Build

What Is Tech Debt And How Do You Manage It

It’s crunch time! You’ve got eager customers who are waiting for you to ship product, your teammates are eager to complete the release and move on, and you don’t want to be the bottleneck. So what to do you? You rush through writing your code and put in a quick fix.

It’s good enough to pass tests and a quick code review.

Unfortunately, crunch time doesn’t come around once in a blue moon. It happens more often than we’d like. And sadly it gets heralded by sayings like: “Move fast!” “Break things!” And, “Ship code!”

As designers, product managers, and developers we are eager to share what we’ve built with customers. However, constantly operating by the seat of our pants comes at a price and that price is tech debt.

Whether you have or haven’t heard of tech debt, I’m pretty sure you’ve experienced its effects. If you’ve been on product teams that seems to constantly be putting out fires, you’ve probably noticed that over time all those quick fixes add up. And when it comes time to build something brand new, what would normally take a few hours or days, suddenly takes weeks or months.

The reason it takes so long is because there’s a lot of cruft built up in the code base. Continuing to layer on quick fixes will only destabilize the code and impact its quality.

If you’ve struggled to deal with tech debt on your product team, or want to educate new teammates on how to manage it, then today’s Build Tip is for you!

I’m joined by Jay Hum who is a Product Manager and Pivotal, and together we’re going to be sharing:

• What tech debt it is and how to recognize it
• When it make senses to accrue tech debt – yes there are time where it makes sense to let it build up
• When to pay it down or just continue to ignore – unlike other types of debt, you don’t always need to pay down tech debt
• When it’s too late to pay down debt tech and what to do

Be sure to share the episode with your teammates to help them understand the importance of tech debt!

Want more resources on tech debt? Here's a link to the post Jay mentioned in the episode: Introduction to the Technical Debt Concept https://www.agilealliance.org/introduction-to-the-technical-debt-concept/

 

Transcript

Poornima: When your product has a nasty bug that's impacting a lot of users, your first priority is to put a fix in that's going to help resolve it. You might hear your developers say something like...

Developer: Yeah, I'll just put in a quick fix.

Poornima: A week may go by, maybe possibly a month, and you've got another nasty bug on your hand. Your developer might tell you...

Developer: No problem, I'll have that bug resolved by the end of the day.

Poornima: Later on, you might ask them to put in a new feature, and they may respond with...

Developer: Yeah, it's going to take a while.

Poornima: How long?

Developer: Weeks, possibly months.

Poornima: “Weeks, possibly months!?” Why so long?

Developer: Tech debt.

What is tech debt

Poornima: Wondering what's tech debt, how to avoid it, and prevent it before it gets too unwieldy? I'm going to answer these questions and many more, in today's quick *Build* tip.                                                 

Welcome to *Build*, brought to you by Pivotal Tracker. I'm your host, Poornima Vijayashanker. Today, I've got a *Build* tip for you. I'm joined by Jay Hum, who is a product manager at Pivotal. Jay, tell me what's tech debt?

Jay Hum: Tech debt is the effort that builds up when a team makes a conscience decision to implement code that's easy, instead of building out a best solution.

Poornima: OK, so what does that actually...

Jay Hum: The easy-to-implement, quick, messy code, is the debt. Like any type of debt, it accrues interest over time, and so the additional effort that is built up that could either be time, money, or resources, is the technical debt that builds up that makes it much more difficult in the long run to implement a better solution.

How to avoid tech debt

Jay Hum: Here is the interesting thing. Tech debt is usually thought of as a bad thing, something that needs to be paid down very quickly, or avoided as much as possible, or all together. However, tech debt is actually unavoidable. Much like financial debt, there is not necessarily good technical debt, but there is technical debt that you can deal with.                                                 

An example is, in the mortgage or student loan, where the principle plus the interest that you accrue could be lower than what you actually yield in terms of the investment. Any experienced or seasoned developer are always wanting to create the best possible solution that there is out there. However, sometimes you need to incur technical debt in order to get a product out to market quicker. Generally, the time to market, or the time pressure, is what makes technical debt unavoidable.

How to manage tech debt

Poornima: OK, it's unavoidable. How can we manage it, while continuing to meet customer needs and pushing features out?

Jay Hum: Here's the thing about technical debt that makes this sort of the analogy to financial debt a little dissimilar. You don't actually have to pay down technical debt. For instance, when you're building out a product or service, there could be parts of the code that aren't used very often, or are not touched, that don't need to be changed. The RY on actually paying down that debt, or refactoring doesn't get you much, or doesn't get you anything there.                                                 

One of the other ways to really look at it and approach it is build in technical debt into the product role map, or how you plan out your releases. When you think about it, you should be thinking about it in terms of what's the upside potential versus the downside risk of either paying down technical debt, or not paying down technical debt, and relate that, to again, getting a product or service out to the market quicker, or spending more time and writing more cleaner quality code.

Poornima: All right, that's great that we don't have to always have to pay down tech debt, and that it's OK to accumulate it, but how do we know when to make the trade off of paying it down, versus just letting it exist?

Jay Hum: Right, so one of the things that you want to look at, is what is the probability of the occurrence of something bad happening, or the probability of the occurrence of you having to do a major refactor because the technical debt has just gotten so big. Coupled with that, you also want to look at what is the impact.                                                

Again, there is smaller technical debt, where the impact of paying it down is not very big. Again, there's other parts where the technical debt can be very big, could lead to a big regression, and what is the impact on the delay to the market, or the impact to the customers that are actually using your product that's in the market right now.

When you don’t need to pay down tech debt

Poornima: Do you have a example of a situation where you don't need to pay down the tech debt, versus one where you do?

Jay Hum: Sure, yeah. I think a really good example would be if you take a look at an app through your analytics, and you're looking at one of the features that you've implemented is not being used very often. This is a good example of, you probably don't want to pay down technical debt on that feature, because again, it's not a lot of people that are using it.                                                 

Versus the flip side, so if you see that there is a feature that's being used very heavily by your users, and that they're clamoring for a feature that is sort of an add on to that feature, this is an instance where you would want to pay down technical debt quickly, so that you can build out that new feature that is an add on to the existing feature.

Is it ever too late to pay down tech debt?

Poornima: What happens if you leave tech debt around for too long? Is there ever a point where it's too late to pay it down?

Jay Hum: There are instances where it is too late. Usually what that manifests itself is that you have to do a big rewrite, which not a lot of people enjoy doing, both from a customer perspective, as well as the development team. If you go back to what I said earlier, if you realize that tech debt is unavoidable, and you build it into your product strategy, and your product roadmap, then there's ways of being able to manage that tech debt at a good pace, so that you never have to end up with having to do a big rewrite.

Poornima: Thanks, Jay. This has been really helpful. Do you have any other resources for our audiences to check out?

Jay Hum: Yes, they should check out this article written by the Agile Alliance. It is called “Introduction to Technical Debt Concept,” and it goes much more deeper into some of the concepts that I discussed here around technical debt.

Poornima: Now, Jay and I want to know, how do you guys handle tech debt at your company. Let us know in the comments below this video. OK, that's it for today ‘s *Build* tip. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel to receive more great episodes of *Build*, and *Build* tips like today's. Special thanks to our sponsor Pivotal Tracker, for their help in producing today's episode. Ciao for now.

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Build is produced as a partnership between Femgineer ((http://femgineer.com/) and Pivotal Tracker (http://www.pivotaltracker.com/). San Francisco video production by StartMotionMEDIA (http://www.startmotionmedia.com/design/).

 

All this month, Karen Catlin and I have been digging into the theme of mentoring. We started out by sharing the debut Build episode on why some people are reluctant to seek mentoring, and last week we talked about how to approach mentors, set expectations, and thank them.

In today’s final episode, on mentoring for this month, we’re going to talk about what you can do to become an effective mentor yourself.

We understand that you might be reluctant to be a mentor for a number of reasons: you don’t have the time, you don’t feel qualified, or you feel like your experiences may not relate.

Don’t worry Karen and me have you covered! You’ll learn:

• How mentoring is a two-way street benefiting both the mentor and mentee
• Why you don’t need to have same experience or perspective as your mentee
• Who should be holding the mentee accountable
• What to do when you just don’t have time, but still want to help someone who approaches you
• What to do when someone brings you a deeply personal problem

Transcript

Poornima: In the previous two segments, I've been talking to Karen Catlin, who is an advocate for Women in Tech, a leadership coach, and my co-author of our book, *Present! A Techie's Guide to Public Speaking*. Karen and I have been digging into the importance of mentorship. We started out by talking about why you might be reluctant to seeking a mentor. Then, we talked about how you can effectively establish the relationship. If you've missed either of those segments, I highly recommend you check out the links below this video. In this final segment, we're gonna talk about how you can become an effective mentor yourself.

                                                 

Welcome back to *Build*, brought to you by Pivotal Tracker. I'm your host, Poornima Vijayashanker. Each *Build* episode consists of a series of conversations I have with innovators. Together, we debunk myths and misconceptions related to building products, companies, and your career. Now, I know at the beginning, Karen, you mentioned how you loved mentoring, because you get to learn a lot. I feel the same way. I think I actually learn more than maybe my mentees do and that's why I love doing it. Let's talk about some of the benefits that you're gonna experience should you choose to mentor.

 

Mentoring is a two-way street that benefits both the mentor and mentee

 

Karen Catlin: Sure, yes. It's definitely a two-way street. You may not know what you're gonna be learning from a mentee, but getting together, hearing about what's going on, the questions they ask, you are going to get insight into how you can benefit your career. You might just get a good, broad perspective of what's going on around your company or your industry. As I mentioned, maybe some great ideas for podcasts that I could listen to, or books I could read, or productivity apps I could use. I don't even know what's it gonna be, but I always pick up something when I talk to a mentee.

 

Poornima: Yeah. I feel like it's a great way to stay relevant. Especially if some of us are a little bit older and maybe we're not as in the know.

 

Karen Catlin: OK. OK. So one time I was talking to someone and they said, "TLDR." This was a few years ago to my credit, but I'm like, "TLDR, what's that mean?" So, I asked and they said, "Oh, just too long, didn't read." I'm like, "Oh, OK." Just now, I am able to just like, weave that into conversations and all of a sudden I seem really relevant.

 

Poornima: Totally. So you can speak the lingo.

 

Karen Catlin: Exactly.

 

Why a mentor doesn’t need to have the exact same experience or perspective as their mentee

 

Poornima: Now, when you were at Adobe, did you just mentor women or do you also mentor men as well?

 

Karen Catlin: Sure. As a senior woman at the company, I definitely was approached by a lot of woman for mentoring. Men approached me, too. I did definitely mentor both genders. I think it's important for a mentee to get advice from people who don't look like them, whether that is because of your gender, or your life experience, your...of other things that you're bringing to the company, bringing to the table. It's important for a mentee to get advice from people who aren't like them, because it's gonna broaden the set of advice that they're going to get, right?

 

Poornima: Sure.

 

Karen Catlin: Likewise, because mentoring is a two-way street, it's good for mentors to mentor people who don't look like them too, because, that is going to allow them to learn, get different perspectives, and all of that. I think everything is ups for grabs.

 

Poornima: Yeah.

 

Karen Catlin: Yeah.

 

Poornima: What about people who may worry that they don't have the same experience, or perspective, and so, they might not feel credible sharing their life experience with a mentee?

 

Karen Catlin: Oh my gosh. Don't overthink it. That's my advice for mentors here. The mentee has approached you because they respect you and they want to learn from you. You don't have to worry about, am I going to be able to provide just the right piece of experience or advice. Don't worry about it, just have a conversation, share stories, share your experience, it's gonna make a difference to the mentee.

 

What to do when you don’t have time to mentor someone

 

Poornima: I wanna talk about a couple of other issues that I see come up a lot when I recommend people mentor and they're resistant to. The first is time. “I'm just so busy, I have kids, I have a family, I have other obligations, I just don't have the time to be somebody's mentor.”

