Transcript: Women Who Code — Silicon Valley Full Interview with Joann Anderson
Developing a Mentorship and Supportive Network for Strategic Career Advancement
Joann Anderson is currently the Head of Engineering at Latacora, a retained security team for startups. Previously she was the VP of Engineering at Scoop Technologies where she oversaw all of engineering, and at Slack where she oversaw the Core Product teams: Internationalization, Backend Foundation, Calls, and QA. Joann honed her skills in streamlining engineering processes to accelerate release delivery at Adobe and Symantec. In her free time, she channels her inner child playing Magna-Tiles with her two kids, is learning Muay Thai, and hopes one day Marie Kondo will come into her life.
Dianne Jardinez of Women Who Code had the pleasure of interviewing Joann Anderson, Head of Engineering at Latacora, on “Developing a Mentorship and Supportive Network for Strategic Career Advancement” where we discuss knowing when a mentoring opportunity is available, where to find support groups, and how to maintain those professional relationships. The main content of the interview is below. On behalf of Women Who Code — Silicon Valley, we thank Joann Anderson and appreciate her time being a part of our #ShoutoutSaturday series.
Dianne: What indicators should you identify to know if someone might be open to stepping into a mentorship role with you?
Joann: I thought about these questions a lot when you sent them over. And the big thing is when you’re talking with people if they start to ask you about your career aspirations, and what you want to be doing, and kind of how you got there, and where you want to go, then that kind of shows that they’re really interested in who you are as a person, and they could actually want to help mentor you. They may ask you probing questions like, ‘what do you like to do about your job? What do you like? What don’t you like? How have you made job choices in the past?’ And generally, this is a good indication that they’re really interested in you and how they can help you grow in your career. They may also talk about their own journeys, like how they came to be in their current leadership role, or in their current career and how they made certain choices, or they may discuss other people’s journeys with you.
I had a conversation with somebody the other day. I was trying to show her different people that I had met throughout my career to talk about like, ‘look at this person, this is how they got to where they were, it’s not a traditional path, but that’s okay.’ We all kind of reach our destinations in different ways. A very obvious one is when they ask at the end of the conversation, they say, ‘feel free to reach out if you ever have any questions, or if you just want to talk about things.’
So, once you’ve found someone who might be open to mentoring you, how do you ask them to be your mentor?
I think this is one of those things where we tend to be more nervous about it than we need to. I think you can literally just ask people if they’re open to mentorship and depends on your relationship with this person. I’ve had people in my organization ask me to mentor them. And that ends up being a little bit more complex for me. So usually, I’ll say, ‘I’d love to mentor you. But I think in our relationship, let me see if I can find somebody who’s a better fit.’ Just because I find it’s nice to get an outside perspective than somebody necessarily in your org[anization]. Not that I would necessarily just say no, in that sense, it just kind of depends on what they’re looking for.
And I would actually ask the person what they were looking for — a formal mentor or something more informal? Are you just looking for someone that you can just reach out to? If you have specific questions, or do you actually want some formal mentorship with a clear goal in mind? Because I’ve been asked in both situations where it’s like, ‘is it okay if I just call you occasionally? Because I like team dynamics I want to discuss.’ Or ‘No, I want you to help me actually grow my career. I’m looking for this promotion can we meet regularly so that I can get there?’ And in both situations, I think it’s literally just you asking, ‘Are you open to being my mentor?’ Being clear with what your expectations are around mentorship. Like, how often do you want to meet up? Are you going to bring topics to me? Should I be bringing things to have? Have you thought about XYZ? Who’s going to kind of ask the questions, makes it easy for whoever’s you’re looking to be a mentor, to actually be a mentor. Be very clear about what you’re looking for.
Have you ever experienced anything where an organization has a mentorship program already structured?
I’ve started up mentorship programs myself. I’ve also been in places where, you know, when you join a company, you’re assigned a formal mentor or somebody to kind of teach you how the inner workings of that company work. But then I’ve also experienced where, you know, I think it was at Adobe, that they had like a, a women mentorship program, where, you know, it was more just kind of cross-pollinating across the company to let people really see what different parts of the company are like and getting a little bit more exposure potentially, and like, different areas that you wouldn’t be exposed to. So it would either be across product or cross-function. They sent out surveys on what you were looking for, and they tried to match you with a mentor that made sense.
It sounds like it’s kind of dependent on whether you yourself would like a mentor and you reaching out on your own vs. if you’re going to use organization resources to do something like that.
