Liliya Sabitova, a senior product manager, discusses the importance of aligning personal values, skill sets, and interests with the right company environment for career development. She emphasizes the impact of business models, company size, and product maturity on the work environment, and highlights the significance of company culture in job satisfaction and professional growth.

Transcript:

Liliya Sabitova: Thank you, Angie. Appreciate the very warm welcome. Hello, everybody. As Angie said, my name is Liliya. And before we start, a few words about me. I’m a senior product manager with 10 years of experience working in different company sizes, startups, SMBs, and enterprises across B2B and B2C business models and in different industries, data, travel, media, et cetera. I worked in four different countries, and now I’m a senior PM in a big tech company in the Bay Area, California.

First, a disclaimer. In my talk today, I’ll be sharing my personal opinions and not the opinions of the company that I work for. So now that it’s out of the way, let’s dive right into it. Earlier in my career, I was approaching career development on an intuitive level. However, I soon realized that to succeed, just a skillset versus the job requirements match is not enough. A career journey is not a one size fits all scenario. Some individuals are happy in large organizations and some are happy in smaller companies too.

And to be honest, I’ve seen the opposite happening as well, where people can be miserable in either of the situations. So how to know what will work better for you? From my perspective, it varies depending on multiple factors. So today, let’s figure out together how we can maximize our chances of thriving in a workplace. So let’s start with the first slide. I hope you can see it clearly. It’s a little bit small as I can see now. So it is an enhancement of paradigm. On your screen, you can see an example of the skills self-assessment wheel for PM, designer, and that developer.

So I spoke with Angie and she mentioned that most of the participants represent those three different roles. So the framework I initially saw in the Mind the Product by Petra Wheel, who is an independent PM consultant. So I duplicated this concept for the designer and also for a developer. So please take your time to evaluate yourself potentially after our talk today. So this is an abstract example, but let’s discuss how it works. Along the edge of the wheel, we have different skills for given roles.

For example, for PM, we have the execution, data literacy, market acumen, strategy, et cetera. The center of the wheel is connected to each of the skills with a line. In the wheel center, we will have a zero score, and where the line connects to the edge of the wheel, we will have a 10. Thus, a person who does the self-assessment decides how well the skill mastery is and rates oneself accordingly. In this example, we can see that a PM is proficient in execution. Thus, he gave himself 10 out of a 10 score.

However, that same person needs improvement in the feedback synthesis as it’s below the five score. I propose to use an identical approach to evaluate how different parameters of the workplace itself resonate with your values. Therefore, instead of putting the skills along the wheel’s edge, put values like work-life balance, opportunities for growth, recognition, supportive manager, et cetera. And note that your expectations and values will probably change in the different stages of your life.

So reevaluate when needed. By understanding what is important for you on the values level, you’ll be more equipped to make a right call when it comes to choosing your next career opportunity. You’ll have an understanding of what is non-negotiable for you and what is not that important and thus not worth the sweat. Also, keep in mind that you yourself can decide what values you want to put along the edge. So it doesn’t have to be what I have proposed, but this is a good start.

So I invite you to take an opportunity and do this exercise in your free time. So now let’s move on to the step two. The step two is the business model, company maturity, size, and domain. Naturally, all of us have different interests, so we’ll be gravitating towards certain industries. Knowing where your interests lie will also help with your longevity and happiness in any given company since you’ll spend at least 40 hours a week, which is about 62.5% of your non-sleep weekdays, excluding the weekends, on work.

So one example that I would like to propose is that I’m personally interested in data and I get a lot of fulfillment from working in this domain. On the contrary, right now my values do not align with a tobacco production companies, so I can’t imagine working in that domain for myself. You can also do a little bit of a reflection and think about which domains are interesting for you. The company size will also impact the work environment. Large companies can usually provide more stability.

However, you’ll have to deal with a negotiations as most likely there will be significant cross team collaboration since one area can be owned by multiple teams. Therefore, alignment and meetings and agreements are needed. So understanding this concept is crucial in order to make the right call for your next career move. For smaller companies, you’re more likely to avoid company politics. But at the same time, there are also challenges. You’ll be most likely constrained with the resources and the pace might be quite aggressive.