 

Karen Catlin: Yeah. Yeah. I get that. Because, we are all very busy. That said, if someone

approaches you because they wanna get your advice, and they haven't time-boxed it following my advice from an earlier segment here. Ask them, what are you really asking for here? Can we get together and maybe, you know, if you're busy, you might say, "Can we get together for a 30-minute phone call?" for example. Ask yourself, "Do I have time maybe for a 30-minute phone call?"

                                                 

Chances are, you have some small segment of time that you could offer to a mentee and so, you can be responsible for saying, "Well, this is what I can give you and this is all I've got right now." If you're really too busy, you might just say, "The next two months I am just super busy on this project, can you ping me in three months’ time, and I'll bet I'll have some time for you then."

 

Poornima: Yeah. I think that's good. I think it's good to give people that kinda realistic picture. One thing I like to do—actually, two things I like to do—if somebody comes to me and I know they have that good directive question, like, I got this one recently, "How do you self-publish?" Well, I've already written two posts, like, pretty meaty ones. I tell them, "Read these posts and then, if you have any other questions, shoot me an email, I'm traveling a lot, I'll be sure to respond to you via email."

                                                 

Trying to find a 30-minute time spot across time zones, is just not gonna work for both of us. I think that's great. The other thing I say is, and you do this because you speak at a lot of events, I say, "I'm gonna be at this event, why don't we just meet there and when I'm in between sessions, would be great to come out and have a chat with you." I think finding those opportunities, you can get more flexible.

 

Karen Catlin: Yeah and,doing what you can to just help the person, whether that is with your actual mentoring or making a recommendation for another mentor.

 

Poornima: Yeah. That's a good one.

 

Karen Catlin: I had times, yeah, over my career, where really my mentoring dance card was just full. I really, really couldn't take on anymore mentees. When those things happen and someone approached me for mentoring, I would explain, my mentoring dance card is full. What are you really looking for from a mentor? And then I might recommend that they reach out to someone else at my company. Right?

 

Poornima: Yep.

 

Karen Catlin: Help them, move them forward in some way.

 

Poornima: Definitely. I know another hurdle is relevancy. Again, kind of, oh, you know, the mentee might say, "I'm looking for somebody in data science." I might say, "I don't know anything about data science, I'm just a front-end engineer or I'm a designer, why are you approaching me?" Right? It doesn't seem like my work is exactly relevant. I don't know if this is a good thing.

 

Karen Catlin: Yeah. It's so funny. Just a couple days ago, a mentor, excuse me, a mentee was reaching out to me and asking, "Hey Karen, I am thinking about putting on a women's only hackathon and I'd like to get your advice about how to do this." I had to tell her, "Well actually, I have very little experience with hackathons, even though I'm an advocate for Women in Tech. I think this is a great idea, but I don't have direct relevant experience to share with you. However, I do know about this one tech company who has run a women's only hackathon." I mention the name of the company, she said, "Oh, I know people who work there, I'll reach out to my network there to find out little bit more.” Again, this notion that I pushed her forward, I helped her out without really being able to answer her direct question, whether that was on data science or a hackathon.

 

Poornima: Yeah.

 

Karen Catlin: This notion, I’ve done with so many mentees, this notion of encouraging them to think about their network. Who else could they tap to get that specific experience or advice they're looking for?

 

Poornima: Yeah. Part of your mentorship is also helping them see what they already got, see the resources that they have at their disposal.

 

Karen Catlin: Exactly.

 

Poornima: It's not all about you having to do the work.

 

Karen Catlin: Exactly.

 

Who need to hold a mentee accountable

 

Poornima: Yeah. That's great. What about accountability? A lot of times people say, "How can I hold my mentee accountable? Make sure they're hitting milestones. Make sure that they are successful?"

 

Karen Catlin: Yeah. Gosh. Maybe I should be doing a better job at this. I really feel that as a mentor, my job is not to take any action items from the meeting, you know, it's to provide my experience, my advice, my thoughts. But, really, I'm expecting the mentee to be taking notes, to be figuring out what they're gonna do next, and to be making progress. I don't take any of that on me, but maybe I should be, I don't know how to help them. We all benefit from having accountability partners. It's just that, as a mentor, I'm already giving a lot of my time, I don't feel I need to be doing that as well.

 

Poornima: OK. Maybe that's something more a sponsor would do or even a coach, if you hire them?

 

Karen Catlin: Yeah. A coach would definitely do that for you. Otherwise, maybe it is a buddy, or a friend, or a colleague that you might reach out to, in addition to having the mentor, you have an accountability partner, who helps make sure you're making the progress you want to make.

 

What to do as a mentor when someone brings you a deeply personal problem

 

Poornima: I've had this happen a number of times, where somebody that I mentored, I see very quickly that it is not just about getting that promotion, or improving a particular thing about their career, there's some other stuff going on. It might be a personal issue, and so, how would you recommend answering that as the mentor?

 

Karen Catlin: Yeah. Mentors and coaches, frankly, we're not therapists. We're not trained in helping people through some deep personal issues. I remember a situation where someone had some things going on with, I think it was a teenage child, and, even though I'm a mom of teenagers, I still felt that this was something that I did not feel qualified or really feel right about providing guidance. Happy to share what I've done as a parent in different situations, but that's not getting to the point of providing therapy, so I've really had to sort of redirect the conversation and stay away from it, frankly.

 

Poornima: Yeah. Set some clear boundaries and make sure that they understand that.

 

Karen Catlin: I'm not a therapist.

 

What are male allies and how to become one

 

Poornima: Yeah. That's fair. I wanna go back to one of the earlier things that we had talked

about around coaching people that may not look like you and I know as an advocate for Women Tech, one of things that you do is coach men to become better allies for women. Start by telling me, what exactly is a male ally?

 

Karen Catlin: Yeah. So, an ally is anyone who is in the majority and really has a point of privilege as a result. Maybe a little bit of power that other people don't have, because they're not in the majority. In tech, it's typically white men who have the position of power, they're the majority. So, it's an important thing for them to realize that they have this role to fill as an ally for women or anyone who's underrepresented in tech.

                                                 

They have a role to play to help those people be successful, to feel that they can be...that they're welcome somewhere, that they can be included, that they can grow their career and have an impact there. A male ally, that's what I look to them to do, is to make their environments, their teams, their company culture, more welcoming and inclusive to people who don't look like them.

 

Poornima: How do you help men to become male allies?

 

Karen Catlin: Yes. I believe there are everyday, simple actions that men can take to make their environments more welcoming and inclusive. For example, and this is something that I think that pretty much every woman who's professional, or maybe working—every woman working in tech, I'll go as far as to say that, has had this experience, where they have been talking in a meeting and some man with deeper vocal chords and a louder voice, just interrupts them and sort of steers the conversation in a different direction.

                                                 

There's a phrase for it, “manterrupting.” We've heard that before. What can a male ally do when they witness that behavior when they're sitting across the table and seeing it going on? They can say something with their deep, strong vocal chords, "Hey, I was actually interested to hear what Anna had to say, let's bring the conversation back to her." That's an example of an everyday action a man can take to be an ally for women in that meeting.

 

Poornima: Yes.

 

Karen Catlin: Another example, might be this whole idea-hijacking, I like to call it. Again, I think so many of us have had the experience where we have said something brilliant, awesome, in a meeting, and it kinda fell on deaf ears at the time, and then maybe a couple minutes later in the meeting, someone else says the same brilliant thing—often it's a man, only because there's gonna be so many men in these meetings.

                                                 

What's a male ally to do in that situation when they notice an idea has been hijacked by someone else? They can say something simple, like, "Yeah, I really like that idea, and when Jen said it a few minutes ago, she phrased it this way. I like the way you've built on it," or something like that. Another every day action a man can take to help the women and underrepresented minorities be successful.

 

Poornima: It's great that you are coaching men to have these everyday actions that are important and impactful. You have any others that you would like to share?

 

Karen Catlin: Oh, sure. Here's another space, I'll call it—forget about meetings, let's move on from meetings. We all need to have networks to be successful, to hear about opportunities, to hire from, right? When we're trying to fill roles at our company or to find jobs if we're looking for jobs. If we let our networks grow naturally and organically, chances are, we're gonna have networks of people who are just like us. “Just like me” networks. We enjoy the same hobbies, we went to the same school, we enjoy doing and talking about the same things, right? That's just human nature to reach out to people we enjoy spending time with, that's our network.

                                                 

I think we have a role to play, especially if we're a male ally, but we should really be looking to diversify our network, so that our networks aren't just like us and that they're filled with people who are of different backgrounds, different experiences, just went to different schools, worked at different companies and so forth. For men, specifically, I challenge them, if they go to some networking event, or a Friday afternoon beer bash or something, go introduce yourself to someone who doesn't look like you. You can define that however you want, but someone who doesn't look like you.

 

Poornima: Maybe shorter than you.

 

Karen Catlin: Maybe shorter, yes. Darker skin, gender, whatever it is. Say hello, get to know them a little bit and see if there isn't something that you can either learn from them or that you can do for them as a result. Just getting to know them a little bit. That challenge, I think, is important and I try to embrace it, too. When I go to a networking event, I tend to like to look for the women that I wanna meet and reach out to them. It's easier for me to have those conversations. It's a little bit more intimidating for me to go up to a young man in a hoodie and introduce myself and start a conversation. I try to do that myself, because I think it's important for me to diversify my network. It's good advice for not just male allies, but probably for all of us.

 

Poornima: Yep. Well, thank you so much Karen. This has been a lot of fun and I'm sure the audience is gonna get a lot out of this. Why don't you let us know how we can get in touch with you.

 

Karen Catlin: Sure. You can get in touch with me on my website, there's a contact page and that is karencatlin.com. If you want more everyday actions you can take to support diversity, inclusion, create a welcoming environment at your company, check out the Twitter handle @betterallies.

 

Poornima: Wonderful. Thank you. We'll be sure to share the links below the video. That's it for our episode on mentorship. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel to receive the next episode. If you've enjoyed this segment, then please be sure to share it with your friends and your colleagues. And finally, a special thanks to our sponsor, Pivotal Tracker. Ciao for now.

 

This episode of *Build* is brought to you by our sponsor, Pivotal Tracker.

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Build is produced as a partnership between Femgineer ((http://femgineer.com/) and Pivotal Tracker (http://www.pivotaltracker.com/). San Francisco video production by StartMotionMEDIA (http://www.startmotionmedia.com/design/).

Have you already tried mentoring and found that it’s not working for you?

Is it because you’re just not getting what you want out of it, or other people have convinced you it’s just not worth your time?

We get that something may go wrong, which is why in today’s episode we’re going to cover ALL the things that can go wrong with mentoring. But we won’t leave you hanging… Karen Catlin (https://karencatlin.com/) and I will provide concrete tips (including some exact script to use) for:

- Why you might consider finding a mentor inside versus outside your current company
- How you can go about setting clear expectations with your mentor
- How mentoring and coaching are different
- How to decide if it makes sense to pay for coaching
- Why it’s important to thank your mentor and how to do it effectively

In the next video, we’ll conclude our theme of mentoring by sharing how you can get started as a mentor!

Transcript

Poornima: In the last segment, we talked about the importance of mentorship and why some people may be reluctant to seeking out a mentor. If you've missed the segment, I've included a link to it below this video, so don't miss it and be sure to check it out. In today's segment, we're going to focus the conversation around how you can get the most out of mentoring. Welcome back to *Build*, brought to you by Pivotal Tracker. I'm your host, Poornima Vijayashanker. Each *Build* episode consists of a series of conversations I have with innovators in tech, and together we debunk a number of myths around building products, companies, and your career in technology, because I know there's a lot of people out there who may not be aware that they are doing things that are actively acting against them from having a good mentoring relationship.

