Being a woman in tech, I only recently started advocating for myself at work about advancement opportunities. Because of this I wanted to ask this question to my male counterparts. When you have 1:1's with your direct reports and talk about career growth / aspirations what is your managers’ response typically? I’d like to gauge how my experience (negative) differs from others. For instance are you met with blockades, enthusiasm, dread, etc?
At the risk of being cancelled...i dont disagree that sexism impacts women everyday in tech, and in life. But my (considerable) experience (in tech) tells me that we are in a hyper-sensitive environment right now for women and 'under represented' persons. Generically speaking, companies are tripping over themselves to demonstrate their sensitivity and diversity. So the deck is severely tilted in your favor TODAY...generally...YMMV.
On a personal note, I'll say that while tech has been male dominated throughtout my life, ive seen strong tech woman do well. So ive havent seen blatent sexism....but dont deny it exists.
As for myself and managers ive seen, we/they want to promote the best people. But many have no understanding of leadership and dont know how to give critism withou losing you as a productive employee. Other just dont see it as their job to coach and mentor you. You need to have the conversation on your strengths and weeknesses. How can you do better, demonstrate the behaviors they value. You need to demand this unapologetically. That doesnt mean youll like the answers, but then you know its time to move on
At the end of the day, nobody should be surprised when their fired or promoted....if their manager is doing his/her job
My manager, Director and VP are all women and 4 of 6 in my team are women and at the end of the day they are all very very different. Not all male managers are good and so naturally not all female managers are good but at the end of the day, it is what it is.
I agree with this. Joining the current company I work for after UC Berkeley grad school in CS, you should’ve seen the faces of the males on my team whenever they double asked me if I really finished such a prestigious school with such a high degree. Meanwhile, none of that “what really?” existed towards the male counterparts on my team when they would speak of their equally “wow” background. Moreover, many of the projects I was the main contributor of would get named after my male teammates who did only 10% of the code and documentation. And it annoyed me, and really hurt my feelings deep down every single time their name was called out in the meeting to speak of project progression, and not mine. Every time the service I created was called “theirs” just because they were more senior than me. It hurt my feelings I’m not going to lie. But hey, I am so super grateful for that. Why? Because:
1. It hardened me. I became much more tough, and less sensitive on these issues because to me, how I do my work is more important than the praise I get for it. After a while, the team started calling referring to me as the owner of my many services and not someone else. Because my effort did not decrease by their lack of appreciation. Actually, the opposite.
2. I started speaking up more, giving back as much of my opinion as I have during all different types of discussions. And when progress on the project I’m involved in is asked, I step in first and communicate clearly and strongly. And I noticed the shift that happened: my name is called out every time now when asked about the progress.
Conclusion? Sexism in tech is real. You will get put down because of your gender. But that’s all at first. If you put in enough effort and as much of you on the table as you possibly can, you will earn the respect you deserve. But most importantly, you will grow into an even stronger engineer and woman. And that’s to be applauded.
I love this so much! I encounter this sexism more frequently than I'd like too. This is very encouraging and I hope to continue to be an evangelist of equity and diversity in data!
Most were positive experiences; but, i found that the bigger the company is the less they work with employees even though they preach complete assistance. Small companies on the otherhand are driven to much by the whims of cliques and unless you belong your talents and value add are ignored. Honestly, most companies preach performance evaluations and handle themas a joke.
EBSCO does have a lot of crumby managers, but its worth noting that in many cases even good managers are leaned on in a way that makes them terrible. There is pressure to under-rate your team members, and as a manager the safest move is to keep your head down and not fight too hard for your people. Your manager's manager doesn't want the call that expenses are going up, so a successful manager will string you along and frustrate your career aspirations.
When advocating for yourself, keep in mind you are not just trying to convince your boss, you are trying to make it as effortless as possible for them to advocate on your behalf to theirs as well. Managers are seldom empowered to give you what you are asking for, and most won't invest the time and political capital to fight for you unless you make it stupidly easy. You need to include not only the case for why you should be promoted, but also give them something to tell their boss for why this needs to be a priority. (I wasn't able to get more money for one of my reports until after she applied for another position in the company and my manager finally accepted that it was a retention risk not to.)
The gender discrimination is not your imagination (despite the insistence of a a number of white male respondents here). There is deep implicit bias from Tim Collins on down. Very few of these people are acting out of malice, but there is pervasive blindness to the ways that gender shapes the way managers see their reports. Who gets pulled in for "support"? Who gets asked to take meeting minutes? Who gets recognition, promotions, raises, etc? I've seen female VPs treated like admins and asked to book hotels and flights for people. I've heard people in the most senior positions make utterly inappropriate assumptions about female candidates for a job-opening. I've personally had to examine the ways my own gendered assumptions effect the ways I relate to female collogues. Its not all in your head. Its a jungle out there.
They usually take me seriously, and they may be dismissive of me (had at least one that definitely was) moving forward within the company, but then it's assumed that I would move on.
I can't say I have a bad experience talking about career goals with management and I am a man. It's always them trying to understand and distill down to what they can do to help and offer advice.
