By Angie Chang (Girl Geek X Founder)
Podcasts are one of our favorite ways to tune in — and this year Girl Geek X producer Rachel Jones released 20 episodes of the Girl Geek Podcast, covering popular topics like mentorship, career transitions, introversion, imposter syndrome and more.
To listen, simply search for “Girl Geek X” to listen and subscribe to our podcast using your favorite podcasting service!
TOP 10 PODCAST EPISODES IN 2019
Here are the most downloaded Girl Geek X podcast episodes in 2019:
From the podcast episode: “I want to have more mentors. I want to have more mentees. It’s just the whole experience is so enriching and the good thing about Girl Geek Dinners is we see these amazing women speaking and through that, too, we’re indirectly getting inspiration and motivation, and we’re getting a chance to meet this amazing community of women and so there’s clearly not a shortage” says Sukrutha Bhadouria (Girl Geek X Chief Technology Officer) on the Girl Geek X Podcast episode on “Mentorship“.
Listen to the Girl Geek X Podcast episode here:
From the podcast episode: “As a software developer, you get these CS highs. You solve some problem, you are excited about getting to a solution that works and that you can push out and deploy, and that’s just exciting that you get to see that solution, you get to see people using it and you get to see the difference that you’re making. When you’re a manager and you’re not actually writing the hands-on code and influencing through people, things take longer. You can’t always see, ‘Hey I’m trying to give people advice and coaching them in this way, am I getting through to them? Is this working, am I shifting the team to be better or not?’ It’s not that you can see that on a day-to-day basis, but that your impact is much broader, and if you can stick through it and realize that it’s not the same as that everyday, every hour is a continuous feedback loop, that you find other ways to see your impact and that you can be really proud of the people and lives that you can influence” says Cathy Polinsky (Stitch Fix Chief Technology Officer) in the Girl Geek Podcast episode on “Becoming A Manager“.
Listen to the Girl Geek X Podcast episode here:
From the podcast episode: “I try to think about it in terms of what is the highest aspiration that I have for myself? What I mean by highest aspiration is, is it to be CEO of a company? Is it to be CTO of a company? Is it to continue to be director of engineering? And knowing that helps me figure out how to chart my career. It’s like the north star. If I said, I wanna one day be CEO of a Fortune 500 company, I would probably make different career decisions. I might try to get bigger and bigger teams, I might move jobs more often, I might have different goals. Up until very recently, my aspiration for myself, I like the director of engineering level. I like the ability to mentor people on a one-to-one level. I like that human interaction, and I feel that in some roles, like if I’m CTO of a company that has 10,000 engineers, it’s probably difficult to do that in the way that I would like to do that. Understanding as my experiences change, aspiration maybe changes, and then maybe I’ll have to think, maybe I should do things differently, I should network, maybe I should do things like Girl Geek Dinners, right? So you get more exposure, whatever that happens to be, I think understanding what that north star is pretty important” says Arquay Harris (Slack Director of Engineering) in the Girl Geek Podcast episode on “Career Transitions“.
Listen to the Girl Geek X Podcast episode here:
From the podcast episode: “I realized that I was just never myself, and so, in the spirit, I wanted to discover who I was. I began to shed the skin that society influenced me to wear, such as the pant suit, and I began to be more familiar with who I was. Who Sandra Lopez was, in her own skin. Five feet, two inches tall. I was destined to wear feminine clothes. I wanted to wear those red suede pump shoes that you see on the PowerPoint, with three inch stilettos. I wanted to wear dresses that would accentuate my Latina curves, because that would be my ability to embrace my unapologetic self. If I were to advise my younger self, and do it all over again, is to be your unapologetic you, and I say that because in the process of understanding who you are, and what makes you special, you’ll discover your own depth, and what you’re capable of. You get confidence, you’ll know your place in society, in this world, and because I discovered who I was, over 10 years ago, arguably my career started to succeed” says Sandra Lopez (Intel Sports Vice President) in the Girl Geek Podcast episode on “Introversion, Shyness And Being You“.
Listen to the Girl Geek X Podcast episode here:
From the podcast episode: “What is imposter syndrome? It means you think you did poorly when you did well. Now, here is the crazy part. If a candidate did well and they think they did poorly and you don’t give them immediate actionable feedback and let’s say you let them sit on it for days, they’re going to get into this whole self-flagellation gauntlet, so they’re going to leave that interview and they’re going to start thinking one of two things. Either they’re going to think ‘man, that company didn’t interview me well. I’m good at what I do and I don’t think that company knew how to get it out of me, so they suck.’ Even worse, what’s going to happen is you’re going to think ‘oh, I’m a piece of shit. Now they know I’m a piece of shit and I totally didn’t want to work there anyway.’ Right? So what ends up happening is unless you tell people they did well immediately after they did well, you end up losing a lot of good candidates because by the time you get back to them, they completely talked themselves out of working for you, so don’t let this happen. Don’t let them gaze into the abyss and give people actionable feedback as soon as possible” says Aline Lerner (Interviewing.io CEO) in the Girl Geek Podcast episode on “Imposter Syndrome“.