Karen Catlin: Sure.

What not to talk about during mentoring

Poornima: Let's start by talking about what you should not expect to get out of that relationship.

Karen Catlin: In a word, gossip. I used to have a mentee who would come to my office for our monthly meetings, and would sit down and just say, "So, tell me what you're hearing about. What's going around the company?" Oh my gosh, like I wasn't just going to share all of the, you know, news I had heard to this person, you know?

Poornima: Right.

Karen Catlin: He was just looking for gossip and it basically turned into this mentoring relationship that I hated. I really did not look forward to those meetings because like he was probing me for intelligence. It wasn't cool.

Poornima: Yeah, yeah. It wasn't the purpose of the meeting.

When mentoring goes wrong

Karen Catlin: No. Can I tell you something else I've hated about mentoring? I had another mentee who we were working together, I think, for over a six-month period, once a month we had a meeting, and when we got together each time I would say to her, "So last time, you know, we talked about this. Did my advice help you?" Her response was various forms of, "Oh, you know, I've been too busy" or, "I didn't really think it was going to work so I didn't even try it out," but she was there to get more advice from me. Like, what was that all about, right? I was not fulfilled. I did not think my advice was helping her, and again, I hated those relationships.

Poornima: Yeah, so it didn't sound like it was something that would keep you engaged as the person who was doing the mentoring.

Karen Catlin: No, exactly.

Poornima: Anything else that people want to be doing?

Karen Catlin: I'm so glad you asked.

Poornima: Yeah.

Karen Catlin: The other pet peeve I have around this—and I bet most people in our audience here would be incredibly respectful of anyone's time that they were asking for mentorship—but I definitely have had people that have overstepped the bounds of that. You know, a meeting has been scheduled maybe for an hour and I can't get them to leave the office. It's like the hour is up and they keep talking, and they want me to keep providing advice. I'm just trying to get them out the door because I've got other things to do, so we really need to be respectful of the time and our time commitments there.

How to set expectations for your mentoring relationship

Poornima: OK, so now that we've talked about a number of things not to do, let's switch gears and talk about how to set expectations.

Karen Catlin: Sure. A mentee should really be looking to the mentor for advice, but really in the context of, "Have you ever experienced this situation before?" Or, "Tell me about a time you might have had to do something like this." For example, let's say that you wanted to approach a mentor because you had to learn about a certain market vertical, right? The worst question is to go to that mentor and say, "Tell me everything I need to know about this market vertical." It puts so much burden on the mentor to be like this educator in everything.

Poornima: We don't know where to start.

Karen Catlin: Any way, and we don't even know where to start. It's too big a question. Much better would be to approach the mentor and say, "Hey, I need to come up to speed on this market vertical. Can you tell me how you came up to speed and learned everything you know?"

Poornima: Nice.

Karen Catlin: Something like that. They then can share their experiences and start talking about how they have come up to speed on the market.

Poornima: Yeah. It's a lot more relatable and they have those experiences. They're not kind of fishing for things that may or may not be applicable. It's kind of your job as the mentee to figure out which piece of their experience relates back to you. Any other examples that you have?

Karen Catlin: Sure. I remember mentoring someone who came to me because she wanted to explore a lateral job move and she actually asked a really good question. She didn't come saying, "Hey, I have this opportunity to do this lateral job move. Do you think I should do it?" No. She didn't say that. Instead she said, "Hey, I'm thinking about this lateral job move. Have you ever taken a lateral job move and how did you make the decision to do it?" Then we were able to have a great conversation about it.

When does it make sense to pay for coaching?

Poornima: It's natural to start and have maybe a coffee conversation. There are a lot of mentors, though, who are also coaches that expect to be paid, so how do you know when it's time to hire somebody?

Karen Catlin: Mentors and coaches are similar and yet different as well. A mentor's job is to provide their experience, share their advice, those types of things. A coach probably has more of a discipline around helping a client in a certain way, whether that is a job transition that they're exploring and trying to put frameworks around that, or strengthening leadership skills, which is what I focus on, and every coach is different. I think a very simple way to think about this is, a coach will be—it's a business, and so there is a charge for that, and a mentor is a free thing.

                                                 

One thing I'll say though is every coach has a different style depending on their experiences and their approaches to things, and I am a blend. Chances are I've walked a mile in my client's shoes because I've had such a long history in tech already and all my clients are in tech, so I do provide some mentoring in terms of my coachees might ask me something, my clients will ask me something, and if I have relevant experience, I'll share that story because I think it might help them, but then I'll also be putting more of a framework around helping them achieve their goals overtime and that's why it will end up...you know, there's a payment involved, there's a cost involved.

Poornima: Yeah. You're trying to get somebody to a milestone.

Karen Catlin: Exactly.

Poornima: You're trying to help them improve, and because there's a lot of structure around it, you then want to get paid for that versus like just general kind of coffee conversations.

Karen Catlin: Right. Exactly, exactly.

Poornima: For people who are evaluating when it makes sense to hire somebody, how would you recommend that they think about it?

Karen Catlin: Yes. I would recommend it in terms of, first of all, if you don't have a good mentoring situation or mentoring program at your company or in a community of some sort, then that's a time to explore coaching. I would also say that if you have a situation where you're trying to grow some skills and you're very much, "Here are my goals and here's what I want to get to," and you feel that it would be something you want to do not out in public, like you don't want anyone at your company to know you're working on these skills, again, you want to do it on your own and sort of on the side, you might want to hire a coach. It also might be that you want some professional help in terms of, yeah, you respect a lot of people that you work with, but are they the right people to help you get to this point that you're trying to get to in your career? It might be time to get an external perspective and some professional help.

Poornima: Yeah. I've also found that just having the accountability of meeting with somebody weekly, thinking of it as an investment, is really helpful.

Karen Catlin: Yes.

Poornima: Versus like, "Oh, can we grab coffee 30 minutes here, 30 minutes there?" A lot of times it's valuable, but you miss some of the context, and like you said, some of the framework that people you're paying for have done this over and over again.

How mentoring differs from coaching

Karen Catlin: Yeah. Here's an analogy. Let's say you think about your workouts, just to keep yourself healthy and so forth. You may have a workout buddy or a friend. You're going to go work out, go climbing, go for a walk, whatever. That's great, but if you really are serious about changing things up, you might hire a trainer at your gym to really get things moving in the right direction and get some professional help. That's similar to how you might approach coaching and mentoring. A mentor would be someone like, "Let's go for that walk together. Let's go climbing together." We're going to talk as we go, but it's going to be a little more casual. Then if you really want to get serious, you're going to hire the equivalent of the trainer at the gym. You're going to hire a coach for your career.

How to thank your mentor

Poornima: Last question for you in this segment. How about thanking your mentors, expressing your gratitude so that they know that their time was well spent, and they keep kind of looking out for you and want to work with you?

Karen Catlin: Yeah. Mentors, even if it looks like we are professional and successful, we still enjoy being treated to a cup of coffee or a lunch. You know, it's a nice touch, and of course flowers, wine, gadgets, Teslas. I don't know. Just have some fun there.

Poornima: Yeah. It'd be a toy Tesla.

Karen Catlin: A toy Tesla. There you go, but seriously, gifts are always nice, but I'll tell you the most meaningful thank yous I've gotten from my mentees have been when they have come and thanked me and told me, "This is how your advice has helped me." I remember I mentored someone when I was back at Adobe just over lunch one day. It was just a one-time, casual mentoring kind of thing. A year later, she reached out to me and said, "Hey, Karen. I want to thank you for that lunch we had a year ago. You told me these things and this is what I did, and I just got the promotion I was trying to go for." I remember I went to lunch, but I didn't remember everything I told her. I shared some advice, shared some stories, whatever.

                                                 

For her to come back and say, "This helped me" was so important to me because that meant that I spent my time well, she really was paying attention and in sort of a circle kind of thing, it also helps me become a better mentor because now I know, "Oh, that story or that advice really resonated for her. I'll remember to use that again if someone is in a similar situation." So thank somebody by really telling them, "This is what you've shared with me. This is what you told me. This is what I did. Here's how it helped." That's the best thank you any mentor could ask for.

Poornima: No, that sounds great. Well, thank you for sharing that with all of us.

Karen Catlin: Sure. My pleasure.

Poornima: Karen and I want to know, are there expectations that you're looking to set with your potential mentor and you're wondering how to frame them? Let us know what they are in the comments below and we'll be sure to respond to them shortly. That's it for this segment. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to receive the next and final segment on mentoring where Karen and I will be talking about how you can become an effective mentor. Ciao for now.

 

This episode of *Build* is brought to you by our sponsor, Pivotal Tracker.

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Build is produced as a partnership between Femgineer ((http://femgineer.com/) and Pivotal Tracker (http://www.pivotaltracker.com/). San Francisco video production by StartMotionMEDIA (http://www.startmotionmedia.com/design/).

Welcome to Build brought to you by Pivotal Tracker! I’m your host, Poornima Vijayashanker. 

Each Build episode consists of a series of conversations I have with innovators. Together we debunk myths and misconceptions related to building products, companies, and your career in tech.

One misconception I fell prey to early on in my career was staying heads down and waiting for someone to acknowledge my accomplishments.

The thought of tooting my own horn seemed too self-promotional. I was worried about what my teammates and boss would think.

It wasn’t until I came across people who helped me find my voice and style that I realized the disservice I had been doing to my career.

Through their guidance and support, I realized how beneficial mentors can be to your career.

While there’s been a lot of talk already about the need for mentors, in today’s segment we’re going to take a slightly different angle and explore:

• Why many resist seeking mentorship
• What is a mentor versus a sponsor
• When is mentoring appropriate
• What to expect from a mentor
• Why is it good to have a mentor 

In future segments, we’ll tackle how to effectively get a mentor, and how you can get started as a mentor!

To help us out I’ve invited Karen Catlin who is an Advocate for Women in Tech, a leadership coach, and my co-author on our book: Present! A Techie’s Guide to Public Speaking.

Transcript

Poornima: One misconception I fell prey to early on in my career was staying heads down and not talking about my accomplishments. I felt like it was too self-promotional to toot my own horn, and I worried about what my colleagues and my boss will think. It wasn't until I came across people who helped me find my voice, and told me that it was OK to share the work that I was doing, that I became more comfortable. And it was through their guidance that I realized how valuable that mentorship can be to catapulting your career.                                              

While there's been a lot of talk already around mentorship, we're gonna dive a little bit deeper. In this segment, we'll dive into why you might be resistant to getting a mentor, and in future segments we'll talk about how to effectively approach a mentor, and if you wanna be a mentor, how to go about getting started.                                              

Welcome to *Build*, brought to you by Pivotal Tracker. I'm your host, Poornima Vijayashanker. In each episode of *Build*, I'm going to be talking to innovators in tech, and together we're gonna be debunking myths and misconceptions related to building products, companies, and your career in tech. And to help us out, I've invited Karen Catlin, who is an advocate for women in tech, a leadership coach, and my co-author on our book, *Present! A Techie's Guide to Public Speaking*. Thanks so much for joining me, Karen.

Karen Catlin: Oh my gosh, it's my pleasure, Poornima, thanks for having me. 

Poornima: Yeah. This is such an exciting episode for me, 'cause you and I have been working closely for a number of years. Now, for our audience out there, I wanna go back a little bit to your days as a VP at Adobe, and walk us through what you were working on there. 

Karen Catlin: Sure, sure. So I joined Adobe through the acquisition of Macromedia, so I actually worked at those two companies for 17 years, so a big bulk of my career. And while I was the Vice President there, I ran the shared engineering services, which included things like product security, product globalization, our open source, our engineering productivity tools, accessibility work. All sorts of things that we hire deep experts in those areas, and then worked across the product teams to help them with their product releases. 

