Women in Tech

[MaryQueenofSocks]

As promised, a new women in Tech thread!

This is a space to talk about our industry, celebrate our successes without apology and moan about anything we want to!

We can swap stories, ideas or just shoot the breeze.

Guidelines for this thread:

We are supportive
We encourage each other
We celebrate each other
No judgement on what we earn or what we want to earn/achieve.
If we are working mothers, then no judgement.
If we are child free, no judgement.
Ignore any derailing or goady posts

If anyone wants to add to the above list then feel free.

Come on in, grab a virtual coffee and park yourself on a comfy sofa 😊

I agree with @RedDedRedemption the climate is tough and goalposts have moved

Your options are:

• Get a counter and negotiate
• Get a counter and move into new similar role that uses previous transferable skills/is an upward move

-Get a job in old sector (which I read as non tech management? Was that at the current company or somewhere else? It's not clear,)

• get pregnant and enjoy the enhanced maternity pay and hope market is better in. 18m/2 years

If you can internally move back to old role I would do that and get pregnant. If not I'd go for a combo of the first and last.

Unfortunately (benefit of hindsight is a frustrating thing!) the right time to negotiate salary level is when they first offer the job and want you to start with them.

They'll open the bidding at as low a level as they can get away with, promise you the earth and several pay reviews per year - it's at that point then you've got to say "that's half my current salary, I need xxx to accept the role". They are more likely to budge then, rather than lose a good candidate. Once you're in, they can go back on the promises made by HR recruitment team.

Definitely get some facts and data that show they are under-paying you. If they still don't take you seriously, I'd look at what's out there and apply for some new positions with the additional experience on your CV.

Just to add to the comment about companies cutting back, my experience is similar. I asked about a pay review (thanks ladies for the encouragement, it took me a couple of days, but I finally asked). The answer was a no, no pay rises at all being negotiated at the moment, until a key company milestone is reached. Which is frustrating, as I have no input to that milestone at all, so no influence over it. I'm casting my eye around at other roles but everything else in this job stacks up really well for me at the moment so it would have to be something stellar to tempt me to move.

Hello ladies, all gone quiet in here.

It CyberSecurity Awareness Month YAY!

I've been busy like a bee trying to do all my actual work whilst making up games, newsletters, training interventions and activities to "engage" with people who would really rather not think about boring stuff like MFA and key management procedures.

How are you doing?

My work is currently sliding from mild to extreme levels of ridiculous.

Apropos of nothing, 95% of the roles I’m getting sent by LinkedIn don’t have salaries on them. I thought that this was a tactic only used by cowboys- has that changed?

Hi, Great idea to start this thread, been in various tech roles over the last 20 odd years including IT support/Unix sys admin/dba then a web agency, then after having kids worked as freelance web developer (eCommerce mainly), now run a small company developing and selling premium plugins . Nice to see there are lots of us about.

OMG I am going to go absolutely stark raving mad.

AI

It's the current buzz word, I get it, people have tried chat GPT and think ooooooohhhhh so fun and wonderful I bet we could do loads with that. So now I've got randoms from all over the company contacting saying 'we want to integrate AI into our service offering, can you help.'

Sure, I say, what do you want it to do? What functions, have you looked at any tools, who will run the project, have they spoken to the tech teams to determine if there are any incompatibilities?

Them: Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Me: Ok, let's just start with the first question. What do you want it to do?

Them: Ummmmmmmmmmmm well you know, automate stuff!

Me: Ok, what stuff?

Them: Ummmmmmmmm well just things that we do manually now......

Me: Uh huh, like what?

Them: we'll we've seen it can answer emails and things.

Me: yep, it can, do you have a knowledge bank of the types of email queries you get, and what you would answer, do you have resource to create that kind of thing, or just a whole heaping load of old questions and answers that you could use to train it? Do you have any budget, resource or capability to build that out, what kind of timeline would you want to work towards, what clients, are there any restrictions based on information classification, tooling, geographic location of processing or storage of data? Do you even get enough emails to justify the costs of implementing a tool like this?

DO YOU KNOW ANYTHING, HAVE YOU THOUGHT ABOUT ANYTHING OTHER THAN THE FACT YOU'VE SEEN THE LETTERS AI ON STUFF AND THOUGHT IT LOOKS COOL?

AI / machine learning is the big thing in my company too at the moment - but generally for much more sensible and valid reasons, as we do scientific software.

The good thing is we're getting some new hires who know about it. The bad thing is that senior management doesn't seem to understand that we still need people who can do the oldfashioned stuff like C++ ... people with skills we still absolutely rely on are retiring/downshifting and not being replaced. That may in part be because youngsters of the calibre we need are all into the AI/ML stuff. Heigh ho.

Still, at least no one is wittering about getting AIs to answer our emails, that needs human intelligence and current information for sure!

