When I changed jobs in 2020, I went from a low-process culture to a high-process culture (or: what I perceive as high-process, all things are relative). It was a bit of a culture shock. The process stressed me out. For instance, my previous job did not have performance review. You were supposed to submit feedback […]
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 […]
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? […]
I think most of us, at some point, have been in a situation – bad relationship, bad boss, toxic friendship, that made us feel less than. Time goes by, and somehow you’ve come to expect less. Become less confident. Being afraid to say or do anything for fear of crossing these boundaries that might be […]
I have a bunch of posts to write up from GHC last week, which was as usual, awesome. But the question I was interested in people I went with answering was – what are you going to do differently when you get back? For me, it was a reminder about the takeaway I got from […]
I’m pretty confident that 2012 is going to be better than 2011. One of the things that makes me sure of this is that I now have Elite status on Air Canada. Airports, a huge source of misery, are set to be less miserable with access to the lounge (or maybe I’ll just get liquored […]
August was about change. I switched projects. We are buying a new car and will hopefully start taking more local trips. I’m trying a new trainer – with the amount of travel I’m doing, I need more flexibility. I’ve been changing the way we do women in CS stuff, and trying to decentralize and delegate […]
My goal for July was to deal with bureaucracy and explore more. My success was so-so. I got my work-permit sorted, and found out how to get my tax form from IBM (still do to – ask for it). And my boyfriend and I took a trip to Paris… Ontario. But, a lot of my organizational energy […]
Nathaniel of the soon-to-be-launched Awesome Foundation Seattle wrote a charming post about why he’s excited for it to happen asking people why they are involved in AF. Here’s why I love AWESOME! I was Instigator of Awesome @AwesomeOttawa and am currently a Co-Conspirator @KWAwesomeFound. I’m a software engineer, so I just need a computer and […]
I have a simple rule when I get overwhelmed. One. Positive. Thing. It’s so simple that whatever state I’m in I can’t argue with it. It’s so easy that there can never be an excuse. But, applied diligently, it can change pretty much everything. When I’m in a tizzy, one of the first things to […]