Poornima: In addition to your role as VP at Adobe, you were also mentoring a lot of people. Walk us through why you decided to do this. 

Karen Catlin: Sure. And I actually started mentoring people much earlier in my career. I remember at one point, at Macromedia, I was a program manager, and in fact I was the only program manager for the company at the time, and I worked on a very early version of Dreamweaver, which you may remember. And as other product teams started hiring program managers, I offered to help hire them and train them, and bring them up to speed. And because of that interaction, a lot of those program managers, by default, kind of started looking to me for ongoing mentorship about how to be successful in their role. So it started out really there. And then, certainly I just kept continuing to do that as I moved up with my career and into the VP level. 

Poornima: That's great that you were doing a lot of corporate mentorship, but as I know it, you also had been mentoring outside of Adobe and other companies that you worked at. Talk to us about the kind of mentorship you did outside of the company. 

Karen Catlin: Sure. So there are quite a few ways to get involved in, formal mentoring programs, I'll call it, and I do that through...for example, my alma mater, where I mentor a senior, an undergraduate, who's about to start her career, and I provide mentoring during her senior year, which is great. And I get matched with someone, and it's a nice way for me to give back to the university, as well as to learn about what a senior is going through right now in her life, and trying to figure out and navigate the career options and so forth.                                                

I also do more informal mentoring, which I like to call micro mentoring, and I do that through The Women's Club of Silicon Valley, where I've been a member of that for a number of years. I've been on their board, and I certainly love helping our members with anything that they might need some advice on, some help on. And I call it more informal because we're not matched, people just reach out to me if they have advice that they want to seek, they wanna get my experience that I've had on something. And they'll just reach out and say, "Can we get a cup of coffee, get together for lunch," something like that. So it's much more informal and kind of organic that way. 

Why is it good to have a mentor 

Poornima: So let's dive into kind of the bigger theme here, right? 'Cause I know a lot of people say that mentoring is important, but why is it even important? Like, why do we need to do this, why can't we just read books, or ask our boss, or ask our colleagues for help when we need it? 

Karen Catlin: Yeah. So first of all, I think that I enjoy mentoring because I wanna pay it forward. I want to share my experience, and help other people who might be going through similar challenges, or similar choices that they need to make, to learn from my experience. And I hate reinventing the wheel, so if I can help other people not have to reinvent the wheel themselves, if they're going through the same type of situation that I'm going through, I'd love to—or, have gone through, excuse me—I would love to share my experience with them.                                                

And this whole notion of paying it forward is one reason I mentor, but it's really a two-way street. Every time I mentor someone, I learn something from them, too—it's just not me providing my advice, I learn from them. I might learn about, you know, good new books or podcasts I should be listening to. I might learn about new productivity tools that are just, you know, a new app to do something that I had never heard off. When I was a VP I also might hear about certain challenges that people are facing, that actually helped me be a better leader, because I got intel and insight into what was going on around the organization that I might not otherwise hear about. 

When is mentoring appropriate 

Poornima: Yup. And for the mentee side, what are the benefits for them? 

Karen Catlin: Oh, sure. So the mentees, they get to have a sounding board. For example, if they are trying to decide something, get some advice, they get to hear someone else's perspective on that. They get to hear stories about a time that that mentor maybe went through something similar, and then they can learn from that. And they just might be able to take a step back from that day to day, I'm working, I'm getting stuff done, let me step back and think about what I should be doing with my career, these choices ahead of me, how I should think about a problem differently, or a situation differently. So, so many benefits to a mentee. 

What is a mentor versus a sponsor 

Poornima: I've also heard of this word, sponsor, and I'm sure some of our audience has as well, so walk us through what's the difference between a mentor versus a sponsor. 

Karen Catlin: Sure. So they're very different, although they may sometimes be the same person. But let me break it down. A mentor is someone that you might meet with to get their advice, and they should share their stories, their life experiences, their perspective on things, so that you get that insight into what they, you know, how they think about things. By contrast, a sponsor is someone who is influential at your company, or in your industry segment, and they are going to be in situations, meetings, different situations where they will find out about opportunities that they might think of you as a good person to fill. So they will open doors for you that you might not even know exist, right? So that's what a sponsor does, they know you well enough to recommend you for opportunities, and to support you that way. 

Poornima: Yeah, a little bit more directed, then. 

Karen Catlin: Yes, exactly. But you might not even know you have a sponsor. They might just be doing this behind the scenes, and opportunities are coming your way and you're not even sure why they happen. So sometimes you don't even know you have a sponsor. 

Why people are resistant to mentoring 

Poornima: Nice. Now, not everyone wants a mentor, why do you think people are resistant to seeking one? 

Karen Catlin: Yeah, so in my current role as an advocate for women who are working the tech industry, I have talked to hundreds of women about mentoring and the importance of mentors, and the two things I hear from many women—there's a theme. The first is, "Ooh, it's so awkward to go up to someone, or send a note, and say 'Hey, would you be my mentor?'" You know, that's awkward and a little intimidating, so they don't wanna do it for that reason. And then the second reason is that they think they're imposing on someone. Everyone's so busy in tech, right? Super busy, and so why would some important person wanna take any time out to help me, right? It's an imposition, and I don't wanna go there. 

Poornima: Yeah. And what would you recommend to kind of getting over those hurdles, if that's what's holding you back? 

Mentoring what to expect 

Karen Catlin: Right, right. So I like to break it down with my coaching clients, as I encourage them to find mentors in their companies, I like to break it down in terms of, be very specific about your ask. For example, let's say your goal is to file your first patent. That's a really clear goal, and there are...then you can look at, who do I respect around the organization who's filed a patent, and send a simple note saying, "Hey, I'd love to file a patent and I would like to have lunch with you to find out about your experience with patent filing." You know, just really simple, concise, direct, this is what I would like to do.                                                 

Sometimes it might be a longer term mentorship, so another example of an ask might be, "I'm very interested in growing my career to the director level. Would you mind meeting with me for three months, once a month, for half an hour or something. I'll bring the questions, you bring the advice." Right? Just be very specific about what you need. You don't even have to say mentoring, like, that feels awkward. Just say, this is my ask, can you help me?                                                 

And you'll notice with both of those, whether it's a one-off or a longer term thing, I time boxed it, right? And I think this notion of time boxing is really critical when you reach out to a mentor. If I were to say to you, "Hey Poornima, would you mentor me?" You'd be like, "What's that mean?" Like, what does that even entail? What are they asking me to do? But if I can say, "Would you meet with me for half an hour, once a month for three months," you know exactly what you're getting into, and it's a whole lot easier for you to say "Yes," or maybe, "Not right now, I'm too busy," if that's the case, right? 

How mentoring relationships evolve

Poornima: Yeah. Or, let's do a couple meetings first, and then if it works out, there's chemistry, you like what I'm saying, then maybe we'll do a full three months, but let's not get— 

Karen Catlin: Exactly. And by the way, at the end of that time box period, let's say that is a three-month, or a six-month engagement, if things are gelling and you still wanna be learning from that mentor, and the mentor wants to continue meeting with the mentee, you can continue it. You can renew it for another period of time, another six months, three months, whatever that is. Yeah. 

Poornima: Thank you so much Karen, I think that's a great place to get started with mentoring. And for all of you out there, if there was a hurdle that Karen and I didn't cover in today's segment, let us know what that is in the comments below, and we'll be sure to answer it shortly.                                                 

That's it for this segment. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to get the next segment, where we'll continue the conversation, and talk about how to get the most out of your mentorship. Ciao for now.                                                 

This episode of *Build* is brought to you by our sponsor, Pivotal Tracker.

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Build is produced as a partnership between Femgineer ((http://femgineer.com/) and Pivotal Tracker (http://www.pivotaltracker.com/). San Francisco video production by StartMotionMEDIA (http://www.startmotionmedia.com/design/). 

 

There’s been a lot of debate and controversy around the lack of women and minorities being represented in tech companies from entry-level to the C-suite and board room.

However, what isn’t showcased is how there is sisterhood within tech, where women are helping each other out, and enacting change at every level from schools to the board room.

To talk about how women are investing and encouraging each other, I’ve invited Samantha Walravens who is the co-author of the new book Geek Girl Rising: Inside the Sisterhood Shaking Up Tech.

If you’re a woman, minority, or male ally you’ll learn from Samantha how:

• Women like Maria Klawe at Harvey Mudd have tripled the number of women graduating with Computer Science degrees
• Women are connecting female founders to female angel investors and influencers to grow their startups
• Corporations are changing and disrupting the dynamics of the boardroom

 

This is the last episode of FemgineerTV but don’t worry it’s not the end...

After hosting FemgineerTV and listening to audience members like you for the past 2 ½ years, myself and my sponsor Pivotal Tracker decided it was time for a fun format!

Starting next month, I’m going to be launching a new show called Build. I think you’ll enjoy the new format for Build. Each week you’ll receive a short video on a topic to help you build a product, company, and career in tech. So stay tuned for the launch of Build :)

Want to help us get the word out about Build?

Please take a moment to leave a review on iTunes here.

If you’ve never left a review, here is a quick tutorial on how to do.

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Poornima: Welcome to another episode of *Femgineer TV*, brought to you by Pivotal Tracker, I'm your host, Poornima Vijayashanker, the founder of Femgineer.

                               

In this show, I invite innovators in tech, and together we debunk myths and misconceptions related to building tech products and companies.

                               

One of the most heated topics today is the lack of women and minorities represented in tech; from entry level, to the C suite, to the board room. While we all know this is already a problem, in today's episode, we're going to be talking about some of the solutions, and showing how there are companies and organizations enacting these solutions.

                               

And to help us out, I've invited Samantha Walravens, who is the coauthor of the latest book, *Geek Girl Rising: Inside The Sisterhood Shaking Up Tech*. Thanks so much for joining us today, Samantha.

 

Samantha: Thanks for having me!

 

Poornima: Yeah, it's wonderful.

                               

Let's start by talking about why you and your coauthor, Heather Cabot, decided to write this book.

 

Sharing The Unspoken Narrative of Women In Technology

 

Samantha: The inspiration for this book was a conversation I had about three years ago with a friend of mine, who's been in Silicon Valley for 20 years. She's a woman, she's the VP of sales in business development, and she's worked in a number of tech startups, and we were having coffee, and she said, "Sam, I cannot tell you what just happened in my performance group review, it was last week, and my manager commented on what I was wearing, the color of my dresses, the jewelry I wore, and he told me that I was too aggressive, and too bossy, and I needed to tone it down a bit." Meanwhile, she is the head of sales, and she was rocking her number out of the park. So she said, "Sam, you've got to write something." She knew I was a journalist. She said, "You've got to write something and you have to talk about this kind of discrimination and this kind of sexism in Silicon Valley."

                               

Mind you this is before the *Newsweek* article came out, "What does Silicon Valley really think of women," people were discussing women in technology, but it really was not a top of mind—and so I started to do a little digging, and researching and interviewing women. And what I found was, yes, there's sexism, there is harassment, there's discrimination, there's unconscious bias, it's there, it's a problem we need to talk about it and deal with it.

                               

But there was another narrative, another discussion that wasn't being told, which was: these women want to talk about the companies they were building, the technologies they were creating, the women who are supporting them and helping them along the way in their careers. There was this whole other narrative that was missing from the conversation that was happening in the national news media about sexism in Silicon Valley.

                               

And I thought, "we have to discuss this." So, Heather Cabot, who's my coauthor, was in New York, I'm in San Francisco, we talked, and she said, "Sam, I've been researching this topic," it was kind of a coincidence, it was like one of those weird moments of weird fate. And she said, "I've been researching this topic, let's work together." So we put our heads together and we just started digging into the topic, and it's been three years now, and finally the book is coming out!