We play 'AI buzzword bingo' at work whenever an exec opens their mouth. So much fun!
People also don't seem to realise that having lots of good quality, processable data is a pre-req to AI. And with data comes storage, speed etc etc issues. Data lineage is ignored as well as the need for a robust network

I found this article on AI quite interesting.
AI Assurance

Just seen this in Active so wanted to join in. I've been in the industry for 25+ years, started off with a Comp Sci degree, was a developer, then a tech lead and now a solutions architect for about a year and a half, all in the same organisation (it's a good one 😊)

It's nice to see so many people in this chat who've been in tech for many years. The one thing that worries me about the field is the bias for youth.

'Tech' covers a wide range of jobs from project management to technical roles like software dev. The latter has a younger bias - so many companies want people who'll put in hours of work.

At the same time, many experienced people have seen and done it all, so they can pick up new tech pretty quickly. I think experience counts for a lot, what takes my boss (20+ years experience) an hour can take me a couple of days as he spots issues immediately.. he's not necessarily smarter he's just 'seen it all!'. He's also on top of new developments though! my company large blue-chip has plenty of older people.

As long as you keep learning you're probably relatively good for 'normal' companies. Snazzy startups that want to hire young people, maybe not.

Tech isn't a 'reliable' field IMO. There are boom and bust cycles of course depending on your specific job role. Currently there's a lot of redundancies and some very good people looking, so lots of competition in the market...

Oh yes! This is doing my head in just now. It's all 'we need to use AI' blah blah blah... But no one knows what they want it to do. And I wouldn't trust it yet... The meeting summaries that the zoom ai assistant provides look plausible at first glance... But are actually just pure nonsense and don't reflect the meeting at all

Experience does count for a lot - the tech may move on but it’s really just new layers on top of what you already know. I always said it was like an onion. I might be running databases on AWS or Azure or whatever now but I understand what goes on underneath.

Sorry if this has already been mentioned - I've not managed to keep on top of this whole thread.

There is a Women in Business & Tech event happening next week in London. I'll be there representing the company I work for and thought I'd mention it as it's free entry and should be interesting, especially for those who might be looking for a career move/change.

It's at the Excel. I have no affiliation with the event itself, I'll simply be there with the tech company I work for 👍

Ironic that the "Women in Business & Tech" event is during some schools' half term (including ours) when so many women have to juggle work with family! However appreciate that when the hols are all different it's difficult to please everybody. Looks really interesting though, hopefully some of the content will be available online.

Actually just noticed there is another event called "Women of Silicon Roundabout" also at the Excel on 22/23rd Nov which may be of interest.

Not free though - in fact quite expensive If you are self-funding rather than being sent from work.

@coles85 that looks really good. I would love to go to the Thursday session, which ironically for me I could have if it was in half term, but sadly can't as it isn't...as you say, can't please all of the people, all of the time 😁

I posted on this thread near the beginning but have been a bit quiet since.

Think I need a kick up the arse and some motivational talking.

Job coming up at work leading a team. Same work as my team just a different bit of the system but one I know enough about.

Same job in my team came
Up last year and I didn't go for it. Lately I've been feeling like I'm getting bored and need a challenge.

So I want to go for it...I'm sure I can do the work side of it (and I know I am well thought of) but gosh my lack of confidence in myself is kicking in. All around being confident enough in myself to argue decisions / manage people. I've said I don't want to manage people but I am not sure that that is not just the lack of confidence avoiding it.

I am sure my (male) manager wings it quite a lot of the time so why think I can't I don't know.....

Tips and hints to get that confidence please.

@Fluffycloudsfloatinginthesky there was a really interesting study on this a few years back about the tech sector. Basically men go for jobs they probably need an additional two years experience for whilst women hold back until they are spot on or over qualified. Risk adverse basically or maybe it's our socialisation.

And I'll be honest as much as I like the majority of men I work with where I am (software house) a lot of them are very mediocre!

Is that a kick up the arse enough?

For sure you should go for it! Also I find that being more senior people listen to you more (which is slightly disconcerting but good!) Also where I am there are some mediocre men. Including one who recently got a promotion and I cannot figure out for the life of me how (actually I do know how it's by pretending he knows what he's doing and being quite old and acting superior) but his tech skills are total shit!!

Thank you @SummerLightning @jeaux90. I just wish I could have more confidence in myself.

@Fluffycloudsfloatinginthesky

Remember you don't have to be the absolute best person there could be for the job, you just have to be the best person who applies.

Stop comparing yourself against the perfect person for the job and look at the actual potential candidates around you, your peers. Is anyone else who might realistically take this specifuc role a significantly better candidate than you?

Because if not, and you don't go for it, you'll see it go to someone and you know you would have done a better job than them.

And let's say worst case, you apply and don't get it. You are still ahead of where you'll be if you don't apply because you've sent a signal to your org that you do want to progress and you can follow up with your manager to talk about career planning, and ask exactly what you need to do to be the best candidate for the next time an opportunity comes up.