Women of Silicon Roundabout roundup
A few of us from BGL Tech recently attended the Women of Silicon Roundabout event — one of the largest conferences for women in tech. With over 300 speakers presenting more than 150 talks and several workshops across the two days, there’s far too much for me to cover everything I learnt. So, here’s just a few highlights from some of my favourite key talks...
Why are women leaving jobs in technology?
This was a really interesting session, where a group of us shared our thoughts and experiences on what causes women to turn away from tech roles, what can be done to combat the attrition rate of women in this sector and what other organisations are doing.
Some interesting themes emerged from this discussion — some obvious ones, such as lack of recognition, lower salaries, poor maternity pay and lack of support when returning to work etc. However, there were a couple of less obvious themes:
- Feedback: The general consensus is that the type of feedback given to women is often different to that given to men, and this can often leave women feeling undervalued and that their accomplishments are considered less important. Feedback presented to women is more likely to use adjectives to describe perceived personality traits, e.g. “you’re too nice” or “you’re a bit overconfident”, whereas feedback presented to men tends to utilise verbs to focus more on their actual skills.
- Glue work: This is best explained here, but in short, it’s being asked to do things that are not really part of your job. It became apparent that women are more likely be asked to perform tasks such as booking meetings, writing process documentation, perform staff on-boarding etc., which often leaves less time for them to focus on more important and interesting work that they signed up to do.
So, what can be done about it?
Looking beyond the typical answers of examining maternity leave policies and reviewing salaries, when we begin digging into some of the cultural aspects, some members of group shared their success in using ‘reverse mentoring’. This is where younger women in the organisation mentor males in senior positions for a mutual benefit — the males can benefit from a fresh perspective, whereas the females have an opportunity to develop skills such as speaking with confidence.
Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) quotas: help or hindrance?
Asif Sadiq MBE (Head of Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging at The Telegraph) delivered a fascinating talk on the perception of D&I quotas in businesses. He covered a lot of ground, which I will attempt to summarise now (wish me luck).
- Talking about statistics is all well and good, but what do they actually show? You might have a 50:50 split of women and men recruited in junior roles, but do the individual members of your organisation feel like they belong once? Do they feel heard? Is there a progression funnel? Does the 50:50 ratio become 80:20 or even 90:10 in favour of males when you look at more senior levels?
- When it comes to hiring, it’s okay to have quotas at the entry point. Push them to the start of the journey, not the end — bring those underrepresented groups to the starting line so they have a shot.
- People who are part of a group that’s targeted via quotas often feel like they are ‘just a token quota hire’ and those who aren’t feel excluded. Positive intentions can have a negative impact if you’re not careful!
- To combat this, communicate effectively to everyone the reasons for the quotas. Don’t keep your targets secret! Everyone needs to understand the business value of a diverse workforce, and that we are not offering special treatment, simply creating a fair playing field.
- If you really want your diversity goals hit, they must be linked to compensation (bonuses) and/or KPIs.
“Diversity and Inclusion is a business imperative, not a “nice-to-have”. It’s needed to remain competitive in an ever-changing consumer landscape that is more and more diverse and businesses need to reflect and represent their customer bases to remain relevant. Inclusion is not a policy or a network, bring it out of HR — inclusion should be felt across the business.” — Asif Sadiq MBE
10 things you should be doing to advance your tech career in 2019
Amy Freelander (Senior Product Tech Manager at Google) did a particularly brilliant talk. Here’s a very loose overview of her top 10 things to do to advance your tech career:
- Explore the present: Understand the industry you’re in or want to be in. Think about the whole value proposition, not just the tech involved — what will excite you? What will make you happy?
- Learn about how you learn best: What is your best input?
- Invest in yourself: Take time to invest in your own learning, hobbies and self-care. Develop a change mindset, focused towards learning and adapting.
- Take free courses: There’s plenty online — Coursera and FutureLearn to name a few. Look out for local clubs and Meetup groups.
- Attend professional events: Not only can you learn a lot, but it’s a great opportunity to network too.
- Use (and be) a mentor or coach: There’s equal value in both.
- Do something new: Explore different tech and re-connect with previous passions. Try to do something new each month, whether it be learning some PHP or learning to knit! Whatever it is (doesn’t need to be tech related), taking time to learn new things helps to develop your change mindset and make you more adaptable, and you’re likely to have fun along the way!
- List your motivations: What’s important to you? What’s essential to you? What don’t you want? What parts of your skill set do you want to use? These are all key questions to keep in mind, re-examine and assess.
- Be creative and be yourself: Don’t let other people shake your own understanding of who you are.
- Polish your elevator pitch: Learn to speak about yourself in a way that’s respectful and true. Be balanced — don’t be overly negative or modest. Be able to talk about your motivations and your background. Women — work on overcoming the female unconscious modesty bias! Importantly, review your LinkedIn profile; does it represent you?
“Techies aren’t just all about maths and numbers and data, they are creative. They like tech because they like to create, to make something from nothing, to bring value and to be challenged.” — Amy Freelander
The future workforce: how are we preparing our business for jobs that don’t exist yet?
With a predicted increase in human and machine integrated teams within the next five years, the future workplace needs to adapt, as do the skills required. The tricky part is that we don’t what skills are, as the jobs of the future don’t exist yet! Schools need to teach children how to learn, focusing on key elements of critical thinking, logic, emotional intelligence to prepare them for the future workplace.
Businesses of the future will be software defined, effectively using R&D to continue driving forward and using AI to pre-empt demands. Tech is changing rapidly, so in this talk Dayne Turbitt, Senior Vice President of Dell highlighted the key emerging tech for businesses to monitor and adopt to stay relevant: collaborative AI/machine learning, 5G, internet of things, robotics, autonomous vehicles and blockchain.
However, whilst getting excited about all this fabulous new tech, the key thing to remember is this: all this technology is irrelevant without humans!
The recruitment pipeline needs to be expanded to include underrepresented groups. Bring people back in after career breaks and restructure training to upskill your talent. Adapt to GenZ — these new workers operate under entirely new paradigms: diversity is a given. They are more familiar with tech than any generation before them and are professional multi-taskers — capture their energy! Consider implementing reverse mentoring, having junior employees mentor seniors for mutual benefit.
The biggest takeaway
Among everything else, my biggest takeaway from this year’s conference was the sheer number of powerful role models I gained from it. Karren Brady CBE, Dr Rebecca Pope, Jo Hannaford... Badass women who are out there tackling big challenges both technically and socially and doing so in a way that they remain true to themselves. They don’t compromise who they are to make waves, they embrace what makes them unique and apply that. They look to make changes both within themselves and in the world around them. This was so key for me personally; a young lesbian woman in tech who is attempting to forge a career and determine my future in a way that will make a difference — not only to myself but also to others — it was so important for me to see and experience that. It’s given me a whole new perspective on how I see my personal development and the things that I could accomplish if I put my mind to it, and I think everybody needs role models like that.
Book club!
Just to wrap up, for any of you out there who are avid readers like me and love a good book (or five!) here are some fantastic book recommendations I picked up from some of this year’s speakers:
- Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong — and the New Research That’s Rewriting the Story — Angela Saini
- Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence — Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, Avi Goldfarb
- Programmed Inequality: How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its Edge in Computing — Marie Hicks
- Why I’m No Longer Talking To White People About Race — Reni Eddo-Lodge
- Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us — Daniel H. Pink
