I am new to the tech world — kinda — but I'm going to be writing this post as if it were something that happened to me years ago instead of like, last week to give me some distance so that I can write about this cleanly, and maybe get some perspective in the process.
I'm a woman in tech and I have a problem with women in tech. Not on the conscious level, of course. I want to do everything I can to encourage other women to get into tech and/or stay here. It's largely a supportive community and it has to be because we know we are rare creatures. After four days volunteering at a tech conference early on in my career, I had to hand out tickets for a raffle and only attendees to the conference itself counted, not children or spouses who had separate badges for the venue, and I noticed I was not working as hard to verify that the men in line had the official/right/tech badges as I was with the women. I know that sounds awful, and it is, but the human brain is very good at pattern matching, and I had four days in a sunless conference environment for my brain to constantly make the connection that man == technical; woman == spouse. No amount of looking in the mirror, or hanging out with my cool lady dev conference-roommates could possibly overwrite the overwhelming amount of data I had been getting from my environment for the past 100 hours.
The environment I was entering when I truly started my career in code was that of the infamous Google doc that said women weren't built to be software engineers. And the thing was, this wasn't the first time I encountered that idea. Not only is it constant background noise in our culture, but I tried for a CS minor in college, and heard similar sentiments expressed my classmates — and TAs. Maybe not directly to my face (most of the time), but these were people who didn't always check to see if I were standing outside of their line of sight, maybe because they simply weren't expecting me to be there at all.
Being constantly reminded that you don't belong is hard. I think this is an experience everyone can relate to — at least those of us who went to middle school. I'm a woman, I'm in tech and when I started thinking that I might not belong here, I had a blueprint for those thoughts ready to go because I had been handed multiple different options by many different people throughout my whole life.
The reality is, I thought, I'm simply too emotional to be in this field. You see, I cry a lot. I hate it because it makes other people uncomfortable and I'm taken less seriously. Maybe it's fair that people don't take me seriously when I'm crying, but people take my brother plenty seriously when he's throwing his phone or punching a wall. I'm aware that neither of us are paragons of emotional health. But I can't be making other people uncomfortable every time I'm angry. I can't have my coworkers taking what I have to say less seriously because I'm frustrated. I also can't stop myself from crying. I have tried every trick. And too emotional to deal with people is a hard blow to recover from. It doesn't matter if I am or am not too emotional to deal with people. What matters is that I think I am.
And then my brain takes the next logical leap. See, one of the things that all the articles championing women in tech like to talk about is how we're just better with people. I hate this. I am as capable of doing excessive emotional labor as the next woman, but the reality is, I'm just not great with people. Yeah, I have empathy, yes, I'm aware of most of the necessary social cues, but also, I still suck at dealing with people. I'm shy — put me in a new job and I probably won't even begin to know how to be my real self for at least a full week. You want me to ask questions? Wait a week. Emphasize that questions the first week is key? I get a complex and never ask the questions I wanted to ask because I feel like I missed my chance. Once I get past my shyness, I have what has been called a “strong personality”, which means that if someone else has a strong personality and we're not metaphorically running in parallel, there will be at least one collision. There will likely be more than one. I don't know how to resolve these. I never have. I have tried, I've gotten better, but I'm still not good at it. And here I am, with these glaring flaws in the very area culture is shouting is my strong suit. Not just my strong suit, culture is saying, hey, this is why I should be hired.
And then my brain takes the next logical leap. If I were hired in part because this company cares about diversity and the diversity I should have brought is my people skills, but I don't have people skills, I don't belong here. My brain also points out that there's no way anyone could have seen my poor people skills coming. Looking around at a lot of the other women-in-tech that I've met, they tend to all trend toward tom-boy at least in appearance/presentation. I do not - I am pink. I wear hot pink glasses, my resume is in pink ink/pixels, my website is very pink. I wear dresses or skirts almost every day. I wear makeup. I dressed myself in all the wrappings of a Woman and then I fail at having those cool marketable woman-skills. I am False Advertising, my brain tells me.
Am I aware that if I were a man*, I'd be judging myself by other standards — probably, as you can see, I am also the kind of person that spends way too much time in my own head. But my point is I'd ask myself, am I good enough at writing code? Am I good enough at learning as I go? Maybe I'd ask myself if I am team player, but I wouldn't expect myself to be the world's best communicator, a top-tier peace-maker. But I'm not a man. And I do judge myself by these standards and I find myself lacking. And I'm also aware that those communication skills I lack are the very skills that could have fixed things so many times over. It's hard to articulate exactly how this feels, but it's kind of like being Batman in a world of superheroes with actual powers. People expect heroes to have powers and powers would have made things so much better. Also, I don't have Bruce Wayne's money. I do, however have something that Batman will never have, and that's a growth mindset. I mean, maybe Batman has a growth mindset about other things, but unlike super powers, communication skills is an area where I can actually grow.
In the mean time I need to keep reminding myself that sometimes when things go wrong, it's not my fault for not explaining things I didn't even understand yet. It's not the other party's fault for failing to understand my sub-par communications. Sometimes no one is at fault, sometimes things just break. I wish the world had unit tests like code does (or should), but it doesn't. I'm going to constantly internalize what is being shouted at me from every direction, both the well-wishers and the assholes.
Also I need to spend more time on twitter yelling into the void. Dear everyone who writes about how we need more women in tech, please stop treating us as a monolith. Having representation of all sorts in tech is a goal enough in itself. Diversity adds value. I'm sure it's great for those women who are good at communication to hear that their skills are in need, but add a caveat sometimes. Some of us are shitty communicators with the people skills of a scared deer or a charging bull (or in my case, both 🎉) and as long as we are improving and contributing in other ways, we still deserve to be here.
*With all other cultural privileges being the same as I have now. I recognize that other underrepresented groups in tech have their own mazes to navigate.