Tech and Me in Shanghai

Right from the start of our time in Shanghai in August, I was interested in helping more women join tech; I was in touch with Girl Develop It about starting a chapter, but after around December, I never heard back from them. By the time WomenWhoCode was in touch with me, I felt like it was too late and wished I had contacted them first.

Luckily, I still had several tech opportunities. First of all, as I had time, I worked on re-designing my blog (though that is a project that may never be finished because I want it to be just right).


At Barcamp Shanghai in October (put on by Techyizu), I spoke about/held a discussion about women in tech and my story.

Michael filmed me:


(How do you like that guy going on and on about how too many women on a team make so nothing gets done? Uh, okay . . . my on-the-spot responses to him weren't great. I think really there just needs to be more understanding about how to work with both genders rather than just always working with the team we feel most comfortable getting stuff done with.)

I had planned on finding a full-time job in Shanghai, but I worried that working full-time would mean I wouldn't be working on learning Chinese, which was the real reason I wanted to live in China, and also, honestly, I worried that my still-very-junior dev skills weren't good enough (technical interviews can be freaking scary!).

One company I started to interview at seemed pretty awesome (I was excited about being able to learn and work with Angular.js), but the non-Chinese CEO sat me down after he heard my salary requirements and talked to me about how they were way too high for China. Together with another foreign tech employee, he explained that junior developers in Shanghai make about 3,000 kuai per month (about $500), foreign or local, and that if I could go with around that then we could continue the hiring process. I told him I'd think about it and the employee invited me to lunch where he assured me that those were normal amounts for Shanghai. I was nevertheless a bit doubtful, especially once I realized that the least-expensive studios we'd looked at cost more than 3,000 per month. Then I talked to Michael's cousin, who had been a developer in Shanghai for a while, and he said, "No, that's just a Chinese guy trying to pull one over on you. You could probably make 15,000 or more per month." Imagine his surprise when I told him that the guy wasn't Chinese . . . I didn't go back there.

In November, I introduced the Hult Women in Business Club to HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

In December, I organized a RailsBridge HTML/CSS/JavaScript workshop for women.



I met many times from October to May with a woman named Jenny (who became a good friend) to teach her some tech skills, including HTML, CSS, JavaScript, git, and a tiny bit of python.

I planned on organizing another RailsBridge workshop and making a weekly JavaScript study group, but without being able to find a location and sponsors (asking for money and space is not my favorite thing to do), and with a lot of other things to do (always), those things didn't happen.

Michael's cousin introduced me to these really cool Taiwanese guys working on some intriguing projects. I showed them what I'd done before, and without a technical interview, they agreed to start me at nearly triple what the other company had offered and go up from there after a three-month review. Unfortunately, all of this solidified when we had only about four months left, and I felt bad jumping in to their company and getting a lot of training, only to leave, so I turned it down. Once again, though, two big factors were the fear of getting detracted from learning Chinese and my fear of not being good enough (impostor syndrome, grr). A third, more embarrassing factor was that I found out I'd have to get another, more complete physical for a work visa and that freaked the heck out of me.




Instead, for a couple of months at the start of the year, I worked on making a website for Michael's Hult Prize team's organization: Revive using some technologies I hadn't used before. This is what the main page ended up looking like.

In April, while I was recovering from my horrible sunburn, a friend from People Can Code Shanghai texted me, saying that he had some friends looking for some front-end skills and asking if I knew of anyone. I told him I may be able to give it a shot and I'd like to hear more details. It turns out that these two guys had an idea for a foodie app, and since they were accepted to Chinaccelerator (an intensive accelerator program for startups located at The Lighthouse in Shanghai), they were in need of someone in a hurry and were willing to pay wages closer to American wages. After we spent a lot of time comparing our favorite foods to bake and our favorite restaurants and bakeries in Shanghai, they said they'd like to have me work with them. Again, impostor syndrome had me scared even though I knew that this would be a good opportunity for me—to learn quickly, to earn some money, to get out of my misery about having failed at creating a positive Shanghai experience . . . and somehow I was able to talk myself into it.

And so I started working on ChiShen.Ma, which happily was flexible in many ways. Working with even-headed, hard-working, smart Rem was great. When it was clear that getting into the office was quite a long journey that was wasting the little time we had to get the app launched, he said I could just work from home, where I felt like I could focus and get more done anyway, and when I was needed in the office, he offered to pay for a taxi to speed things up a bit. He let me choose the tech stack, so I chose to build a Django back-end, and though ChiShen.Ma will eventually be a hybrid app, we started out with a mobile web app using jQuery Mobile, meaning the "app" is a website (accessed via a browser) that looks like a phone app.



The first paycheck ChiShen.Ma paid went to yours truly. Notice the mixed currency. Also, this was the first time I've seen the new, blu-ish dollar bills ("bluebacks?").



This is The Lighthouse on Changping Lu, where Chinaccelerator's office is.

As with any project, I butted my head against unexpected barriers every single day and as the only engineer, there were times when my resilience wore out and I felt bashed into the ground discouraged, but the successes were great, and I was able to earn some moola for our rent in London.

The most unique part of the app is what Rem calls the "Decide-o-matic," where you can swipe pictures to sort them into piles of likes and not-likes. Getting the right library in place for this took waaaaaaay longer than any of us could have guessed.















































Now that Rem and Ryan have demoed the ChiShen.Ma app, things are a bit up in the air as the search for funding takes off.

Writing this post makes me feel better about my time in Shanghai. We'll see what I get to work on next.

The First-Ever RailsBridge Workshop for Women in China

My first-ever RailsBridge--at Code for America in July 2012.

RailsBridge has been a great help to me in the last year and a half (as have many other tech-for-women groups), and, as you can see here, I promised to pay it forward some day. So I organized a workshop in Shanghai!

Not only was this my first time organizing a RailsBridge event, it is, as far as I know, also the first time for a RailsBridge event in China. Hurray!

Here is what the BridgeTroll sign-up page said:

Want to learn website development? Or want to help more women join tech?

