I Hate the Word ‘Technical’
I cringe inside every time I hear the phrase “That’s technical.”
Now hear me out. I’ve worked full time in technology for 8 years working on everything from browser and operating systems to virtual and augmented reality. Before that, I was in college and working in technical support and doing a bit of freelance web development. I’m a product manager — and, recently, I’ve been using FreeCodeCamp to refresh some skills and learn full-stack javascript web development. It’s not like I’m scared of technology. I can confidently state I’m not not technical.
Wait, what?
I don’t feel confident calling myself “technical” but I’m trying to learn how to do so — here’s why that matters: this behavior is partially based on gender. Women tend not to apply for things unless they see themselves as 100% qualified for the role. Men instead apply to roles where they only fit 60% of the criteria. Do I feel I fit the the technical criteria? Well, not entirely…
Part of this is how technical fields work. Someone with a coding certificate is looked down on by someone with a bachelors who is looked down on by someone with a masters who.. You can sub in the same thing for front-end to back-end to machine learning to… You get the picture. When I think technical I compare myself to the far right of the spectrum and don’t feel it resonate and so I hesitate to say yes.
This framework isn’t just a personal mental model but one that I see applied in daily life where people are judged on being technical or not. During my undergrad at Stanford, this was the classification of “fuzzy” for social science and humanities or “techy” for other fields. While I always felt more comfortable aligning in the middle, there never seemed freedom to operate there and eventually I gave up the nomer of being technical.
After college this bifurcation of ability appeared omnipresent — in conversation, in jobs, and chances to learn. I was told half jokingly when asking details of the implementation of an API, “that’s technical, sweetie.” I saw jobs that required a “technical background” without regard to what technical background you had so longs as you were “technical.” As recently as last week, another PM I met had the gall to say to me “I’m assuming you weren’t technical” in asking me about my career. Suddenly not being technical is a non-starter and worse yet, because it’s a spectrum of learning “that’s technical” can always be used by people further along to prevent people from progressing their skills to the next level.
It wasn’t until the last year or two I realized how toxic this behavior was. By treating “technical” with otherness, in essence, they quelled my ability to learn. They were treating “technical” as if it were something I couldn’t learn, as if it were a fixed trait. This is the exact opposite of the growth mindset I needed to learn — I just wasn’t technical yet. In years at Google, despite working with engineering on a daily basis, I only learned coding skills needed for specific projects (PHP, VBA, SQL) and never thought about making myself “more technical.” It wasn’t until one day in a new job it clicked that I was limiting my own learning. And so I started pushing back.
Without getting into the debate of where one should best learn, StackOverflow’s 2016 developer survey revealed almost 70% of developers are self-taught, meaning technical skills are no longer just indicated by a college degree. Instead, ‘technical’ is something you become in shades and degrees with curiosity and thirst for learning. And more importantly, it’s a title a woman is less likely to relate to before a man would. It’s fine when it comes to a job to have specific requirements, but what if instead of saying it’s limited to a technical person or specifying a degree we listed the actions required? Javascript — node.js, express, jquery and full-stack app development? I can do that. “Technical”? Maybe.
I went to a Women Who Code Javascript event a few weeks back. While the group was nothing but amazing, it took a bit of confidence on my end to even go and define myself as ‘a woman who codes.’ I only code casually, did I deserve that title? It wasn’t until I went and helped someone get something up and running that I realized how far I’d come. Being ‘technical,’ like being a ‘woman who codes’ is a title that women will be slower to take on and may not even be something that feels achievable.
Personally, I’m working on both learning and taking credit for my knowledge but professionally, as an industry, we need to be better. We need to stop using “that’s technical” as a barrier to learning and instead talk about specific knowledge and readiness to learn. If you need technical abilities, break down what you need instead of treating it with an impossible otherness. And for dear God, never say something is “technical, sweetie.”
