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Angie Chang: It’s time for our next session. Up next is Ashu Ravichander. She is an engineer and product manager, currently Principal Product Manager at Workday. And outside of her day job, she leads product for the Human Health Project, which is a nonprofit, connecting patients with mental health and other chronic diseases [inaudible] advocates that help them navigate the healthcare system. Welcome, Ashu.

Ashu Ravichander: Thank you, Angie. Let me start screen share. Okay. Hi, everyone. And thank you so much for joining this talk, writing the highs and lows where I’ll go over some of my techniques to navigating bad mental health days in the workplace. But first introductions.

Ashu Ravichander: Hi, I’m Ashu Ravichander and I’m currently a Principal Product Manager at Workday. I started out my career as an engineer in the healthcare space almost a decade ago now, and since then have built consumer and enterprise products for a wide variety of personas. On a personal note, I have two beautiful dogs and Boo, my cat, with my husband. Outside of work, I live in California now, so I love to kayak in the summers and ride bikes through the year.

Ashu Ravichander: I also have bipolar disorder, type two to be specific. Most of my friends and coworkers know the first seven things about me but not the last, because that is not something I ever speak about since it’s not really well understood and is unfortunately so often conflated with your character and capabilities.

Ashu Ravichander: Now I have attended conferences and other events for past decade now, and I have heard some amazing speakers, but I wish 23-year-old me could have heard more people talking about mental health in a tech or professional setting so that it felt more normalized, and that I understood that it was just a difference and should never have been a reason to hold back.

Ashu Ravichander: That’s why I’m here today to kind of do this for 23-year-old me and for anyone else that may need to hear it because statistically, I know I’m not alone and you may not have a diagnosed mental health condition, but honestly, it’s a spectrum and we all have mental health. And some days, it just does not fare as well, whether it’s due to biochemical reactions, external stressors, thanks pandemic, or just being human.

Ashu Ravichander: I think this is important for everyone to hear and learn, to build resiliency. Now earlier, I used to compartmentalize my professional and personal self and never let it seep into the other, but this wasn’t sustainable. And if I wanted to bring my full self to work, I had to positively integrate my condition in because I also have ambitious career goals. And I knew I’m going to build amazing teams working on amazing products.

Ashu Ravichander: I started taking on a more mindful approach to work and making sure I had defenses up against any bad days. And that’s what I want to talk to you all about today. I’m going to walk through my personal experience about how I build resiliency around bad mental health days at work.

Ashu Ravichander: I go through five of the most basic and important things I have in my tool kit that help me be consistent and bring my best whenever I need to. And how I, and hopefully you, can use this to bring your whole self to work. I do want to also call out what the talk is not. None of these techniques are substitute for care, whether it’s self-care, meditation, medication, therapies. There are a lot of great resources out there and I do recommend you seek this out.

Ashu Ravichander: I have put years of work for myself into therapy and medication that has let me come to this point, to be here and talk you all. And I’d be more than happy to connect on this offline. Along with seeking out care, I want to stress that you need to treat your physical and mental health the same and take the time off, take the mental health days off if you really need to.

Ashu Ravichander: And finally, it is not a formula. I’ve had to develop what works for me over years of trial and error and I’m sharing what has stuck. This could look very different for you. And I hope you take this as a starting point to build the tools that will work for you. With that, let’s jump into five simple tools I use to bring my best work.

Ashu Ravichander: Now, my first technique is to build a playbook of templates, frameworks to help give me a leg up on really low energy days. I’m a Product Manager and we are the go to people about our products, right? Quite often, I find that I have to turn around and create something like white papers or business cases for really different audiences in a very short timeframe.

Ashu Ravichander: But what do I do if this falls on a really low day for me, where my energy is not where it would normally be? I don’t want to do a bad job just because the timing wasn’t right. I knew I had to do something different to accommodate for this.

Ashu Ravichander: I looked at the most common things I might need on a daily or weekly basis and figure that if I had a template or a framework for these things, then I would always have create starting points for my most common deliverables.

Ashu Ravichander: Think about it kind of like meal prep on a weekday after you’ve had this hard time at work, you finished all your chores, you know you need to have a nutritious balanced meal, but you just don’t have the mental of physical energy to cook up anything elaborate.

Ashu Ravichander: If you do meal prep on the weekend and have some pre-prepared proteins and chopped and season vegetables, then all you really have to do is heat it up, maybe add a really simple salad to it, and wow, you’ve got a great nutritious meal ready.

Ashu Ravichander: The templates that I collect are kind of the same thing. If I get asked to put a business case template together, I already have a starting point with my business case template and you and I know that formatting is 50% of the work. I already have a leg up.

Ashu Ravichander: I also have notes, prompts and question of these to make filling it out easier, almost Mad Libs style. For example, in my business case deck, I have a section on the success metrics and I have a little prompt there that reminds me to detail out the product metrics and how that could tie into the organization’s metrics or OKRs that they’re tracking.

Ashu Ravichander: Now when I need to fill it out, even if I’m having an off day, I’m making sure I cover the right points and details.

Ashu Ravichander: Over the years, I have collected and continue to add what I need in my day-to-day work to my playbook. So far, I have a roadmap deck, feature requirement templates, business case decks, prioritization frameworks, and a few more things that I can lean on.

Ashu Ravichander: I also have the privilege of working with some amazing coworkers and teams in various organizations. Every time I see an impactful presentation or document, including some that we saw in the conference earlier today, I constantly think about my playbook and either ask for a copy or adapt a template from it.

Ashu Ravichander: I have a folder for my work computer with these samples and templates labeled with all the organization teams and branding, but I also make a generic and non-branded templates for myself to use with links to publicly available themes and icon collections, and have it on my private Google Drive, so I know I can port this playbook with me.

Ashu Ravichander: Next, I have what I like to call, spacers. One thing I have learned from cycling through highs and lows is that everything passes. So it really helps me to buy some time or create spaces between me and the critical event or task till I can get back in that right state and have appropriate and reliable responses.

Ashu Ravichander: A few weeks ago, my dog Arby, he had surgery and I think it was on a Wednesday. And I remember I was like a complete wreck that day, but I was still in a few meetings where I needed to make sure I had a handle on the project we’re working on.

Ashu Ravichander: I tried to be as present at the meetings, but since I knew it was going to be a high stress day, I asked for all meetings that day to be recorded.

Ashu Ravichander: For meetings that I couldn’t record, I had my transcription app open, so I had the whole meeting transcribed and had notes for myself. I spent the rest of the day doing less intense tasks, like I think I just sorted through some old detail that I needed and replied to older emails.

Ashu Ravichander: Then at around 6:00 PM, the vet calls me and he tells me, “Arby has made it through surgery. Just fine. It was awake.” I finally felt like I could breathe and got back into that right state of mind.

Ashu Ravichander: Now I know there was some questions asked of me in the meetings and some follow-ups. To make sure I didn’t miss anything, I just replayed my meetings from the day at 2X speed, of course, and looked at the transcription so that I could catch up.

Ashu Ravichander: Now, recording and transcriptions are a good way to build spacers, but there are other ways I do this too, depending on the situation, like shuffling around some of my tasks, so working on more routine or repetitive tasks when I’m stressed and then the more important tasks later, or responding to infuriating emails only after I spent some time out watering my garden and having to think about it, either way a very well-watered garden in case you were wondering.

Ashu Ravichander: But it is a slippery slope between building a spacer and procrastination. I have seen this and experienced it. So I have had to make a sacred rule about maintaining a to-do list in a single spot, which I have to regularly review before starting another task.

Ashu Ravichander: The bottom line here is find out what works for you. Pause, prioritize, and come back to situations or tasks when you are ready.

Ashu Ravichander: Now, the third technique I use is to ask for feedback early and often to almost have a reality check. I’m not going to lie to you. It’s hard to ask for feedback and I am still putting this into practice, but I know it has a big payout.