RailsBridge is a free, open-source workshop that is intended to reach out mainly to women who are interested in learning web development. This is the first RailsBridge workshop in Shanghai, so we're starting on beginning front-end (the part you see) web development, specifically HTML, CSS, and JavaScript (we will be doing a back-end Ruby workshop in the future). Men are allowed to sign up as students if they sign up with a woman.  

This workshop will be led in English, but we hope to have Chinese-speaking volunteers who can help as needed. Students should bring a laptop that already has Sublime Text (or another text editor downloaded onto it). It is also useful, but optional, to have Google Chrome. As with all RailsBridge events, we will make an effort to provide childcare if needed.

HULT International Business School is most easily accessible from the People's Square Metro stop, exit 14. Map: https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=214705170228158071651.0004ebfaf5744b0203513&msa=0

Please contact Michelle Glauser if you have any related ideas or questions, or if you know of a company interested in hosting and/or sponsoring this and/or other other workshops.

This is the tentative schedule:

9:00-9:45 AM - Volunteer-only get-to-know-you and tip-sharing
10:00 - 10:30 AM - Student registration, breakfast (hopefully we can find a sponsor to provide food)
10:30 - 11:00 AM - Opening presentation, sorting into levels
11:00 AM - 12:30 PM - Groups work on curriculum
1:00 PM - 2:00 PM - Lunch (hopefully we can find a sponsor to provide food)
2:00 PM - 3:30 PM Back to work
3:30 PM - 4:00 PM Regroup, recap, clean up
4:00 PM - Optional after-event at nearby Tock's Deli (during Happy Hour) at 221 Henan Zhong Lu/河南中路221号 (hopefully we can find a sponsor to provide a food or drink reward for the volunteers--students may attend, but they pay for everything on their own)
Tell your friends!

Volunteer Details

Be sure to review the curriculum before the workshop: http://curriculum.railsbridge.org/frontend/frontend
It is also helpful to go over this teacher training:
http://curriculum.railsbridge.org/workshop/teacher_training

Student Details

All students need to bring a laptop and a power cord. Please download Sublime Text (or another text editor) before you arrive. We also recommend having Google Chrome.

Items of note:

• I struggled to get a sponsor for food and supplies, even though I kept the cost super low. I budgeted 1500 RMB (about $250). I'm still hoping to find sponsors for future events.
• We had 10 volunteers and 26 students sign up. There were 8 volunteers and 17 students who actually came. That's 80% volunteer show-ups and 65% student show-ups (that's an average of 69%, which is almost exactly the percentage the Workshop Cookbook predicted). There were 4 male students signed up, but only 2 showed up.
• We had typical Chinese food for breakfast: tea and baozi (Chinese dumplings--”包子“）
• Lunch was sandwiches, juice, and soda (I think we'll avoid soda in the future--it was barely touched). The one vegetarian didn't sign up until the night before, so we already had our order in for meat sandwiches and totally forgot about getting him something. Oops. Luckily there were veggie baozi left over.
• Some of the volunteers seemed nervous about teaching, so we went over the RailsBridge teacher slides one hour before the event started, but they blew me away with how well they were able to teach.
• This was a front-end workshop, split into three groups. Every class used the RailsBridge curriculum itself less than I would have expected, but whatever they did seemed to work.
  
• Things started to drag about the last 30 minutes of class, and people started going home before we wrapped things up communally. Ooops. Maybe we should have had one more break or ended a little earlier.
• Everyone who stayed to talk seemed really positive about the experience and interested in future events.
• No one wanted to go to the after-party, so sweet(!), we saved money and I could go home an hour earlier than planned. :)
• I was able to finally find out about a Chinese developer meetup (as opposed to the expat meetups I've been attending). Yay!

Here are a few of my favorite pictures (you can see the rest of the photos from RailsBridge Shanghai #1 here).


This busy guy was super nice and helped with set-up, signing-in, food, and clean-up.




Shobhit is apparently secretly "a CSS king."




Here's Allen Wyma (co-organizer of People Can Code Shanghai Meetups).




Michael Shi was a great TA and teacher!




Language barrier? What language barrier? Go, Tony!




Peace from Yun in Level 3.




Lukasz Muzyka (co-organizer of People Can Code Shanghai Meetups) amused volunteers and students alike.



Success! I hope I can get some more workshops together and build a great women-in-tech workshop network around here. 

21 Reasons Why Tech is a Great Field for Women

This is the life you want.

After getting over my fears and transitioning into tech last year, I now have trouble not telling every woman that she should do the same. Why do I think that tech is such a great field for women? Here are 21 reasons:

1. Believe it or not, it's creative! You get to make ideas come alive.
2. There are so many different roles that I believe you can always find a niche for you within the world of tech, whether it be front end web development, software engineering, big data, internet security, project management, tech support, technical writing, or something else. 
3. Every field in the world needs people to run its tech.  If the medical field interests you, do tech for them. If working on improving life third-world countries interests you, contribute there with your tech skills. If you love phone game apps, build them.
4. There is a huge need for techies worldwide, so there is a lot of opportunity. Many people believe that providing women a pathway into tech will help women and whole families make their way out of poverty.
5. Your work is not only a career, it's a cause. The number of women in tech has decreased since the 1980s! By going into tech, you have the chance to forge a path for girls' careers in the future and support your sisters now.
6. Most people looking for people to work in tech care less about official education, personality, and looks, and more about skills and the determination to figure something out. To make learning tech even better is the fact that a lot of what you need to learn can be easily accessed online.
7. Working in tech is your chance to prove the stereotypes of men being better-suited to tech wrong.
8. As Audrey Tan wrote, "The rise of the Internet and its impact on the global economy has already proven itself. It has defined our generation. But we are just at the starting gate. If we as women fail to be involved in the formation of an industry, we prevent ourselves from being the future leaders of that industry. It is better, easier and far more likely to grow with an industry than it is to break into it."
9. There is a growing, very supportive network of champions for women in tech.
10. Men aren't the only ones using technology, but they form the majority of people developing tech. There is a great need for more women's voices to cater to women's needs in tech products.
11. Because companies are aware of the low numbers of female engineers being employed, they are always on the lookout for women. This means that they are more flexible in their work terms and you feel empowered.
12. You just need a computer and the internet to work in tech, so where you work is very flexible.
13. If you're an introvert like I am and need some space to survive, no one will be surprised or put off when you put on headphones and pretend the world is not there.
14. Tech is always evolving. You aren't expected to know everything from the start, and a good deal of your work will be figuring out new things. You will never stop learning, so your work doesn't get old.
15. Pay is good, especially compared to women's pay in non-tech jobs.
16. The gender wage gap is smaller between men and women in computer science. 
17. There is virtually no dead end to tech; the world is your oyster.
18. Generally, dress codes are pretty lax in tech. (Yay! No nylons!) 
19. Techies receive lots of free swag, including t-shirts (that you can then wear to work).
20. A lot of companies, especially startups, love to make a fun, positive lifestyle for their employees, whether that means providing catered lunches and gym memberships,  having weekly happy hours, or keeping ping pong tables in the office.
21. The new generation of techie culture tends to be generous, open (ever heard of open-source software, open leadership, or open-plan offices?), and tolerant. LOVE.