Can you expand upon how it was negative for you?
Off when I want and on when I want. Exception is meeting with SVPs then always on.
For me, it has depended a lot on which manager I've had discussions like this with. Some give encouragement mixed with a lot of excuses. Most give little to no actionable ways to improve/progress. Luckily, my current manager is much more encouraging and invested in my career.
My experience may not be normal, but it seems like managers in general just try to do the bare minimum for people with regard to career growth because that's "safe" for them. I can't express how great it is to finally have a manager who I feel is working for me. Finding a manager like that may be harder for you as a woman, but I think as long as you are willing to put your neck out there and have hard conversations you'll succeed in finding a solid manager about as easy as the rest of us. And don't be afraid to try moving in your organization or moving to another company if you can't find that sort of management support where you're at.
My response - as a manager - is to coach and encourage. Additionally, there is a very real and unfortunate reality that as the post above highlights, for many reasons women advocate for themselves less than men. This is something I share in those conversations, with tips and encouragement to negotiate. Good on you for starting to advocate for yourself - YOU are responsible for your career. A great manager will help guide you and provide tools and opportunities - but YOU are your own best advocate. Lastly - just because you may have started to advocate late - doesn't mean you should settle for anything less than market rates - acknowledging that an employer may not be able to make a full jump all at once, but stepped over time, with your solid performance.
Every manager should be Happy.
I formerly worked at a small, now medium-sized startup, and, for me, it depended on which manager I had. I worked there for seven years and had three actual managers (one woman, two men) and others filling in at various points in between. All of my actual managers' responses to career growth were always positive, I believe because they saw what I did day to day and recognized that I would work for what I wanted. My reviews by others who only tangentially worked with me or knew of my work were not as positive. My last review with the company was done by a man who I already knew was a misogynist both by personal experience and by other women's encounters. It was the worst review I've ever received and was based on hearsay. It's the reason I decided to leave the company because I could tell that he would ensure that I wouldn't advance any more than I had.
Forgot to add that in my current role, I've had one manager for the four years I've worked and he has been one of the most uplifting, encouraging managers I've had. He's provided opportunities for me to grow and given me tools to do the same for my own employees. Night and day experience from the last six months at the former company.
There is no difference between men and women for career advancements. How did you come to that conclusion? Men get just as many negative experiences. Generally men just ask more for advancement opportunities and are ready to take on super uncomfortable jobs that pay well, and in result will find more opportunities, but the chances and treatment are the same. Work on your social, work, and presentation skills, learn how your company evaluates workers (it's not always fair, but absolutely unrelated to gender), or change companies. It's the same for everyone. That is if you want to be successful. Otherwise keep complaining about gender.
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I think it’s worth considering both your managers personality and what they are saying.
As a woman in tech I can say I have been treated differently due to gender but never really in a 1:1 with a manager. I find usually people in management positions don’t think that much about gender.
So the stuff you can consider is are they giving good actionable feedback. It doesn’t actually do you any good to have a manager just say nice things to you. You need them to be critical if you want to move up in your career. Figure out if you agree with their feedback and work on it. If you don’t understand why you aren’t in a place to take the higher position ask for more information about expectations.
In terms of personality. Managers are people and sometimes they aren’t great at expressing themselves unfortunately. If you are in that position look for other senior people around you who can give you advice.
I find on most teams there is one person who thinks they should already have been promoted but wasn’t and is annoyed. And usually I have a pretty good idea why they haven’t been. A lot of times this is because people believe they should be promoted for being good at their current job, but that’s not usually the case. Most managers will wait to promote you until you’ve already been doing the next job for 3-6 months. This is to avoid promoting people past their competency level. So look for ways to stretch and become better.
Sometimes I'm met with some hesitancy or lack of enthusiasm. That can be about the lack of creativity or open-mindedness of the person you're speaking to. It could be because you didn't outline why it's possible well enough or didn't sound certain. It could be because some people can only think or offer advice from the perspective of their own experience. It could be that they perceive you succeeding more as a threat to them.
Navigate around them. There are multiple vectors to discuss things. Find advocates for you elsewhere in the organization. Try to determine what the barrier is in their mind and address it, then come back in a new 1:1 with the solutions.
In order to succeed you HAVE to advocate for yourself. Every opportunity I've ever gotten, I got because I went and asked for it. Sometimes just asking opened the door. Sometimes I really had to push. Sometimes I had to leave the place I was in to get it elsewhere.
At the end of the day, you can't expect others to care about you like you care about you. Advocate for yourself, chase down what you want, and be solution oriented in your thought process. If you take that in, you won't fail to meet your personal goals.
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I see several suggestions on speaking up which is the right approach. I would recommend some structure to the conversation and giving advanced notice on the topic of conversation. I have 2 simple charts on career growth that I have used for 15+ years with teams that I managed/led. Very simple though effective to engage in a discussion about career growth. I provide these to team members and actually see who fills them out proactively (leading indicator #1). You can email me at david@sima.ai and I will share them you would like to see them.
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