Women in Tech, Part III: Breaking through to a way forward
Authors: Marguerite Thévenin-Viallet & Andrea Zhu
If you are joining us for the first time, this is our third installment in a three-part series on Women in Technology (WiT). Be sure to check out:
- Women in Tech, Part I: Building and sustaining diverse teams
- Women in Tech, Part II: One year into COVID
The series launched on International Women’s Day and spans the course of Women’s Herstory Month. It is conceived and written as a virtual, asynchronous conversation around women in tech: members of the SSENSE tech community came together in a Slack channel used as a makeshift salon to share their voices, experiences, and advice.
Turns out a conversation about women in tech is a conversation about so much more. The discussion touched on teams, career progression, learning, recruitment, parenthood, and allyship. We are publishing these candid exchanges verbatim to the SSENSE-TECH in hopes of extending the dialogue to include our community at large.
For the final installment, we shine the spotlight on biases, careers, and a word from our SSENSE Tech leadership encapsulating the support we all need and deserve. Product Managers, Marguerite & Andrea, lead conversations with some of their colleagues across the business and engineering departments.
1/ BIASES
Biases are deeply embedded regardless of gender. Are there examples where you realized you’ve had to adjust your perception?
Sara, Senior Director of Product:
The first step is to be aware that biases exist. The question then becomes, are you able to discern biases when they happen and if so, then what will you do about them? I have been on the receiving end of these types of biases — whether unconscious or not — and have also witnessed biased comments or actions towards others. Unfortunately, it is only as I gained experience — and perhaps confidence — that I felt more and more comfortable either calling these out directly or reaching out directly to others to help support.
The biases I’ve lived and seen, have come from both men and women. While I’ve had women and men as managers, unfortunately, it has been most often with the woman managers that I’ve experienced these biases. I have categorized these as either they’ve felt threatened, or uncomfortable managing strong women, or felt more comfortable working with men. For whatever reason, I can’t understand why these managers unconsciously (I hope) make it so hard for fellow women to help others succeed or feel supported.
Now, as a woman occupying a senior managerial role, aware of these biases, I try to do even more for everyone I manage or work with. I not only speak up and out when these events occur, but continuously work to provide a safe space and a platform for all to have their voices heard. I try to encourage the ones who don’t speak up as much to do so, to feel supported, to encourage those who speak up, to do it more, and to ensure all are contributing to this safe and positive environment.
Nadja, Senior Product Manager
Sara, that is a super interesting perspective that I second. The experiences I have regarding this fall in the same categorization. I found it very interesting to observe “conscious” vs. “unconscious” biases in this regard, with (interestingly) other female leaders living these biases rather consciously: either consciously choosing to be a door opener and trailblazer for others to come after, or to consciously blocking other women to rise next to them as they feel threatened, or want to keep their “special” position that they had worked so hard for, for themselves. With men, most of the behaviours I have experienced were based on the fact that they had only seen women in “supporting” or “secretary” positions. That’s how they’ve been unconsciously trained over decades. So, encountering someone who doesn’t fit that category, and has topical or even technical knowledge and know-how, took a bit of getting used to for them. I wholeheartedly appreciated and supported them once they realized I could keep up.
I believe it’s a cultural phenomenon tightly linked to the “age”, generation representation, and upbringing of those within the company. If you grew up going to college with other women studying engineering or similar subjects, I don’t think those biases exist as much, which is why most start-ups I have seen have fewer or perhaps different types of issues.
Pam, you wrote an SSENSE-TECH article and were intentional about having a personable tone vs. corporate-speak, and embracing that you’re a quirky female. Were you always this deliberate about your voice? What has been your experience in choosing to show up in this way, and can you tell us more about your choice to do so?
Pam, Group Product Manager:
I’ve always strived to demystify working in “tech as a non-techie”, given systemic talent pipeline issues starting in primary education. Rather than add yet another barrier, I try to be my genuine self and make it clear that my employer (thankfully) fosters an environment that empowers me to do so. By purposely adding the “sourdough selfie” joke at the end, I intended to overtly call out what may not typically get mentioned in a tech blog.
I try not to use labels or generalizations knowing different interests run the gamut, but hopefully, by simply “being” and sharing my experience, I’m encouraging fellow visible minorities to see themselves reflected without being pandered in an inauthentic or tokenized way.
2/ CAREER CHOICES
Quincy, one of the behaviours women tend to fall into that holds them back, is putting your job before your career. As someone who has worked across several squads and is now completing a secondment outside of tech, what is your perspective on career-building? How did you decide to make the pivots you did?
Quincy, Senior Manager Online Personal Styling & Product Manager
There are a few things that I turned to which helped me through these decisions and to ultimately make the jump:
1. Have a North Star: Find a direction you want to head towards. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a specific job or title, but it’s important to know where you’re aiming and where you’re not. When I took my secondment, I was very nervous about leaving tech and product — even if it’s just temporary. Ludovic, my manager at the time, said “In all of our career development conversations, I’ve never actually heard you say you want to be a CPO, it’s always a CEO. Since that’s the case, this definitely won’t hurt you, I think it’s an amazing opportunity”. I’m paraphrasing here, but you get my point… It also helped to have a supportive manager who wasn’t concerned about my current job, but my career.