 

The Sisterhood That Is Supporting Women In Tech in Silicon Valley And Beyond

 

Poornima: So one thing I experienced early on in my career, and it keeps me motivated, is the women who inspired me. So, early on, when I was a college student in engineering school, I had a professor, and she had twins, and she was doing her research, and she was teaching, and she was leading the department, and I thought, "If she could do it, I could do it." And as I was reading the book, I noticed the theme of the sisterhood kind of coming up again and again.

                               

Tell us how you discovered this theme as you started writing or as you were doing your research.

 

Samantha: Of course. Well, I too had a mentor back in my Silicon Valley days when I worked for a software startup during the dotcom boom in 1998 to about 2003, so I saw the dotcom boom and the bust happen, I was living through it, our company went public, stock went to 130, then went down to two, so I lived and breathed the dotcom boom and bust.

                               

My manager/boss at that point was Carol Carpenter, who has since gone on to become—she was the CEO, actually CMO of ClearSlide and then CEO of ElasticBox, so she's a prominent woman in Silicon Valley, and she really pulled me up. She really, when I was lacking confidence, and I thought, "I can't do this," I'd just had my baby, my first baby, we were going public, and I thought, "I can't do this, this is crazy." We're working 24/7 and I have a newborn at home. She was the one who said, "Sam, you can do it, you can do it." And having that kind of mentorship and that kind of woman who was going through it herself pulling me up, really encouraged me.

                               

So as we were researching the book, we started noticing these pockets around the startup universe, women who were supporting each other, investing in each other, encouraging each other in their careers and inspiring the next generation of girls and young women to pursue technology and continue their careers in technology.

 

Encouraging The Next Generation of Women To Consider Careers In Tech

 

Poornima: Yeah, that's great. I think you're absolutely right, that is a narrative that's missing from the media and more women need to know that that's out there as well, so that they don't feel like all there is is just what the media portrays.

                               

Now, the first place that you write about change happening is at the primary school up to the high school level, so walk us through what that looks like.

 

Samantha: Well, fortunately, before Obama left office, he did create an initiative, a $4 billion initiative called "Computer Science for All" that is encouraging and putting funds towards creating computer science curriculum in schools throughout the country. I was so excited to read about Rahm Emanuel in Chicago, in the Chicago public schools now, computer science is a requirement for all high schools in Chicago. So I think we're going to see more of that.

                               

When you look at the numbers, though, we still have a long way to go, cause 25% of high schools in the U.S. offer computer science, I think it's like 22% of girls, of students taking the computer science AP exam are girls, so we still have a long way to go.

                               

What we noticed, though, it's sort of this grassroots movement of women who are encouraging the younger generations to start building, to start creating, to start coding. For example, we start our book talking about Debbie Sterling, who's the founder and the CEO of Goldie Blocks, and she's got this great—I have two little girls, we have it at home, it's a great toy that encourages girls to build, and there's a really fun, positive role model, Goldie, who builds a spinning machine and she has all these sorts of engineering—you wouldn't even know it's engineering, it's really just building Ferris wheels and building merry-go-rounds and all these fun things, along with the story, talking about Goldie and her friends, and how she's building these different fun games and amusement park rides. We have that in our household.

                               

These are the kinds of things that women are doing to try to inspire the next generation. There is a woman in our book who started a company called Bitcode, she's actually working with the public schools to get them to use video to teach girls how to code. So if you have kids you know that they're on video, they're on YouTube, and they're really tech savvy. I have four kids, they can get around YouTube, and iMovie, and they're all over it. So, this tool is used in the public schools, to teach coding, using videos, to make it fun.

 

How Colleges Are Changing The Ratio Of Women Graduating With Computer Science Degrees

Poornima: It's great, yeah, it's good to see these grassroots efforts, so that even if there is kind of a gap in terms of change for public schools or the school system in general, there's ways in which parents and teachers can supplement that.

                               

So, the next place in which a lot of women and minorities drop off is at the college level, tell us who's working on changing that.

 

Samantha: Well, we had the most amazing experience at Grace Hopper in 2015. I believe you were there, and Heather and I, my coauthor and I went, and just to see, I think it was 12,000 women there in computing, and it is a true celebration. And to see the enthusiasm and the excitement and the bonding between these young women, it was so encouraging.

                               

When you look at specific colleges, there's a lot being done to encourage more women in to pursue technology and computer science. I met with Maria Klawe, who's the president of Harvey Mudd, and wow! What a firecracker she is, she skateboards around campus, she's just a really fun, wonderful woman, and she implemented a program along with her colleagues a few years ago, where there are two tracks for computer science, so as a freshman you can take the gold track or the black track.

                               

The gold track is for students who have not had any computer science experience in high school; the black track is for students who've had some experience. So, by doing this, the students who have not had experience don't feel so impostered, they don't have the confidence cause no one's had this experience, so they get through this year and I spoke to a couple of students who have taken these classes, and they say that by the end of the year, everyone's pretty much at the same level.

                               

So, she, Maria Klawe, and her team has tripled the number of women graduating with computer science degrees at Harvey Mudd in the past ten years, and the number is, I hate to throw in all these numbers, cause they get little mind boggling at times, but 55% of the computer science graduates at Harvey Mudd are now women.

 

Poornima: That's great, it's a nice change to—the numbers go up.

 

Samantha: There's also Stanford. Another example of what's going on to encourage women to pursue computer science is Stanford University, of course a top institution, but they have a Women in Tech group called She++, which was started by Ayna Agarwal, and who was not even a computer science major by the way, but she started this group to encourage women and they had a Gala, every year, which gathers all the women in technology, not just Stanford. What they do is they go out into the communities and they take on high school students in different communities around the country and they support these young high school girls to start programs in their communities. For example, I live out in Marin County, and there is a girl who started a robotics happy schooler box program in Marin City, which is an underserved community in Marin County, and she runs this afterschool program in Marin City.

                               

So all of these girls around the country who are starting these programs through She++ gather together for this gala, and I am telling you, if you could be there to see these college women, these high school girls who came, they were dressed to the nines, they were glamorous, I mean, talk about debunking the myths and breaking stereotypes about what a woman in tech looks like, I mean, we could have been in an LA nightclub, not to sound like—but they were so beautiful and wonderful and smart and excited to talk about their programs, and they were so excited to be in technology. And again, this is why Heather and I said, "This is a story that no one sees," you don't see this kind of enthusiasm around technology, you see, "Oh, it's so hard, numbers are dropping, it's all doom and gloom." And so we really wanted to tell that other story.

 

The Angel Investors And Others Who Are Supporting Female Founders

 

Poornima: OK. That brings us back to industry, and I know there's a lot going on at the corporate level, as well as startups. I'm of course partial to startups, so let's start there and talk about how the ecosystem is changing for women and minorities.

 

Samantha: There's a lot of momentum behind supporting female founders. For example, there are accelerator programs like the Women Startup Lab, which is down here at Menlo Park; there's MergeLane, which is in Colorado; there's The Refinery in Connecticut. These programs focus on female founders, and really giving them the tools, the skills they need to grow their company into a venture, fundable company. And they give the tools to learn how to pitch venture capitalists, and we all know the venture capital world is very male dominated.

 

Poornima: Yeah, it is a challenge. I know I've had my fair share of doing the fundraising.

                               

So, there's a very common problem around women and minorities getting up and pitching their business to VCs, either male VCs not getting their idea, or they don't think it's a big enough market, or there's a lot of unconscious bias around it, so how are women getting their training to get over all of that?

 

Samantha: Well, you've started a company, so you know what it's like. The founders that we've met, that I've met in my journey with this book, are so passionate about their idea. But you can have an idea, and it's not going to go anywhere—you have to have the product market fit, you have to test the idea, you have to build your team out—and so these programs are really teaching women what they need to do to get to that level, to actually pitch to investors. But when you look at the numbers, I think it's 10% of the venture funding, globally, goes to female founders—it's still a really small percentage.

                               

We've also noticed that there's women who are angels. So angel investors who fund companies at the early stages—for example, Joanne Wilson, aka Gotham Gal, who has a tremendous momentum in New York City, who has invested in a number of really great companies; Caren Maio, Nestio, Shanna Tellerman, Modsy—she finds these women, who have ideas that are big, that are scalable, and she nurtures them, and she's like the fairy godmother to these women. And there are other women that we talk about, we'd had to read the book to learn about all of them, but there are women who really take these female founders under their wing and support them on their journey.

 

Poornima: I think it's great that there are women like Joanne Wilson out there. Do you have a sense of how many companies she's invested in?

 

Samantha: Joanne Wilson has invested in around a hundred companies, and they're doing fantastic. One of them, Shanna Tellerman, started the company Modsy, which is an immersive, 3D environment for home décor, home design, and she told us that she created this project called “The Pinnacle Project,” at Park City, Utah, and it was Wednesday through Sunday, I think. And she invited Joanne, and Susan Lyne, and a bunch of angel investors, as well as a number of female founders, to come gather, network, ski, and have fun, and she said it was funny, because all the women were thinking, "We should be home, we should be working, we should be with the kids, we have so much to do," and she said she had to tell and remind people that, "This is what the guys do. They have a boys call and they pick off and it's all about business, whereas women don't have that sense of, “Let's go out to ski, or golf,” and that kind of networking, so it was an example of this pinnacle project, which is going to happen recurring every year, of, "OK, women, we can get together, have fun together, network, introduce each other to investors and influencers, and have fun while we're doing it. It's OK."

 

Poornima: Yeah. That's fantastic. And I think another thing you had mentioned pipeline ventures, or pipeline angels?

 

Samantha: Pipeline angels, yes, yes. Natalia Oberti Noguera is a force of nature and she started this angel investing group for women and I went through it and Heather went through it. I did it in San Francisco, Heather did it in New York, and basically it's a training, it's a bootcamp or a training program for women who are credited investors, to learn how to invest in female and minority-led companies. So it walked us through the process of how do you set evaluation on a company, what do you look for in a startup that you're investing in, what kind of traits you want to look for in the team, what's going to make this a good investment. So it trains women to invest as angels, and then you actually make an investment at the end.

                               

We made an investment in a great startup—which I believe is still hush hush, underground at this point—but I believe we made a great investment and we're following the course of these early stage female founders, and it's really her goal to change the face of angel investing, to increase the amount of money going towards these early stage female founders.

 

Poornima: As we were doing research for your book and when I was reading it, I noticed that there was some astonishing findings, like only 11 companies that were founded by African-American women have received funding over a million dollars. So walk us through who is working to change this.

 

Samantha: Well, that number has actually increased, it's now 13 companies that have received more than a million dollars, but the numbers are still really low. One woman who is really on top of this problem is Kathryn Finney, who is the founder of DigitalUndivided, which is an organization whose main purpose is to increase the number of women, minorities in the tech world, latino women, and black women founders, and she just recently launched an accelerator, in Atlanta, Georgia, called the Big Innovation Center, and I think their first cohort is gathering this year to help skill up and prepare these minority founders to raise money.

 

How Tech Companies Are Growing Up And Changing How The Nature of Work

 

Poornima: So let's switch gears, and talk about corporations. We previously had Lisen Stromberg on the show, talking about the changes that were happening for parents—what have you seen?

 

Samantha: Well, what we've noticed is that Silicon Valley is growing up. They are trading in their ping-pong tables and foosball tables for nursing rooms, which is inspiring to see. When I started out, I had my Medela Pump in Style in a cold bathroom out of the courtyard of our startup, so it wasn't pretty, but we spent a day at Eventbrite not too long ago, and Julia Hartz, who's now the CEO of Eventbrite, it's very focused on woman, developing women in leadership positions and allowing for work-life balance. And I say that word, “work-life balance,” a term that is loaded, what she's trying to do with that company is focus on the whole person, not just the employee self.

                               

For example, they have a program called “Take the time you need.” So if you need time to care for a child or to care for an adult, you can work from home, you can take time off, so she's really interested in her employees, and telling her employees, "You can do what you need to do, so you can live a life and you can be an employee."