So when you are evaluating those types of opportunities, having and realizing that this will most likely be the environment where you will have to work will also be helpful to making the right call. Now, let’s discuss the business models. So here you have the table where I have outlined some of the key or the major business models. B2B refers to business to business. And in such a model, a company is offering products or services to other businesses. In other words, other businesses are your customers.

One example could be Atlassian. Among other things, Atlassian offers software for project management to other companies to run their processes. So if you will look at this table, you will see some of the nuances of work in such type of a business model, so it will involve a lot of negotiation. It’ll require understanding of the business needs. Because compared to B2C, you will not be able to try the product on your own. And most likely, in order to really understand the business pain points, you will have to talk a lot with your stakeholders.

Thus, comes stakeholder management. Also, ability to communicate complex ideas effectively will be important, because sometimes the decision makers and people who will use your product are actually two different user groups. Also, integrations of various business aspects and technology will be crucial because you will have to integrate with existing technology that business already uses. Now let’s talk about the B2C. B2C refers to business to consumer, and one example of such company could be the Spotify, a streaming service for individuals to listen to music and podcasts.

So as you can imagine in this type of company, there will be a very big number of users, millions, so it will be really hard to understand what users want barely from the user research. So for this reason, data literacy will be very important. Also, in order to validate the solutions that you have developed, just talking with your clients like in B2B will not be enough. And also seeing how many solutions were integrated is also not enough. You will have to run A/B tests for validations of your solution.

Then also, it’ll be crucial to have a very agile and flexible approach to adapt quickly to changing consumer trends. And finally, compliance. Especially in the US, user data is very much protected. So for this reason, whenever you would want to roll something out, you will have to go through a number of circles before you will be able to achieve something. And finally, the B2G refers to business to government, and one example could be Palantir.

It empowers intelligence agencies like US Department of Defense to securely derive actionable insights from sensitive data and achieve their most challenging operational objectives. So you can see nuances here, but we’ll move on for the interest of time. Finally, let’s discuss the work environment depending on the product maturity. So here you also have a table. Zero to one refers to products built from scratch, and the environment there will require frequent pivots and changes in direction as the product concept is still being refined and product market fit is being searched for.

For this reason, for especially engineers, it might be quite challenging to join such a company because something that an engineer developed before potentially will be changed or not used or severely altered. So for this reason, it may cause frustration. Also, it is a very fast-paced environment with a focus on quick iteration to bring concept to the market. Now let’s talk about one to infinity. One to infinity products referred to incremental improvements to existing product, and the environment there will be much more predictable and more structured.

Thank you for your reactions. And it will most likely include a lot of cross-team collaboration, specifically at the large companies. It actually quite closely related with a company size. Okay, and also there will be a big emphasis on enhancing user experience and adding value to retain the customers. So you will keep improving what is already existent so there will be much lesser ambiguity. Also, the scalability will be the major focus. Since for zero to one products, you’re not really interested in scaling your products just yet because you didn’t validate the problem that you’re solving for.

One remark that I’d like to make here is that sometimes in larger companies you actually can find zero to one initiatives. There will be some departments who are working on exploration. However, it is rather rare. And most likely in larger organizations, you will be working on already established products. So this is something to keep in mind. So for this reason here, I have a little icon with the eyes so that you can think about and reflect how comfortable you are with the levels of ambiguity, how decisions are being made.

Are they top down or down up? How is the pace in the company? What is the scale of the problems that you have to solve? What the collaboration structure look like? Because if you understand what your expectations on the comfort level, the longevity and your happiness in the company can significantly be increased. So now let’s move on to the next topic, which is the step three, deep specialization versus the broad skillset. When making career decision, it’s helpful to realize that with current life expectancy and social security retirement age, we’ll spend about 40 years in the workplace.

So it’s not uncommon that interests and career aspiration will change. So let’s talk about some statistics that is not mentioned here on the slide, but you still can look at some of the visualizations here. Baby boomers career change statistics in 2019 show that they held on average 11.3 jobs between the ages of 18 and 46. So given the longevity and pivots of careers and employee type framework based on areas of expertise, skills across the topics, and leadership could help understand the possibilities of expertise development.