Ashu Ravichander: Almost all the time when I’m in a depressive phase, I find that I’m putting myself down almost relentlessly. For example, recently I forgot an edge case while writing product requirements, and someone pointed that out during the review.

Ashu Ravichander: Now my inner voice starts telling me that I’m a terrible product manager, because I couldn’t think of that edge case scenario upfront, and that I’m probably not qualified for this job. Even though rationally, I know it’s not possible to think of all edge cases that could possibly occur.

Ashu Ravichander: And in fact, product requirements are a collaborative effort that grows and improves with feedback and maybe my multiple engineering degrees and a decade of releasing successful enterprise scale products may say otherwise.

Ashu Ravichander: However, this constant cycle of thoughts really magnifies the imposter syndrome. And what I’ve found breaks the cycle is having factual evidence or conversations to overcome it.

Ashu Ravichander: For me, especially at the start of new jobs on new projects when I am still working on getting up to speed or where in storming phase of the project, I find that I’m a lot harder on myself about not being further along and the imposter syndrome is on high gear, and almost always.

Ashu Ravichander: The people around me recognize that the reality is that we are in the storming phase of the project and that it’s normal and we’ll get better with collaboration or that it’s only been two months since I joined, so it’s actually okay to not know as much.

Ashu Ravichander: I ask for feedback early in these cases so that I’m being grounded and have a better pulse on reality versus what the imposter syndrome’s telling me.

Ashu Ravichander: Now it is important to get feedback from the right people. Just because someone is on the same project as you, doesn’t automatically make them a great person to get feedback from.

Ashu Ravichander: For me, these have to be people have a great professional relationship with. I know that they know me and I feel comfortable asking and really discussing their opinions.

Ashu Ravichander: I also prepare what I want to get feedback on because it is important to know why you want feedback and what you’re going to do with it. Is it a specific action on a project or your working style with a team or something else?

Ashu Ravichander: Vague questions give you vague answers. So take the time to prepare the questions to make this meaningful. I also know I need to wait for the right time when I know I’m in a good place mentally to accept the feedback and not be defensive about it.

Ashu Ravichander: And the last thing I’ll leave you with on this topic is a reminder to accept positive feedback. Earlier, I used to spend most of my time reviewing my feedback and focusing only on the negative, because these are areas I could take action on to improve.

Ashu Ravichander: And I would completely gloss over anything positive since my reviewer probably didn’t mean it or they were just saying it to be nice that there was really nothing actionable for me there.

Ashu Ravichander: But now I know it is so important to focus on the positive so that you know what’s working and what strengths you have that you can lean into more. Seek and accept positive feedback.

Ashu Ravichander: Now this next technique is a more recent discovery for me. And I can tell you, it has absolutely been redeeming already. You may have heard this before.

Ashu Ravichander: Assume positive intent. Practicing this a few times has already helped me so much that I know this one will stick in my tool kit for a long time. So uncertain days with interpersonal interactions, I’m sensitive and sometimes read too much into things, like why does my coworker hate me?

Ashu Ravichander: Just because they said something contradictory or spoke over me in a meeting. There was a time this would have upset me so much that I’d be crying in a bathroom stall over it.

Ashu Ravichander: Now as a bottom line, I just assume everyone I interact with at work has positive intent. It helps me not be angry or annoyed over it, but look at it situationally.

Ashu Ravichander: In the case where someone interrupts me in a meeting, I’m now thinking that you just interrupted me to say something, not because you wanted to cut me off, but because you had something to say that felt unheard.

Ashu Ravichander: Okay. With this context in my mind, I’m going to repeat what he said so you know that I hear you and then go on to the point I was making. In an organization, especially one with great culture, you very rarely meet actual bad players. Instead, if in a conversation or project, if we have that common goal understood, it’s easier to assume that everyone has positive intentions to work that’s that common goal, albeit in different ways.

Ashu Ravichander: It’s usually not personal or malicious attacks, so remember your common goals, and assume everyone works towards it with positive intentions.

Ashu Ravichander: Now I saved this one for the last, because for me, one of the bigger challenges I’ve faced in the workplace with my disorder is the disproportionate reaction to certain situations on certain days. It could be as simple as someone pointing out a mistake I made or getting some not so positive feedback.

Ashu Ravichander: Either of these simple reactions or interactions could have resulted with breaking down into tears when I got home or sinking into depression. This kind of extreme reaction is hard to deal with when you now have to get on with the rest of your day and go into a three-hour grooming session with your engineering team.

Ashu Ravichander: What has really helped me here is finding a few key people who are my anchors and help ground me and rationalize my thought process. A simple conversation or text with my anchors, where I describe a certain situation, helps me understand what a rational response would look like from their perspective versus how my brain might be exaggerating it, and this really helps center me.

Ashu Ravichander: One thing I must caution you about here is the fact that this can be extremely exhausting for the people you reach out to. Be mindful of that and make sure you have a few different trusted people that you can talk to, so you can load balance it without bringing any one single person, but don’t hold back on reaching out to people.

Ashu Ravichander: And if you don’t get a response, move on to someone else if it’s important for you to talk to someone at that time for that scenario. For me, if all else fails, I still text my mom and she replies back, so that’s a great thing. Put in effort into these relationships, and I always look to find ways to give back to the wonderful anchors that hold me steady.

Ashu Ravichander: Well, that’s my tool kit. To quickly recap what I have: Firstly, playbooks that I have built over time to give me great starting points. Second, spacers that help me pause and come back to a task when I’m ready. Third, is feedback, to cut the imposter syndrome in the bud and help me reinforce what I’m good at and what I can work on. Fourth, is assuming positive intent that can help move us all towards a common goal. And finally, fifth, my trusted circle of anchors that I can rely on.

Ashu Ravichander: Those were five of the more important tools I have in my tool kit. And even though I use these tools almost daily, I knew it still needs very intentional practice for it to be useful. And please know that you are not alone.

Ashu Ravichander: Ever since I posted that I was going to talk about this, I was worried whether being this open and vulnerable would impact my career, but it’s had the opposite effect. I’ve had so many people reach out to share their stories.

Ashu Ravichander: These are women who’ve founding companies, and someone else I met who’s had a really hard time with her mental health but is still so very successfully leading a large channel from one of the biggest companies in the world.

Ashu Ravichander: There are many people with these invisible struggles who are flourishing and building beautiful products. We just need to work differently. I’d love to hear your thoughts more about your tools, or maybe just connect on LinkedIn.

Ashu Ravichander: Thank you. And happy Women’s Day.

Sukrutha Bhadouria: Wow. Ashu, that was amazing. I felt like you were talking about me. Thank you so much for your amazing talk on managing mental health at work. I know from the comments, a lot of people really resonated with your tips and tricks specifically, because you gave so much context into what the actual problem was that you were looking to solve.

Like what you see here? Our mission-aligned Girl Geek X partners are hiring!

• Check out open jobs at our trusted partner companies.
• Watch all Elevate 2022 conference video replays!
• Does your company want to sponsor a Girl Geek Dinner? Talk to us!

Like what you see here? Our mission-aligned Girl Geek X partners are hiring!

• Check out open jobs at our trusted partner companies.
• Watch all Elevate 2022 conference video replays!
• Does your company want to sponsor a Girl Geek Dinner? Talk to us!

Angie Chang: Our next session is a slate of technical women from Slack, from engineering managers, to leadership beyond the management track. I’m so excited to hand it over now to our Slack panel moderator to get things started. Welcome, Brooke.

Brook Shelley: Thanks Angie. Yeah, as Angie said, we’re from Slack. My name’s Brook, my pronouns are she/her, and I am a manager in the infrastructure group at Slack. I manage two different teams, one for asynchronous jobs, and one for data management. I’d like to start us off by just going around the group. And if you want to name, pronoun, and then what got you into engineering or development in the first place? So Leena, you’re first on my screen, why don’t you go ahead?

