Am I a Woman in Tech?
After four years of underemployment, one developer starts to wonder: is the tech world serious about retaining the women it already has?
I identify as a software developer. It’s the career I chose and went to school for. The one for which I’ve stayed up late nights and surrendered weekends; the one to which I’ve paid my dues as a developer, teacher, author, and speaker. But lately I’ve started to wonder if I’m not fooling myself.
Four years ago, my husband and I followed his graduate advisor abroad, both for my husband’s career, and for the adventure of it. The startup I worked for at the time wasn’t a good fit for remote work, so I quit. I figured I’d just find new work after getting settled here, and pick up where I’d left off. At the time, we willingly believed the cheery refrain that I’m a digital worker, and I can work from anywhere.
After all, I was pretty accomplished at that point. I was over a decade into my career. I had earned a Certificate of Applied Sciences in Software Engineering from the Harvard Extension School (3.9 GPA). I had become a multimedia developer at a large interactive agency (making award-winning microsites for clients like Vogue and Target), then joined a startup as the first hire on their apps team (where I helped design the SDK and tools for third party developers, mentored junior developers and supported evangelism efforts). I had gone on to teach several programming courses at RISD’s continuing education department, and co-wrote a book.
I had even had a kid, gone back to work full-time at three months postpartum, and continued working for the next two years — right up until our move.
It felt like my career was in a good place.
Little did I know.
After six months of handling German administrivia relating to setting up the household and our car, finding a daycare spot for our child, and slowly transitioning said child to being left with caregivers with whom he couldn’t communicate (a gradual process, which to this day I worry that I hurried), I was finally free to work. Yay!
There was just one problem. There was no work to be found.
Now, I readily admit that I have a special set of obstacles. We live in a small, rural university town. My work permission here is limited. My German is better than average for a foreigner but still non-native. I haven’t found a single German company that offers remote work. There’s a big time difference between me and clients in the States.
Perhaps most critically, until that point I had been an Actionscript developer, and Flash work was drying up.
These obstacles, big as they were, didn’t keep me from seeking out what work I could find. I took a part-time local gig as a technical writer for six months, but left it because I missed writing code. I tried working remotely for a US-based company, but a full-time role was a poor fit at that point and I moved on again. Finally I set up a freelance web development practice, found some clients, and hustled to make projects happen. The work was slow, so I made a website for a non-profit pro bono to fill the gap. On the side I learned iOS development and started a couple of passion projects. However, my earnings two years later still did not remotely approach a livable income.
Let me underline that fact, because it’s important, if not central. I’ve spent the last four years struggling with the cost of living. Unable to save for retirement. Stretching my husband’s graduate stipend as far as we can, while dwindling our formerly healthy savings into the red.
I use a four-year-old laptop that gets remarks for its heft, and is currently giving me a warning about the battery needing to be serviced. I use a cracked iPhone 4 that I can’t afford to have on a data plan. My iPad 3 restarts randomly and often. All of my charging cables are patched with Sugru. I am telling you about the disrepair of my devices, because these are the basic tools I need to be a mobile developer. I fear the day that these break, because I can’t afford to replace them. I’m only barely hanging on to my Apple Developer Program membership. Forget the idea of buying an O’Reilly book here or taking an online course there.
We hadn’t anticipated the move to be this rough for my career. If we had known how little work I would find, how difficult scraping together a freelance practice from scratch would be, how contorting my sleep schedule to accommodate client meetings after my child’s bedtime would burn me out, or how isolated and disconnected I would come to feel, I am positive we would have chosen differently. I would have had the vocabulary to talk about two-body problems and refused to become a trailing spouse.
Now, I’m one to make lemonade when handed lemons, and I’m proud of what I’ve done to keep my tech skills in practice. I’ve coded my own mobile passion projects (in AIR, then Objective-C, then Swift), won a hackathon (love you, Berlin Geekettes!) dropped knowledge as a speaker at conferences in a dozen countries (from O’Reilly Fluent in SF to Mobile Central Europe in Warsaw), and created and host a podcast about retaining mothers in tech. I’ve learned so much about client relations and running my own business. I’ve made many amazing friends and professional contacts as I’ve searched for inspiration and strategies wherever I can find my tribe.
But people, having an income is important. I literally don’t have the means to survive, let alone thrive. And that weighs on me in practical and emotional ways that I would not wish on anyone.
Which brings me to the point I want to make here. As much as the tech world purports to want to retain women, I can’t really say that I’ve been retained. And it’s not for a lack of trying. Rewind to 2001, when I put in the three years of going to graduate school while working full-time to earn my degree in software engineering. Fast forward to 2008 and see how I went back to work full-time when my baby was three months old. I missed so much of his first two years because I was working long hours and weekends for a startup.
Throughout my career I’ve raised my hand for extra responsibilities like teaching, writing, and speaking, on top of my day job. I’ve put in my dues. And what do I have to show for it?
Four years of underemployment, of struggling to make ends meet.
Until now, I haven’t written or said much about the challenges of being at this point in my career, because I’m worried about sabotaging my job search. But by staying silent, the dissonance between the positive outlook I try to maintain and project, and my lived experiences of the past four years, has been weighing more heavily on me. And the impression that friends have of my glamorous career, when I report that I’m speaking at another conference in another country, feels increasingly inauthentic. Pretending everything is great doesn’t help me or the industry. So I’m starting to carefully look for ways to be honest about this. It’s hard.
The one thing I can say with certainty is this: if I am still a woman in tech, it is only because I keep showing up. If I stopped showing up, the tech industry would barely notice. My friends would, but the industry as a whole? It is so busy concentrating its diversity efforts on attracting young girls that it’s forgetting to retain the women who are already here.
Companies need to make it possible for employees to return from extended caregiving leaves into new roles. This is different from having great parental leave. It means hiring people who haven’t worked for you before, and trusting and supporting them to ramp back up at your company. Possibly part-time or remotely. It means hiring on track record and potential, rather than recent experience or freshness out of a CS program or expensive bootcamp.
This year is a critical one for me. It is the one where I will either find work again, or admit to having been bested by an industry that has plenty of existing workers and new grads to sustain itself without this mid-career woman trying to fight her way back in. I will either reclaim my identity as a professional developer, or disappear into the void of tech’s lost women.
This month we’re moving to San Francisco for my husband’s job. I keep telling myself that once I’m back in the hotbed of the industry, finding a job will shift from being nearly impossible, to achievable. When I dare to dream, I dream of a returnship that enables me to ramp back up, and a cohort of smart, caring people with whom I get to make impactful things every day.
I just hope I’m not deceiving myself again.
For more of my work around diversity in tech, visit the Motherboard podcast, the Ally as a Verb email newsletter, and Equalitism.