Have I convinced you yet? The ways to get started are endless. Go for it!


Whether you’re seeking further success in your current role or a new opportunity, Kaplan University can help you prepare for the exciting possibilities ahead.*

As an accredited university built on more than 75 years of experience,† Kaplan University offers a wide range of career-focused programs designed to develop the skills and knowledge leading employers seek. Our focus: to offer you the most direct educational path to achieve your goals.

Are you ready for a change?  Learn more at kaplanuniversity.edu.

* Kaplan University cannot guarantee employment or career advancement.

† Kaplan University is regionally accredited. Please visit http://www.kaplanuniversity.edu/about/accreditation-licensing.aspx# for additional information about institutional and programmatic accreditation.

How I Abandoned My Fears and Got Into the Tech Job I Love

How televisions should really be used.

Some days I can hardly believe that a year and a half ago, I was working at a job that didn't pay enough for me to pay rent, forcing me to rely on generous relatives. After struggling to figure out what I was doing for a couple of years after a Master's degree, I was relieved to finally have any income and I enjoyed working with a talented Italian, but the job seemed to be a dead-end one, and besides that, it wasn't at all what the job description had said; I had to do sales-type work, it was boring, it wasn't creative, and sometimes I felt like stabbing my eye out.

I tried to make the job fit its description by regularly putting content about the company in several places online and building a customer community, but the company engineers couldn't seem to complete anything so I'd have some good, original content. At one point, they were too busy to work on designing a website for a customer, so the COO and I started looking at website designs and he asked me to make a mockup. I didn't know how to do that, but I was fascinated by the idea and dedicated myself to learning by doing. My browser was soon overwhelmed with over 90 tabs as I started looking at tutorials for making Photoshop mockups, because I ran into more and more fascinating links about picking up tech skills.

However, when I signed up for an intensive course for women to learn web development and was accepted, I still hesitated. I was scared.

I didn't want to disappoint my co-worker by quitting. I wasn't confident that I could learn tech skills quickly. I'd already gone a couple of years without what I would consider a real job and didn't want to feel like a non-contributing member of society again. Dedicating myself to learning tech full-time would mean not having an income; where would the means for food, transportation, insurance, and such come from? To make matters scarier, my relatives needed their basement back, so housing was unsure. Not only would I not be making money, I'd be going deeply in the hole to pay for rent and the course. Finally, I felt too old to make a complete career change. In other words, there was every excuse not to go for it.

So why did I?

Somehow, despite all the doubts in my head, there were some ideas that refused to go away:

• It was clear that I was more interested in techie stuff than in what I was doing. Even if I didn't end up liking the curriculum or the course didn't help launch me into a tech job, it was a way out.
• I learned to make a mockup pretty quickly, didn't I? Maybe it was possible for me to learn more. 
• I realized that in the end, my career wasn't about always pleasing my co-worker; it was about finding some kind of satisfaction and being able to support myself, and I was underestimating him if I thought he wouldn't understand that. 
• If I could find a way to fund this career change, I could get into a job that would enable me to pay it off and have a higher quality of living.
• It was better to make a change now than to suffer for years and try later.

In moments of inspiration, I started to work things out, one by one. I got permission to work very part-time for a little while longer, meaning I'd still have a minuscule small income and I didn't feel like I was letting down my coworker as much. I found quite the alternative way to temporarily finance an education break and get a discount on rent by getting married and becoming an apartment manager.

Of course, with this transition of a lifetime and even with the support of a loving new husband, I still had fears, but it was those very fears that motivated me--if I didn't keep at it, I'd be in the hole even longer. If I gave up, I could be back in a job that sucked my life away without giving anything back.

I am so glad that I went out on a limb to transition into tech. I like my work, I've found a supportive professional network, and the pay would have made my eyes pop out two years ago. If you are considering a career change and are fearful as I was, consider the future. How will it be if you stay where you are? How could it be if you were to overcome your fears?

To any women even slightly interested in computers and the internet, I'd encourage you to move into tech without delay. Why tech? Stay tuned; I'll be addressing that question in a post next week.


Whether you’re seeking further success in your current role or a new opportunity, Kaplan University can help you prepare for the exciting possibilities ahead.*

As an accredited university built on more than 75 years of experience,† Kaplan University offers a wide range of career-focused programs designed to develop the skills and knowledge leading employers seek. Our focus: to offer you the most direct educational path to achieve your goals.

Are you ready for a change?  Learn more at kaplanuniversity.edu. 

* Kaplan University cannot guarantee employment or career advancement.

† Kaplan University is regionally accredited. Please visit http://www.kaplanuniversity.edu/about/accreditation-licensing.aspx# for additional information about institutional and programmatic accreditation.

App Review: Learning Chinese with Skritter (5 Stars!)

Good news!
我能读中文
(Wǒ néng dú zhōngwén!--"I can read Chinese!")

