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 😊

No problem @Muhwanda , I know what you mean. I get very minimal feedback and sometimes you just need to hear that you are good at what you do.

Sorry to hear that you’re at the point of being signed off. Remember, it’s just a job and not worth compromising your health for.

Don't know how I missed this thread. 25+ years mostly as a unix sys admin. Made redundant a year ago.

Very tired of it all, having to fight that bit harder than male colleagues for everything, including pay. But I do need an income, savings won't last forever. So here I am.

Hi all, back again looking for advice. Does anyone have any pointers for good tutorials on creating flow charts, and for generally improving that kind of visual thinking? I'm much better at written descriptions than visual ones, but I am increasingly needing to draw up flow diagrams and I hate it and I am rubbish at it. Any tips gratefully received.

LucidChart have lots of learning resources https://training.lucid.co/path/diagramming-foundations

Geared to their tools, obviously, but I find them easy to use.

I use Miro for this

@Muhwanda just wanted to check in to see how you were getting on? Are things getting any better?

Thanks for checking in @RK800 still there, taking it one day at a time. My equivalent in another sector resigned recently and he had a lot more experience than me! I had a conversation with my husband where we agreed I can resign at any time if I needed to, that and and seeing the doctor helped a lot.

It’s still a total car crash there, and I’m still not working in what I see as an optimal way, but I’m just trying to battle through at the moment. I’ve had some positive feedback, but I know I’m better than this. I’ve had a couple of nibbles re new role, but I also can’t face that process at the moment either!

Hey @Muhwanda glad you’re staying strong! 💪

I’ve just been made redundant so I’m unenthusiastically job hunting, it’s very tough out there at the moment.

On bloody hell @RK800 sorry to hear that. What sort of roles are you looking for? Will keep my eye out on my (many) job alerts.

What kind of role are you looking for @RK800 some of us may be aware of vacancies

Thanks @Muhwanda and @FlabMonsterIsDietingAgain (love that user name btw)

Looking for a Project Manager or Scrum Master role but to be honest my confidence has taken a knock and feeling really down at the moment, I don’t feel like I’m fit for anything.

Looking for remote only roles, based on the UK.

The company I was working for just went under, so I'm considering setting up on my own. I already have a limited company that I put freelance stuff through, has anyone else thought about this?
I've had no luck with jobs, being either too senior or not senior enough, and I think I'm basically unemployable at this stage. My last job was flexible and lots of mutual respect, and nothing else seems to offer the same. Maybe I'm just grumpy.

Hi everyone, hope the people above have found exciting new roles.

I am an IT Systems Engineer in the UK for a US software company and am here looking for some advice. I have been with my current company for 5 years and am starting to look for a new role (due to excessive male toxcicitym there's a surprise!).

I am updating my CV, which I haven't done since this role and I am concious it seems a bit old-fashioned. Can anyone give me some advice on what a seasoned technical CV should look like these days? I currently have Profile, Preofessional Experiencs, and Education on there but am wondering if you need to add key words or tags these days? It also looks a bit boring I think in Arial 10 and just chunks of text.

Does anyone have any pointers or links to modern examples?

I wouldn't focus on layout or format, it's cheap tricks and lots of companies are using automated CV sifting now which doesn't care about appearance of the document.

Focus your attention on tailoring your CV to the job and person spec, make sure you have content that covers off every requirement they have listed, mirror their language as much as possible, make it very easy for the system or person to tick off the requirements and determine you may be a good fit.

One 'trick' is to have a footer on the document. Use very small font to fill that footer with as many 'keywords/tags' as you can, change the font colour to white so it can't be seen and save the document as a pdf. If they're using automated sifting then the system will match those keywords and give you points.

For the love of all that's holy do not put your picture on your CV, I hate it when people submit a photo, I couldn't care less what my applicant looks like and it uses up valuable space that could be telling me why you would be good at the job.

Incredibly useful thank you! Brilliant tip for the key words which I am definitely doing. I was struggling to think how to put the keyword tags in without looking like some kind of CV bot but could see you need them in there now as so much of the first sift is automated.

And good to hear I don't need ro faff around with formatting too much as I'd rather focus on the content and matching the job specs. I'd already decided that hell would freeze over before I added a photo so that's good news 😀

Describe experience in third person still not I did this, I did that?

Do I needs a 'skills gained/achievements' bit with each job role as well as the description? I think i had them but took them off to keep it to 2 sides of A4.

Does anyone care about 'Hobbies and Interests' anymore? Bearing mind I work all day every day so these wpuld not be anything particularly interesting ....

I think it depends on your hobbies and skills. I include language learning as it can also be useful in a work context, and mentioning swimming hints at work/life balance. A friend had fire eating (which he really did) and got asked about it at every interview, so if you do have something unusual like that, it might be worth adding.

I've got a section with work experience-projects etc that show things like technical planning, good communication, saving the company money etc. I have a section on technical skills which is just a list of platforms and applications I've worked with. Then a little bit on companies and dates, formal qualifications, and interests st the bottom.

I assume someone read it to have offered me an interview then job, but I'm not entirely sure, going by some of the questions over the last couple of weeks - "do you have experience of..."