                               

And she also tells the women who are having babies at her company, she says, "You know what? You can get through the first six to nine months," it gets a lot easier, because a lot of women when they have their babies early on, they think, “I can't leave this poor creature alone with a daycare with a babysitter,” and she says, “If you can just get through that”—she's got two little girls herself—”If you can just get through that time, stick with it, come back, and we will support you while you're doing it,” which is fantastic.

 

Poornima: You also showcase companies like Power to Fly. Walk us through what Power to Fly is.

 

Samantha: Yeah, Power to Fly was started by Milena Berry and Katharine Zaleski. Katharine actually wrote an article apologizing to all the mothers out there. Before she had children, she was a little bit judgemental of mothers taking time off and having to leave work early, and then she had her first baby and she thought, "Oh, my gosh, this is really hard," so she and Milena got together and started this company, Power to Fly, which connects women with remote and flexible job positions, so they can actually care for their family and pursue careers in technology. The great thing about technology is that it can be done remotely. Especially if you're in coding, you don't have to be in an office 24/7, so Power to Fly works on that.

                               

Another great program is Tina Lee started a program called MotherCoders, and she's based in San Francisco, a fabulous woman, her program retrains mothers in tech skills, so they can go off and they can—either they've taken time off or they have background in some other field, they can skill up in technology, and go out and get the tremendous amount of jobs that are available in technology as they get back to work.

 

Disrupting The Boardroom

 

Poornima: Well, that brings us to the boardroom, so walk us through what changes are happening there.

 

Samantha: The number of women holding board seats in our country is still very, very low, I think the number is 18% of board seats at Fortune 500 companies are held by women. So we still have a long way to go.

                               

One real pioneer in this area is a woman, her name is Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, she's fabulous, she is the CEO and founder of a company called Joyus, a tech company, and she, a few years ago penned an article called "Tech Women Choose Possibility." And she really wanted to profile the women in Silicon Valley, in the startup world, who are doing great things, just founding great companies. There was a lot of positive response to that article, and so she created an organization called #choosepossibility.

                               

Part of that organization is a group called, or an initiative called "The Boardlist." And basically it's a matchmaking tool that matches qualified, board-ready women with startup, tech companies, looking to fill board seats with women, so she made that happen, and they placed three women on the board, which it seems like it's very low, but what they're doing is they're connecting the VCs and the startup companies with these women, and a lot more placements have been made not directly through the platform, but just through the connections that have been made on this platform.

 

Poornima: OK, great, so it's good to know that there is some change happening at the board level as well.

                               

Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Samantha, I know our viewers out there are going to enjoy reading your book, *Geek Girl Rising*. And for our viewers who are women, minority, and allies, is there anything else you would like to share with them in terms of resources?

 

Samantha: Yeah. I would love to see everybody come to our website. We have a gazillion resources

on how you can join the digital revolution, just take a peek.

 

Poornima: Thanks for tuning in today and special thanks to our sponsor, Pivotal Tracker, for their help in producing this episode of *Femgineer TV*. If you've enjoyed this episode, then please be sure to share it with your friends, your teammates, your boss, and everyone so that they get to benefit from all the great resources, and subscribe to our channel to receive the next episode.                               

Ciao for now!

--

FemgineerTV is produced as a partnership between Femgineer and Pivotal Tracker. San Francisco video production by StartMotionMEDIA.

There are a lot of people who want to change their career later in life. They want to do more challenging work, earn more money, and have a better lifestyle. Given the growing need of technical talent in the US, it would see like a technical career would be a great choice, right?

Unfortunately despite the dearth of technical talent, many people are wary because of the misconception that transitioning into a technical career later in life is just too hard. Another is, as you start to fall behind on your technical skills, it’s hard to play catch up!

Hence, a lot of people struggle to stay relevant.

Piling on career pauses like parenthood make it even harder!

However, the growing number of retraining programs, bootcamps, and online education options are looking to cater to busy people who are eager to transition into a technical position.

In today’s episode we’ll talk to Tina Lee, who is actively is working to change these misconceptions with her nonprofit MotherCoders, which helps moms on-ramp to technical careers in the new economy.

You’ll learn from Tina:

• Why people get put on the mommy track and how it does a disservice to women who want to continue to pursue their careers
• Why technical skills are crucial for employment and why Tina is focused on helping mothers acquire them
• Why companies shouldn’t withhold investing in a retraining program and how it can benefit employees and employers attract and retain top technical talent

Show Notes

Check out MotherCoders at http://www.mothercoders.org/ 

FemgineerTV is produced as a partnership between Femgineer ((http://femgineer.com/) and Pivotal Tracker (http://www.pivotaltracker.com/). San Francisco video production by StartMotionMEDIA (http://www.startmotionmedia.com/design/).

 

Full Transcript

Poornima:         Welcome to another episode of *Femgineer TV*, brought to you by Pivotal Tracker. I'm your host, Poornima Vijayashanker, the founder of Femgineer. In this show, I host innovators in tech and together we debunk myths and misconceptions related to building tech products and companies. One common misconception I come across a lot is how challenging it can be to pursue a technical career midway through your career.            

Another is that it's really hard once you've lost track of your technical skills, or they've gotten rusty, to get back on track. One woman, Tina Lee, is working to change this misconception. She is the founder of MotherCoders, a nonprofit, that helps moms on ramp to technical careers in the new economy. Thanks for joining us, Tina.

Tina Lee:            Thanks for having me.

Poornima:         Yeah. So, I know you and I met about a year ago at a conference, but I'm not too familiar with your background. Why don't you just tell us a little bit about how you got started.

Tina Lee:            So, I started this journey towards having a technical career when I became a management consultant coming out of college. I helped implement large, enterprise-level IT systems and from there I kind of had this epiphany that tech was going to play a major role in business, and it was just a matter of time before the rest of the world was going to be transformed by it as well, and then after that I did technical recruiting. I spent some time in grad school studying education technology, and then ended up working on behalf of nonprofits and government and helping them use technology better to meet their goals.

Poornima:         So that's great that you've had all this exposure to technology in your career. What ultimately inspired you to start MotherCoders?

Tina Lee:            Well, like a lot of people who are inspired to make change, it came from a deep place of pain.

Poornima:         Yeah, what was your pain?

Tina Lee:            So, I had been trained to do simple things, build simple things: HTML, CSS, a little bit of JavaScript. I even tried learning Ruby for a while. And it was fine until I had my second child, right? The programs that are available to beginners usually happen on the evenings or on the weekend or online. And I felt like because I had just had a baby, my second one, I felt very isolated. So, doing it online felt very lonely and I couldn't make these in-person classes anymore, so out of that I had this vision of like, you know what? I cannot be the only mother, a new mother, who’s experiencing this. I should just organize kind of an informal meet up because my grandmother had met me.                            

I had envisioned maybe some grandmas here on the corner and then we'd be doing our thing here. And ultimately what happened was I had so many women that filled out this informal Google Poll that I had about their interest level that I said, "OK. There's enough there to do something more organized." So I ran a pilot out of a co-working space that was empty on Saturdays and just happened to be next to an onsite child care facility center.

Poornima:         Wow.

Tina Lee:            Yeah. So that we were able to run the classes in the conference rooms and then have the kids be cared for by professional caregivers in a setting that was set up for them.

Poornima:         That's awesome. So you really saw the opportunity. One as like a personal pain point that you experienced but then after you do this experiment there were a number of women who were interested. And then from that point, how did you transition into making it the nonprofit that it is today?

Tina Lee:            So, I'm all about failing fast and rocket prototyping. So that was kind of my way of experimenting with this model. And because so many women had reached out, ones who could not participate in the pilot for one reason or another, I knew that there were moms out there that were hungry. And once you dig deeper into the numbers it collaborates that, right? I know you had Lisen Stromberg on the show recently and you look at the numbers about how many millennia women are about to become mothers, right? A million a year for the next 10 years or so. And then you look at how millennia women are going to be the largest and the most educated demographic ever, right? And then you look at who’s already a mom now.                               

There's just tremendous opportunity to help moms who are either stuck on the sidelines and they want to get into tech but can't. Or they're in a job where they're not touching it and they want to move up. This is a great way to activate them and give them a skill set that will help them stay competitive. And we even have entrepreneurs who feel like they need a bigger tool set. They want like a wider understanding of how the ecosystem’s working so they can really launch their ventures. They come to us for that understanding and then also the community, too. That's a big part of what we do is the community because like I said being a mom is very isolating.

Poornima:         Yeah that's fantastic. I'm sure some of our viewers out there who are entrepreneurs will be interested to learn a little bit more. So it’s great that there are going to be all these millennial women who are becoming mothers but I know there's still a problem when it comes to leadership, and as you and I have noticed, within tech itself only 26% of women hold computing jobs. So, how do you think MotherCoders is helping with that?

Tina Lee:            Well, couple of things. One, we've kind of discussed this a lot which is a pipeline issue. Yes. We could be graduating more women with degrees in computer science or engineering but we also do a terrible job as a society of helping women thrive once they become mothers, right? No one ever says the term “working dad.” We just assume that—

Poornima:         That's true.

Tina Lee:            —you're going to be working.

Poornima:         Yeah.

Tina Lee:            But for mothers, I think as a society, culturally, we're still very ambivalent about how we feel about women working outside the home once they become mothers, but if you think about it, mothers are the people that you work with, right? They're the people sitting around you and they're your cohort next to you that's going to be taking over this role. It’s just the workplace is not set up to help women succeed, right? The IT worker is all in, all the time.

Poornima:         Right.

Tina Lee:            And if you have caregiving responsibilities, that's impossible, right? And women are kind of pressured to make a choice because there are not...there just aren't the social support systems, right? School lets out at 3.

Poornima:         Yeah.

Tina Lee:            There's no paid parental leave, right? And a lot of companies are just starting to experiment with flexible work hours, right? So all these things make it very difficult for women who feel like they want to prioritize their families and of course at the same time they're made to choose.

Poornima:         Yep. I do remember in Lisen Stromberg's interview we talked about this caregiving bias. So it’s great that you touched upon it. I think you also mentioned in a talk earlier the mommy tax versus the fatherhood bonus. Walk us through why this disparity exists.

 

Tina Lee:            Oh man, we're going to get sad. OK. So, because of this ideal worker model, right? You're expected to go in all the time. Once you become a mother, everyone knows what that means and what that looks like, right? Based on our certain circumstances. Our current set of circumstances. So, automatically men and women will think, "OK. So this person is either going to be downshifting their careers or they're going to drop out altogether." Right? "And if they do stay they're probably not going to go all in. So let’s put them on the mommy track." So, women aren't left with that many choices right? So the way I frame the mommy tax is that automatically you're considered less valuable.

                               

Right? And that will represent...that will manifest itself in salary negotiations, in having projects that will help you reach the next level, in helping you maybe make connections or professional development that will bring you to the next level. So there's a tax not only in real terms in salary but also a tax in terms of the opportunity cost.

 

Poornima:         Right.

 

Tina Lee:            Of what you could have done if you didn't become a mother in the eyes of the employer. Now it’s such a powerful bias that women who aren't even mothers get hit by it right? I mean how many stories have we heard of women walking in to pitch their companies or trying to get a job and they say, “Are you going to be pregnant?” Or, “You're married, do you plan to have kids anytime soon?” Not only is that illegal.

 

Poornima:         Yeah.

 

Tina Lee:            That automatically kind of primes everyone in the room to think like, "Oh, right. You're a woman. There's a high chance that you'll become a mother and you're just going to peace out at some point and why should we invest in you." Right? So that's the motherhood penalty. On the flip side, the opposite is happening to men. "Oh! You're going to become a dad? This means you're going to be...you're going to be going in even harder because now you're responsible for caring for a family, right? You should be given the best projects because you really need to get to the next level. And you really should get a salary bump because now you're responsible for all these people."