If you don't want the background story, skip down to the paragraph after the picture.

In case you haven't heard this before: I've been wanting to learn Chinese since 2010, and when Michael and I met, I had been accepted to a program in China so that I could do just that. What with having married a native Mandarin Chinese speaker and having an upcoming wedding celebration in Taiwan, my motivation has grown, and it is my persuasion that took us to China.

In the past few years, I've taken classes, listened to CDs, done language exchanges, hired a tutor, started a company Chinese club/class, did loads of studying, checked out enough Chinese books from the library to make another library, stared at Michael's grandma's TV since the channels are in Chinese, practiced with Michael and his family . . . and yet, none of that was enough.

I often felt frustrated before we left San Francisco, because I wanted to arrive in China with some more Mandarin under my belt, but there just wasn't time, especially since I seemed to have to start over every time I went back to what I'd "learned." And now, in Shanghai, being surrounded with characters I can't understand makes me feel like my hands are tied all the time.

The most obvious problem since arriving is vocabulary. In Germany, I could easily pick up words because many of them are similar to English. Here, I just need pure memorization since the words aren't like anything I've known before. I need a personal tutor to do repetitive language drills with me.

And now to the main point of this post: I have found the Mandarin vocabulary-builder/tutor I need in an app called Skritter. Since finding out about it from a HULT student and writing the developers of this app to see if I could get a free review account, I have spent 5.9 hours going over 237 words or phrases, and according to the app, I have 84.3% retention so far. I can confidently say that I could give you at least 100 characters back on the spot, which is about 95 more than I ever could before. :) It is simply amazing how much knowing just those few characters has opened up the Chinese world around me.

If you want to learn Chinese or even have the slightest feeling that it might be a good idea to learn Chinese, you need this app. I give Skritter 5 stars, which I have never done before. Developed by some cool developers who wanted to make the most powerful Chinese-learning app out there, this app is majorly impressive. Instead of spending hours writing down new words and phrases that I'll never remember again, I spend my time memorizing words and phrases in all their forms.

Why do I love this app?

• the number one reason: you learn characters (writing and recognition of kanji/hanzi characters), tones, meanings, and pronunciation all at once
• it's pretty, fun, and easy to use
• it saves me the trouble of finding, paying, and scheduling a tutor
• you can pick word lists that you think are most useful for you, many of which come straight from textbooks that you can use as supplements for grammar
• the lists teach compound words and phrases in addition to individual words
• there are lists for children
• you can also use Skritter for learning Japanese
• the repetition is just what you need, especially for ones you've forgotten often
• every slide will show up again at some point, ensuring complete memorization
• the very first time you run into a character, you have to physically "write" it on the screen (helpful for kinesthetic learning)
• if you forget a stroke, a screentap shows a hint for a moment
• if you start your strokes in the wrong direction or write them in the wrong order, the app tells you
• it's not just "correct" and "wrong"--there's a "so-so" level in case you only forgot one aspect of that word or phrase
• the app congratulates you at significant intervals of time, and not in an annoying way!
• each slide has a recording of a native speaker saying the word or phrase that you can listen to as many times as you want, and the first time is automatic
• the app won't let you go back more than two characters, forcing you onwards and upwards (it'll bring all of them back eventually anyway)
• each slide has example sentences so you can see how the word or phase is used contextually
• you can see other users' shared mnemonics and add your own
• each individual word or phrase has stats about how long you've been learning it and your success rate
• progress reports--it's highly motivating to see how many words you've learned
• you can use the app on your iPhone, iPad, or via browser (and your account syncs across platforms)

That's a long list. If videos are your thing, watch this video I made (one for China and one for the rest of the world):








Do I despise anything about the app?

• no

What do I think could make Skritter better?

• verbal testing to get feedback on my pronunciation
• diagrams in the word information windows to show physical pronunciation
• texts to translate (like Duolingo)
• verbal recognition quizzes
• traditional characters in the word information windows, as well as traditional vs. simplified character lists (for people interested in Taiwan, Macau, Hong Kong, or Guangzhou) UPDATE: turns out you can include traditional characters by going into "advanced study" and then "style"
• color coding for tones
• pictures for visual learners (like Chineasy)
• an Android version (no, there isn't one or plans for one at this point, but you can use it online)

Skritter is $14.99 per month. I know that any time I see an app that isn't free, I look for something else, but this is one well worth paying for, even for one month (that's long enough for at least 1,000 characters!). You could be paying way more than that to fill notebooks with Chinese every month and not get anything out of it. There is special educational institution pricing and a free Skritter trial available.

I'm obviously impressed enough with this app to like talking about it, so if you have any questions, let me know.

Hackbright Girl Geek Dinner #3 Video

Find Michael and me:


Yay for more Hackbright alumni! They are in the midst of interviewing, so good luck!

Meet My Mentee Melanie

I am so proud of my Hackbright mentee, Melanie Warrick. She has been working really hard and every time I meet with her or exchange emails with her, I marvel at how smart she is and how much she has picked up in such a short time. Whoever snags her as an employee is one lucky person. Here's the bio she wrote for Hackbright Career Day:

After getting my MBA from GWU, I worked for 12+ years in management consulting for companies like Accenture and Alvarez & Marsal. I focused on improving efficiency and enhancing customer experience through project management and business analytics with companies ranging from start-ups to Fortune 500. Last year, a major life event helped me take stock. What makes life worth living are the challenges that drive me to grow and learn. I've always been interested in technology, but I perceived barriers to entry when I was younger. I am keenly aware of how pervasive technology is in our lives and its exponential growth. Thus, I realized recently that I want to take on the challenge to learn how to speak its language, build things and solve problems with what I can build. Hackbright gave me the opportunity to test my interests, and proved my insatiable desire to learn "all the things." My career goal is to continue growing software engineering skills and exploring interests in data analytics and machine learning.