If we really, really, really oversimplify it, there are two primarily path: the specialist or the generalist. So you can see here an example for the domain experts and also for the broad skillset representatives. Also, here I added a book that has been recommended by Bill Gates regarding those two different specialist type. So I would highly recommend for you to check it out. Let’s talk about the specialists. They give deep expertise and authority in a specific domain, making them sought after in niche areas and often commanding higher salaries.

However, they have some limitations as well. In job market flexibility and risk obsolescence, if their skills become outdated, they will face significant consequences. On the other hand, professionals with a broad skillset adapt more easily to various roles offering a holistic view of projects and greater job market opportunities. This adaptivity is valuable in the rapidly changing industry, but it may come at a cost of being perceived as less proficient in any one area.

So for tech specialists, it’s choosing between the specializations and broad hinges and aligning personal interests, career goals, and the evolving demands of the tech landscape. So evaluate for yourself where you see the most return on your time investment and make a decision wisely. Finally, I would like to talk about the culture and why it is so important. Considering a company’s culture is paramount when evaluating new career opportunities. A company’s culture encompasses its values, beliefs, behaviors, and the overall environment in which employees operate.

It significantly influences job satisfaction, engagement, and ultimately one’s success in the role. So let’s look at some data. So we can see here that happy employees are more creative and usually exceed expectations, when disheartened workers are 10% less productive. Why is this data important? Because if you are interested in your career development, it’s important to evaluate the company. Company evaluates you, that’s for sure, but you also should evaluate the company.

Does it match with your values, with your interests, with your comfort levels? And based on that you need to make a decision. Because if you will be happy, you will be much more successful in the company compared to the situation where you’re not happy, not fulfilled, and feel like your skills are not being put into good use. So speaking of the skills being put into good use, here we see that employees are 10% more likely to search for a new job if they feel their current job isn’t putting their skills to a good use.

So these are some statistics that you probably need to think about before making a final decision about [inaudible 00:14:17] All right, so let’s move on to the next one also about the culture. So aligning with a culture that resonates with your personal values and work style not only enhances day-to-day job fulfillment, but also fosters long-term professional growth. In environments where there is a strong cultural feat, individuals are more likely to thrive, contribute meaningfully, and sees opportunities for advancement.

Therefore, a thorough understanding and assessment of a company culture should be a critical component of any career decision-making process. So now for the conclusion. So navigating career development, and let me get to the final slide if you would like to connect. So navigating career development is a multifaceted journey and a one size fits all approach does not really apply to career growth. The importance of aligning personal values, skill sets, and interests with the right company environment cannot be overstated.

Whether it’s choosing between a startup’s agility or an enterprise’s stability, a B2B or B2C model or the thrill of zero to one innovation versus the steady growth of one to infinity products, each choice shapes your career trajectory. The key takeaway is to remain adaptable, open to learning and to continually align your career choices with your evolving professional and personal goals.

By focusing on transferable skills and being mindful of the cultural feat with potential employers, you position yourself not just for job success, but for job fulfillment, a crucial distinction in the long arc of a career. So here you can see some of the resources that I would like to recommend. Please feel free to scan the QR codes. The first QR code is my LinkedIn, so feel free to follow and connect. And also I wrote a Medium article covering this topic in case you are more of a reader rather than audio receiver.

So feel free to check out the article as well with all the slides provided there too. And in terms of the recommended resources, if you are struggling to understand what is important for you, I would highly recommend to find a mentor, and there is a really great tool for that. It’s called Meander. There you will be able to connect with mentors and professionals from bigger companies, smaller companies, different maturity levels, et cetera. So feel free to check it out and find a guide for your career.

Then also, there are a few communities that I have mentioned here. First one is the Product School community. If you’re a product manager, you can get a lot of support from your peers. It actually helped me a lot when I just moved to the US and was looking for my next job opportunity. So I highly, highly recommend this community as well. If you’re a designer, feel free to check out Friends of Figma community. They have a very broad number of directions for the different specialties within the design.

And finally, to read the reviews and know a little bit more about the culture, I would recommend to also check out the Blind and Fishbowl. However, take it with a grain of salt because people are much more motivated to share negative feedback than positive. However, you take much more risk if you do not know the negatives compared if you do not know the positive. So it’s much better to be surprised with the positive aspects rather than to be discouraged with the negative things.

