Has anything really changed for women in tech over the past 20 years? It’s definitely a question worth asking if you’re a woman, and hopefully one you’re at least mildly interested in if you’re a man.
We did not initially ask Anne to be on the show so she could cover that topic—we asked her on because she’s a brilliant engineer from the Cisco cloud team and we wanted to know what she was working on. But when you’re a woman in the tech world, sometimes people just want to know. What was it like when you were young and you wanted to get into the field? Did you always love it? Did your parents resist your plan? What was it like in college? Did the guys dismiss you? Do they dismiss you today? What’s it like when you walk into engineering meetings? Do you care that you’re probably getting paid less? And how do you feel about that Google letter?
Luckily for us, Anne is capable of a quick pivot. She graciously tabled whatever engineering insights she had planned to share, and instead spent the half-hour sharing her first-hand experiences, opinions, and insights as a woman in tech. She covered all the things I mentioned above, and also delved into:
- The dangers of “Us vs. Them” tribalism when addressing gender inequality
- How she reacts to the “microindignities” women experience so regularly in the workplace
- Her realization that not all the “dinosaurs” are old (or going extinct)
- The best steps women can take to earn respect from their male colleagues
See the video podcast on our YouTube page, or listen to the audio version on iTunes. And if you like what you hear, we invite you to subscribe to our channel so you don’t miss any of the other exciting podcasts we have scheduled over the next several months.
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