Her final project at Hackbright is a weather app called "Sun Finder." Basically, Sun Finder helps you figure out where you can find the sun in San Francisco. She worked with APIs from Weather Underground and Forecast.io for weather data and Google Places & Maps for search functionality and map results. Some of the technologies she used include Python, Flask (including Login and WTForms), SQL, SQLAlchemy, Postgres, Javascript, Twitter Bootstrap, and jQuery. Here she is demoing her app to previous Hackbright students at Hackbright Alumnight:




It's crazy that she'll be graduating this week--how time flies [when you're not the one doing a bootcamp, ha]! She is going to go so far, and I can't wait to watch her spring into the tech world. I'm very happy to be her reference and connect her with anyone who wants connecting.

Congratulations for making it through Hackbright, Melanie!

P.S. More people should try out being a mentor--it's really rewarding!

My First Three Months as a Web Developer

I passed up my three-month mark as a paid techie at Get Satisfaction two weeks ago. Do you know what that means?

1. I got this fancy envelope from Hackbright:




There was money inside. A lot of money. Refunded tuition money for working three months at a partner company. Wedding money.


2. It's time for an update about working as a web developer.

Overall, Get Satisfaction has been a great place to be.

Every day, I marvel at how surrounded I am by talented, smart people who can collaborate well. Every day, I also spend at least a couple of hours staring at my screen trying to figure things out. Sometimes my questions are so general that I can't really share them with anyone, like, "How do I use PostgresQL?" and other times, all I need is for someone to spot that one ridiculous missing bracket (or to tell me to just paste the code into Sublime Text 2 so I can line them up!). I've loved learning about CNAMEs, SSL certs, and single-sign-on, and each time a light bulb turns on, I love that our platform allows me to post about what I've learned in our community to build up our customers' available and searchable knowledge base.
 
I also am so appreciative of pretty flexible schedule that allows me to go to doctor appointments and run errands without feeling guilty. It's fun to see ideas develop as we work on our new platform, and it's nice that everyone's opinions are valued.

And listen to how cool this is--last week, our CEO, Wendy Lea, invited all the female employees to her home. (Do I ever admire Wendy--when she speaks, I want to take notes, and often I do. Sometimes I even tweet what she says.) We mingled and snacked as we marveled at her view of the ocean and the sunset, then Wendy started a discussion about being women leaders in tech.  The discussion was positive and helpful, and I think we all feel really united from that evening spent together.

Like anyone else, sometimes I get annoyed or frustrated by questions or tasks. Sometimes, my brain is fried and it would honestly be better if I just went home (sometimes I go, sometimes I don't). Occasionally I get discouraged when I think about losing my Python skills before they were ever really strong, and there are still so many technologies I want to learn that I don't use at work, so I try to do a bit of hacking on the weekends.

I've been a Firefox fan for years, but Firebug just has not been enough and Chrome has become my hero for development purposes. It was amazing to realize this week that I have learned enough to help my mentee with some front-end development. Hurray!

So there's your update.

The First Hackbright Alumnight

In February, I (with the help of a few others, including Michael, who ordered and picked up the food) organized the first Hackbright alumni get-together, now dubbed "Hackbright Alumnight," so we could catch up and see the new school.

Thanks to Angie for the photo. Next time we'll try to focus on one camera. ;)

With the two graduated classes present, we make a group of 28, but we had 19 of us present, plus a few teachers and mentors. We talked about future Hackbright Alumnights and how it would be nice to have some knowledge talks to share our growing web development knowledge and maybe change up the days of the week they'll take place on so different people can attend. We also shared some updates (if anyone doesn't want these publicized, please let me know):

Michelle (that's me!)--working at Get Satisfaction
Mercedes--working at Real Gravity
Sara--working at SurveyMonkey
Sanby--working at Eventbrite
Moon--working at inVitae
Susan--still looking then, now working at Flixster
David--working on the interior design of the new Hackbright location
Louise--working at SurveyMonkey
Annie--looking then, now working at GreenGar Studios
Lydia--working at RichRelevance
Andree--working at Bitcasa
Charles--working at Versal
Sonya--working on projects
Angie (of Women 2.)--joining Hackbright as an employee
Michele--working on her Java certification at school, looking for a summer internship
Zoe--working at New Relic
Melissa--was at a startup, now funemployed, aiming to work at Yelp
Claudia--working on a short-term project
Erica--working at Kixeye
Nicole--working at Eventbrite
Christian--engaged :)
Michelle Sun--working at Buffer

To add to the fun, we received our Hackbright hoodies. As Erica pointed out, those hoodies are the best $6,000 hoodies any of us have ever bought. Worth it? Yes.

Here's to many more Hackbright Alumnights to come!

Why Did I Decide to Learn to Code?

A Listserve friend named Rob asked me,

What would you say was the catalyst that got you started on the path of learning technical skills? What made you take that introductory web developer course?

It seems like a lot of the women I've known who could easily become great web developers / engineers never even consider it as a viable path, so I'm really curious about what made a difference for you.

I've been doing weeks of thinking on this (sorry I haven't gotten back to you, Rob, this is a good question!). 

I think I have to say that there wasn't just one catalyst that got me started on the path to becoming a web developer. The past several years were just killing me as my previous career direction no longer seemed right and I couldn't seem to get a grip on a financially stable adult life. One year ago, I had finally found a job, but I knew pretty soon after starting that the company wasn't ready for what they wanted me to do, and so what they gave me to do instead was something I would never have signed up for--sales. Bugging people all day long really got to me, so whenever I could, I put content into our blog. However, there wasn't much content I could post, and when I asked for something specific, I never got it. I wished several times I could build things myself. When I had the chance to do a mockup for a site, I thought I should really learn some website-building skills and started googling about learning. I found Women 2.0 and some other blogs about women in tech and was amazed that there was this whole cause behind it. After breaking my foot, I was at the end of my rope. This one sounds rather silly--I love the feeling of closing tabs (since I always have at least 50 of them open), and one of them at that time was Hackbright, so, since I was indecisive and Michael advice was, "Why not?" I decided to apply and decide later so I could close the tab.