Listen to the Girl Geek X Podcast episode here:
From the podcast episode: “Mentorship is not the answer for why women leave tech. The answer is actually advocacy at the higher exec levels, and that’s actually one of the things that I’ve been more mindful of given the leverage that I’ve had at the company and thinking more about that diverse group, and how I’m able to speak up for them because I also know that I’ve been able to grow in my career because there’s been that one person for me that’s been speaking up for me at that high level E-staff and board level” says Rija Javed (MarketInvoice Chief Technology Officer) in the Girl Geek Podcast episode on “Here To Stay“.
Listen to the Girl Geek X Podcast episode here:
From the podcast episode: “I keep a running list of all the projects, outlining every single thing that I’ve worked on, and more importantly, the impact of those things, and I encourage you to do that, and also to do it maybe just in your personal Gmail, in your personal docs, or wherever, someplace that’s external to your current job, because you want to be able to aggregate this information, and also take it with you when you go to other places. It’s good to look back. Because what happens is when it comes time for promotion, or comes time for review cycles, you get recency bias. Have a conversation with your manager so that you can say, ‘Look, these are the things that I’ve done.’ That said, I have never in my professional career had a situation, I mean never, had a situation where a manager has said, ‘Great, Arquay, you’re doing awesome. Time to promote you to the next level.’ Never happened, every single promotion that I’ve ever gotten has been me saying, ‘I am operating at this level. I’ve done all of these things, and I think I’m ready for the next level and here is why. Here is why,’ and you can hand this to your manager and have a conversation with your manager to demonstrate these things. You are your own best advocate” says Arquay Harris (Slack Director of Engineering) in the Girl Geek Podcast episode on “Self Advocacy“.
Listen to the Girl Geek X Podcast episode here:
From the podcast episode: “Coming out of school with my fantastic degree in Russian studies and political science didn’t set me up for anything really obvious and it took quite a bit of experimentation and curiosity and I think that early curiosity is what has also kind of driven a whole bunch of my career. A strong desire to learn new things and an absolute hatred of being bored. My career was clearly not a straight line. I did start out as a localization project manager. You can see the … I did that job three times in my career so just moving on from it, finding myself in a position where it was skills I needed to rely to kind of go back into the job market when things had changed. I certainly didn’t expect to learn much that would help me in my career, taking that nine month apprenticeship as a handbag manufacturer with an Hermès-trained designer, but my goodness did I learn a tremendous amount about human nature, about how satisfying the wants and needs of customers in a way that I don’t think any other technology job would have given me” says Shawna Wolverton (Zendesk Senior Vice President of Product Management) in the Girl Geek Podcast episode on “Unconventional Journeys“.
Listen to the Girl Geek X Podcast episode here:
From the podcast episode: “I try to encourage in my team a force of communication that is kind, direct, and prompt, because I think, particularly in the open source world, you have a place where people can be kind of jerks, right? They’ll say, ‘Oh my god, this code is terrible.‘ Sometimes, you need to communicate that, but you don’t need to communicate it in that way. Also, you can go too far, and be nice, and not say anything. That’s not helpful. What you have to do is be kind by telling them, by sharing that with them. Be direct, so say what you mean. Be prompt. Don’t think something and not get around to telling someone until it’s too late for them to do anything about it” says Laura Thomson (Mozilla Director of Engineering) in the Girl Geek Podcast episode on “Communication“.
Listen to the Girl Geek X Podcast episode here:
From the podcast episode: “If you’re looking for very smart and talented people, and you’re taking this shortcut of using, ‘Oh, well if Stanford took them, then they meet my criteria’ and assuming that Stanford has a level playing field to start with, right? Because recruiting from the same schools that are recruiting from the same schools — it’s not really a pipeline problem, it’s a fishing problem, right? Everyone’s fishing in the same pond and then they’re like, ‘But we’re all fishing here and there’s no different fish!’ And, I came back the next day and there’s no different fish. It doesn’t work that way, right? You can not tell me that the top engineering candidate at Ohio State, Howard, etc are somehow less qualified than someone who just happened to be at the bottom of their class at Stanford” says Gretchen DeKnikker (Girl Geek X Chief Operating Officer) in the Girl Geek Podcast episode on “Bias In Hiring“.
Listen to the Girl Geek X Podcast episode here:
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MORE GIRL GEEK DINNERS IN 2020!
We would love to have more Girl Geek Dinners at med/health companies, biotech companies, consumer-facing companies… We are interested in partner more with the scientific and ethical-minded companies out there in addition to our slate of tech companies hosting Girl Geek Dinners.
Here’s how to partner with Girl Geek X in 2020. We are currently working with sponsors for 2020 dinner dates, and excited to continue partnering with companies to host Girl Geek Dinners!
“X” IS FOR DINNERS, PODCASTS, CONFERENCES, AND MORE
Girl Geek Dinners, Girl Geek Elevate, Girl Geek Podcasts, and much more!
Looking for the best-of Girl Geek X? Here are the top 10 Girl Geek Dinner videos from 2019, and the most popular 10 Elevate videos from 2019.
We’ll be releasing the best of 2019 lists for more content soon, stay tuned!
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