Vanessa Tan, engineering manager

What do women in tech wish they knew early on? That your gender expression will be heavily scrutinized, but no matter how much easier it seems to just conform, it’s well worth your effort to stand by who you are.

Being pressured to fit into “brogrammer” stereotypes? Absolutely, and I was warned that this was coming. But there’s also discourse like this:

Now I find myself having to waste time talking about my gender rather than my technology…otherwise, there are lectures:

• The “you didn’t have a woman on the panel” lecture. I’m on the panel, but I’m told I don’t count because of the way I dress: T-shirt, jeans, boots, no make-up.
• The “you desexualize yourself to fit in; you’re oppressed!” lecture. I’m told that deep in my female heart I must really love make-up and fashion. It’s not that I’m a geek who doesn’t much care how she looks.
• The “you aren’t representing women; you’d be a better role model for girls if you looked the part” lecture. Funny, the rest of the world seems very busy telling girls to look fashionable (just pick up a magazine or walk down the girls’ toy aisle). I don’t think someone as bad at fashion as I am should worry about it.

“I’m told I don’t count.” Sometimes I don’t count as an engineer (“why are you wearing a dress?”), but I also don’t count as a woman (“can’t you just wear makeup?”). And defending my desire to wear t-shirts (or not) is exhausting.

I wish I knew early on to be more vocal about gender issues like this, because it matters.

Xin Lu, old engineer & fat mom (answered Mar 29, 2014)

Ask for more money – Yes, women do get paid less for the same roles, but women also don’t usually ask for more money either. I didn’t know this and didn’t negotiate my job offers in the beginning. I only learned because I found out what everyone else was paid at one of my first jobs and figured out that women were REALLY paid less. Now I always ask for more money in job offer negotiations. If you are not happy about what you are being paid you need to speak up. Companies will always try to shell out as little as possible, but you should know what the market rates are and value yourself as much as men.

Don’t be afraid of offending people – It’s okay to speak your mind and be a bit loud. I’ve gotten louder over the years. You don’t always have to be the “nice girl”. Sure, some people might think you’re a “bitch”, but you need to fight for what you believe in.

Don’t get too offended – Men just interact with each other differently. They can be kind of immature. What can I say?: 90 percent of the time they are not trying to be mean, but sometimes they can be. However, the good thing about men is that they are usually fairly direct and if you are offended it’s easy to tell them. Some people are just jackasses, and there’s not much you can do about that.

Find a job that challenges you and continue to learn – My last job wasn’t terrible. I had a bunch of great smart female engineer coworkers but the job got too easy and if I stayed there I would have been stuck there. You have to keep on learning new stuff to survive in tech. All of this mobile tech stuff (android/ios) didn’t even exist when I went to Berkeley in the early 2000s. Sometimes it is easier to just stay at one place forever and do the same thing forever, but it’s probably not the best path.

Think about having kids early – Some women may not want kids, but I did want at least one kid. This is something you need to plan out and think about early on in your career because usually women have to give up much more to have kids. I had my son when I was 26, and the hardest thing to deal with was childcare especially if you live in the Silicon Valley where EVERYTHING is more expensive. If you work full time you may have to give up a ton of your take home pay to childcare. Even with a tech salary this can be a lot of money. In fact I paid more for my son’s childcare in the last 4 years than I paid for my 4 years of college. However, I am happy now that my son is 4 and I don’t have to worry about him as much and can once again focus on my career. If you are further along in your career it would be even harder to even take a break. So if you want kids you need to think about it and prepare for it. Once you have a kid or two the dynamics at work will also change. Basically, it’s a huge deal. Think about it and plan for it early.

Maintain your personal networkI’m basically in my 10th year of working in the Silicon Valley now, and I’ve found that it really does matter who you know in this place. Yes, I have gotten job leads and recommendations from former coworkers, and multiple former coworkers have tried to recruit me. If you are not from Berkeley/MIT/Caltech/Stanford/other top tech schools then you’ll have a slightly harder time in the beginning, but try to break into that network professionally and make sure people remember you. Social circles are really really small here even though it seems like a big place. It can be a meritocracy, but it’s much easier when you have worked with someone at the top in the past.

Detours are OK – A lot of Berkeley EECS women that I graduated with did not end up working in tech at all. Again, this is a personal decision. A lot of them went on to great things such as finance or medicine or lawyering but they decided that tech is not for them. So I’m basically saying that it’s OK to switch gears. I took a break to do something else, too, and it has been financially rewarding. Basically don’t be locked down into a tech career just because you got a degree in it and you feel like you got something to prove. Do what makes you excited and challenge yourself. Even in tech eventually you got to decide whether you want to go into management and give up being an engineer or in big company parlance an individual contributor. I haven’t gone that route myself just because I don’t really want to deal with office politics and reviewing people and all that crap, but it might not be so bad.