Decades after women began entering the tech workplace, relatively few have made it into corporate management.
What’s it take to reach the top? At a Monday night panel discussion at Lyft, hosted by a San Francisco-based organization of international women called The Expat Woman, leaders discussed their journeys to success in the tech industry, the gender gap in senior leadership roles and advice for women in ways to forge ahead in their fields.
What they said: Women need to get better with self-promotion and personal branding. They need to build strong networks outside their company, not just inside. They should seek out many mentors, not just one. Learn new skills. Enjoy risk. Setbacks? Failure? Bounce back.
The conversations steered clear of recent revelations about Uber detailed by Susan Fowler, a software engineer who exposed a culture of sexual harassment and sexism.
Rather, the leaders offered practical suggestions to young women in tech — a new pool of candidates who tend to be ethnically diverse and have grown up in a digital world for much of their careers. There is competition for these women as tech companies are under growing pressure to broaden and diversify their workforce.
Specifically, they offered this advice for how to rise through the ranks of technology firms:
By Lisa M. Krieger
Source: The Mercury News
At a time of shrinking DEI commitments and growing cynicism around corporate culture, Toni Thompson is paying close attention to what Etsy’s increasingly diverse and growing number of employees need to succeed. Since she joined Etsy in 2020, the company has expanded dramatically, transforming into a ‘house of brands’ with offices in Brooklyn, Chicago, London, Dublin, and Mexico City
Job swapping and job hopping, once viewed negatively, can now be a strategic move to advance the careers of Black professionals, offering an alternative and unconventional way for workers to control their own stability and boost earnings in a relatively short period of time.
During a women’s development program I once facilitated, a participant stood up to share her experience: “Nellie, one of my colleagues told me that I got promoted simply because I am a woman.” Her discomfort and disappointment were visible, and I could see by the expressions of others in the room that this was a familiar scenario. No surprise.