Leena Mansour: Sure. Yeah. Hi, my name is Leena Mansour, my pronouns are she/her. I’m an engineering manager at Slack. I run a team of mobile developers.

Leena Mansour: What got me into this is I was 16 and I did not want to follow my parents’ footsteps. So I didn’t take any biology because they were all in the medical field. And where I grew up, your options were you were a doctor or your engineer.

Leena Mansour: So I went into engineering. I thought computers were cool. It worked out for me. They are cool, so here I am.

Brook Shelley: They’re still cool, right? Otherwise, I got to find a new job.

Leena Mansour: Yeah. Yeah.

Brook Shelley: Mina, how about you?

Mina Markham: Hi. So my name is Mina Markham, my pronouns are she/her, and I’m a staff engineer here, and I got in engineering by accident. I used to be a graphic designer professionally, and so I taught myself the basic HTML and CSS so I could build a graphic design portfolio website so I could get a job. But as I learned how to do that, I found it interesting, so I kept learning how to do more and more web development things. And eventually I realized, “Hey, I could actually get paid to do this instead of the design stuff.” So I shifted my attention to learning more about that and eventually got a job as a front developer and kept learning and growing in that. So it was organic, but by accident.

Brook Shelley: And I heard you start working at Slack because you thought that’s your best way to meet Beyonce, right?

Mina Markham: I mean, yeah, obviously I’m still waiting. I’m crossing my fingers, but yes.

Brook Shelley: I mean, we know a few people who are pretty cool use Slack, but maybe she doesn’t yet. We got to let [crosstalk].

Mina Markham: Maybe not yet, but if anyone out there has a connection, just hook me up.

Brook Shelley: That’s right.

Mina Markham: I’m waiting for it. I’m waiting for it.

Brook Shelley: Yeah. Mina’s information is in the things, and she’s serious. Find Beyonce for her.

Mina Markham: I am dead serious. Yes.

Brook Shelley: Hi, Rukmini. How about you?

Rukmini Reddy: Hi everyone. I’m Rukmini, my pronouns are she/her. SVP of Engineering at Slack. I run Slacks platform. I wanted to be an engineer since I was eight years old. This has been my dream. I’m a total geek. I love building things, and yeah, I’m happy that I was able to realize an early childhood dream.

Brook Shelley: Heck yeah. Tracy?

Tracy Stampfli: Hey, I’m Tracy, my pronoun are she/her, and I’m a Principal Engineer at Slack. I also got into tech by accident. I started off studying mathematics, and originally thought I was going to get a PhD and become a professor of mathematics. I know that’s a very glamorous career choice, but then midway through grad school, figured out that wasn’t actually what I wanted to do, and ended up leaving. And by accident, getting into tech, starting off in QE and then working my way over to development. But now I’ve been in tech for very long time, and have found it really, really great and fulfilling.

Brook Shelley: Start with you, but can you say what’s your title at Slack? Because I think people don’t quite [crosstalk]

Tracy Stampfli: I said my title, Brook.

Brook Shelley: Oh, you did. I’m sorry.

Tracy Stampfli: I’ll say it. I’m a Principal Engineer, and I’ve never… I’ve stayed [crosstalk]

Brook Shelley: That’s the highest level here, right?

Tracy Stampfli: It is the highest level at Slack, and I’ve stayed on the IC side of things. I’ve never switched over to management. And I’ve really found that for me, at least, I’m interested in having impact on the direction of product, and planning, and all those things, technology decisions. But I want to do it from the standpoint of being more of a tech lead, and not from moving into management.

Brook Shelley: Yeah, that makes sense. And myself, I guess I should say I started off in literature. I wanted to be a writer. I still am a writer, but I needed to make money, and it turned out fixing computers was a better way to make money. So I started off in IT, moved into Ops and SRE work. And now eventually back into management and I wrote promo packet as Rukmini says. We have a thing at work called Manager Olympics, where we have a series of events that take place over a few months, and we just finished. So now I’m just celebrating.

Brook Shelley: But yeah, I like working with people better than computers these days. They’re harder to troubleshoot, but they’re more rewarding when you do. Computers, just say 200, okay. People might cry, or say thank you. It’s nicer. Let’s say the opposite side of Tracy, Rukmini, what made you want to get into management?

Rukmini Reddy: That’s a great question. So I started my journey being an individual contributor. It was a very tiny company. So me being a principal engineers nowhere equal to Tracy’s Principal Engineer at Slack. Woohoo. But I was a principal engineer in a tiny company, and my CTO then came to me and it was like, “You are really good with people. I always feel like you can give hard feedback. You’re able to drive for clarity. You’re hyper-organized and you’re bringing everyone together. Have you considered moving into management?”

Rukmini Reddy: And like most of you, I went through all the stages of grief I see go through when someone else says you should be a manager. And I was a like, “No, I won’t do it to, maybe I should explore it.” And the assurance I had from him at that time, which was very, very advanced for the time it was in, was if you hate it, you can go back to being in IT. So I was like, “Okay, I’m going to try.”

Rukmini Reddy: And I tried, and you know to Brook’s earlier point, people don’t come with debug statements. They don’t come with here’s how you are supposed to deal with me. And I just found it just so much more complex than programming, and also so much more rewarding.

Rukmini Reddy: I think that’s the part I want to underscore, because I realized that my purpose in life was to enable others finding their purpose, and their journey. And I just wanted to be that bystander and cheer them along, and brought me lot of joy in ways like coding did not. So I never look back. I say, I’m one of those people who just absolutely loves being a people manager because no two days are the same for me.

Brook Shelley: Now I’ve heard when you’re a manager, you never get to code again. Right? You could never do a personal project. You can never even open a computer other than for a meeting. Is that right Leena? Have you had that experience?

Leena Mansour: I believe it’s illegal, and the police will show up at your door if you launch any kind of code editor. Yes. That is true.

Brook Shelley: The stack overflow [inaudible]

Leena Mansour: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you definitely can. And I know I try every now and then, but you get so rusty and then you go try to touch it and you’re like, “Wow, I’m really bad at this.” But it is so still really fun to build little things just for yourself.

Brook Shelley: But I always try to over-engineer my stuff. My website’s built on Netlify, with docker containers and all sorts of stuff. Because I’m like, “Oh, if I can’t program at work, I’m going to do it way too much for my blog.” And Mina, did you have pressure as well? To become manager, become a lead in some way? I imagine so, because people [inaudible] quite a bit.

Mina Markham: So yeah, a little bit. There was a fork in the road in my career at Slack. And for a long time, I thought… Not just at Slack, but my career in general, and for a long time, I thought that to be a leader I had to go into management. Like that was the only way to truly lead anyone.

Mina Markham: And luckily I had a great manager at the time, who let me know, “Yeah, you can be a leader and not manage people.” Which is great, because I didn’t want to manage people. So I went the IC track instead. But yeah, for a long time, people kept trying to tell me, “Hey, you’d make a really good manager. You should look into it.”

Mina Markham: And not to say that I wouldn’t be good at it, but it’s not a skill that I necessarily want to do. I like coding. I want to stay more into coding, and more into doing architecting and strategizing. So the fact that I was able to shift into IC leadership, and be more of a mentor to people, versus actually managing people was great.

Brook Shelley: Yeah. That makes sense. And for me, I’ll say as a manager, I manage two teams. I absolutely depend on my leads. The tech leads I have, I wouldn’t be able to do most of my job if I didn’t have their advice, and their ideas, and even their mentorship with other people on the team. So, it’s pretty key.

Brook Shelley: What keeps you going every day? I know it’s been a hard time. We’ll start with Mina this time. But it’s COVID, there’s a war, there’s all this stuff going on. Whether you’re working with people, working with computers, there’s not a lot of respite sometimes. The Internet’s still there, so how do you stay motivated?

Mina Markham: I can answer that. I’ve actually disconnected just a little bit from social media, just because the onslaughts of information does get very draining. So I’m staying motivated by narrowing the focus of what I let grab my attention. I mean, that’s a little bit of a privilege, because I can turn off certain things and not pay attention to them, which is not what everyone can do.