 

Poornima:         Yeah.

 

Tina Lee:            So it’s just a very unfair situation where women are getting hit by this mommy tax and dads are not. And women are already a lot of times behind because of the gender pay gap that they came into before all this even happened.

 

Poornima:         Right.

 

Tina Lee:            Oh and for every child that you have, additional child, you get hit a little bit more.

 

Poornima:         What can we do to sort of alleviate this? Or what...what can people do to sort of empower themselves?

 

Tina Lee:            Well, I think we need to talk about it in several levels, right? One is the individual level. One may be at the company level. And then one at a society level. So I'm going to start personal. Personally, I think one of the strategies that I've employed is you really have to take stock of your own capacity.

 

Poornima:         Mm-hmm.

 

Tina Lee:            What are my goals? What are my passions? What do I want to do? What capacity do I have in terms of caregiving? Do I have family to help me out? Do I have friends? Do I live in a community where there's support systems? So all of these things have to be taken into consideration. And I specifically stayed in a neighborhood in San Francisco that has a high density of in-home child care providers, and preschools, and great elementary schools to kind of situate myself where I would have these resources available to me. Other people move in, their parents.

 

Poornima:         Yeah.

 

Tina Lee:            Other people move closer to their parents. Everyone has a different situation, right? And I'm lucky in that I have a great partner. So all of these things help me succeed. But on a company level, what would make it even better, as I mentioned earlier, some flexible schedules. If I have a role where I pretty much can do work without being physically in the office, I should be allowed to do that, right?

 

Poornima:         Yep.

 

Tina Lee:            And if I happen to work with other people who are caregiving, not just kids but for their parents, or they happen to do other things in the community, they should be given that right, too. So having this flexibility actually benefits everyone in the company.

 

Poornima:         Yeah.

 

Tina Lee:            Paid parental leave is huge, right? And also really thinking about how to combat that implicit bias against women and mothers, right? And that kind of speaks to the larger problem of the societal expectation that women are expected to provide caregiving and men are not, that women should stay home after they have kids, right?

 

Poornima:         Yeah.

 

Tina Lee:            And the reality is that our society's changing, women are more educated, they're working. Forty-five percent of families with kids under 18 now have two working parents working full time to stay afloat, right? And so the reality is that we need to change some policies around how we support parents in general, caregivers in general. And I'm really glad that people like Sheryl Sandberg through *Lean In*, Emily Slaughter through her books, and then Lisa, too, are really tackling this societal piece because we can't change. We're not going to see change until we have culture change and I think that's a long-term thing that needs to happen.

 

Poornima:         So let’s bring it back to the struggle to stay relevant, right? You take a pause for parenthood, or you downshift, or maybe you don't even downshift, but there's this perception that you are downshifting. So I think it’s great that there are retraining programs like yours. How do you see these programs evolving overtime?

 

Tina Lee:            I don't know.

 

Poornima:         Yeah.

 

Tina Lee:            That's the honest answer.

 

Poornima:         OK.

 

Tina Lee:            I don't know, because—

 

Poornima:         But you see people embracing them?

 

Tina Lee:            Yes, people are embracing them, but I think we're at the beginning stages of just having this consciousness that tech is moving really fast.

 

Poornima:         Yeah.

 

Tina Lee:            We live in this world where you have to continuously learn in order to stay relevant whether you're a caregiver or not, right?

 

Poornima:         Right.

 

Tina Lee:            That's why companies invest in professional development budgets and provide access to online training courses or learning plans. So I think we as a society know that people need to stay fresh on top of the skills and understand how fast things are changing in the industries, right? And that's why they invest in the professional development piece, but they also will have to come up with new ways of providing those to people who may not have the capacity to go to the one-week conference.

 

Poornima:         Yeah.

 

Tina Lee:            Or the “take three months off to learn how to become a full-stack web developer” type of programs, right? Those all-in programs are going to be very challenging for people with caregiving responsibilities and that's why you don't see an influx of caregivers in those types of boot camps or in online learning, right?

 

Poornima:         Yeah.

 

Tina Lee:            Because as I spent time in ED School, I know that learning is very social and I'm a big believer that context is important. It’s great if you learn how to speak French by yourself, at home, in front of a computer but if—

 

Poornima:         No, I tried that. I have a terrible accent.

 

Tina Lee:            But yeah it would be better if you had actually visited France.

 

Poornima:         Right.

 

Tina Lee:            If you understood French culture and maybe even had some French friends and had a French meal. So it brings it all together and that's kind of the experience that we aim for because it’s not just the skills. It has to happen in context.

 

Poornima:         Yeah. So why teach these technical skills? Why not just get people to get better at management skills or some of the other softer skills? Why do you want to focus on tech skills?

 

Tina Lee:            I think tech is transforming our economy. It’s just going to be one of those things that we take for granted, right? And having that literacy is going to empower you to think about your own industry differently. And it’s going to impact the way you approach a problem differently. And I think once moms gain that level of tech literacy, it just gives them a level of confidence to approach this new phase in their life differently because a world of opportunity will open up, right? I think before in the beginning, when things were still very technical to the point where you had to have a bachelor’s or a master’s degree to understand it, then it was less accessible.

                               

But now we're at the point where we've automated a lot of these things and made it a little bit more friendly. And I think if you're really going to innovate, it's just as important to understand the problems in the industry and then figure out the technical piece that goes along with that. And I think there's enough room for everyone to participate in that exercise.

 

Poornima:         So why don't we talk a little bit about the type of people you see coming to your program, other coders—are these people that are outside of tech? Or are they people within tech who maybe were on the business side and then wanted to transition into the technical side?

 

Tina Lee:            So, after running five cohorts now, some patterns are emerging, right? We mainly see women who are working moms and they want to get technical but can't find a solution that works with them because of scheduling or child care issues. They know that their path to career advancement requires them to gain this new skill set, right? So they want access to it and we provide that for them. Another group of moms who come to us, like you mentioned earlier, they may have stepped out for a little bit. A year, six months, some even 10 years, right? And they're just looking for a refresh. To figure out a way to connect their passions to a path forward.

 

And then the last group, these are entrepreneurs who have an idea for an app or they are already on their way to building a company and they just realize, like, "Hey, I'm kind of stuck now and I can't proceed without a grander understanding of what it is I'm trying to do and how to go about it." And so they come to us. So those are kind of the three groups that we see. In terms of industry background, they just run across the gamut. We have moms who worked in a startup only on the operations side. So they wanted to get closer to moms who were scientists, who are working in a lab. And they're like you know what? I actually want to do something else because it enables me to be more creative. So just really all over the map in terms of industry background.

 

Poornima:         And how do you go about doing the teaching?

 

Tina Lee:            So, we have a three-pronged approach. As I mentioned before, it’s not just the technical skills.

 

Poornima:         Sure.

 

Tina Lee:            So, we teach a little bit of code. All the moms are taught HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to build a basic website and how to launch it, but the goal of that really is to give them a taste of it, to see how it feels to build something and put it out into the world, and to really check themselves. “Do I like this enough to keep going?”

 

Poornima:         Yeah.

 

Tina Lee:            Right? Or, “Is this enough? Or do I pivot?” The second piece that goes along with that is the community piece. So we bring in women from the field, like yourself, and we create this community not only of people who could mentor them, but people who provide access to job opportunities. And then of course they have each other.

 

Poornima:         Yeah.

 

Tina Lee:            Right? They can go to conferences together. They can just go to a café and help each other. And having that nerd mom comradery is really essential to success because, sometimes in the middle of the night and there's no one else there, you can feel like you can ping someone.

 

Poornima:         Right.

 

Tina Lee:            And then the last piece that we do, right, technical, community, and the last piece is the childcare piece, right? And that childcare piece really helps moms figure out in a safe space if this is something they want to go further. Right? And I would also argue that another piece of it is context. Although it’s hard to explain to people what I mean by that. What I mean by that is all of this is happening within context of what we see in everyday life and that piece of context is provided by the community, right? You come in and explain we use agile and that's what it means in our shop.

 

Poornima:         Yeah.

 

Tina Lee:            Or we believe in rapid prototyping and design thinking and that's how it works in our shop. Right? So all of these things are relevant. Not just the building part or not just the hanging-out-with-your-people part.

 

Poornima:         So that's great. So how do you pick a cohort?

 

Tina Lee:            We pick a cohort the way I would build a team.

 

Poornima:         OK.

 

Tina Lee:            So because...before I used to be a technical rep, I spent some time being a recruiter, and having that safe space for learning is really important. And I realize how hard it is to do this when you are a mother as well. So I work with my board and we have several steps to our application process, the last one of which is an in-person interview.

 

Poornima:         OK.

 

Tina Lee:            Where we really talk to the moms. “Are we right for you? Are you ready for this?” Because a lot of learning will have to happen outside of the classroom too, right? So they have to have capacity and they have to be really clear about why they're doing it because otherwise you're not going to stick to it and it's not going to feel like you achieved something at the end, right? So we walk them through that. And it’s worked out pretty well. All the moms come together and I think because being a mother is such a democratizing experience they all show up as people who are there to support each other, and want to learn together, and move forward together.

 

Poornima:         So walk us through what a day in the life of MotherCoders looks like.

 

Tina Lee:            Sure.

 

Poornima:         For your students.

 

Tina Lee:            So, Saturday only classes right? You would go...you would drop off your baby. So we have a half an hour transition time. It takes a while to explain have they eaten, have they slept, all that stuff.

 

Poornima:         Right.

 

Tina Lee:            So you hand off to the caregiver and you're in your seat by 10:00 right?

 

And then you learn until noon. And then we have lunch together. We always have lunch catered because it's such a special time and they have to bond. And a lot of times we'll have speakers there too, right, who will stay and hang out with them. So it’s a great time to just kind of network and talk. And then after lunch they learn some more. And then around 3, we leave half an hour for reflection. So I'm big on you learn, but at the end of the day, you have to pause and really connect what happened to how you're feeling about it and how it connects to your own understanding of the work, OK? And then after that they pick up their kid and then they go.

 

Poornima:         OK.

 

Tina Lee:            In terms of content, it will vary by day. We have specific build days where people just get together and they build and we help you work through your wireframes and your issues. There are days when we have lectures. We don't really have a lot of lectures. We have “discussions,” I should call them. And then there are other days when we have guest speakers who come in and they talk about a topic that they want to talk about, or they do a workshop, or something I've been doing is I've been pairing a cyber security info sec expert with data scientists.

 

Poornima:         Yeah.

 

Tina Lee:            So on one side you have data scientists who want like all the data, and then the other side you have people who are in charge of the data or making sure they're following the rules about data and saying, "Whoa." So that's been a very illuminating conversation, too. So we've been doing stuff like that.

 

Poornima:         That sounds great. So how many people have you graduated? You mentioned you have

five cohorts coming who have gone through the program?

 

Tina Lee:            Thirty-four so far.

 

Poornima:         Great. OK.

 

Tina Lee:            Yeah we're really delighted because 34 moms represents families, right?

 

Tina Lee:            And there is over 50 kids. And another way to think about this is we've placed 34 stem role models.

 

Poornima:         Oh, great.

 

Tina Lee:            Right? Into homes. They are inspiring our next generation of kids. Right? So not only are these women changing the trajectory of their own family like right now, their kids are going to be impacted, too. So we're really looking at this from a multi-generational perspective.

 

Poornima:         Yeah. That's fantastic. So what are some immediate outcomes that you see from them graduating in the program?

 

Tina Lee:            Jobs!

 

Poornima:         Yeah.

 

Tina Lee:            They're getting jobs.

 

Poornima:         Good. OK.

 

Tina Lee:            They're getting jobs in tech, right?

 

Poornima:         Yeah.

