful, as I would not do any research or fact-checking as I went along (can be distracting) but later. As a result, I think I wrote more, and faster unplugged. It did put me off coding things though, knowing that I wouldn’t be able to look anything up or download anything. The other major annoyance is that most of the time over October and November, I have been unable to watch video – not great, but not the end of the world, either.

I take for granted a constant and fast connection, and yes sometimes I don’t have it, but this is the longest period in a while where I’ve been internet deprived in some sense. It’s a helpful reminder, as an engineer, how important it is that the things we build function with poor, intermittent, or no internet. Twitter’s addition of photos to the stream annoys me for this reason. When I’m limited to 15MB, an image-heavy webpage will significantly deplete my internet reserves. Engineers could do a better job, in general, of handling this.
The worst part of this was that sometimes “just this one thing” on the internet would take an hour or more. Because I often deal with poor internet by opening MOAR tabs… I don’t know why I do this. It is basically the opposite of what I should be doing if I really want to just do that one thing and go to sleep.

Relaxing is not the same as Being Relaxed.

This idea has it’s own blogpost, but essentially – once I had chilled out, I didn’t need the things I normally do to “relax”. I survived No-Novel November, for example.

The things that made me want a break, were not the same as what made me afraid to go back.

Obviously, no-one takes an extended break and moves to another country because they are completely happy with how things are.

If you’d asked me what I was needing a break from at the end of September, and what I was worrying about going back a week ago, I would have given you a different set of things. And then, what actually made me excited to go back was something else again.

I guess we don’t always know exactly why we need a break, and it can take time to process the things that are the most stressful – especially those things that we try so very hard to tell ourselves are fine. But I think it’s helpful to honor the feeling of needing one. I’ll do this again, should the need or occasion arise. And I understand better now, my friend who when I asked her how she had survived and got so far in this industry, told me she had burnt out and taken a break multiple times. I’m so grateful to her for admitting that, and making me feel that I could make the same call.

December 4, 2013
The Disillusionment of the Early Career Engineer

Credit : flickr / Kenny Louie

You’re brilliant! You have so many options! You graduate, start work… and now you’re at the bottom of the food chain. There’s a game on, and from what you understand of it, you’re not sure you want to play.

Sometimes people ask me for advice. I have no idea why; I’m not sure what I’m doing either. I’ve noticed a trend, though, of being disillusioned after the first thrill of “I graduated! I have a real job!”, and some people feel disillusioned… others feel disillusioned and trapped.

Disillusionment mostly comes from a feeling of “is this it? I thought I was going to [change the world]”.

Trapped comes from things like: career not going how you thought/hoped it would, not feeling like you are learning enough, not feeling appreciated, not being clear on what you need to do differently to progress.

I can’t offer anything to the disillusioned (I think this is why people join startups instead of working for The Man), but I do have some thoughts on being trapped.

Always have a plan B. The time to find your next thing is not when your confidence is shot – it’s something you should always have. And then you activate it when you’re in a situation that is sapping your confidence.

Even a good manager is not a forever. Yeah your manager helped you with that thing, it doesn’t mean they are going to be 100% good for you, all the time. Another situation they might let you down really badly, or just not be able to help you (e.g. your last promo, they had a plan. For the next it seems like something of a crap shoot). A good manager will see developing your career as part of their job, but even if they do (or say they do – not the same thing), your career is not going to be built on blind loyalty to them. Stay whilst they are offering the things you want, that will help you move forward, but remember: your manager is human, and sometimes as a human they are going to suck – that is their right as a human, and your responsibility as a decent human is not to hold it against them. The question is, is what they are currently sucking at important to you? Will it stop you from feeling fulfilled or moving forwards? If it is, then it’s time to go. If it’s not important, don’t be a jerk, let it go.

Find something you can be excited about on your project. Or find a new project. I don’t think you need to be a passionate user of whatever you are building. A career regret of mine is that I didn’t spend longer working on email, the hatred I have for it was motivating to improve it. I get excited by great user experience, by building things that I think real people will use – which actually gives me a pretty broad set of things to be excited about. But read the launch announcement and feel “meh, nothing new here” – that’s not a place for you.