So check out that as well. And finally, Levels.fyi to know the salary and benefits comparison. So that concludes my presentation. Thank you very much for your attention. Angie, back to you.

Angie Chang: Thank you so much for the excellent talk and all the resources that you shared with us today at Elevate. I encourage people to check them out and take a picture of that QR code, go to that link. We’ll be moving on to the next session. So thank you so much and we’ll see you in the next one. Bye.

Liliya Sabitova: Thank you.

Dominique Simoneau-Ritchie discusses the importance of the technical project leadership role in engineering teams. She highlights four key practices that effective tech leads use: understanding technical debt and defects, establishing automated testing frameworks, aligning with technical decisions, and setting up scaffolding for quick feedback loops.

Transcript:

Dominique Simoneau-Ritchie:

Thank you. Hi everyone. Throughout my career, I’ve led, coached and mentored hundreds of engineers leading projects, and at Lever, Wealthsimple and now Affinity, I’ve introduced a technical project leadership role. So today I want to talk to you about that and to provide… And the reason that I love to do this is because it provides engineers with experience leading projects and true ownership. And I believe that ownership helps us ship the highest impact features for our customers. Because as engineers, we’re uniquely positioned to understand how to implement features really quickly while keeping our codes simple and maintainable. And as such, I’ll highlight four key practices that effective tech leads use, many of which I learned by observing teams and tech leads and leading projects myself.

So first, a quick note on the role. Like many titles in tech, Tech Lead lacks a common definition. It may not even have the same role from company to company or even from team to team. I personally prefer establishing this as a temporary role for the duration of a single project. It creates more experience and more opportunities for people to gain that experience leading projects from a technical perspective, which in my opinion is a mandatory skill for wanting to progress from one level to the next. At Lever, we already had tech leads and actually a couple of them had burnt out because they led every single project at the time. And so I named this role Project Lead to really imply that it’s meant to last for the duration of a project. At Wealthsimple, we were familiar with the term DRI so I called it Tech DRI. And now at Affinity, I’ve introduced the role as a Tech Lead. In some companies you might be a team lead leading a project or in a smaller team, an engineering manager leading a project. So regardless of your title, if you’re leading a project, then some of these are your core responsibilities here and this talk will be relevant for you.

And for this talk, I’m going to choose to focus on the technology aspects of the role. And the reason for this is that no one else is going to ask you to do this. It might seem obvious that Tech Lead is literally the title, but many companies are very product driven and don’t naturally create the space or the expectation for engineers to invest in technology and so they end up shipping with lower velocity and lower quality as a result. As engineers, it’s tempting to start to plan work exactly the way that your product team thinks of it to get to customer value faster, because it seems faster, but often it’s not. And as someone leading a project, you have the greatest ability to ensure that we’re constantly improving our architectural foundations and the developer experience so that we keep being able to innovate and build quickly in the future and not just for one single project. Don’t wait for somebody to ask. This is a mindset that you can apply to any test that you’re working on, big or small.

So I’m going to focus on a few proven techniques to set up the technical aspects of your project in such a way that everyone on your team ships with high confidence and quality, by understanding tech debt and defects that will cause slowdowns and problems later, establishing automated testing frameworks, data and examples required to make it mandatory to add automated tests as part of every single code change, aligning with technical decisions across your organization to make progress against your engineering strategy, and finally, setting up scaffolding to ensure that all developers have quick feedback loops.

So let’s start with technical debt. It’s important to take a look at any debt related to the scope of a project that you’re about to kick off. In product management, we often do a thing called lit review, which is to look at all of the customer enhancement requests, user research, feedback that have come around this area related to the feature that we’re about to build to inform what we’re going to build in the scope. And here, from a technical perspective, we can do the same thing. So look at all the manual tasks to understand how to automate them, to remove the need or to build the feature into the product. So for example, at Wealthsimple we built a brand new mobile app that customers had to sign up and onboard into. And so as part of that, the identity team started looking at where they had issues with regards to identity and settings that they could fit into the scope of the project. And so we were able to move over tons of manual tasks related to customer profiles, both into the app, but also into internal tools when it didn’t make sense to have that workflow be part of it so that those tasks, instead of going to engineers, now were either completed by our CS team or customers directly, which also created a better customer experience.