Mina Markham: But yeah, I’ve decided to shift, to focus on more things, closer to what I can control. The sphere of influence I have, because I get really anxious when I see all these things happening that I can’t do anything about. So I’ve tried to stay motivated to like, “okay, what can I personally do?” And that helps me to find some purpose in getting up and doing the work that I’m doing. So yeah.

Brook Shelley: That makes sense. What about you, Tracy? What keeps you coming back to Slack?

Tracy Stampfli: For one thing, I think that one thing that’s nice about getting to the higher levels of being, and I see is that you really get to design what your role is yourself. No one’s really telling me what to do at this point. No one’s telling me what to do, and so I’m really figuring out what do I want my role to be?

Tracy Stampfli: I actually went through this exercise recently, where I tried to write down, and define, this is what I think my role is. This is what I think I should be doing with my time. And that was actually really interesting exercise to go through, and really useful, because it did make me think about what do I want to spend my time doing? And what do I think is important?

Brook Shelley: Oh, that definitely makes sense. How about you Leena?

Leena Mansour: Sorry. Yeah.

Brook Shelley: No, it’s okay.

Leena Mansour: I mean,

Brook Shelley: There’s a lot going on in the chat too, so.

Leena Mansour: There is, there is. Yeah, I adopt the stick your head in the sand mentality when it comes to most news. I hear about the big things, because you always will, but it’s hard when there are things that you can’t do anything about.

Leena Mansour: It’s also been hard because I’m in Canada, and Canada has been mostly locked down for a really long time. So you find your own ways. So I actually have my knitting right here. I knit through meetings, most meetings, and you just got to focus on the things that…

Leena Mansour: What I keep reminding myself of is like, “What do I truly like about the job?” And like Rukmini, I really, really enjoy helping people figure out what their goals are and get those goals. So if I’m having a hard time, I just focus, and have some of those conversations with my people and feel like I’m leaving some positivity in the world through that. And then we sleep, and we start over again.

Brook Shelley: Totally. And Rukmini, I mean, you’re a boss’s boss’s boss. So all the pain and suffering and emotions go to you, right? You’re sort of where it ends? Is that?

Rukmini Reddy: You know, actually I think it just comes down to, I think whether you’re in IT, whether you’re a manager, use your empathy. Put yourself in other people’s shoes. You are leaders in the company. When global events out of your hands are happening, first process the change for yourself and what it means and how you are going to show up.

Brook Shelley: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Rukmini Reddy: Because one thing that’s really important in a leadership position, whether a manager or not, you are a multiplier. People look up to you in moments of stress, in moments of uncertainty, and they try to understand for themselves how they should react. And this is where it’s okay to be vulnerable.

Brook Shelley: Yeah.

Rukmini Reddy: It’s okay to say you don’t have shit together today, and that’s okay. I didn’t last week, because I led teams in Ukraine for many, many years, and this has been very heavy on my heart. But just knowing to it’s okay to be vulnerable, having empathy, losing…

Rukmini Reddy: And keeping people focused on what matters. What’s your impact on the business? Why are you here? And understanding what motivates people. What do you want to be motivated by? And redirecting them to that, is I think the most helpful thing you can do as a manager or leader.

Brook Shelley: That totally makes sense.

Leena Mansour: Just to build on that, one of the things that I do often, I know I’ve seen some of the people on my team in the chat. I know they’re here. I have no problem telling people, “You know what? I need a mental health day.”

Brook Shelley: Yeah.

Leena Mansour: And I think that’s so important, because we all need mental health days, and it’s a lot easier or for your team when they see you taking mental health days to say the same and not be like, “Oh, I’m vomiting today.” That’s extra energy that they have to expend to make up something.

Leena Mansour: So be honest, you’re a human being, and so is everybody else. If you folks on the pod, the no bones and bones pod, we use it a lot in our channel to indicate our status of how much energy we have that day. But yeah, just be human.

Brook Shelley: I like that. I like that. I always just say my stomach hurts, but then I’m like, well, if my stomach hurts, I can still type. So what can you do there?

Mina Markham: No, I kind of agree with both Rukmini and Leena, that I am very open when I need a break. So I will tell people very clearly, “Hey, I need a mental health thing.” I don’t even try to fudge it with, “Hey, I’m sick.”

Mina Markham: No, I just, I need a break. I am burned out. I need a break. I will see you all in a couple of days. And my manager was very, very open, very receptive to it. So yeah, I try to model that healthy behavior. I’m like, “No, I’m feeling overwhelmed. I need a break. I will come back when I’m a hundred percent.”

Brook Shelley: And we have sabbatical now at Slack too, which I don’t know if any of y’all have taken advantage of it? I have a person on it right now. And you get like a week for every year that you work.

Brook Shelley: I always tell my people, I’m happy to approve up the two or three weeks, no problem. Past that, it gets harder to justify it, but take a sabbatical if you want to take off a month or two. That’s amazing. Tracy, you’ve been here for a while. Have you taken a sabbatical yet?

Tracy Stampfli: I haven’t taken a sabbatical here. I worked at a previous company that had sabbaticals, and I think they’re super, super great, and super wonderful, for avoiding burnout because everyone gets burnt out after a while, and being able to take a longer break is really awesome. So I’m hugely in favor of the benefit and have done it in the past.

Brook Shelley: Yeah. Yeah. It definitely helps to reset a little bit. Because otherwise, I feel like you go on a vacation for a week and by the end of the week, you’re starting to forget that you have a job, but then you have to remember and woof. Then you have to go, “What do I do here?”

Brook Shelley: One thing I wanted ask Tracy, especially, is, how do you find your ability to lead from the front, from being an engineer? In what ways are you able to influence product decisions or strategic decisions? How do you navigate that?

Tracy Stampfli: Well, for one thing, I think you have to find the right place, the right fit for you, the right company fit. I mean, I don’t want to make this all about how great Slack is, but you know. But it is a place where ICs really can be leaders, and where you can have that kind of influence, and not every company is like that.

Tracy Stampfli: So I think that’s one big thing is you just have to find the right fit for you, the right place where you are able to have that impact. And then I think a lot of it is just being willing to step forward and take ownership of things and say like, “Hey, I really have opinions about what the technical direction of this part of the product should be. Let’s talk about them.”

Brook Shelley: It is collaborative too, right?

Tracy Stampfli: Yep.

Brook Shelley: It’s not just like here, “I’m the sage star. I’ll tell you everything.”

Tracy Stampfli: Yeah. It’s definitely also a big part of it is trying to get other people to trying to bring forth the ideas from other folks on your team, or beyond your team, and say, “Hey.”

Tracy Stampfli: Part of it is just calling out. There may be some big issue that we need to address, now let’s try, together, figure out what the best path forward is. And then you, as the leader, can be the messenger for that to executive leadership or whoever.

Brook Shelley: And Mina, how about you? How do you influence all of us manager folks?

Mina Markham: How do I influence the managers? Oh, wow. As I’ve gotten to the staff level, my manager sees me more as a partner, as opposed to a… I don’t want to say, use the word support, because that’s not the right word, but basically we work together to figure out what the next steps for the team are.

Mina Markham: He’ll ask me for my opinions about, “Hey, what do you think we should be working on?” It’s more like what Stacy was talking about, about how defining our own path. Now he counts on me to see all the things that he can’t see, like where are the trouble spots in our code base, or the trouble spots in our processes.

Mina Markham: And so I use my heads down nature into more than the weeds to let him know what’s important, and what our team should be focusing on. And aside from that, I also let him know like, “Hey, I think this person would be good for this project.”

Mina Markham: So I help him to figure out how to best utilize other members of the team as well, and from what I know of, how they want to grow and what they’re capable of, and things of that nature.

