Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash
You are techY, Mom!
I took a break from blogging. I had a baby so there’s that. I guess from an outsider’s perspective that would be a good reason to not blog for a while, but if I’m being honest that’s not really why I stopped. I stopped for about four months which was just about enough time for me to finish off the last few weeks of my pregnancy, have a baby and try to find some new normalcy with an infant added to our family. The real reason I paused was because my marketing lead made a comment about how I have over 80 blogs in a way that made it sound like it was a lot.
I had been so head down producing content that I thought would be valuable to you, I hadn’t stopped to say – is this working? More importantly, what is working the best, meaning what is helping YOU (the reader) the most. Because more is NEVER the answer. I’m a workhorse. I’m willing to do an unbelievable amount of work in the name of service. And yet, MORE is not going to help you. So I took a break to really think about what I wanted my blogs to contain. What information was the most helpful to you. I took a break to make sure that what you are getting out of this is so valuable, you just want to pass it along to your friend, your neighbor, your sister.
I stand for more moms in tech.
Most people when they hear that agree. I don’t have a big mountain to climb like other entrepreneurs to convince the world that we need more moms, who happen to be women, in the tech workforce. The stat about women holding only 20-25% of the positions in tech is fairly wide-spread if not generally agreed up in our society. It’s a small amount. Too small and most people can look at that stat and agree.
No, the big mountain I have to climb is to help YOU understand that it is possible for YOU! Even just writing that down sounds a little like a cheer – “You can do it too!” But seriously, that’s not what it is. The biggest struggle I have with my students and coachees is that they believe – sort of. They believe it but I have to keep proving it to them again and again. They believe it’s true for some other women, but they are those special women. You know, the ones who were in the advanced math classes.
They think they could be in tech, but only if it’s not in coding. That’s why UX is so great for moms. They think, design software? I’m not sure I can do that. Be an empathetic voice of the user on a team building software, now that I can do. It’s really just semantics but it matters. It matters because when I say “you are techy” what I mean is that you really and truly can decide that you are a techy person. It will require work to make that a reality, but why not just decide and then get to work.
You know how you can feel really, really techy? By doing technical work every single day. Do that for 30 days and let me know how technical you feel!
You won’t know everything. No one does. We can easily forget that when we get started. No one has the secret key to knowing everything. “Best practices” are just those. Best practices. Marissa Meyer said she learned at Google that “yellow” was the answer for engagement for the UI she was researching. So then people started deciding “yellow” was the way to design elements. “Yellow” is the best practice. That is not the right take away there; that Marissa is an expert and everyone just put yellow on their websites, they would have a company like Google. The takeaway is that Marissa Meyer is a dogged researcher who put in the time doing rigorous study of her userset and made a great design decision because of it. She did the work.
You can do the work too.
Here’s what it will take. Not doing laundry! Say what? Yeah, that’s right you’ll have to do your tech learning FIRST and then do the laundry. Or outsource the job. You get the point. It’s important to make doing the work a super high priority. Not more important than the livelihood of your children. Not more important than your sleep or your sanity. But more important than laundry. And dishes and school forms and even responding to email. But you can set aside time to do those things. It just has to be AFTER your learning. Your learning is SO SO important. You have to invest in you – time and money. You are worth it!
When I say learning. I don’t mean watching videos. I mean producing work. That is the only way you will begin to develop your skills. Produce work. For UX that work is interviews and wireframes. For Development that work is code. For QA that work is writing and executing test cases. Show up. Do the work. You are techY. That’s how it works.
Showing up and doing the work is hard. I know that. We know that it takes learning, doing, getting feedback and having support. That’s how we designed our membership so that you would have what you need to get hired in tech. It sucks doing it alone. You don’t feel like you’re making any progress. Every time you get a snag, you feel like you will never actually get hired. But snags are part of tech. If you are constantly being reminded of that, that you are doing it right even when it’s hard, you will keep going. When you keep going, you get there. You get hired. It’s a beautiful thing. It usually takes longer than you think. It can take a year or more. It can also take less. It can take 3 months or 1 meet up or 2 interviews. It can take a lot of different amounts of time. Does that really matter? Once you are hired in your tech job, do you think you are ever going to think about how long it took? Probably not much. You’ll be busy…doing your new work…the one that provides you with a paycheck!
And work in tech is great work for moms. Many opportunities are remote (that was true before Covid and it’ll be even truer post-Covid) which enables you the flexibility to do things like pick your kids up from school or add an hour to your day by not commuting. It means you can make a healthy lunch for yourself or take a walk at lunchtime. How cool is that? It also means you will make a great income for your family. I mean a truly great income. A six figure income. That’s a lot of money! How much pressure would that relieve if you brought in 100 thousand dollars to your family’s income! You could pay for all four years of your child’s college in one year!
Some won’t make six figures to start. I know that. What I also know is that if you stay in tech, even for just a few years, and you continue to grow your skills, six figures is very, very likely. Why not put yourself in a position where you are “likely” to make a six figure income. I know you can make six figures in other careers. It’s just that your odds go up so much in tech.
But the reason tech is so great for moms is actually beyond these two reasons of flexibility and income. You want to make a difference in this world, but you feel like you have to choose between doing that and supporting your family. With tech, you don’t. You really and truly don’t have to choose. The reason tech is so great for moms is that the work matters; it’s meaningful work. When you design and develop software, you are shaping what the future interactions of generations after you, like your children, will use. That’s an important thing in our world. Tech is neutral. It can be damaging or beneficial. As a mom, you know how important it is that the future of our world is better, not worse than we left it. If we as moms don’t jump in and impact the tech world, our voices will not be heard and the technology that results will not be what we want in our world. This work matters. It’s important work. As a mom, I think you get that.
Even if you are onboard with everything I just said, I can hear that voice in your head saying, but that may not be possible for me. Or I could do it, but it’s just too much work. I don’t have that type of time. It is possible. It’s not too much. You can make the time. You literally just have to believe it’s possible for someone like you. And it is. It’s completely and totally possible for someone like you. How do I know? Because I have seen firsthand how women just like you have been hired in tech. They are teachers or social workers or Starbucks baristas. They are stay-at-home moms for 5, 10 or 20+ years. It really doesn’t matter what you’ve done in the past. It doesn’t matter where you live, what your faith is, what other people think about you, if you know someone who’s done it. It only matters if you believe it is possible. If you believe you are techy. If you believe it enough to put in the work. You are techY!