You can also look at Rollbar, Datadog, Sentry, at your alerts and monitors to understand that there are a lot of performance issues, timeouts, 500 errors, things that are related to these areas as well because that will inform how you build your data models and what changes you might want to make as you’re building either on top or adjacent features to what exists.

Look at existing but also fixed bugs. Are there patterns with recurring bugs, like you’re constantly seeing the same one or something related to an area that might indicate that you haven’t really designed a state machine and you should because you keep having these one-off errors? Or are there maybe bugs that are hard to fix? We had so many bugs at Lever that had 50 customer requests that we had difficulty getting to because the feature hadn’t been designed initially to solve for something. It just wasn’t possible to do with the current architecture. And then similarly incidents, postmortems, maybe the action items that came from those. Are there any that are still not resolved or not done? And documentation. So maybe your internal documentation for helping developers get set up and work in that area of the code or public documentation on the feature. A lot of developers will Google, “How is this thing supposed to work?” when they’re working on a new feature for the first time. And looking at the customer documentation and updating it is a great way to do that.

Talk to your cross-functional peers and PMs. So don’t do this in a vacuum. Go do a quick review, see what exists, and then share your learnings with either the PM, the designer, your data scientist. They’ll be able to add missing context and they might have additional use cases from customers that help justify an increase in scope. And so this is really not a, “Oh, I’m going to go do all these engineering things all on my own.” This is truly about bringing your knowledge and the technical aspects to the table and making sure that you agree on what the right scope is for the project.

And also when it comes to tech debt, it’s a really good idea to pick one to three high priority bugs that multiple customers have requested and to fix them upfront. A lot of engineering managers actually already kind of do this without proactively planning for it. So they’ll know, “Oh, I think this person’s going to end up working on this area of the code next, so I’m just going to keep sending them bugs this way.” And so what I’m proposing is that you do this proactively when you kick off a project. And the outcome might be that you onboard really successfully and you get context in an area of the code that you didn’t understand before or didn’t know the complexities of, you realize why these bugs aren’t fixed, and you address that as part of the technical design for the feature that you’re now building. You didn’t design the state machine correctly maybe so there’s constant edge cases to address.

You might also just fix customer bugs that people have been asking for for a long time. And if you understand enough about where you’re going, you could potentially even be refactoring to make it easier to build on top of. And finally, sometimes the outcome will be, and I wish it wasn’t often the case, but you’ve identified something worth fixing, but it’s much bigger than you thought and it doesn’t really fit into the scope of the project. And that’s okay. That’ll happen sometimes, but at least you’ve learned and you’ve gotten context that’s going to inform what you’re going to be building as part of this project.

Now, automated testing, it’s also sometimes a debt if you haven’t done a lot of it. It deserves its own focus because it determines your ability to confidently make major changes in existing areas, but also to ship really quickly with high quality anything that you do within the scope of your project. You already probably know this, but these are some of the reasons that make it worthwhile to focus on automated testing, but not just to do it as part of your project, but to do it upfront. So not later, but really, really thinking about it proactively. You’re less likely to introduce regressions. You increase confidence refactoring your code. Your tests act as documentation for developers that are joining if you end up having developers joining later on, and then it’s easier to onboard developers because of that. And it’s required for continuous deployment, which even if you don’t do today, is eventually probably going to be required. And doing it now will help you as you increase your technical foundations.

And so when I say automated testing in terms of setting up your project for success, what I mean is everything required to make automated testing just part of every PR and part of every small piece of the feature that you implement. So that might mean an initial subset of stubs, mocks, connections to real data, at least one test of each type that you plan to support, maybe a unit test, an integration test, end-to-end tests. It could also mean test coverage. We’re building a brand new product, which is part of our core app and monolith at Affinity, and as part of that, we’ve decided to enforce a certain amount of test coverage because it’s net new, it’s really easy for us to enforce it pretty high right now. And so before we even build all of our features, we’ve put in place what’s required to make it possible to do all of these kinds of tests and to measure and get to, I think it’s a hundred percent actually, I don’t know if that’s too ambitious, but that’s what we’re setting it at to start.