Mina Markham: It’s become less of a, “Here’s what you need to do, Mina,” more of like, “Hey, Mina, let’s figure out what the next steps for the next quarters are together.” And I like that. I like it a lot.

Brook Shelley: Yeah. That’s really awesome. I like that. So one question I wanted to ask too, maybe for Leena and Rukmini, is as you got into your career and you started into management or into leadership, did you have someone that mentored you, or someone that you emulated or learned from, or sponsored you a bit? And maybe telling us about that? Leena, go for it.

Leena Mansour: Sure. Yeah. I mean, I had a lot of great role models that I worked with. I had to fight to become a manager. I had to quit jobs, and threaten to quit jobs, and leave and come back and do all kinds of things to get my people management role I really wanted. And I had a lot of people who supported me in helping me figure that out.

Leena Mansour: But I think that honestly, the most important piece and the most important and helpful thing in my journey being a manager is my peer mentors. I always, always, always have a group of managers who are on my level, but also higher. Just varying levels.

Leena Mansour: That is a small, small, small trust group that you can go with, with your problems, and talk out how you would solve it. It’s been the most helpful tool for me for anything, because you don’t just get one person’s perspective, you get a whole group try and solve your problems for you. Highly recommend.

Rukmini Reddy: Yeah. I have a squad. A squad that speaks truth that I don’t want to hear to me. It’s super important. With people who tell me I don’t have it together, and I need to fix things. And it’s really important to have that squad of people who think of your scope larger than you can think for yourself, right? They shouldn’t be like narrow you down, they should actually open things up for you.

Rukmini Reddy: And I rely on them to show me opportunities that I haven’t been considered for myself. And they’re extremely important for you at every stage of your career for you to have a squad.

Brook Shelley: I have my business boys. So my former founders of the company that acqui-hired by Slack. And I ask them a lot of advice about finances, and whatever else. They’ve founded companies, they’ve led stuff, and so I’m always just like, “Hey, tell me the secrets, business boys.”

Brook Shelley: I also highly recommend bicycling during and after work, because the computer’s not there and you can escape. So I think that we are out of time, but any last words of wisdom from anybody? Just take more breaks?

Leena Mansour: Breaks.

Mina Markham: Breaks.

Leena Mansour: Only take whatever path you actually truly want, not the path that you think you’re supposed to have. Find cool people to talk to you about what that role looks like, so you can actually understand.

Brook Shelley: Heck yeah. All right. Well, thanks everybody. Really appreciate your time and I’ll pass it off to Sukrutha.

Sukrutha Bhadouria: Thank you so much. Special mention to your amazing cat.

Brook Shelley: Oh yeah. That’s Snorri. He gets sad when I talk to other people besides him. He’s right here right now, hold on. All right, do you want to say hi to everybody?

Rukmini Reddy: Hi, kitty.

Sukrutha Bhadouria: Thank you so much to the women at Slack for sharing your amazing insights on leadership, from both the management side of the house, as well as from the IC side, the principal and staff engineer side.

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Sukrutha Bhadouria: So, our next talk is by Elyse Gordon and Camille Tate from Strava. We have Elyse who’s a Senior Director of Engineering and Camille who is the Head of Talent. And they are going to talk to us about how they have evolved their tech hiring at Strava. We all know how challenging it is actually to find us the right people for that role. And we don’t want to ask them questions that are not relevant and interview them for skills that they’re never going to need to exercise. So, this is really important and interesting for us all to learn. Welcome, Elyse and Camille.

Camille Tate: Thank you so much.

Elyse Gordon: Thank you for having us. We’re really excited to be here. So, I’m Elyse. I work at Strava as a Senior Director in Engineering. I’m going to talk a little bit about why I’m here talking about this today and why this is important to me. I have spent many years in [inaudible] as an engineer and engineering leader in tech at this point. And I have felt for a long time that the way we interview folks whether it’s the specifics of questions we ask or just general like philosophy and approach just isn’t really serving the industry as a whole and definitely isn’t serving folks who are underrepresented in the industry across the board.

Elyse Gordon: And so, at Strava, over the last couple of years, we’ve really had the opportunity to rethink this and do things in a different way. And so, I’m excited to be here and talk to you about that today. And Camille is going to talk a bit about her why for being here, too.

Camille Tate: Hi, everyone. Thank you so much to Girl Geek and ELEVATE for having us here. We really appreciate the opportunity. My name is Camille Tate. And I’m with Strava. I’m the Head of Talent here. And I get the privilege and the honor to work with Elyse on a day-to-day basis. I’m very excited that we’re having this discussion about building diverse teams and the work we do at Strava to try to make our environment anti-racist culture and company.

Camille Tate: My why is simple. I live this life every day. It’s something that … I’m a black woman in tech. I’ve been in tech for quite some time. And there, I’ve experienced numerous things when it comes to hiring. I’ve seen numerous things being on the recruiting side in terms of discrimination and equality, people not putting in the effort to reach out to underrepresented groups.

Camille Tate: So, my why is personal to me and I love that Strava is on the path to making a change in our industry of tech, and trying to be a blueprint for what we can do in terms of promoting and hiring people from all walks of life. So, that is my why.

Elyse Gordon: Thanks, Camille. It’s always awesome to hear your talk about that more. So, I’m wondering like you’ve spent many, many years in recruiting both at tech companies and then the wider industry, can you talk about why sourcing is such a key part of hiring diverse teams? And really, what we’ve done to think about sourcing differently?

Camille Tate: Yeah. So, I don’t know how many recruiters we have that’s attending this conference, but it’s a well-known fact that the majority of applicants that apply for roles specifically in tech are majority white. That’s just a fact and it’s something that I’ve seen in the almost 17 years I’ve been doing this. So, sourcing is super important.

Camille Tate: And I think when … I want to redefine what sourcing means. Sourcing is not just going out and cherry-picking different people from all walks of life. Sourcing has changed. And I like to describe it … I don’t know if Elyse has heard me talk about this but I’ve mentioned it in other chats.

Camille Tate: Sourcing, I call it the three Es. So, if you don’t have these three Es a part of your sourcing strategy, then you’re probably doing things a little bit differently than the way we go about doing and promoting and just exposing opportunities to people from all backgrounds.

Camille Tate: So, the three Es are exposure, engagement and effort. And so, when you think about sourcing and it’s not just going out and cherry-picking people from underrepresented groups. And actually an example of sourcing is what Elyse and I are doing today which is speaking with all of you. So, sometimes, sourcing is more so exposure because I talked to a lot of candidates.

Camille Tate: A lot of candidates know who Strava is, but there are a lot of candidates especially from underrepresented groups that don’t know who Strava is. We have over 90 million athletes on the Strava platform. So of course, those athletes in that community know who Strava is, but then what about the groups that they are not necessarily in …

amille Tate: To Strava, an athlete is anyone who sweats. But maybe people have this impression that, “Oh, if I want to work for Strava, I have to have all these qualifications. And in addition to that, I have to be this endurance athlete that does all this cycling and running and things like that.”

Camille Tate: This is an opportunity. This is an example of an opportunity where we’re sourcing and we’re saying, “This is Strava. You don’t have to be an endurance athlete. I’m certainly not. And I’m still here thriving and striving.”

amille Tate: And so, that is just exposure is a key piece of sourcing, making sure that you expose opportunities and your culture to people that wouldn’t normally have heard of your company and the culture and the things that you can bring to the table as an employer.

Camille Tate: And then engagement, engagement is maybe someone that you speak to or something like that, they don’t have the qualifications or they’re not in alignment with roles you may have at the moment but you want to stay engaged with them. So, engagement is very important in terms of sourcing. It’s not necessarily all the time filling a role right then and right there, it’s keeping relationships going, i.e. building relationships with HBCUs or outreach organizations.

Camille Tate: You don’t want to just go to events or just go to a career fair, you’re looking to build long-term relationships. And then just effort, everybody needs to put in the effort to source and step outside of their comfort zone and not stay in their bubble or their network that they’re used to operating in.

