Advice for young women in the industry
I’m currently an undergrad interning at Amazon as an L4 SDE. I noticed that there are very few women in the management, and I’m gonna go ahead and assume it’s the general trend in the industry? I know I’m very new to the industry still, but I’d like to start off with a goal to reach the decision making level eventually. Any advice for me? Both long term and short term advice can help! TC too low to share YOE 2
It’s very team dependent. 2 teams I worked on had 50/50 gender split, and many female executives. Don’t assume your experience as the industry standard.
Dont get into all the women empowerment talk and start thinking about how women are perceived a certain way. I am not saying that all of that is false, i just choose to not engage in it; Coz assuming equality increases my confidence. And listening to all these women empowerment talks will make u see every feedback in the light of discrimination and u wont be able to improve.
Find a female mentor in a decision making role that you are aspiring to. Don’t have kids or if you do, find a husband less ambitious than you.
I agree with the mentor part. But why not have kids or find a more ambitious husband?
Google the motherhood penalty to understand
it really doesn't have to do with Amazon proactively discouraging women, the complete opposite actually. But often women move to PM roles instead of SDE and it's usually because they want more people interaction. But if you're dedicated and know what you want as a woman, Amazon will not get in your way, you will actually find a lot of encouragement along the way
Not necessarily, I have a female friend who was a rock star DS. She's building some legit optimization models, some that are even being adopted network-wide. But she doesn't look like your typical engineer (she considers herself a "girly-girl") and a lot of times her models are discounted and people who dont model themselves (aka Sr. Leadership) assume "it must not have been a very hard model to make". and she's so sick of seeing her male counterparts getting praise and sometimes even promotions for "complex and amazing" Excel models haha. And on top of that her manager will sometimes ask the guys if they want to go golfing, or grab a beer after work one on one. she's never been invited for any of these things, and even if she was she couldn't exactly go being a young, attractive, single female without raising some eyebrows. Anyways, she started thinking about a PM role even though she doesn't like interacting with people and she loves building models but she doesn't see a path to any sort of leadership role or even general career advancements in a tech role (with out having to dress like a dude and work twice as hard as all her male peers)
If her peers are actually promoted for work for lesser worth than hers, she should sue.
Join Facebook. All the 3 main products: messenger, Facebook and WhatsApp are lead by women.
For every job that you take up, go where you find a good boss - not just nice, but influential and confident boss, of any gender, who could open doors for you. You must go with your gut feeling about people. Don't chase the gender angle alone - you are what you are and it's not because of your gender. Read about and understand leadership and corporate politics. Don't pick nasty, aggressive people as mentors - please!
This advice applies irrespective of gender
Take the lead even when it’s not part of your role. Make sure you’re the expert first :) Help others in many ways and it doesn’t have to be an official mentorship. The lack of women in management is exacerbated by the lack of women in tech in the first place. If you mean the glass ceiling, then keep trying to push through it. If they won’t budge even when you put your 200%, then fuck it and leave. My 2c.
Copy successful men. Not because they are men but because they are successful and there are more of them.
Only if men had the same journey to success as women
Search for this 15 minutes Ted talk in Spotify, wish I knew this when I started working 8 years ago ... "How to find the person who can help you get ahead at work | Carla Harris"
Than you for sharing..... that’s a very interesting point “the way to grow your power is to give it away”. I’ll be looking out for that :)
Work hard and whine less!
But theres a difference between whining and being outspoken! Just make sure youre outspoken and speak your mind in a constructive and postive manner
Make sure you're open to listen to /why/ they do things a certain way.