 

Tina Lee:            So we have moms who have become front end engineers. We have moms who have become mobile app developers. We have moms who have become user experience designers. Some have been promoted, of course, because now they have this new tool kit. And then we have other moms who are proceeding with their startup dreams. So potentially, right, we have entrepreneurs out there. So, this has been really exciting to see them grow.

 

Poornima:         That's great. So it’s a lot of variety of outcomes but all pretty positive.

 

Tina Lee:            Mm-hmm.

 

Poornima:         So how do you measure success for MotherCoders?

 

Tina Lee:            Right now the way we're measuring success is completion.

 

We're also looking at how diverse we are in terms of the people that we have in our classes. Right? I'm an intersectional feminist.

 

Poornima:         Yeah.

 

Tina Lee:            Eighty-one percent of women become moms and if companies are really worried about diversity? I'm like, “Come to me, because we have queer moms, we have moms that emigrated from other countries, like just everybody.” We just think about it racially, religiously, geographically, right? So the way we measure success—there's a piece of the diversity piece, and then there's a completion piece, and then we're starting to track not only who got jobs or who got promoted, but how much did they increase their income?

 

Poornima:         Oh, great.

 

Tina Lee:            Or earning potential? Right?

 

And that's been tricky because we've been running cohorts and it takes time. And different moms have different capacities, as I mentioned. And some of them have kids, again.

 

Poornima:         Sure.

 

Tina Lee:            Because moms do. So, we're trying to figure out a way to tell that story better but just anecdotally because there are only 34 moms, I keep pretty close tabs on them.

 

Poornima:         Yeah.

 

Tina Lee:            I know that they are making more money because some are buying new homes.

 

Poornima:         OK.

 

Tina Lee:            Some are buying new other things.

 

Poornima:         Yeah.

 

Tina Lee:            And they're updating their LinkedIn profiles and LinkedIn tells me that, right?

 

Poornima:         Sure.

 

Tina Lee:            So we know that they're getting skills, getting new jobs, buying homes, and on top of that, starting businesses.

 

Poornima:         So I love that you care about this diversity piece, and I do, too. So I'm going to ask you this question: What about Father Coders? You know there's a lot of stay-at-home dads that's becoming less and less of a stigma, but would you ever be open to allowing men to come in and participate in your program?

 

Tina Lee:            Not in the foreseeable future.

 

Poornima:         OK.

 

Tina Lee:            And here’s why, right? The reason why we don't do Father Coders is exactly the same reasons why we do MotherCoders, right?

 

Poornima:         OK.

 

Tina Lee:            Think about it from a kind of a cultural perspective.

 

I have actually gone to meetups and programs. They're very friendly. Not that they're not friendly to women, but in terms of belonging, I think women have a harder time feeling a sense of belonging in those spaces, right? And you walk into a room and you don't see anyone who looks like you...it's very intimidating and there's a lot of trepidation around going back again.

 

So we create this safe space where we know that women will find inviting, right? And I think mothers specifically have a very unique set of challenges, right? That go beyond just being a woman, right? The scheduling, the feeling of pressure to be the perfect mom, and the perfect spouse, and the perfect worker, all the perfect things, right? And then on top of that picking up skills and working in an industry that's predominantly men is very intimidating, right?

 

Poornima:         OK.

 

Tina Lee:            So all of that comes together in MotherCoders. And I understand that fathers have the same challenges with scheduling, but I bet you they would feel less trepidation walking into a space that was designed more for someone without the challenges that moms have.

 

And we actually have had conversations with women who come up to me and say, "I'm not a mother but I care for a family member. Can I come?"

 

Poornima:         Yeah.

 

Tina Lee:            So I can see at some point that we rethink our structure.

 

Poornima:         Oh I see. Right.

 

Tina Lee:            But we exist for the same reason that Hackbright exists and Women's Colleges exist.

 

I graduated out of a Women's College. So all of those things still stand and until we kind of break apart some of those barriers to women I think I need to keep doing what I'm doing now.

 

Poornima:         Thank you so much for coming on the show. Is there anything else you'd like to share with our audience before we end?

 

Tina Lee:            Yes, I would love to share with you kind of my pie-in-the-sky kind of vision that I'm working towards, right? Women from all all over the U.S. and the world reach out to me and ask when we're coming to their communities.

 

Poornima:         OK. Yeah.

 

Tina Lee:            So I know there's a desire for this type of training program all over and we're trying to figure out a way to get there. And we envision ourselves being in any community that wants to have a MotherCoders but, because, you'd know, technology varies by geography, and industry, and all these different things. We want to design a program that's thoughtful enough and flexible enough where they can design it to fit their local conditions, right? To fit the needs of their local employers so that moms will have a place to move to. So we are moving towards that. We are actively fundraising towards that.

 

And the reason that we're a nonprofit is because we're committed to helping women who cannot afford to pay $10,000 for Bootcamp or they're not sure if they want to invest in that even before having tried out something more preliminary. So we are working towards a vision where we're all across America, if not the world, so that we could help women everywhere as they transition into being moms and thrive in the workplace.

 

Poornima:         Great. So how can we help you with that?

 

Tina Lee:            Well, help us get our word out. This is great, right?

 

Help us send moms who are interested in taking our program to us. I would also love it if employers who are worried about retaining moms that they have to provide professional development for them through us. And then also figure out a way to maybe work with us to develop programs or return ships where women who may have stepped off want to get a refresh and then go back.

 

Poornima:         Yeah.

 

Tina Lee:            So those are great ways. And then of course, we're always looking for donations, always looking for sponsorships. So many ways to partner with us and everything can be found on our website.

 

Poornima:         Wonderful. Well we'll be sure to include the link to it.

 

Tina Lee:            Thank you.

 

Poornima:         Thank you again for joining us, Tina. Thank you for tuning in today and special thanks to our sponsor, Pivotal Tracker, for their help in producing this episode of *Femgineer TV*. If you've enjoyed this episode, then please be sure to share it with your friends, your team, your employer, and of course, all the mothers that you know to get the word out. And be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel to receive the next episode of *Femgineer TV*. Ciao for now.

 

 

If your company doesn’t produce a hockey stick graph for growth by the end of the first year, you’ve done something wrong. Don’t expect it to become one of the fastest-growing companies, just shut it down!

Seems drastic, no?

Sadly, that’s what many founders are led to believe.

The truth is, it can take several years to really figure things out. Some of the fastest-growing companies today began really slowly.

To debunk the myths around how long it takes to really see significant growth, I’ve invited Ooshma Garg, the CEO and Founder of Gobble.

Gobble is a weekly dinner-kit delivery service that helps busy people cook dinner in just 10 minutes with one pan. It is growing quickly, doing $100M in sales. But it didn’t happen overnight. It took 3+ years of twists and turns through the trough of sorrow.

This is one of my favorite episodes because Ooshma does a great job of talking openly about issues that many founders struggle with like:

- why you should pursue your idea, even when you don’t have a funding or a technical co-founder

- what to do when your lead engineer leaves right before you launch;

- why finding product/market fit is really about becoming an expert in the field

- transitioning from a bespoke service to a product that scales;

- how to deal with competitors that creep up on you

- how to deal with the criticism of going at your own pace

- why it’s OK to go back to investors that had initially rejected your idea

- how to put aside your ego and do what is best for your company.

--

FemgineerTV is produced as a partnership between Femgineer ((http://femgineer.com/) and Pivotal Tracker (http://www.pivotaltracker.com/). San Francisco video production by StartMotionMEDIA (http://www.startmotionmedia.com/design/).

Two common pieces of startup advice that get doled out are you need to be in Silicon Valley to start your startup, and you need to cater to customers in the US market.

That’s a tall order considering the rising cost of housing, the war on tech talent, and a number of challenges facing immigrant entrepreneurs (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SybHtHG6gcA).

Plus it’s simply not true. There are a number of startups that are starting up and succeeding outside Silicon Valley (http://femgineer.com/2016/05/myths-overcome-idea-to-global-product/).

To help debunk this myth and others, I’ve invited Marina Mogilko (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAQg09FkoobmLquNNoO4ulg) who is the co-founder of LinguaTrip (https://linguatrip.com/en/), an online marketplace that connects language learners around the world to language schools.

What you’ll learn from Marina in this episode:

- How Marina and her co-founder came up with the idea for LinguaTrip, and began it as an offline business.
- How they transitioned from offline to online.
- How they attracted customers outside the US.
- Why they decided to hold off on coming to Silicon Valley, and how it benefited them in building a profitable business that wasn’t beholden to receiving investment.

Listen to the episode on iTunes

You can listen to this episode of FemgineerTV on iTunes (https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/femgineertv/id1032969327?mt=2). Please take a moment to leave us a review. Your positive review will help us get featured in News & Noteworthy and bring more exposure to the work we’re doing, as well as the talented guests we feature!

--

FemgineerTV is produced as a partnership between Femgineer ((http://femgineer.com/) and Pivotal Tracker (http://www.pivotaltracker.com/). San Francisco video production by StartMotionMEDIA (http://www.startmotionmedia.com/design/).

Many of us think of a career as the period between college graduation and retirement. We’ve bought into the myth that taking a pause is considered a career killer because to truly be successful we have to keep working!

As a result, many companies both large and small have developed a work-first culture that operates 24/7.

But what if we want more from life than just work?

I’m not talking about work and life balance.

I mean taking a REAL pause that is longer than a weekend or a month vacation and isn’t tied to work taking a sabbatical from work to write a book, travel, start a company, or go back to school.

I mean pausing just for a life goal, like pausing for parenthood.

Is it even possible and can we do it without killing our careers?

Well to help us answer this question, I’ve invited Lisen Stromberg who is the CEO & Founder of Prism Work, a culture innovation consultancy. She and her team partner with companies, leaders, and advocates to innovate the workplace so the next generation isn’t forced to choose between work and family. Lisen is also the author of the new book Work Pause Thrive: How to Pause for Parenthood Without Killing Your Career.

In this episode you’ll learn the following from Lisen:

• Why we should consider planning a pause in our career

• Why one of the reasons we don’t pause for parenthood is the stigma behind caregiving

• How our current work culture puts a strain on fathers

• Why pausing isn’t a career killer and many go on to thrive after their pause

FemgineerTV is produced as a partnership between Femgineer and Pivotal Tracker. San Francisco video production by StartMotionMEDIA.

 

It’s the start of a new year, and you’re probably really excited to run some experiments for your startup or company.

Since you’re keen on trying a lot of things, you’re probably going to be saying yes a lot!

Saying yes is a great way to show others that we’re open to trying new things, taking in feedback, and making time for them.

However, when we say yes over and over we start to lose our focus. If we do it too many times, it can be disastrous, especially when time is of the essence and we are trying to get something off the ground, like a startup!

So today we’re going to flip things around learn a simple and tactical way to say NO.

And to teach us how to say NO the right way, I’ve invited Steli Efti: https://twitter.com/Steli, who is the CEO & Co-Founder of Close.io: https://close.io/.

While Steli and I dig into best practices for people who are in startups, this episode also contains valuable nuggets for individuals out there who have struggled to say no to a boss, teammate or customer effectively.

Don’t miss watching this episode and learning the following from Steli:

- Why saying NO is really hard, and receiving a NO is even harder

- What you need to say NO to

- How to say NO politely and effectively, especially to influential people like customers, teammates, and bosses

- How to help others from over-promising and getting comfortable saying NO

- What we should be saying YES to

Listen to the episode on iTunes!

You can listen to the episode and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/femgineertv/id1032969327?mt=2.

Please take a moment to leave us a review. Your positive review will help us get featured in the News & Noteworthy and bring more exposure to the work we’re doing as well as the talented guests we feature!

—
FemgineerTV is produced as a partnership between Femgineer (http://femgineer.com/) and Pivotal Tracker (http://www.pivotaltracker.com/). San Francisco video production by StartMotionMEDIA (http://www.startmotionmedia.com/design/).