Camille Tate: Sourcing is very much an inside job. I know we look at it as something that’s external and you’re reaching out, but it’s very much an inside job because you’re looking to communicate authentically with candidates from all backgrounds. So, I would say sourcing is very important, but it’s not the sourcing that we know of the past.

Camille Tate: This is the new sourcing and is better because you’re building more relationships and you’re creating just an alignment with candidates and building those relationships for now or in the future. So, I would say that that’s why source is important and those are the components of sourcing that we embrace at Strava.

Camille Tate: Also, one more thing before I get back to you, Elyse. But sometimes if you want to source and build relationships with underrepresented groups, you have to invest. Obviously, we are a sponsor here at the ELEVATE Conference and so appreciative of the opportunity, but sometimes you have to invest resources to gain access to people that you want to reach. And so, sometimes I know a lot of companies are like, “Well, let me just pick your brain,” or, “Let me just do this,” and you think everything is for free.

Camille Tate: Well, if you don’t have access, you need to invest resources. Sometimes that means paying money to have access or partner with a company that aligns with your culture and your values to gain access to the candidates you are looking to reach. So, that would be my thing on sourcing. Elyse, did you have anything to add to the sourcing piece?

Elyse Gordon: No, I mean, I think that was amazing. You covered it all. I will add, I am also not an endurance athlete. I love walking and moving, doing a little bit here and there what I can. I’m a mom so like do what you can. But we do not hire people because they can ride their bike 40 miles or run a marathon. We hire you because you’re going to contribute to the team. So, I think that’s just a really important thing to say.

Camille Tate: Right. And I wanted to pass the mic to you, Elyse, because I’ve been with Strava for 14 months and obviously have the privilege of working with you. And you’re very involved in hiring on the engineering side. And I would say that engineering at Strava is some of the most engaged and active hiring managers and teams and hiring processes that I’ve been a part of. So, I like you to speak to just the prep and process from an engineering hiring standpoint and what you and the team do to prepare yourself for hiring at Strava.

Elyse Gordon: Yeah. I mean, this has been a really key area-I mean, this has been a really key area of focus for us, both for a long time, in some ways, one of the hiring values we carried forward with us when we started doing things differently was actually put the candidate experience first, put the candidate first. And I think that was a good thing to bring with us.

Elyse Gordon: We just do it maybe in a different way now, but we’ve invested a ton in both how we talk to candidates, what we talk to candidates about, just basically communicating and authentic to Strava way, being transparent. We do a lot of prep with candidates. We tell them topic areas. We let you know what you’re going to be interviewing about. We don’t give you the whole question verbatim, but we give you enough time and information so you can be ready and confident going in.

Elyse Gordon: We never want anybody to feel like they’re taking a test, or feel like they got surprised. Right? We want you to do your best when you show up here, just like we’re trying to put our best foot forward. So I think that’s been a really key part.

Elyse Gordon: I think on the other side, how we actually have rethought the hiring process, we really look for all of our questions to reflect real work, no algorithm, sort of gotcha kind of questions. We’ve done a ton of work there. We continue to do work. If a question we don’t feel like is helping us evaluate candidates well, then we rethink it.

Elyse Gordon: And that’s a high effort process. It takes time to make new technical questions, and make them good, and make them reflect work. But we’ve really seen that the effort put in there. We’ve gone a lot of return. We can better evaluate candidates. We can evaluate level better.

Elyse Gordon: We get a lot of really great feedback on our process from candidates. So we’re both seeing how do we feel about it? How do candidates feel about it? We’ve invested heavily in rubrics. So I think you can never make a hiring completely objective.

Elyse Gordon: We’re all human beings involved in this process, but we try to take as much of a objective approach as we can get, especially with technical questions where we can have a rubric, the interviewer can fill out a rubric, and it’s the same every time. And that’s been really important.

Elyse Gordon: And the last thing I’ll say on this topic is we’ve really gone to a per role approach. And so last year we hired a bunch of folks coming out of boot camps, which was awesome. It’s a program we’re going to continue this year, really excited about that program. But when we first started interviewing for it, it just wasn’t working.

Elyse Gordon: We were not able to evaluate candidates with our current interview process well, and so we took a step back and we said, how can we let people shine? Which is where the [inaudible] came from. Thank you, Michelle Bousquet, our Head of People.

Elyse Gordon: And so we really took a step back, and rethought it, and we have a totally different interview process for early career now that is really looking at potential, and is not show us what you know, because you’re at the beginning of your career.

Elyse Gordon: We’re going to train you. Right. And so the questions we should be asking about bringing people on board are very different and that’s been really successful. So we’re just looking to continue to iterate, and continue to do more of that going forward.

Camille Tate: Yeah. And one of the things that I know you all do is speed to hire. I know a lot of companies just, “We got to fill all these roles, and we got to go, go, go.” And it doesn’t matter who’s in the pipeline, just pick the candidate who has the qualifications and move on. Elyse, I think that you all have done a really good job and say, “Wait a minute, our pipeline is not diverse enough. It doesn’t have… We haven’t exposed it to enough people. Let’s take a step back, and slow this down before we hire.”

Elyse Gordon: Yeah, I mean, as we were preparing for this, I really spent some time reflecting on the speed thing. And you know, honestly, this was not something we really went in knowing this was going to change so much. And I feel like this is… In Strava, when you talk about anti-racism, we talk about unlearning a lot.

Elyse Gordon: And this is something I felt like we had to unlearn, because everywhere else I have hired, even at Strava before the last couple years, speed was the end-all be-all, right. Speed to get that person in the door. How fast can you be interviewing? How fast can you make a decision? Right? And we have really walked away from that to the point where we’re willing to lose candidates, because their timeline and our timeline is not matching up.

Elyse Gordon: So I think that we have really committed to going in a different direction. And I think that’s good, because I think when you are all about speed, hiring managers tend to feel the pressure to do things like hire the first person they see, instead of seeing a bunch of candidates and say, “Who’s the best person and from this group?”

Elyse Gordon: And because of what Camille was talking about, that the people who apply tend to be in the majority groups, right? You do not serve your team goals of building a more diverse team when you hire that way. And so we have taken an approach where we do batch candidates, and it does take longer, to go from opening a role, get a bunch of candidates through screens, then get to onsite. It takes longer.

Elyse Gordon: However, we’ve been finding that when we do that in batch of candidates, we often find more than one great candidate in the batch. And then we make more than one offer, because we have more than one open role. And so the overall speed isn’t necessarily dramatically slowing down, but it feels slower in the middle, and that’s something we’ve really had to work on and adjust. And as a team, unlearn that, because it’s hard to go away from what you’ve known your whole career, the way you’ve been hired into roles is challenging.

Elyse Gordon: And so I think this is one of the things that we’re going to keep looking at. Like how do we make this continue to be great going forward? And how do we carry this forward, maybe even more intentionally? I think we’ve come to it, now how do we make it even more intentional?

Elyse Gordon: Camille, I have been wondering something. I see a lot on LinkedIn lately about people hiring DEI recruiters, or DEI specialists, sourcers, and we don’t hire like that. The whole team does it. So I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that?

Camille Tate: Yeah. I mean, that’s a great question. I see it too, on my LinkedIn. I’m obviously connected to a lot of recruiters. But yeah, in my opinion, building a diverse team is everybody’s job. And specifically, not even a recruiter’s job, it’s the whole company’s job. That’s what I say every time I’m talking about hiring to the lovely teammates that we have at Strava. It’s everybody’s job.

Camille Tate: I don’t think that it makes sense, or it’s a benefit to anyone, to have separate diversity recruiters, or diversity sources over here. And then everyone is what, just… I don’t know what they’re doing over here, if everyone over here. So it’s important that the whole team leads with, if we say at Strava, we’re building diverse teams, that means we. That means every single person at Strava.

