wildchocolate

It’s International Women’s Day today, and on my walk to work I thought, “wow, I am feeling so optimistic!” Optimistic, because in the last year, I have gone from fearing that in my career I might never see an improvement in the ratio of women in technology (particularly software) fields, to feeling positive change everywhere.

I wrote an open letter after an upsetting experience at a conference. The responses I got were so overwhelmingly positive and supportive. I received messages and emails from guys I didn’t even know, telling me how important it was to them that their daughters, wives, friends, could feel comfortable being a part of the computer industry. I learned something really important. If people don’t speak up about the things that they feel aren’t right, nothing will change! But if we have productive, open, and honest conversation, amazing things happen. Perspectives are changed. Understanding is achieved. Empathy is developed. And everyone works better together!

So to my fellow women in technology, let me tell you that we have a lot of support out there. We have to keep an open dialog in order to realize change, but it is happening. It is more than possible… it is all around us.

I am so grateful to have a supportive network of women in technology who take care of each other. I am also beyond thrilled to have met such amazing men in the Mac/iOS developer community who have showed their willingness to listen, try and understand, be the change we want to see, stand up for women everywhere, and most importantly, to be wonderful co-workers and friends.

Some things I’d still like to see improve about the women/minority experience in software:

- Toning down the inapproriate/raunchy content that can make people feel uncomfortable at conferences or events while STILL having fun with each other!

- More people taking a step back to try and objectively look at what they can do differently to make women feel more included. Maybe that means helping to steer the conversation away from a constant stream of “guy jokes” at a networking party, introducing yourself to every woman you don’t know in the room at a party or event and thanking them for coming, or just making a solid effort to get more female speakers at your event.

- More reaching out to the women you know in your tech community to ask what you can do to help, or to invite them to a tech get together you attend.

- Being great listeners, having open minds, and putting differences aside to realize that what this is really about is improving the entire community and making the future even better than today.

As of right now, the number of women studying computer science is still in decline and under 10% at most universities. It’s due to so many factors but sometimes I don’t think that we realize how little things like the suggestions I made above can really make an impact.

Let’s break stereotypes. The future of programming is people of all types. And that can only be a good thing!

A special thanks to the guys who I have the fortune of knowing personally and are always there for support! You guys rock. And please take a moment to appreciate the amazing women in your life today!

When I first started working for myself, the most common question people would ask me was something along the lines of “how do you stay motivated?”. If put in my position, it seemed that most people expected they would be lounging in PJ’s until noon. In their minds, once you remove yourself from a position of being managed to becoming your own boss, there’s no reason to work hard. I mean, there aren’t consequences for under-performing without a manager or performance review waiting for you, right?

This couldn’t be further from the truth. That is, for me it’s quite the opposite of reality, and I imagine the same is true for anyone who expects to be working for themselves for more than say, five minutes. But I can understand where the expectation is coming from. The real question, I think, is “how do you stay sharp without someone else managing and shaping your career”? If you are your own boss, who pushes you to become better and better? The answer is, well, you!

From where I’m sitting there are two basic motivations for those of us who are self-managed. First, the consequences of failure actually become greater when you begin working for yourself. In a traditional job you work hard, you hope someone notices, if you’re doing well you move up. That’s the expected path. If you screw up or get lazy, well then maybe you don’t get a promotion this time around, or someone scolds you in a performance review. But there’s always someone there to pick up the slack. Your manager is the one who’s ultimately responsible for your team’s performance and no one can hold you individually accountable for the successes or failures of the company.

When working for yourself, the failure falls to you, and you alone. That pressure in itself becomes a major motivator. Particularly, if you are the type of person who has pride in your work ethic and reputation, which is true for many self-managed people. If you don’t set the example, push yourself, do your best work, your team will fail. That’s a near certainty. For me, I just couldn’t let that happen. Not after risking so much and coming so far. I’d say the majority of start up founders are probably workaholics for exactly that reason (although I don’t condone overworking, but that’s another topic). If you get lazy, you’re only letting yourself down. You’re risking your own job and lively hood. If you’re bootstrapped (like my company), you’re throwing away all the equity you worked to build. But mostly, there’s just that fear of being seen as a failure. Without anyone else to blame, your company’s failure becomes very obviously yours. And everyone would see that.

