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, […]
I found the Truth About Burnout (Amazon) from this article, which I think gives the main takeaways from the book far more succinctly. I did find the book interesting and I’m glad I read it, but I wouldn’t necessarily encourage other people to. It’s a little dated in places (it was published in 2000), and […]
One of the things I’ve been meditating on since escaping the tech industry is what skills do you not acquire when the main skills you are learning are how to cope in a bad situation? And do you have to unlearn them to go back? The other thing about environments where we “cope” rather than “thrive” […]
Several of my computers have been hit with hammers. I tell them they should be flattered by the complement, but they still have dents in them. Computers in Dave’s office keep overheating. But I don’t think it’s anything to do with Dave having the heating on high. Many of my processes are failing with specific […]
Lately I’ve been watching more men give talks about diversity. Personally I’m in favour of this, because 1) If women could fix this, we would have by now – making “diversity” a “woman’s issue” is a way of perpetuating the status quo. And 2) there is clearly a subset of men who won’t listen to […]
I was hanging out with an OSS-dude (OSS = Open Source Software) for a while, and I learned a couple of things. Firstly – don’t try and buy committed OSS types books. It’s a complete nightmare. Secondly – I’ve reached a better understanding of harassment and open source. And particularly the pushback, which comes from […]
A few months ago three people told me I had been right about something. Obviously this brought me joy – I do love being right – but it was not all joy, because what I had been right about was bad news for them. I personally felt vindicated. But my friends were in a bad […]
It’s about 18 months since my friend Tracy wrote this post pointing out that whilst the tech industry evangelises data for decision making, there is very little available when it comes to diversity numbers. And about 12 months since we started seeing companies release their numbers. Helped along by radical shareholder action from Jesse Jackson Sr. […]
I read a lot about how important it is to get more women speakers (and PoC!) at tech conferences, and I agree it’s important. But one of the things I’ve found as a speaker, who is also a woman, is that I get invitations to fill what I refer to as “the woman speaker slot”. […]
In the way of a lot of books that are a collection of blog posts, Women in IT (Amazon) is a bit disjointed and the writing varies. It’s also very promoting of the BCS which is not an organisation that I am involved with – I had to take a course at uni for accreditation […]