It kind of just depends on what you want. I think a lot of times when I’ve reached out to ask people to be mentors, it has to do with more of me wanting to do a career switch. And so doing it within the company I’m working at would largely depend on how big it is. If I’m at a small company, that’s all of 30 to 50 people, it’s kind of hard to find the right mentor if I’m trying to completely change what I’m doing. But at the same time, if you’re in a company that has 20,000 people, it’s not that hard to find someone who can help you. So it largely depends on what your goals are and what you’re kind of looking for.
What support groups have helped you towards your career growth and what about them made such an impact?
I haven’t had specific support groups. I have attended events like Women Who Code or Women in Tech. And that’s helpful largely because it makes you feel less alone. Right? You know that there are other people like you in this industry who may have my career path. I don’t know, in some ways, it’s very traditional and in some ways, it’s very untraditional and so just meeting other people who kind of have come into this in different ways is hugely helpful. One of the support groups I did belong to within a company was an ERG, an employee resource group, that was basically all the moms in that company. And it was a tech company. So it was a very small group of women. But it was nice. It was nice to complain about things like it’s hard to balance at the end of the day when you have to go home and you have the kids and how do you figure out when does work stop and when does the family begin? And how do you juggle a career being a mom? And that was hugely helpful to make me realize that there were people who have done this, there were women who were more advanced in their career, and I could see them and they’re like ‘it gets easier.’
My three kids are mostly grown now, and so it’s gotten a lot easier. There’s not the constant diaper changing, there are not the constant sleepless nights, so things are going to change. And right now you feel like your careers are completely off track. But it’ll get back to not worrying. So in some sense, it’s all about self-compassion, the human connection, knowing that, you aren’t the only one who’s been through whatever you’re currently going through.
Given the current online climate/environment, mentoring and maintaining support groups can become challenging — do you have some advice on how to navigate these relationships and how to best maintain them?
I’m probably not an expert in this. But the way I think about it is how do I feel when somebody reaches out to me, right? I don’t think I’ve ever been upset. If anything, I feel this little pride that somebody thought of me and they want to reach out, right? And so whenever I hear people kind of hesitant I say, you know, just reach out like, I don’t think anybody is like, ‘oh, I can’t believe you reached out to me, how dare you.’ We all just kind of feel this, ‘Oh, you actually thought of me, this is great.’ And you know, just ask how people are doing. It doesn’t have to be formal at all. It can literally just be like, ‘hey, just wanted to check in to see how you’re doing? Would you like to go for like a socially distant coffee or walk or something?’ And I found that that’s actually been really helpful in navigating relationships, especially in this kind of challenging time.
And I think it’s just one of those things where you can also do really simple things as people who maintain a calendar invite. And they literally just monthly will text a list of people. And granted yet, it feels a little bit weird, but it’s how they maintain the relationship. They also do things like they try to make it a little bit less friction, where they go for a walk once a month or every fourth Sunday or something. And that’s just, that’s just what they do. Everybody’s kind of in this weird headspace, I want to say with the pandemic, just because we’re all not quite sure what’s going to happen in the future. But it is actually really beneficial to do that regularly.
One of the women I know who’s also an engineering leader, she’s actually created a monthly leadership group and she does I think once during lunch, and then once in the evenings just to accommodate people who may have busy work schedules or other people who have kid responsibilities. She tells me, she gets a little bit discouraged sometimes, but she still keeps it up and there’s always at least three or four people who sign on to chat and see how things are going in different companies. It’s always interesting to hear the challenges just because I think every challenge, every company has its own environment, but the challenges are actually all fairly similar. And so it’s nice to just be able to bounce ideas off of people and be like, ‘oh, I’ve seen that, here’s what worked for me, or I’ve seen that, here’s what didn’t work for me. So good luck.’ And just recognizing that we’re all human, we value that connection. So don’t be afraid to reach out whether it’s a walking coffee, or just hopping on Zoom call really quick for a couple of minutes.
It just sounds like the tips that you’ve given is ‘just go for it and reach out.’ The worst thing that someone could do is not respond.
And don’t take it personally, right? We don’t know what’s going on in people’s lives. Just don’t take it personally. I have definitely had that happen to me. And I have reached out to the person afterward, or I’ve run into them, and they’re like, ‘Oh, my gosh, I’m so sorry, I just completely forgot.’ And most of the time, it’s not personal. We all get busy with various things and just forget. And also, if the person doesn’t have time, you can also just ask ‘do you know of any support groups or people who are meeting regularly that I could join? Because I’d love to figure out how to talk through some of these issues with others, too.’
Any last words of wisdom for those in engineering leadership positions? And any tips for success for women in this field?