The second motivational component comes not from fear, but from passion. A lot of people end up in a self-managed position as a direct result of pursuing their passions. That’s true for me. So I have this deep protective instinct toward my job. I want to preserve the ability to be my own boss, and do what I love every single day. I want it to last. I want to keep loving my job for years to come. That’s what motivates me to stay sharp. I never want to stop getting better, because I never want to wake up and have the fun job carpet suddenly pulled out from under me. You can’t achieve greatness by lounging in your PJ’s and hardly working. That just isn’t going to happen. For me, that desire to preserve the job I love is motivation in itself.

Certainly there are other factors at play like competitiveness and financial security, etc. I don’t mean to say those are the only two motivations. And what’s really fascinating to me now, is thinking about how much more the larger, more traditional companies might achieve if even half of their workforce approached their jobs the way self-managed entrepreneurs do. We all need to stay sharp and keep pushing forward, but the results are so much more powerful when that push comes from within.

I wish I had known this when trying to make the difficult decision of going “indie” three years ago. I knew that no one was perfect, but I went through patches of insecurity where I imagined that every other entrepreneur out there in the world knew more about what it takes to be successful than I did, and that as a result I was not ready. Now I can tell you with confidence that this is completely false.

Nobody has it all figured out. Sure, some people have a lot more experience and wisdom to guide them. They’ve already been at the start of their first business or two, and learned what not to do. But, that doesn’t mean that they know all the answers and know precisely what to do in any situation. I encounter people all the time who have been in this a lot longer than I have, and let me tell you, they still have questions. They still stay up at night wondering about things, obsessing over things. They still ask questions about accounting, legal matters, hiring, which hardware to purchase, etc.

Once I started to realize this, I was actually shocked. I had all this time seen these entrepreneurs walking around so confident, with years of success under their belts, and thought “what is it going to take to be like that?”. I had no idea that they could feel just as clueless as I do sometimes.

What it Takes

I’ve noticed that great entrepreneurs, and I would argue all people who are seen as leaders in the workplace, have a few things in common.

First, they’re confident enough to face a problem that they’ve never seen before and potentially aren’t equipped to handle head on. Why? Well, because they have to be! This happens on an almost daily basis. (I’ve written about this essential confidence before.)

Secondly, they realize that you’re never actually done learning. There are always areas for improvement, new skills to pick up, and tricks that you can learn from others. They understand that standing still is a recipe for disaster. They handle criticism well and learn from it, always maintaining a positive attitude.

Finally, they possess an amazing work ethic. People tend to equate entrepreneurship with crazy hours and working weekends, and that has always frustrated me. It’s some start ups’ culture, sure, but it’s really not about the amount of time. It’s about the discipline, the dedication, the passion, and the giving it your all attitude that really defines it for me.

I guess what I’m trying to say is this: If you’re smart, confident, and possess a strong work ethic, you can be an entrepreneur. There’s no magic potion. There’s no state of knowing it all and having all the answers. You just have to dive in head first.

Dear Mac/iOS Developer Community,

Empathy is the ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes who may be different from yourself and attempt to understand/have compassion towards that person’s feelings, especially if their feelings are different from your own. If you do not consider yourself to be a particularly empathetic person, there’s no need to read any further.

I attended a Mac developer conference recently and overall had a great experience. I had the opportunity to meet and get to know many great developers while learning a few things too. Unfortunately, I left with a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. This feeling I attribute to a lack of conduct standards, and a failure by many of us to understand the changes in the industry that have been occurring, like it or not, over the years.