All of these things added up to me applying for Hackbright Academy on the last day before the application deadline without really knowing what I could be getting myself into. At the time, it seemed really spontaneous, but thinking about all the things that led to applying, I guess it wasn't so random. I'm sure I could add more reasons, but that's all I'll write for now.

In summary:

• I needed money and didn't seem to be able to make enough.
• My old career dream was gone.
• I didn't like the jobs I could get.
• I wanted to use my creativity.
• I love cool new apps and web design and making a mockup made me wish I knew how to build nifty tech stuff.
• I was lucky to be in a tech-happy city.
• The women in tech cause fascinated me.
• Breaking my foot made it clear that something needed to change.
• I wanted to close some tabs and took care of the Hackbright one by applying.

Let's Discuss This Response to my Listserve Email

Out of all the messages I got from my "Women in Tech" Listserve email, only one (!) was negative. Here's the message:

Women in Tech: you know where that never happens? The kitchen, laundry room, and bedroom.

Sent from Yahoo! Mail on Android

Is there a way to discuss this without letting my annoyance get in the way? These are some ridiculous replies I thought of:


Dear Terry,

Well, you're using Yahoo. Did you know that company is being led by a woman who has done wonders in tech?


Dear Terry,

That Android in your hand wouldn't exist in its present state without the help of women who weren't limited to the kitchen, laundry room, and bedroom.


Dear Terry,

Ever heard of Ada Lovelace?


Dear Terry,

How did you sign up for the Listserve, anyway?


Dear Terry,

You do realize that half of the human race is female, right?


Dear Terry,

It is domineering, mean men like you that make the world a bitter place.


Dear Terry,

Here is what my husband said: "A pooper will be a pooper."


 
Here's the mean email that I ended up writing. I thought I was over my initial anger, but maybe not:

Your poor mother and every other woman you've ever loved.

Have a great day anyway.

Michelle Glauser

What would you have done? How can we discuss this in an open way?

Interviewing at Hackbright by Katherine

Katherine, who asked questions pre-interview, sent me these synopses of her experience. She is now in the midst of the good craziness of Hackbright!

David didn't ask any technical questions, more about my background and why Hackbright in particular.

My interview with Christian was scheduled for 15 minutes but was in total around 30 minutes, though part of that was technical difficulties (I should've just had it with me but there was an echo in the room so I had to run back to my desk to grab my headset). He actually started off with some of the similar non-coding questions that David had had, basically around what brought me to this point of being interested in Hackbright. I think they're really focused on making sure that the personality dynamics will work for the class and go towards building up the community of Hackbright grads, and as an applicant you want to see if this program will be a good fit for yourself as well, which is something that I forget a bit about sometimes when I get nervous about interviews.

The part that was a bit different from David's was that Christian went through the optional coding question on the application about how to write a function to get the multiples of a number in a certain range, which I had taken a stab at for theoretically how I might do it but didn't actually write any code. He shared what he thought was the optimal solution and walked me through it, so I think here this was a sort of mini-test of what his teaching style is like against what your style of learning is. Ultimately while I know I have certain tics I need to keep an eye in during an interview situation (if it's not an in-person interview, I'll pretty much always put up a post-it note somewhere to remind myself to SLOW. DOWN.), you should fall back on the general advice of being yourself, because I figure if you can't be yourself in two 15-minute interviews, it would probably be a lot harder to get through 10 intensive weeks.
 

Resources for Learning to Code and Opportunities to Teach Coding

Request: please share this page from my blog instead of the direct links to the docs. Here's the shortened link: http://bit.ly/learning-to-code-resources

Because of all the talking and emailing and blogging I've been doing about women learning to code, a lot of people have asked me how they can learn to code. I've made a hopefully-helpful spreadsheet, with the following tabs/sheets:

• Coding Bootcamps
• $ Online Learning
• Free Online Learning
• On-site Learning (or Volunteering)
• Other Resources [Submit more coding resources below.]
• About Me

Learning to Code Resources (Women-focused):







And a lot of other people have asked me how they can help people (especially women) learning to code. The second spreadsheet includes:

• Volunteering Opportunities [Submit more volunteering opportunities here or below.]
• Volunteer Form Responses [Submit your name as a volunteer here or below.]
• Submit Volunteers or Opportunities Links
• About Me

Helping Women in Tech:



You can add to the list of learning-to-code resources by filling out this form:




You can join this list of people willing to help by filling out this form:




You can submit volunteering opportunities by filling out this form:




I'm sorry to all the people who have been waiting so patiently for this post; I was a little overwhelmed with my inbox and work. It's here now, never fear. Feel free to share this post. (And if you have anything to add or any questions, please fill out one of the forms below, tweet to me, or send me an email--firstnamelastname AT gmail.)

Inspiring Reactions to my Listserve Email

I received over 200 emails and tweets and LinkedIn messages as a result of my Listserve email last week (not to mention the plethora of birthday messages I received on Facebook!). I've loved hearing from people, especially since the response has been overwhelmingly positive. I thought I'd share my favorite parts of some of the messages.

From Katie of http://katality.com/: 

I think getting into development and engineering is a great way for a woman to be a builder and creator in all types of businesses.

One man just wrote and said that when he talks about SQL and bash scripts, women aren't interested. I basically said, "Well, if they knew what those actually were, maybe they would be."

Maggie kindly wrote: 

I'm a bookkeeper for a restaurant group, which is not necessarily a male-dominated industry, but your note really rang true and shed light on an upsetting truth about gender roles. I could go on, but my main reason for writing back to you is because, contrary to what you may believe, I think you're a terrific writer. Your note flows in a way that effortlessly leads the reader through your story.

Emily's story: 

I went to college for a Bachelors of Fine Arts. My parents both encouraged me to take computer classes, I refused every time, because when you are 18 - 22 you know everything :) Once I finished my degree I went into crisis mode - I had no idea what to do next. Again my parents encouraged me to take coding classes at a local university that offered day long classes. I did. I learned, and I loved it. I got my first job as a receptionist at an advertising firm, I showed up everyday and one day I got the courage to tell our developer and IT manager that I knew how to code. I'll never forget those men, they changed my life by taking a chance on me. The told me to show them some work, which I did and with in months I was on their team. I've been victim to the "aren't interested" faces, I've been told by good friends that they 'zone out' when I talk about work, which hurt, but it doesn't make them bad people and it has challenged me to be more clear about my work.