2. Always prioritize learning. I would say this is my main priority at this point in my career. Honestly, I don’t think this will always be my main priority, but because I’m still on the earlier side of my career, and I don’t have kids log out or similar responsibilities to manage, it’s the main focus right now. You need to ask yourself “Is this going to seriously accelerate my learning?” If the answer is yes, then the opportunity should be seriously considered.
3. Be a little selfish in regards to job/team guilt. It can be hard and scary to leave a team, and sometimes I felt guilty, but at times, I believe you have to push yourself to be selfish. Jobs and capitalism are built to take and take and take from you. So take it for yourself! When I think about moving on from a team or job and feeling any guilt, I remind myself everyone is replaceable! Will your replacement do the job the same? No. But the company and team will go on with someone new.
Pavani & Alice, could you tell us about your story? What brought you to the world of Data Engineering? What is your favorite part of your job? What would be your advice for young women who would want to become data engineers?
Pavani, Senior Data Infrastructure Developer:
I started my journey as a software developer because I loved math and solving problems in general. Once I started working in the field, I started gaining my interest in data-driven applications. This led me to pursue a career in data, but I was conscious of never wanting to lose my software engineering perspective. Thus, I wanted to shift my career towards data engineering and I never looked back.
My advice:
- Streamlining raw forms of data into something useful or consumable.
- Keeping your comp sci basics strong.
- Understanding code modularity; testability is equally important as understanding big data concepts and parallel computing.
Alice, Data Infrastructure Developer Level 3:
I was a computer science student at McGill University, where artificial intelligence and machine learning have become a popular trend. However, for us to build a strong model, the first thing to do is always cleaning and correctly processing the data. And identifying how to transform the data in a reliable, scalable, and efficient way is what I’m passionate about.
Turning data into knowledge.
Interest is the key. If you are interested in the data engineering field, you could always find great blogs, videos, and resources online. Read about the common problems data engineers are trying to solve, what the state-of-the-art technologies are, and also reflect on your thoughts about how these two are connected.
What was it like pursuing interests in male-dominated fields? Did you need to adapt in any way?
Pavani, Senior Data Infrastructure Developer:
TBH it is still a struggle for me even now, I have 1,000 filters going on my mind when I have to utter a word in a meeting or put forward my technical opinion on anything. But, I once received a piece of amazing advice from my manager:
“No one knows what you want until you tell them. Don’t fear to say what’s on your mind, it might be uneasy at first, but you will at least have your voice heard by the right people.”
So my advice would be to speak out, everyone is still figuring it out around you too. Also, there might be some people around to help you.
3/ A NOTE FROM OUR EXECUTIVE TEAM
As an executive member of our SSENSE team, why is celebrating Women in Technology important to you?
Katya, Chief People Officer:
Ensuring we strive for gender parity in our Technology department is essential. It is scientifically proven that such representation brings greater diversity of thought, better performance, creativity, and innovation. I am proud to say that at SSENSE we are committed to moving the needle on gender representation in technology, and are taking concrete actions to deliver on this. Stay tuned…
Phil, Chief Technology Officer:
This question reminded me of how many of us who have studied computer science and engineering know the story of Charles Babbage and his work on the first general-purpose computer in the 1800s, but how it was really Ada Lovelace’s contributions in mathematics to create the first computer program that enabled Babbage and inspired others like Alan Turing.
Celebrating Women in Technology not only emphasizes our commitment to having a more welcoming and inclusive technology organization but when tackling very sophisticated and difficult engineering problems, we have proven that the best team to solve them is a team that is passionate and diverse.
As CTO, it’s my responsibility to shine a spotlight and champion our pioneers and the major contributions of the women in our technology team. We are proud of our accomplishments to date, but we can always do more, so that our WiT leaders can inspire the next generation of leaders. This is why we have started from the beginning of a candidate or colleague’s journey with SSENSE, and we are continuously looking at improving from there. For example, we’ve recently revamped our recruiting and hiring processes to not only meet our internal benchmarks, but to also make sure that those participating in the interview process represent our diverse and inclusive culture. Candidates can see themselves from the day they first consider joining. And it doesn’t stop there… So, while we celebrate women and femme-identify individuals this month, let’s not forget that this is an ongoing continuous improvement opportunity for all of us — all year long, and every year. We are on a mission. A mission to create a world-class platform, with a world-class team, and we cannot get there together without inspirational women.
CONCLUSION
While Slack threads and Medium articles eventually come to an end, the journey towards equity, diversity, and inclusion should not. Beyond showcasing our earnestness and garnering any traffic to the three-part WiT series, our hope with these articles is for the exchanges to live on. To grow in righteousness is to embrace the messiness, the vulnerability and the conviction required by its authentic pursuit. One vital element to the SSENSE purpose is to amplify voices — we’d encourage our community and audience to please keep talking and listening to one another.
We would like to thank the support of Chief Technology Officer Phil, Chief People Officer Katya, Senior Director of Product Sara, Group Product Managers Pam, Senior Product Manager Nadja, Senior Data Infrastructure Developer Pavani, Data Infrastructure Developer Level 3 Alice, and Senior Manager Online Personal Styling & Product Manager Quincy.
Read more about our Women in Tech here:
Concept & Afterword by Andrea Zhu,
Editorial reviews by Deanna Chow, Liela Touré, and Paolo Pazzia.