I’m not a very good word of wisdom person but one of the things that have come up for me recently, amongst people that I’ve managed, is I just want to tell everyone that everyone suffers from imposter syndrome, you’re not alone, it doesn’t matter how far advanced that you get in this field. I know people who are CEOs, CTOs; they still wonder if they really should be where they are, or if they’re doing a good job. So not letting that kind of inner critic or feeling really stop you. A lot of times, we are literally our harshest critic. I think it disproportionately affects women and just trying to remember that, ‘No, we got where we got because we deserve it.’
Secondly, I just wanted to say, always support women around you. I know that this should be kind of a given but I think sometimes there’s a bit where it’s like, ‘oh, but I got where I got by climbing tooth and nail and you should struggle through the same.’ And, you know I really believe that we should just try to support everybody as much as we can. If you can give somebody a leg up, they’ll appreciate it, and hopefully, they’ll pay it forward too.
And that kind of goes with being a mentor and having support groups is supporting those who are in those groups or organizations and to lift everyone up.
The best thing is to be your own cheerleader, but sometimes you just need that team around you to be like, ‘No, you’re amazing. You’re doing great.’ It’s hard. And sometimes we all make mistakes. There are definitely times where I’m like, ‘I can’t believe I did that.’ And someone else was like, it’s not a big deal. It really isn’t, you’ll get past this too. Just reminders of how far you’ve come. Just having that really good network around you is so important.
Attendee Questions
How do you build trust/gain trust as a leader?
My personal way of doing this is showing my own vulnerability. I don’t know if this works for everybody. I know that as leaders, we’re often told we have to have a certain leadership facade. I don’t ascribe to that philosophy at all. Instead, I try to show vulnerability, like what are the things that I’m worried about? What are the things that I’m thinking about? To my reports, and hopefully, they also feel like they can show vulnerability and that’s how I start to build the trust. So sometimes if people are really silent in a one-on-one, I’ll say, ‘Look, I’m currently trying to work out an apprenticeship program. I am so sorry, I am trying to figure out how to give you good feedback to try to help you guide your career. But I’m at a loss, I’m trying to figure this out.’ And hopefully, they see that we don’t all know the answers. And so it’s okay to ask those questions. And to kind of build that safe space between us and to build the trust.
Should you be formal or informal when having your mentorship meetings?
It really just depends on the relationship with your mentor, right? If I remember, I talked to one person about being a mentor once and I could tell she was just a much more formal person, I was not gonna be able to come to her with ‘I just had a terrible week, and I can’t stand these people and what’s happening?’ Instead, most of the questions I asked her were around like, ‘Okay, how do you evaluate two different job opportunities.’ And one of them, at the time, I was trying to decide between a small startup and a fairly mature startup. And she was like, ‘Well, what is your fear about the small one?’ I said, ‘Well, I’m just afraid that they’re gonna go under, or there’s gonna be a failure or something.’ And she’s like, ‘yes, but you’ll learn so much in that.’ And so in that case I read the room a little bit and my relationship with her was just much more formal.
I’ve had other mentor-mentee relationships where I can literally curse and it’s totally fine. Like, they recognize I’m just venting. And it’s not a judgment on my character. I just need to vent and I need to know somebody else who’s been there. And to kind of be like, ‘okay, help me relate, help me figure out how did you get through this troubling time? And how did you get through these, like, challenging situations?’ So I think it really just depends on the people involved.
Is it good to have one mentor or many mentors and why?
I think quality over quantity. So I don’t think having 30 mentors is necessarily a good thing. I think it’s okay to have multiple though, especially if you’re at a place in your career, where you’re not quite sure where you want to go, it’s helpful to get different perspectives from different people. I think if you have too many, then you’re not really giving yourself enough time to build relationships with each of them. But don’t be afraid, it’s not like you have to have the same mentor throughout your entire career. You may outgrow a mentor, you may just decide like, ‘Hey, you know, our viewpoints don’t align.’ And so it’s just time to kind of let this relationship go. But it really just depends on where you are and what you’re trying to get out of the mentorship.
I think if I’m trying to decide between several different career choices, I will talk to probably three different people. Would I consider them formal mentors? Probably not. But it is helpful to get those different viewpoints. Usually, I tend to just stick with one or two mentors, just because, for me, it’s about quality. And it’s harder for me to talk, as the time right now is kind of scarce. So it’s hard for me to talk to so many people about careers at the same time. Plus I find that I get a little overwhelmed with all the different perspectives and so I kind of do like just having like one or two people.
What other aspects of different mentors would be good to have to work on your strengths?
