What It's Really Like to Be a Woman Working in Tech

Updated on 6/21/2015 at 1:15 PM

This question originally appeared on Quora: what is it like to be a woman working in the tech industry?

Answer by Rebekah Cox, a product manager who has been working in technology since 1999.

TL;DR: Being a woman in the tech industry is awesome if you love technology enough to push through the more difficult parts.

Right off the bat, a disclaimer: It's very difficult to answer this question broadly. Not all experiences are the same. However, I can share my personal experience because it might contribute to some larger themes if enough women participate on this thread. So, here's my answer…an answer from a product designer who has spent over a decade building products and has spent the last four years building products and managing people in Silicon Valley.

Act 1 - Unfortunate Reality

The Environment Is Generally Rough

Girls are raised differently than boys. Not all girls and not all boys are raised the same, obviously, but on average girls are more sheltered than boys in their formative years. Girls are typically raised with kid gloves and rarely receive the hard, direct and tough feedback of their male counterparts. This is important because the technical environment is tough and has been built on a foundation of direct feedback and there are very established and elaborate structures that facilitate nerd trash talk. So, if you enter this environment as a woman without any sort of agenda or understanding of this culture, the first thing you find is that if you actually say something the most likely reaction is for a guy to verbally hit you directly in the face. To the guys this is perfectly normal, expected and encouraged behavior but to women this is completely out of nowhere and extremely discouraging.

As a technical woman, this is your introduction and the first thing you have to learn is how to get back up and walk right back into a situation where the likelihood of getting punished for participating is one. How you choose to react to this determines the rest of your career in technology. If it's too painful you'll retreat to management, if you can tough it out your career will be limited because the very tools you develop to survive have other social consequences.

You Generally Feel Alone

Because the environment is so rough and generally hostile, the women who can navigate it are a very small, select group. It's rare to encounter another woman and even rarer to encounter another technical woman.

Overall it's awesome to encounter other women because while you grow accustomed to quirks of a room full of men (the jostling, the chest beating, the pissing contests, the egos, etc.), it does get old. When another woman is thrown into that mix, you get to avoid the old script and reevaluate the dynamic so it's more interesting. However, you and everyone else is accustomed to women in the facilitator manager role, not in the making technical decisions role. Typically your collaborative and directional contributions almost always fare better than your technical contributions. If you pay attention to those social cues, you may start to subtly pull yourself out of the rough and tumble technical decision making and retreat into the facilitation role. If you ignore the social cues, you have to assert yourself aggressively into the technical conversation and take some lumps. If you choose that aggressive path, you will be even more alone because those likely less technical women in the room with you don't have the expertise to back you up.

Act II - Fortunate Reality

You Have Access to Opportunities (You Are NOT Actually Alone)

Even the aforementioned nerd trash talk is actually a useful tool that can help you. The reason that culture exists is to make everyone in the group better. The fact that you are getting hit in the face means that someone is either wrong and you can hit back with a correct answer or that you are wrong and someone is letting you know that directly. Sticking that out means you are learning in an accelerated environment with instant correction.

Furthermore, if you stick around long enough, you can find people who aren't completely insecure and are confident enough to not resort to insults to assert themselves. Those people make the tough environment actually tolerable. If you can help each other, then you can establish a safer zone to talk through ideas. And since those more secure people are typically so secure because they are really, really good, you can find yourself in an informational jet-stream. I didn't fully appreciate this until working with Adam, Charlie and Quora User but once discovered and taken advantage of opportunities abound.

Opportunities also exist in the form of help from others pushing you forward and help in the form of others who don't let you get away with anything. Help might be treating you like everyone else. Help might be from the powerful women who may not make the perfect guidepost but are available and will make time for you. For me personally a huge turning point was working at Quora. I remember realizing how the founders had trusted me with this incredible challenge involved with taking responsibility for building Quora's product and interface. It was the first time I was able to take responsibility directly which is a remarkable opportunity.

Results Matter and Are Powerful

The technology world isn't a perfect meritocracy but it's close enough and awesome results do matter. Whatever barrier is in front of you, an amazing product that gets traction will cut through it. The same is true for an awesome abstraction that boasts a 50% speed improvement or generates elegant code which enables future efficiency. The absence of an outright block means that making something great can open many closed doors. Just knowing that is possible is very encouraging. Additionally, if you push through the crap and have major contributions to make, no one is going to be able to ignore your results nor will they want to. At the end of the day everyone in technology wants to turn a dollar into 10 and then into a thousand; it's essentially a culture built on hope and results. The barriers to entry are pretty low and inexpensive. Start building, learn JavaScript, publish thoughts, all of these building blocks are readily accessible. Use them. Get results. People will give you money to get more results.

Being a Woman in Tech Is a Competitive Advantage

Developing new technologies is about oscillating from extreme focus (for designing and programming and building) to wide open creative exploration (in order to understand people and their motivations as well as their problems). As a woman thinking about these complex issues, you have a rich and deep understanding around details like safety and privacy but also around tone and cooperative communication and gathering feedback. You also have this ability to obsess about the details others may ignorantly avoid. That's not even the faintest outline of the unique characteristics women bring. When half of all consumers are women, being able to tap into those women to use your product is obviously huge. Not enough women capitalize on this advantage, but that doesn't make it less meaningful.

Act III - Conclusion

Technology Is Awesome

Being a woman in technology means being surrounded by amazing technology and crazy smart and ambitious people all the time. Being a technical woman means being able to join in on the fun and building things for people as a path toward making their lives better. How awesome is that?