And finally, and this is where it actually might feel not natural, put test cases in for existing features. And I have a really good example of this. At Lever, we started a project built on top of a feature called Offers, as in job offers to candidates, a recruiting tool, which was created over six years ago. Offers had very few automated tests, I think it might’ve been written by the founder. And getting into the right state to test required a lot of manual setup on your machine, which was really not obvious. And no one on the team had ever worked on Offers before.

So one of the first tasks that the tech lead assigned to someone on the team, so small aside here, you don’t have to do all of the things I’m talking about yourself, it’s really great to distribute this as part of the planning for your team, was to create two happy path end-to-end test cases for the existing feature. This had multiple benefits. The developers working on the tests learned how Offers currently worked. By running them automatically as part of continuous integration, we increased the confidence of all of the developers and also decreased the chance of introducing regressions. We established a pattern for our end-to-end tests, which made it easy to add new end-to-end tests as part of the project, finally, that’s the last thing we did. And so this is a really good example of the kind team leverage that a technique can generate when they empower everybody to contribute and they proactively plan for the type of technology and type of work that we’re going to want to do next.

So that brings me to engineering strategy. And you might think I work at a company that doesn’t have a strategy, but all engineering teams have a strategy, even if it’s accidental, not documented, or maybe only one team knows about it, maybe there’s one team making really forward-facing decisions and then they go in and they make these decisions. But the reality is your company’s probably in the midst of converting code to a new language, trying to standardize on a single design system, maybe they’re adopting microservices or componentizing a monolith. Everywhere that I’ve worked, we’ve been in some sort of transition. And I’d argue that if you’re not, you’re probably creating additional tech debt with everything you build. Technology changes and it’s faster and it’s easier to keep up than to have to invest in some sort of full migration later.

So here’s some example engineering initiatives to get you thinking about what you could consider as part of the scope of your projects. So migrating to a new language, whether that be TypeScript or adopting GraphQL APIs, upgrading to a new major version of a library which might introduce API breaking changes that need to be made, adopting a new design system. So at Affinity, we’re currently standardizing on a single design system. And so as part of every project, we determine whether or not we should migrate all the way and if we should reuse existing components that are in the design system or if we have to introduce new ones. Changing coding patterns across the code base, for example, updating JavaScript code to use promises instead of callbacks, or we’re abstracting a lot of our backend logic at Affinity into service objects instead of directly being part of our controllers.

Generally, one team will do some initial work to identify these initiatives, put in the foundations, and then maybe make a decision, but then we’ll need, at an engineering level, multiple teams to adopt these as we update the code. It’s really rare, even in big companies, that you’ll be able to have a dedicated team that could completely run initiatives independently. It’s just impossible. You could not update every single GraphQL API for a product with one team sitting over here because they don’t understand the product. It makes way more sense to do it while you’re working on the forward-facing feature than to go and rebuild the thing that already exists.

So let me tell you a story about three projects and three different tactics. A successful tech lead understands the initiatives that exist in the company and then the technical decisions that other teams have made, and they look for ways to integrate that work into existing project in a way that propels the project forward while still slowing it down as little as possible. And so a few years ago at Lever, we were approximately 50% done converting our CoffeeScript code to TypeScript. This is pretty basic. Now you would probably automate this in a much more efficient way. But, I think it’s a really good example of how different techniques empower teams differently. We were all in, we were definitely going to replace it all, but we were against tight deadlines. We had really small teams. We didn’t have the budget for a dedicated platform team at the time. And so we had three different projects and two different teams that used different approaches. In the first, we had a less experienced tech lead and we didn’t end up converting anything to TypeScript upfront. And actually, all of the changes were made in our CoffeeScript files. And I’ll tell you, it was slower because we had developers that didn’t have experience in CoffeeScript and then later we had to go back and change it all. So it felt faster at the time. It was not faster.

In the second, the tech lead set up a new TypeScript file for all of the new code and just referenced that whilst keeping the existing CoffeeScript code. That was made possible because it was a lot of new features that didn’t require modifications. And then the third, we decided to invest upfront and we converted the entire file to TypeScript and the team was way more efficient as a result. In the end, we finally invested in a single team getting ownership, but it was faster because of the work we’d already done.

