5+ Awesome women in tech and the things I learned from them
1. Sarah Mei: Writing code is not the only way to help Open Source
Railsbridge is a 1.5 day workshop that helps women to learn how make their first “Hello World app”. I’ve met dozens of engineers who got their start on one of these workshops and I’m sure there are hundreds more.
Railsbridge is demonstrating that the talent is out there, they just need a nudge in the right direction. Our weekends are better spent helping develop this talent than writing “yet another MVC framework” or putting “fiber-channel networks” on a basement.
2. Sandi Metz: The only requirements for great software are discipline and pride on your craft.
“We want to do our best work, and we want the work we do to have meaning. And, all else being equal, we prefer to enjoy ourselves along the way.” — Sandi Metz
Sandi’s book http://www.poodr.com/ completely changed the way I write code. I used to think that good code was code that ran fast, was clever and was written even quicker. Sandi’s book taught me that great code is Clear, Concise and Extensible. And most importantly, it made me realize that you cannot take shortcuts; making great code is an iterative process and knowing when “it’s good enough” is something that comes with practice & experience.
Thanks Sandi for showing me how to make software that’s enjoyable to work with.
3. Sheryl Sandberg: The Glass Ceiling for women (and minorities) is real. To break it we need to fight not only from the bottom but also from the top.
https://www.facebook.com/sheryl
“My argument is that getting rid of these internal barriers is critical to [Women] gaining power. Other s have argued that women can get to the top only when the institutional barriers are gone. This is the ultimate chicken-and-egg situation. […] Both sides are right. Let’s agree to wage battles on both fronts.” — Sheryl Sandberg, Lean In
We need to attack these problems at all levels. The excuse “my boss is a prick, but he’s the boss so I won’t say anything” was never valid.
4. Julia Evans: Asking questions is a superpower
Nowadays when people ask me “how did you figure that out?” my answer 90% of the time is “well, by asking someone”.
But I didn’t used to be like that, I used to think that people would judge me by my questions. Thanks to Julia -and partly Columbo on Netflix- I realized asking simple questions is the best way to solve the hardest problems (and crimes).
5. Camille Fournier: Debugging Organizations is exponentially harder than Debugging Distributed Systems but also exponentially more rewarding.
As her the title of another of her talks says, “Cloning yourself isn’t an option”. If you want to have real impact in your company, you need to learn how to become a good technical leader. It is hard work and you will make mistakes along the way, however some of the skills you already have might help you on this new path.
+ More awesome women in tech you should follow:
Leah Culver, Jessie Frazelle, Ines Sombra, Jessica McKellar, Jerri Ellsworth, Caitie McCaffrey
Appendix
About my opinions regarding the manifesto, I will just leave these references.