Here is what happened. I sat down to listen to a talk that I could tell by the title of the talk, was going to be inappropriate. I thought to myself, I’m at a respectful Mac conference, the organizer is walking around in a suit and conducting himself very professionally, I’m sure it will be ok. This was, in fact, a poor assumption. The speaker prefaced his talk by basically stating there was a little substance, but that most of the topics were being presented simply because of the sexual or otherwise inappropriate jokes that could be formed from the topics. For instance, jokes that can be made about “autoreleasing”. I’ll let you think about that for a second and you basically understand how this went. About ten minutes in, I was thoroughly disappointed in the immaturity and inappropriateness and walked out of the room. As others informed me later, it did not get any better. There were tidbits of information weaved in, but the overarching theme remained the same.

Sadly, this was not the only offensive point in the week. The highly respected keynote speaker managed to weave in a reference to a female celebrity’s “tits and ass” in his discussion, which I found awfully distasteful.

Now, I know that being one of the handful of women in attendance at the conference, I am in a serious minority in terms of the way I experience and react to things such as this. I also know that it’s quite possible that others would not be offended as they may have the same, in my opinion immature, sense of humor. Yet, in discussing with others, including members of my team, I found that I was not alone in finding these references uncomfortable.

Why is it that an inappropriate talk would even be permitted on a stage at any respectable conference? How does this in any way further the advancement of the software industry at large, and the Mac community especially? In my opinion, it sets us back quite a bit. During one of the much more informative and respectable talks of the week, the topic of diversity was brought up. The speaker pointed out the fact that the Mac community is full of mostly men from an educated and higher income background. The context was in discussion of how we tend to gravitate towards like minded people. And in fact, it’s impossible to argue that this is a truly diverse field by any means because women and minorities are grossly underrepresented as I’m sure you know.

However, what this experience and other similar encounters I have had in the last three years as a Mac developer have started to suggest is, maybe the Mac community doesn’t want people like me to be comfortable? Perhaps they would rather keep this a boy’s club forever, and it’s simply irritating when people like me disrupt that.

Wow, does that thought scare me. Coming from a different industry where diversity is praised and encouraged, could it be that software developers want the exact opposite? Clearly not all of us. But, perhaps some of the organizers of this particular conference gravitate toward that mindset.

The Mac development community has changed a lot over the years. There are new iOS consulting companies popping up all the time. Macs are in more homes than ever before in history. Mac developers are hiring business partners, even donning suits sometimes, and prancing into major corporations to work on exciting applications. It’s a new world, folks. And as a result, there will likely be growing pains.

All I ask is this…

First, if you are in a position where you can control the conduct and standards at a software event that is intended to be in any way professional, you are therefore obligated to do so. Or at least warn people who may be attending otherwise, so we may steer clear.

Second, before you start to defend this kind of inappropriate behavior in a professional setting, think about how you would feel if I were your daughter or your sister. I’m not against inappropriate humor by any means, I just think there’s a time and a place. This was not it.

Do we want the Mac community to be a place where anyone, regardless of gender, race, religion, etc. feels uncomfortable?

Diversity is great. It shows that our field is growing up. But diversity can only happen with acceptance, tolerance, and the ability to empathize with those who may feel uncomfortable, even if you yourself do not. I sincerely hope that at future Mac community events, I will not be similarly offended.

Thank you to the wonderful guys who provided support and feedback in preparation for this article. It’s nice to know we have some gentlemen out there in the Mac community!

Sincerely,

Brit

Update: After getting in touch with the conference organizers, I have a lot of hope regarding this issue. They were very concerned, apologetic, and acknowledged that this should not happen at a professional event. Thank you!

The other night I was debating with a friend whether or not it was truly possible to have major success in your career without your job coming first. She believes it’s simply not possible. You’re either family oriented or job oriented, but something always must win. I was nearly persuaded. But after she left I thought about it some more, and decided it is possible to achieve major success and still put your family first. We just have different definitions of success.