If you are 100% your job, when your job sucks, your life sucks. And even when you get free meals and all the rest of that stuff, sometimes your job is going to suck. Work on a side project – you’d be amazed at how much you can get done if you set aside half a day at the weekend, or carve out time to write in the evenings. I conducted an experiment in working Saturdays earlier this year. After a few months I declared it a failure and started spending that time on personal projects instead. My happiness improved dramatically, and I started getting some external validation that was a huge – and much needed – boost to my confidence. Perhaps most importantly, I started feeling empowered to challenge and change things I was unhappy about.

Have an idea what you want to do in the medium term. Then make a list. Here’s my medium term plan – I want to be able to run a cross-platform mobile team. Am I ready to do that yet? Not quite. Do I have a plan to get there? Not exactly. What I do have, is a list of things I need to achieve and skills I need to master so that I can do that. And so when I look to my next move, I focus on crossing something off the list – my last move? Two checks – build an iOS app from scratch, and run a small (sub-)team. My next – more web development experience. Currently my side project is building an Android app from scratch. I know that my short term choices build a medium term plan – and that’s my responsibility (if you’re lucky, you get a manager who will support your short term and your medium term goals, but short term can be good enough).

Sometimes you make a choice between values and skills – i.e. “we want someone to focus on <area>” vs “we want someone to build X”. File this under – career choice I didn’t realise I was making at the time. Build X is more concrete, and good to show your value, but what happens post-X? Is it just going to be a short term thing? Focus on area might be better, but why is no-one currently focused on that? Are you really going to be able to? Is your work going to be recognised, and rewarded?

Beware of boring. Why is no-one else doing that? I could make a list of things I find frustrating about the typical nerd. Here’s something that would be… ooh, top five. The logic that goes “if it was important, I would be interested in it, and I’m not, so therefore this is not important”. I have been amazed by the things that get de-prioritised this way. And then the people that work on these things have their work diminished in complexity, just because it is perceived as boring. If you work on something that no-one else wants to, do people recognise it’s importance? Or are you working on something that no-one else wants to… and doesn’t see the value of. That’s a dead end. How people perceive your value and achievements is important, and it’s worth being aware of this, and learning to communicate the value of things that you are doing.

Say something. So many times, I’ve had conversations where someone sets a deadline for things being better without telling anyone who actually has the power to change things. It helps to tell people what you want. They may, or may not give it to you, but at least you will know you tried. If you don’t feel you can, that’s a whole other problem.

Don’t underestimate the importance of your manager/tech-lead. Work hard and good things happen is bullshit. The missing bit – have someone who can advocate for you notice. And advocate for you. This is how you get opportunities – projects, promotions. This is the good situation. In the bad situation, beware of people who need to inflict their insecurities on you, especially if they are the people you need on side to get ahead.

Some Final Thoughts

A lot of this centres on who your manager is. There are a lot of bad managers in the tech industry, hence the drive to do without them, which just creates a different structure (extensively written about elsewhere, but why not start with this). I think it’s really hard to evaluate your first few managers, and only later can we see what they did well, and what they didn’t do so well. In the end, we can’t expect too much, or much at all – our careers are up to us. If we are lucky we get people who help us make good choices along the way, and if we get really lucky, we find people who also support us when we don’t. These people are not necessarily formally your manager, but they can have a tremendous impact on your career none the less.

For women and other minorities, it’s even harder – the manager who gaslights a woman, might be the best manager the dudebro on his team ever had. And you know, lucky for the dudebro. Unlucky for the woman. Whilst tech companies look for women in a limited pool, the women I know look for the limited pool of managers that are good for women (or at least will be good for them – not all men who have sponsored a woman are enlightened and educated about sexism, look at Larry Summers and Sheryl Sandberg) – and it can be hard to tell whether that particular manager has no women on their team because it just happened that way (maybe they work on very low level stuff, where women fall even below the 15% graduation rate) or if there is a reason for that. You can’t always know – but find out if you can. It’s easy to talk good game, but actually given that people who think they are meritocratic exhibit higher levels of cognitive bias, maybe talking good game should worry us more.

In the end, I can’t tell you anything about finding a good manager. I’ve got lucky, and I’ve got unlucky, and if at some point if I figure it out, I’ll let you know. The only thing that I know is that statistically, men whose wives have jobs treat their female colleagues better. So if you’re a woman, prefer the male manager whose wife has a job (if they are in a male dominated field, all the better). Otherwise, here is a handy list (associated article) – as a metric, the more of these that make you laugh in relation to your manager… the more you need that Plan B.

November 27, 2013