Some of the things like you might ask a mentor, like for me, I tend to be a fairly emotional person. I’ve definitely asked people in the past of like, ‘Okay, well, how did you get past that, especially in these like, kind of tense meetings with other men in Management, and how do you keep a level head and how you make sure that you’re coming at it from a logical reasonable place.’ One person gave me the technique of when you find yourself kind of getting that elevated emotional place, take a deep breath, and when you exhale, literally visualize pushing people away from you. And give yourself a little space to really think about what is it that you’re going to say?
One of the things that I’ve also learned from my mentors is when I was a new manager, I used to think I need to state my opinion on everything. I have to make sure that people hear me, or I had to get involved with every single problem that arose. But as I’ve kind of matured, in my management, I’ve realized, not everything needs my involvement. Some things will have the same outcome, whether or not I get involved. And it’s actually important to kind of recognize which situation do you actually need to get involved in? And which one, can you just let play out? And so I think it will ultimately kind of depend on where you are and what you’re trying to deal with.
What’s the difference between having mentors versus advisors?
I always think of advisors more in an academic sense of like, usually, they’re telling you, ‘oh, you should apply at this company.’ And that mentors, I think, at least from my perspective, they tend to ask you more questions to get to know you as a person and hopefully are tailoring their guidance based on you. For me, I think advisors are always kind of trying to push you more than trying to see where you’re at. And what I mean by that is, there have been points in my career, especially when I’ve had kids where I’m like, ‘I’m not looking for career advancement. I’m happy where I am. I just need to improve on the skills that I currently have.’
In general, when I think of somebody as an advisor, it’s because I’m ready to make a large change. I’m not necessarily asking them for ‘how do I improve myself?’ It’s just more like, ‘Okay. Should I be looking at startups now? Or should I be looking at more mature companies?’ That’s when I’ll tend to ask an advisor for more guidance. And as somebody who may or may not know me intimately, they don’t know my insecurities but they will look at my background, and they’ll say, ‘Oh, well, you may want to round out your experience with more enterprise experience or something like that, where it’s less of a personal touch.
How do you design your social life so that you come across more people who can guide you, essentially, how do you increase serendipity?
I’m probably not the right person to ask because I often feel like the belonging part is a little bit rough for me. I mean, I’ve been in tech for a long time now I think like 17 ish years, at least, if not longer. And so it was hard in the beginning because it was primarily male-dominated. I didn’t necessarily feel like I had that support network. It’s definitely changed over time, I found a lot of people. But I think you can meet people at meetups and try to find people who have some of the same interests as you may have outside of work.
I also feel like I’ve kind of tripped upon people. Like I met a woman who was the wife of a co-worker of mine. I didn’t really talk to her for years until we both happen to have our [pregnancy] due dates one day apart. And now I talk to her all the time, and it’s just really random as to think, ‘oh, how can she help me? Right?’ She works in privacy at Google and the other day I had a different friend reach out saying he had somebody who had just joined a startup, and they were trying to understand how Google does something. And I was like, ‘Well, I can try to put these two people together.’ And so sometimes it’s just a random chance.
I think trying to force your social network so you have more serendipity and create friction that’s not natural. And so really I think you should instead look at the social networks that you have and kind of be open-minded. Silicon Valley is actually a pretty small place, I bet somebody may know, and it never hurts you to reach out and be like, ‘hey, do you happen to know anyone at x company? Or do you happen to know x?’ This happened to me the other day, a woman was looking for a new role. And she gave me three companies that she was looking at. I was like I know people in two of them, but I don’t know the third. But I said let me just look on LinkedIn if I know anyone, and I looked and sure enough, there was an engineer, who I never really worked with that closely, but I happen to see in the coffee room occasionally, at a previous company, and he was working at the company that she was looking at, and I was like, ‘Well, okay, I haven’t talked to him forever. But let me just reach out on LinkedIn’, because like, what’s the harm, right? Seriously, what’s the harm? And sure enough, he responds. He’s like he’d be happy to help happy to talk to her about the company. And I was like, great. And she recently reached back out to me, she said, that connection was amazing, and she actually decided to take that job. And originally it was like the last place. So you just be surprised as to the serendipity nature of it doesn’t just come randomly, like you don’t have to force it with your social network like these two things can be separate.
Did you also have mentors in your career? And what did you learn from them?