What does a successful career mean to you? We tend to see people with lots of money, lots of power, lots of fancy shit, and important titles as being the definition of success. That is I suppose one way to look at it. Those people are often depicted as being on call for their job 24/7, Hong Kong on Monday, London on Friday, with never a moment’s rest. These are images that I myself am victim of accepting as what it means to be successful at one time or another.

As a little girl I remember picturing myself as CEO standing in the corner office in the high rise of some elaborate futuristic skyscraper with a headset in my ear making deals. Other days, I was a world renowned surgeon saving lives every day. Of course those are descriptions of successful careers, without a doubt. Those are also descriptions of intense, demanding careers where it is probably darn next to impossible to put your family first one hundred percent of the time. I mean, soccer practice or saving a life? Although I don’t know from experience since I’m neither a corner office CEO at a major corporation, nor a surgeon. But there are certainly a lot of other definitions of success. They’re just not as popular or glamorous.

I watched the pilot of a new show on the CW called “Hart of Dixie” and was further convinced that I was onto something. Yes, yes I know. But I love Rachel Bilson and the basic premise fits perfectly with this internal discussion I was having with myself. In the show, the character, Dr. Hart, is an ambitious, driven doctor soon to be cardio-thoracic surgeon at the best hospital in NYC who suddenly finds herself in small town Alabama as a general practitioner. The show sets you up to understand that over the course of the season she will come to realize that she doesn’t need the fancy hospital in NYC or a fancy title to be happy. In fact, that’s not who she really is inside, simply who she thought she was supposed to be.

We’re so ingrained to believe that success is defined by money, power, fancy titles, fancy houses, irreplaceable importance in an organization, etc, etc. However, those are just the most in your face types of success out there. Maybe that is how you define success. Maybe that’s what you aspire to achieve for yourself. That’s fine; I used to. Now I think of things differently, though. And I realized that my new viewpoint comes from re-defining success for myself.

When I was just starting my career out of college, I took a consulting job where I was flying back and forth to Miami every week. I worked fairly long days, pretty standard for consulting, nothing crazy. I lived in a hotel out of a suitcase that was perfectly packed every week. About one year into this, I was so incredibly miserable. That was simply not the life I wanted to live. There were more important things to me than whether the client was happy and the software was ready for “Go Live.” I wanted to cook meals with my boyfriend after work. Hell, I wanted to see my boyfriend after work. I wanted to not feel like I had to check my email over the weekend in case something went wrong or someone might need me. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with pursuing a career in consulting. I’m simply pointing out that for me, it was not what would make me happy in life.

Shortly thereafter, I quit my job to pursue something more in line with my personal goals. I redefined success. Instead of thinking corner office at a Fortune 500 I went for 2 person indie software startup instead. I love my job now. Wherever it takes me, at least now I know what it feels like to be real with myself. Through this path over the last two and a half years, I have found a lot of success. For me, success means balancing a love of life, with a love for the work I do. It means always learning, always pushing myself, always tackling challenges, solving hard problems, all while trying to contribute useful products to people around the world. That’s my new definition of success. What’s been the most interesting part of this journey so far, is that my life is actually more satisfying now than at the fancier job. Things are not always what they seem I suppose.

So, moral of the story. Define your own success. Figure out how your life fits into it. Then pursue whatever track helps you achieve that success. Even if it means abandoning the track you’re on.

I recently read in the book, “Good to Great” by Jim Collins,  about the CEO/founder of HP, Mr. Packard. He was a wealthy and very successful man. But he went into work everyday because he had a passion for what he did. He lived in the same modest farm house after making his millions. His idea of a good time was “getting friends together to string some barbed wire ” on the farm. He wore flannel shirts and drove a regular car. When he passed away, his rather large estate was donated to charity. Mr. Packard defined success quite a bit differently than one might expect. All I can say is, that rocks.