Girls Who Code - What I'd Tell My Younger Self

Talk for Girls Who Code (Summer 2013 - San Francisco)

Transcript

1. What I’d Tell My Younger Self Angie Chang (@thisgirlangie) Director, Hackbright Academy Girls Who Code - Summer 2013
2. What I Do: Director of Growth Hackbright Academy offers a 10-week accelerated software development program designed to help women become awesome programmers. Partner companies include Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, SurveyMonkey, Eventbrite, Amazon and many more.
4. Our Mentorship Program ROCKS. We pair our students with mentors who are software engineers (1 hour a week).
5. Founded Bay Area Girl Geek Dinners FREE! Founder, Bay Area Girl Geek Dinners Bay Area Girl Geek Dinners are hosted by companies including Google, Yahoo!, Facebook, Palantir, Evernote and more. The ask is simple for sponsoring companies - buy dinner and schwag for women in tech!
8. Founded Women 2.0 in 2006 Editor-in-Chief & Co-Founder, Women 2.0 Women 2.0 is a media company at the intersection of women, entrepreneurship and technology. We offer content, community and conferences for aspiring and current women innovators in technology.
9. Our Website Looked Like This:
10. 1000 Women Innovators Strong!
11. Why Am I Standing Here Talking? Because stuff like this happens.
12. But we need more like this: Newsweek cover in 2006! Newsweek cover in 2006!
13. Remember GOOG started in a garage
14. What can a girl geek do in a garage? You know, I can’t wait to find out.
15. Invent The Future, Girls!
16. The Beginning: Just Start. Think about what interests you.
17. GO Bears!
18. What I’d Tell My Younger (Cal) Self? Everyone’s struggling. EVERYONE. Work really hard. Everyone else is having a hell of a time, and they JUST AREN’T SAYING ANYTHING ABOUT HOW HARD THEY ARE WORKING.
19. Take Advantage of Every O.H. The best students stayed after class and confessed to the instructor what they have yet to understand. They attended office hours. They did not leave until they understood the subject matter completely. Lesson learned: bother your instructors.
20. Tools to Get Ahead, Get Recognized LinkedIn, Twitter, GitHub, any online portfolio... The important thing is that you can be FOUND online. Even if you have to use a pseudonym, do it.
21. Your Project Work MATTERS! List your projects - on LI, your Twitter bio, etc. Make sure the website is live (or archived) http://azurecollier.com/2013/03/12/make-your-linkedin-profile-stand-out-by-adding-projects/ ADD YOUR PROJECTS!
22. Go to Meetups, or Start One! Check out Meetup.com - Pursue your interests. Everyone has to start somewhere, and one day you will wake up with 40,000 hours (or a lot of knowledge under your belt) - a thought leader!
23. Ask Questions! Say them. Tweet them. Be bold. Go ahead, be inquisitive! You can develop thought leadership. Practice thinking of a good question to ask, then ask it.
24. Read Some Books. Before you even get your first job offer, READ - • Women Don’t Ask (salary negotiation) • Getting More (life negotiation)
25. And of course, LEAN IN.
26. Do You BLOG? At least, contribute something - somewhere. • Your WordPress blog? • Huffington Post • Medium • Twitter (micro-blogging) Who are your favorite bloggers? • Penelope Trunk • Kara Swisher • Pamela Fox
27. Language and Women’s Place Basically, avoid saying “I think” and “I feel”. That sounds like hedging. Be confident. Robin Lakoff is a UC Berkeley Linguistics professor. She proposes that women's speech can be distinguished from that of men in a number of ways, including: 1. Hedges: Phrases like "sort of", "kind of", "it seems like" 2. Empty adjectives: "divine", "adorable", "gorgeous" 3. Super-polite forms: "Would you mind..." "...if it’s not too much to ask" "Is it o.k if...?" 4. Apologize more: "I'm sorry, but I think that..." 5. Speak less frequently 6. Avoid coarse language or expletives 7. Tag questions: "You don't mind eating this, do you?". 8. Hyper-correct grammar and pronunciation: Use of prestige grammar and clear articulation 9. Indirect requests: "Wow, I'm so thirsty." – really asking for a drink 10. Speak in italics: Use tone to emphasis certain words, e.g., "so", "very", "quite" *Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Lakoff
28. Dare to Tweet. Join the Conversation. Tweet at people you follow who are thought leaders - agree or disagree, provide additional comments or useful links. This gets you on their radar. You become a peer because you’re in a conversation with them without really having one IRL. The Internet is funny.
29. Join Mailing Lists. Listen, lurk and occasionally chime in.
30. Have a Business Card. Story of developer Kathryn King (@coderkat)
31. Here Are My Hopes for the Future. For all you high-achieving girls, here’s to you: • START A GROWTH COMPANY ◦ Find the biggest market. Have a team supporting you. Get venture funding, or just be business-smart. • LEAD A GROWTH COMPANY ◦ You don’t have to be the founder (that’s overrated). But you can identify a growing company and get on the rocket ship. • INVENT SOMETHING. THEN PATENT IT! ◦ Start your own language or web framework. Put your name to it. Grace Hopper developed COBOL.
32. Invent the Future. Give entrepreneurship a shot. Code something.
33. Well, why not?
34. If you never failed, you never tried. So go ahead, have some epic fails. Learn from them, and laugh at them (one day).
35. Women Who Tried - And Succeeded! Julia Hu (Founder & CEO, Lark)
36. Women Who Tried - And Succeeded! Caterina Fake (Founder, Flickr/Hunch/Findery)
37. Women Who Tried - And Succeeded! Debbie Sterling (Founder & CEO, GoldieBlox)
38. Women Who Tried - And Succeeded! Alexa Andrzejewski (Founder, Foodspotting)
39. First, She Pitched a Prototype: She sold her vision by pitching a prototype at one of the first Startup Weekend hackathons.
40. Grew a Team, Raised $, Sold It! Foodspotting was acquired by OpenTable for $10 million earlier this year.
41. Here’s to More Cover Women! Success stories, role models, women who risk.