Camille Tate: That’s our philosophy, it’s not separate. It’s a part of who we are. It’s a part of our culture. We discuss it in interviews. Anti-racism is our number one ABC, which in some companies are their values or foundational principles. So it is important that everybody gets on the train, and is incorporating that into how we interview, how we hire, how we recruit. So that’s our philosophy, and I know we’re wrapping up, so there’s Angie. Thank you so much.

Angie Chang: Thank you so much, Camille and Elyse. There are so many quotable quotes. I’m sure they’ll be on Twitter later. So thank you so much for sharing all of your wisdom and insights about how Strava has evolved hiring.

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Angie Chang: We’re going to be having our next speaker join us. Her name is Ali. And she’s a Director of Engineering at Modern Health. She’s passionate about companies with strong social missions and dedicates as much time as possible to DEI efforts. She has led Women’s ERG, served on Belonging Councils, mentored women on achieving their goals and has been a … I’ll let her introduce herself. Welcome, Ali.

Ali Littman: Thank you, Angie. Let me get my slides up. Good morning, everyone. Hope you’re having a great day at ELEVATE already. I’m Ali Littman. I’m a Director of Engineering at Modern Health. And I’m going to be talking to you all today about how to get the promotion that you deserve.

Ali Littman: This topic is very, very, very near and dear to my heart because there are so many hardworking people who might have the tools or might not have the tools in order to ensure the career growth that they deserve. So, I’m very excited to share some of my lessons learned throughout my experience and give you a tour of some things that you can actually try out in your career growth.

Ali Littman: So, brief overview of the agenda. So, I will get a little vulnerable with you all. I encourage you to get vulnerable with me in the chat and share some things that I’ve learned along the way.

Ali Littman: I’ll also give you some really strong tactical advice around how you can take control of your growth. This includes setting expectations around promotion, developing a plan and actually sticking to it, taking control of it and making sure you grow alongside it, and also how to properly self-promote and make your achievements seen.

Ali Littman: And then lastly, just walking through all the different people that might be already in your corner that you can leverage to ensure that they support you on your growth path. All right, so diving into lessons learned. Just to kick things off, I’ll introduce myself a little bit more and tell a bit about my story.

Ali Littman: So, I’m Ali again, Director of Engineering at Modern Health. I just switched over to Modern Health very recently. So previously, I was Director of Engineering at Omada Health. I have a pretty nonstandard background. I started my career doing like a large company, technical project management work. And then, over time, moved into startup technical project management work. And then, from there, grew into engineering leadership. So, very interesting growth path. And I can share some experiences along the way from that journey.

Ali Littman: I think some other things that I identify with that are important to share, I identify as a leader, a mentor and an imposter syndrome coach with a focus on evolving the workplace for women and other underrepresented groups. I’m also a woman and a manager. I have been promoted myself. There’s been times when I haven’t been promoted. And then also, I as a manager have made mistakes. Even as a very growth-oriented manager, I didn’t always get it right either. So, that’s something we’ll focus on a little bit more today.

Ali Littman: So, sharing some of those hard lessons. So, I’m going to share a few personal stories. And in the chat, share some times where you maybe learned the hard lesson as well so other folks can see that you’re not alone and I’m not alone. So, one big lesson, a common fallacy, I thought if I worked hard, I would get rewarded. In this particular case, my manager didn’t have sufficient visibility into my work, I didn’t have sponsors and I didn’t understand the power dynamics in the office, therefore I got less visibility and fewer opportunities.

Ali Littman: Also, I’ve had times where my manager evaluated me on things that had little to do with my output. I was judged based off of frustration shared in one-on-ones rather than the quality of my work. I didn’t know how to intervene and ask for a more fair evaluation. Additionally, I had one moment where I didn’t remind my manager to promote me. They wanted to but they just forgot. I didn’t remind them. And actually, in this case, a male counterpart had to remind my manager that I should probably be promoted and it was squeezed in the last minute.

Ali Littman: So, I’ve definitely learned some hard lessons along the way. This is the shortlist. And as a manager as well, I have made mistakes. This I think is a really important thing to understand. Even a manager who wants to support you and has a great plan around it, they might have a lot on their plate. They might still execute imperfectly. It is so important in all of this that you and your manager are very much on the same page and your team and your growth.

Ali Littman: And then, lastly, I personally have had successes with promotion. I have coached others on how to get success promotions. And even in one case, I was promoted against all odds. I was told that I was unlikely to get the promotion I wanted on the timeline I wanted, but then I met with my manager, made an overt plan with them, executed against it and was actually able to get the promotion that I wanted on the timeline that I wanted.

Ali Littman: So, I’m very excited to share with all of you how you might be able to replicate some of the successes I’ve had from the lessons I’ve learned. Feel free in the chat, too, to share some of your favorite promotion success stories. I’m not the only one who has learned some of these lessons and I think we can all learn from each other on this.

Ali Littman: So, let’s get into those tactics I mentioned. All right, so first thing, setting expectations around promotion. This is one of the most important things that you can do is signal your intentions. So, clearly communicate your growth goals. You see a statement here, “I want to do blank by blank.” So, I think what’s important here is to make sure that you really state your career goals. They shouldn’t be a secret. They shouldn’t be a secret aspiration. They should be something you’re constantly talking with your manager about. Have them be front and center in your one-on-ones.

Ali Littman: I often put them at the very, very, very top. So, they can’t really be ignored. They’re not a secret. They’re always top of mind. So, find that central spot for reference. Make sure it’s clear what you want. And as you’re talking about these things, maybe for the first time with your manager or maybe it’s not the first time, make sure that your conversations are around goals. It should be a very collaborative conversation, understanding how they can support you. I strongly recommend against any setting of any strong expectations or ultimatums. This should be really collaborative and goal-oriented.

Ali Littman: And I think another area to get strong alignment with your manager on, I’ve already do this a few times already, realistic promotion timelines. Setting expectations around the timeline is an important way to put pressure on making sure you get what you want by when you want. And also to show that you’re serious. There might be some standard line that your manager might give you around needing to be performing at a certain level or being with the company for a certain amount of time. These might be real requirements that they need to ensure before they can promote you.

Ali Littman: So, make sure that you have this conversation so you can understand how your manager can pitch this potential promotion to leadership in the future and so you have good expectations around what timing looks like.

Ali Littman: Okay. Next up, this is one of the more important things, aligning with your manager on where you’re at. You and your manager need to agree that you’re operating at the next level. They need to be able to articulate whether you are or whether you’re not. And as they make that pitch for promotion, they need to state the case as to why you already have been doing the job that you want to do.

Ali Littman: In this case, I would strongly recommend doing evaluations against whatever your manager might use to do your performance reviews. So, this might come in the form of a career ladder or leveling framework. We’ll talk a little bit more about that in a few minutes. But I strongly recommend doing a self-evaluation using that tool and sharing the results with your manager. That way, you can have a strong conversation around where you might be aligned in terms of your performance next level or where you’re misaligned.

Ali Littman: There might be cases where you’re saying, “Hey, I’m a fantastic cross-functional collaborator or something like that and here’s why.” Maybe your manager just hasn’t seen those five examples that you have. And maybe they thought you were actually not operating at the next level, but now you can convince them that you actually are. Or maybe there is a legitimate gap that you need to work on. And this is a great point to understand. Here’s exactly what you might need to do in order to demonstrate that you are ready for the next level.

Ali Littman: And then, yeah, so we’re all business superheroes here. We’re all trying to actually solve some important business need in the work that we’re doing. So, I think part of the expectation-setting process includes identifying that business need that you’ll be filling upon promotion. So, this can be a tough one for folks sometimes I think especially in engineering. But if there’s no clear role that needs to be filled or if there are business roadblocks outside of your control but you’re still looking to grow, I would say ask for alternate pathways to growth in the way that you want it.

Ali Littman: Have that documented, this is really important, so you can at least get the right experiences or navigate around the blockers. An example here might be maybe you need to demonstrate that you can manage managers but there’s no new managers in your organization. So maybe you can look into switching teams or mentoring all of the new managers, things like that. You can find alternate pathways to that growth and still make some progress.