From Malena:

I am currently a senior at the Indiana University School of Informatics and Computing and am SO proud to be a woman in tech. I was lucky enough to know by the time I started college that technology was my career passion, but for so long in middle school and high school I almost felt compelled to hid these interests in fear that they weren't "cool." 

Martha from Nairobi wrote:

I'm a 19 yr old Ruby/Python/Clojure hacker from Nairobi, Kenya. I consider myself really fortunate that I was exposed to it when so young, and I think more girls NEED the same exposure - I have something cooking for them! :) And not just for Sub-Saharan Africa girls, but globally.

From Tim: 

I've been trying to do something similar in my life. The hardest part for me is to not treat failure as the end of the world, but as a guidepost on the path to success.

From Syl: 

I just graduated from college less than a year ago. I studied psychology and economics because I tried the biomedical route and found out that I was terrible at chemistry. I thought I wanted to be a psychiatrist because my own had helped me work through some problems. I wanted to be a writer, in public relations, in HR, because that's where women were. 

A turn of events placed me in a sales job that i hated. I asked that they move me to marketing and . . . they did! But something is still in the back of my mind. During my terrible days as a phone salesman, I found a company looking for an entry level web developer. They were willing to train, and only preferred previous experience. I was excited at the idea of a career change. A new life, a new job, a new interests.

My boyfriend told me I wasn't focused enough. He wasn't trying to discourage me, but he reassured me that I was good at writing. I had a wonderfully exciting personality that should be at the marketing department. 

I dropped it, and these days I rarely think about it. Until I read your email. Working in Silicon Valley, the tech stuff is everywhere. Maybe tomorrow, I will have forgotten about this new-found determination. But at least for today, I'm encouraged. 

Maybe I'm not such a good, concise writer after all, because what I mean to say is, thank you.

From Skip: "Why didn't you find your path earlier? [Because] When the student is ready, the teacher will appear."

From Shannon Harrington: 

I currently recruit engineers for startups and personally strive to encourage more females who are freshman in college to make that leap or jump if they are really enjoying the work in their CS classes. GO GIRL! Glad that you found your niche and I wish you the best of luck in your new job post HackBright! If you know of anyone who is looking for awesome work at exciting startup companies feel free to send them this link as these are the companies that I work most closely with: http://www.baincapitalventures.com/startupacademy/.

From Trevor: 

Seems that you were soo close to staying in the rut. Damn cool you broke the pattern and are doing good with that experience. A dad of a 7 year old girl.

From Max: 

It was heart-trying to read your story of the series of unfortunate events, and I cheered for you at the end, when everything started clicking. Good for you! Congratulations!

From Nick:

As an ex-Mormon, it made me happy that you had the courage to drop the M-bomb and mention your religious affiliation in an email to thousands of strangers. If there's any blowback, hope the ignorance is transparent, and that you can shrug it off.

From another Nick: 

I completely agree that technology is often a difficult place for Women to work, I think everyone wins when we have more of a gender balance.

From Kyle: 

I slaved through school thinking I was going to be a Professor of Comparative Literature.  It was what I always assumed I'd be.
But I stumbled into a job with a small niche software company, and I fell in love with it.  I started at the bottom, and worked my way into the development team.  I also braved several pay raise negotiations.  (They're harrowing aren't they)  It's funny how companies tend to pay you what you think you're worth, and you just have to realize what you're worth in the first place to make them see it.
I was just warmed to hear a similar story, and thought I'd say congratulations!  Where we end up in life seems to often be a process of surprises, and the end result is so often much better than what we first imagined.

[After I congratulated him for being the first man to tell me that salary negotiation is harrowing:] I wonder if most men don't actually feel that intimidation during the salary negotiation, or if they just feel silly admitting it.  My suspicion is that it's the second.  Men are supposed to be confident and self-assured, and it honestly hurts at times to admit when we're not.

But keep going with development, it's rewarding in many ways.  Especially if your company gives you the freedom to pursue lines of interest.  It's sad that women are discouraged from the work, because I know so many that would find it rewarding to themselves personally. Much like how there are men out there that I believe would be excellent in the nursing field, but feel pressure against pursuing it. 

From Allison: 

As a teenager, I loved web design and taught myself HTML and even made a few of my own websites. However I was never encouraged in this direction.  Like you, I took my studies and initial work experience in the direction of working in non-profits . . . perhaps becoming a social worker . . . doing something where I can "help people." Like you, I am an introvert, and discovered that I got WAY too much anxiety thinking about meeting with new people and working with them ALL the time. Then I stumbled into my job doing quantitative data analysis. I learned SQL, and have been learning Perl, D3, and JavaScript. I now help teach our internal SQL training. I LOVE it!! This is my favorite part of my job, and I am trying to find the best path to becoming a software developer. It is definitely intimidating, because it feels like the men in the field have been learning these skills their whole lives, whereas I am just starting now (I am 26). It is so hard to know how things will fall into place or will life will take me, but I am convinced that tech is the future, and I agree that more women should learn the valuable skills to enter these fields.
You may have seen this study on the bias against women in science, but it is fascinating and depressing and a call for change: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/09/14/1211286109"

From Amanda:
As a woman who's always been interested in computers, CSS, web theory, but never considered programming, your story seems uncannily similar to mine. I am a junior at NYU and just now starting to regret my English major--I wish I could have picked up programming, too.


From another Amanda:

People just don't think to encourage girls to pursue stuff like this! So what can we do? Maybe start by doing some presentations in local schools. I know in my career  I will have lots of opportunities to do outreach, and I want to make sure the time I spend on it is effective. Do you have opportunities in your job? I know  a lot of tech companies in the bay do value community outreach. Maybe you could negotiate with your boss to have a few half days a month where you can visit a local high school and talk to some math courses about your career.