So I’ve probably had two or three, like what we would call formal mentors, I definitely have more people who now are kind of just peers that I reach out to when I need to just bounce ideas off of somebody. One of my mentors was my first boss when I was an intern, and he’s a women’s rugby coach, and I’ve lost touch with him through the years, but one of the things that I remember from him is how important it is to make individuals feel like they’re part of the team. Like, at the end of the day, I’ve heard a lot of people where it’s like, ‘these are your co-workers, they’re not family.’ And I understand that, but we spend so much time interacting with each other, it’s actually important to me to make people feel like ‘no, I actually do care about you more than just a company’, there is a bit of like, ‘yeah, I need to get the company work done.’ But that’s one of the things I learned from him on how to balance the ‘it’s okay to be friends with your reports.’ Even if it’s a manager report relationship, as long as there’s a certain mutual respect, and you kind of know what the right boundaries are. But we are all human, we all value that connection. And that’s one of the things I learned from that mentor.
Another mentor I learned from was not to be afraid of taking risks, especially with your career. One of the things that he taught me to do is that every job that you take, whether or not initially you feel like it’s the right job or the wrong job. When you leave that job, you can always find something that you weren’t right. Either you learn to ‘Oh, you definitely don’t want to be at a small company anymore, or you’re looking for more diversity in your next role, or you want to learn more technical things.’ He made me see how different roles I had taken had actually taught me more than what I had thought. He was like, ‘Look, Joann, you’ve worked in the consumer business, you’ve worked in Developer Relations now, you’re working in an enterprise, this basically sets you up for future work in any industry that you want within tech. Don’t be afraid of that.’ So those are the two that I remember the most.
In terms of people that I’ve just bounced ideas off of. I’ve had people actually helped me negotiate salary as well. And I think that’s hugely important because having other people in the industry who have access to how much other companies are paying is really important for the equality of pay as a woman right? And getting more familiar with people my experience, can look to be paid about this much money and so I think those are kind of like three pretty tactical things that I’ve learned from mentors throughout my career.
I think you sharing your perspective on salary negotiation and comparing it with someone from the organization and with similar experience is good to know.
I’ve definitely coached people sometimes to not take the highest salary. Because it all just depends on what you’re looking for, like, you can definitely get paid a very high salary. But when it comes down to if it’s an organization where you’re working nights and weekends, is that really what you want? And sometimes it is because you’re looking to maximize income. And sometimes it’s like, no, I actually do want to do that right now, I want to explore other things too.
What if the mentor I have now doesn’t seem to be a good fit anymore? What’s the professional way to tell them?
I think thanking them for their time and saying thanks for being my mentor, for however long they’ve been your mentor, and then just saying, I’m finding that I want to grow in these different areas you don’t really have to say that you’re looking for someone else, but just that ‘thank you for spending the time with me and I don’t want to waste your time anymore. I don’t think we need to have one-on-ones’. And just trying to leave it at that. I wouldn’t go too much into why necessarily. If they ask you, then you can kind of say, ‘Oh, well, you know, I’m still trying to figure out what I want to do career-wise, or where I want to grow. I think until I do that, it’s not a good use of our time to continue meeting.’ And that can kind of take the sting off. Hopefully, that is semi-true. But if you’re finding that is just not a good dynamic. I don’t think it really does anybody any good for you to continue just meeting with them anyways.
In terms of finding a good dynamic, just have coffee with people, keep it light, You don’t have to go with a formal mentor relationship just yet. I’ve had plenty of coffee with people, I mean, pre-pandemic, but it was just literally just coffee and they never asked me to meet again. And I was like, okay, ‘I thought it was a pretty good chat.’ It’s a little bit like dating, you know. But I’ve also had ones where I’ve had coffee, and I don’t drink coffee. So any beverage, like boba tea, and somebody will be like, you know, this was really fun. Would you mind if I reach out to you next month? And I’m like, ‘No, I like talking, let’s just meet next month.’ And keep it light until you’re sure this is something I want to do regularly. I don’t think there’s any harm in keeping it informal. I think, you know if the only reason why that be more formal with a mentor-mentee relationship is if you’re not sure this person has time. And you really know that they’re who you want to learn from, and you know they’re exactly in the role that you want to have in a year. So you really need their time. Then I would say yes, try to keep it formal, and make sure that you come with clear expectations, but outside of that, I think just keep it light.
Anytime you think you might have a potential mentor, ask the person ‘Hey, can we have coffee, because I have this situation that I’d love to talk through with you.’ And be clear about what it is that you’re trying to talk to them about and see if they can actually talk, and if you actually feel good after that discussion, where you feel like ‘oh, they’ve opened your mind, or do you feel like this really wasn’t a good use of my time’, in which case you kind of just be like, ‘Oh, thanks. Yeah, it was really helpful.’ And then, you know, just kind of move on from that.
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