Ali Littman: I think on this one, I’ll also say if the company wants to retain you and believes that you’re ready to make an impact at a higher level, they’ll make it work usually. This might not be straightforward but it is possible that the role that you want doesn’t exist, in which case, take stock as to whether this is the right role with the right company. If it’s not, there’s no opportunity for you to actually grow the way that you want.

Ali Littman: And also, things change rapidly. People leave companies. So, just always be on the lookout for the next opportunity you can take advantage of as the business itself is shifting.

Ali Littman: Okay. Now, how to make a growth plan and take control of it? Great. I would say, ask this question early and often, what is getting to the next level entail? What do you need to be doing to make it? This is a really critical question that you need to be able to answer and build a growth plan around with your manager.

Ali Littman: A big piece of this puzzle is understanding if there is a growth ladder or a career ladder, a leveling framework, whatever that might be, some kind of framework where you can evaluate the skills and capabilities that you need to demonstrate at each level so you can understand where you land on that ladder. You need to have a clearer picture of what the roles and responsibilities are and expectations so you can defend the fact that you’re ready for that next challenge.

Ali Littman: I would ensure that you know this ladder inside and out. And ask for evaluations, relative ladder, at least twice a year from your manager. I would recommend doing them right after your performance reviews because often, those do not reference the growth ladders at various organizations. So, it might be a good opportunity to follow up with the feedback you receive to say, “Okay, and what does this mean? How does this translate into the leveling framework?”

Ali Littman: Or after performance reviews, does it make sense? Maybe you got a good sense of where you landed. Doing this in between performance review cycles could be another good call. In a lot of cases especially for folks who work at startups, there might not be a growth ladder.

Ali Littman: So, I would recommend asking for one or making one. This is a tactic I’ve seen use several times and used by myself as well. If a ladder doesn’t exist, go ahead and make one and see if that’s going to be useful to your manager, ask if that’s something you can start. That way, you actually can put input into what goes in there that might be helpful for you. And it can expedite you having something to evaluate your performance relative, too.

Ali Littman: And if you don’t like the ladder, give feedback to management on it. And it might need to change to actually be supportive of folks’ growth of your company. And then, building that growth plan. So, growth plans can take many forms but this is something everyone should have. Maybe you’ll have a very specific growth document. I’d strongly recommend this in the event that you are struggling to get that promotion, you want something more formal. Otherwise, it could be something that’s part of your one-on-one document, Trello boards. I’ve seen it all.

Ali Littman: But in a perfect world, your growth plan should have some of the following elements like, what exactly are those skills that need to be demonstrated in order to show you’re ready for the next level? What actions do you need to take to demonstrate those skills? Maybe it’s a project. But also, how is your manager going to catalyze your ability to demonstrate those skills? It’s not a one-way street here. You need to be connected to some of those opportunities to show off what you got.

Ali Littman: And then lastly, having measurable goals or tactics for assessment and a plan for recurring measurements. So, having these things be as quantifiable as possible is going to be important. But sometimes, you might only get qualitative feedback, in which case, just understanding that the measurement mechanism is that feedback and getting good feedback in certain areas.

Ali Littman: And then lastly, I would refresh this growth plan regularly. Make sure that you take a look at it ideally monthly but refreshing it fully maybe about quarterly would be what I would recommend. And then, I always say the feedback is a gift. And so, be hungry for it. It’s a gift just like cookies. Cookies are my favorite gift. So, yeah, ask for feedback as often as possible. This is a really important part of this growth process. And set expectations with your manager on how often you want that feedback to be reviewed.

Ali Littman: I’d suggest at least monthly. I would also ask your manager to collect feedback from certain people in certain growth areas. So, they might not know or always be talking to all the people that you’re working with very closely, so ask them for more feedback on a recurring basis. And lastly, curate your reviewers. This is a great thing that you have control over. So, who do you want to wow? Who gives you helpful constructive criticism?

Ali Littman: I would say ask for feedback regularly from these people. So, by the time you hit the review cycle, you already have their buy-in and know exactly what they’re going to say. So, this feedback is useful in the reviews but it’s even more useful before the review and long before the promotion cycle comes.

Ali Littman: Now, let’s take a minute to talk about self-promotion. So, one of my favorite other top topics is self-promotion. So, there’s three different levels but I’d recommend really focusing on the core one, no surprise, based off things I’ve been saying, your manager. And then there’s also the department and the company. So, when it comes to your manager, do whatever you can to brag to them. In one-on-ones, proactively share like, “I got this feedback. I achieved this goal. I did this extra thing, I solved this problem.”

Ali Littman: Ask your manager how they want to find out about your achievements and funnel all of them through that pathway. I usually have an FYI section that I have in every single one of my one-on-ones with my manager just to let them know all the great things that I’m doing in case they missed them. I would also say share wins at the department level. This could mean being the one to present a group achievement at an all-hands or sending that launch email.

Ali Littman: I would also suggest being very vocal in public forums. There’s always a set of public forums in an organization where management’s evaluating how people are showing up as leaders and contributing. Understand what those are and be present in those. They might be a guild meeting demos, etcetera. And also, volunteer to lead initiatives that leadership cares about. This will give you some additional departmental visibility.

Ali Littman: With the company, I would suggest to share wins. Find reasons to share your achievements. If they’re impactful, people might legitimately need to know about them. So, see if you can present at a town hall, send an all company email, etcetera. And then lastly, and all this is classic advice but write a killer self-review. This is very important in order to solidify your promotion but it should be what catalyzes it. So, it’s like your self-pitch but you should be self-promoting along the way. And this should be like the summary of all your self-promotion you’ve been doing. All right.

Ali Littman: So, last section here, growth takes a village. So, who do you have in your corner that can amplify your growth and successes? So, here, I strongly recommend finding a sponsor who can promote your work to the right leaders and give you the right opportunities. This can take many forms and often is a matter of sharing your goals with everyone and seeing who gets excited about them.

Ali Littman: Also, understand how your manager maps to executive leadership. This way, you can understand who to wow and what your manager needs to do to get you promoted and identify if there’s any communication breakdowns on how your performance is being evaluated and discussed with the promotion decision-makers. I’d also recommend just telling everyone you work with what you’re aiming for in terms of growth.

Ali Littman: Focus on experiences and feedback and the support you need. And take time to get their feedback, get their support, wow them especially if they’re an executive leadership representative. They’re the ones in the room come promotion time. All right.

Ali Littman: And then lastly, just a reminder, people really want to help you. I think we all forget this sometimes. But studies show asking for help really, really goes a long way and people are very likely to want to help. So, make meaningful connections. Ask for feedback. Ask them to amplify your good work.

Ali Littman: I would say also find a mentor, this is really important, both internally, externally on different topics, whatever you need, get that help, get their perspective. Also consider coaching. I’m a fan of life coaching, this really helped me clarify not necessarily that I wanted to get promoted, but exactly what I wanted out of my time, what I wanted out of work so I could ask for the right experiences that then align with my career growth.

Ali Littman: And lastly, your manager wants you to succeed. So, just my final plug, lean on your manager. They’re in your corner. They might be busy. They might actually not be doing their job or not doing their job well. So, manage them and managing your growth. And they’re going to be there for it. They will.

Ali Littman: So, I know we’re at time. So, we might need to revert to your questions via email so you can reach out to me. Find me on LinkedIn. And I’m happy to answer questions and provide support in your career growth journeys.

Sukrutha Bhadouria: Thank you so much, Ali. I was going to say you’ll see some questions on the chat and through the Q&A section, you could even choose to respond there.

Ali Littman: Okay.

Sukrutha Bhadouria: But this was really insightful for me. Even though I’ve been in the industry a long time, I feel like I learned so many new things, as well as got refreshed on all the things I should be doing as well. So, that was really, really helpful even for me. So, thank you so much.

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