Also, as women in stem, we need to stick together, even after we find our dream job. It was courageous and rare of you (as a woman) to make a counter offer for your job. Why are we so intimidated by negotiating? (yeah, that is a blanket statement but a mostly true one)

So lets add each other to our networks of women in male dominated fields who want to make our field more accessible to other woman, and sometimes just need to know that we are not the only women who love this stuff!

From Michelle:

Being a woman in tech, I'm around men who constantly talk about

google glass
football
basketball
porn
drinking (brogrammers, sigh)
hackathon after hackathon 

it's great fun! But after the tenth conversation about all the prizes they win at hackathons, I start to wish we could have some conversations about politics. Literature. Tv shows. Angelina Jolie! 

So reading your listserve email today--even just reading the subject line,which got straight to the point--made me extremely happy. It brings me a huge sigh of relief to know that there are cool women techies in the bay area.
Have you seen this website? http://futurewomanintech.com/

From Jon:

I graduated from university in Economics last year and have recently been toying with the idea of learning more about computers. I don't know any programming whatsoever, but I am definitely interested in having specific skills rather than just the "soft" ones! 

From Sam:

I have no technology background whatsoever.  I don't even own a smart phone.  Nevertheless, I am trying to forge forward on a bit of technology.

From another Michelle:

Firstly, from a personal perspective, I'm currently trying to retrain with an aim towards a tech based career. Like you I've spent years being interested in technology, have a tendency to surround myself with technology types. I've recently left my job running a policy department for a learned society, and am trying to work out how to do this.  

And then there is a second reason; albeit it linked to the first. I am passionate about diversity - in all ways. As a properly working-class girl with an abusive family from an area in the middle of nowhere in the UK, who somehow ended up doing biochemistry at one of the best universities in the world, I'm so incredibly keen to ensure to help remove as many barriers to inclusion as possible. One of the areas in which I focus is science, engineering, and technology . . . my areas of academic interest.

From Kelly:

On the 25th, I bought a one-way ticket to San Francisco, and am going to try to make it in the start-up world (as a non-programmer for the time being). I graduated from Princeton in June. As an undergraduate, I was fascinated by computers and programming (the idea that you could make your living solving puzzles is beyond fabulous), but the few classes I took in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science were entirely male-dominated. Even the class nicknamed "emails for females" was tough as nails -- it was taught by Brian Kernighan, one of the authors of C, and was about 80% men. To make things worse, I came from a very poor public high school with minimal math and science. My classmates had world-class educations and included Intel prize winners. Any time a group project would come up, I would struggle to get a word in edge-wise, and didn't take much away. The CS degree was out of my reach, but I liked logic, so I studied philosophy.  Fast-forward a few years and I still have a burning desire to be a programmer.  I tinker with online classes and Project Euler, but I feel like there's a barrier that's very difficult to break through without the structure of a curriculum and guidance of a dedicated instructor. 

From Sara:

I live in the Bay Area, and I am interested in changing careers.  I've always done jobs related to tech (I help manage a college website), but I never thought of myself as geeky enough to become a full-on programmer. After reading your email, I realized that it was kind of weird to count myself out of a programming job because I like people too much and lead a life with balanced interests.  Maybe that makes me a perfect fit for programming!

From Francine:

My name is Francine, I'm a brazilian 22 years old and - just like you - I work with IT. I like developing web, even I work with developing for PC. But reading your e-mail made me thinking about RailsGirls. It's a Ruby event for Girls learning a little about developing, but in the better way of learning - we learn doing some application in Ruby on Rails. Here, in Sao Paulo/BR, these girls work in several areas: IT, journalism, management, marketing . . . I was thrilled to see so many women developing useful applications for themselves and  empowering themselves with this tool that can change realities.

From Anne:

Glad you have found a niche in technology.  I spent about a third of my career programming (jcl, COBOL as well as SQL). 

My town does a Women in Science fair and Robotics events - you might work as a judge. 

Also, you can be a good example in your family and your church.  

From Dana:

I agree that it isn't promoted to girls enough, and we all need to know what a great option it is! I keep finding that the programmers I know are such happy, fun people. I've been thinking about programming for some time now as I try to find a new job, and I still am trying to figure out if programming could be for me. (I work in nonprofit fundraising, but I'm trying to transition to do communications -- anything with a positive social impact that's ideally a little creative. Which programming can clearly be!) 

Your email was really inspirational, and just now it made me turn to my programmer boyfriend and say "Hey, can I work with you on practicing web development again?" 

Clara let me know about her experience at Year Up, a "one-year intensive program that provides low-income young adults, ages 18-24, with a combination of hands-on skills development, college credits, and corporate internships."

Bill shared www.coderdojo.com with me, a free and open learning collaboration around the world.

Jim let me know about an analytics conference in San Francisco mid-April: http://www.emetrics.org/sanfrancisco/2013/

Mariel told me about an event being held in New York on March 19th called, "How Tech is Changing the Way Women Work." You can find more info about it here (and see the live stream):

http://www.thegreenespace.org/events/thegreenespace/2013/mar/19/wnyc-presents-how-tech-changing-way-women-work/

From Heather:

I'm trying to make my first feature film, a Sci-Fi Comedy.  It features an IT woman who saves the world via her tech savvy and intelligence. The hero is a tech woman! 

I feel portraying a woman like this in film, not as though she's an anomaly, but simply as a fact, is extremely important - as art and life mirror each other.  And as a female film director, and comedy writer - I feel there's not enough successful female directors or comedians in power.  We do see more and more successful females in comedy, but there are still so few female filmmakers on top.  Many female oriented comedies are directed by men. 

As I'm in my fundraising phase (it's an independent film) I'm hoping to reach out to women in technology and that community - as people who might be interested in my project. Perhaps you are linked into this world, or could connect me to people such as yourself who want to improve the image of women in technology? 

I want to thank everyone who has reached out. I loved reading and responding to your messages and would love to read more (my address is first and last name at gmail dot com).