Swag (a.k.a. "Bribery") as a Hackbrighter

 


During my ten weeks at Hackbright, I realized that not only do companies want software engineers a whole lot more than they want people with Master degrees in American literature, they want women software engineers even more than either of those, and they are willing to do a lot of things to bribe the small number of women engineers to join them.

I received t-shirts from:

• Awe.sm
• Google Circulars
• Hackbright Academy
• Bay Area Girl Geek
• Awe.sm again (I tweeted them about wanting a "Relentlessly Awe.sm" shirt, and they mailed it to me!)
• Singly (my favorite, because it fits right and it's soft)
• Stripe
• YouTube
• ESPNW Hackday
• Mashery
• Twilio(CON)
• Mashery again (I have to mention here that the whole we-don't-realize-that-women-wear-other-sizes thing that I ran into in high school is still around, though not as much. I loved it when t-shirts were small enough for me and they didn't have those really wide collars up around your neck like for men. Also, if companies would start giving out pants and shoes and the like, I could have a full wardrobe--I heard one engineer say that he gives all his t-shirts to Goodwill at the end of each year and starts over with his collection.)

Stickers were also popular, from:

• ESPNW
• Twitter (3)
• Burner
• Square
• Mashery
• Github
• Twiliocon
• RocketSpace
• Amazon Web Services
• Facebook
• SendGrid
• YouTube
• ESPN
• HTML5
• box
• singly
• some I don't know where they're from (like the nyan cat)

I also received:

• stress squeezy fruit from fruition
• silly putty from Facebook
• mints from Yelp
• a pen from Parse
• a pen from EventBrite
• a notebook from SurveyMonkey
• a Moleskine from Twiliocon
• a maze from Parse
• two Square card readers
• a whole bunch of pins about APIs and Auth
• a Facebook "like" pin
• a whole pile of business cards
• fingertip-less gloves from Yelp that say "YELP LIFE" on the knuckles (not shown)

And probably the most effective were food and/or tours at:

• Google
• LinkedIn
• SurveyMonkey
• Twitter
• Twilio(still up and coming)

ETC.

It is nice to feel wanted (even if it is through bribery). Now I need to go work on my technical interview skills so I can be specifically wanted. :)