That brings me to scaffolding. And scaffolding is all about generally setting everything up for your project when kicking it off. And the goal is to make any major refactoring changes, put in place what’s required for engineering initiatives you’re adopting, make it easy to do automated testing, and run locally and in production. And the most important thing is to think about what’s going to set up your team for really fast feedback loops. And that means a developer being able to test a single line of code and as quickly as possible validate that it works. The tighter the feedback loop, the faster and safer that code ships.

And some examples of this are manually testing locally and on staging, setting up your local test data with different states. At Shopify, when I worked on draft orders, we created a bunch of rate tests to create orders in multiple states. You could just run it locally and really easily see if what you had built worked. And then a whole lot of other things related to automated tests, like even just being able to run a single one as fast as possible locally will help. And then whatever’s required to push to production from day one, feature flags, etc. The goal of scaffolding is to reduce feedback loop time so that issues can be identified and rectified swiftly, enhancing the quality of the code and the pace of development. You go faster, but it requires that upfront investment.

To wrap up, a successful tech lead balances short-term engineering investments to boost team productivity with considerations for individual project impact and long-term maintenance and velocity. And when you do that, you take into account the tech debt that you already have, you establish automated testing patterns, and you align with technical decisions across the org to make progress against your engineering strategy. And finally, you set up the scaffolding to ensure that all developers have quick feedback loops while addressing all of the above. Thank you. I’m happy to answer, I think I have one minute for a question. I see there end-to-end and integration tests. I think you have to define these for your org. There’s no common definition. Thanks, Laura.

Amanda Beaty:

Thanks so much, Dominique, and thanks everybody for joining us. We are out of time, so we will see you all in the next session. Thanks.

In this talk, Tal Flanchraych discusses five tips for supercharging your resume to increase your chances of getting more interviews. Overall, the goal is to make your resume stand out within the first five seconds and make it effortless for recruiters to say yes to your application.

Transcript:

Tal Flanchraych:

Thanks so much, Angie. I am so excited to be here as a long, long time supporter of Girl Geek X, but since times of the essence, I’ll get started. So this talk is all about supercharging your resume, five tips to get more interviews. It is not about having the perfect resume, it’s about getting a resume that will get readers and recruiters to say yes after scanning it for just five to 10 seconds, which is oftentimes all you get. And in 2023 that looks a bit different. So I will tell you a bit about myself for context and then dive in. So Angie already mentioned a bit about my background. One fun fact, I was actually laid off from Indeed this year and that’s how I started ApplyAll believe it or not. I literally got laid off from a job board. Try sugarcoating that one on a resume.

And one thing I want to share is that a lot of these resume tips are actually backed by data we have from ApplyAll on real resume outcomes from hundreds of our tech job seekers. We’re seeing who’s getting interviews and who’s not, and looking at their resumes to see what do they do that’s getting them that, yes from recruiters to get a phone screen. So let’s start with some real talk, which is that your 2020 approach won’t cut it in 2023. And it’s not just because 300,000 job seekers have been laid off. That’s one of the reasons of course. But what it means is that beyond just more competition for each role, it’s really changed how recruiters do their job. And to truly understand how to approach your resume in 2023, you first have to put yourself in a recruiter’s shoes and understand how they’re looking at your resume in the first place.

So your resume in 2020. As I was a hiring manager in 2020 and helped build our startups recruiting team and we’d be lucky if we got even 20 or 30 half qualified applicants for a role. So as a recruiter, you’re screening the three that look superficially qualified and maybe two others that are interesting but have less traditional backgrounds, maybe could be good candidates in a different way, but really the pickings were often slim because a lot of the best candidates were sitting around waiting for recruiters to hit them up on LinkedIn. And oftentimes you would just pray that the hiring manager likes at least one or two of these people because it’s so hard to get good candidates. And so having a good enough resume is often enough to get you the role. And also resumes were read much more carefully.

However, in 2023 rather than 30 applicants, you might have 2000. And after you filter down to the 500 superficially qualified ones by matching against titles and keywords, you’re just trying to survive as an overwhelmed recruiter. So you’re scanning the first 50 resumes for five to 10 seconds each. See what’s their most recent experience, does it seem at first glance, within 10 seconds does it seemed relevant. Let’s flag the top ones and take a closer look in order to select the finalists. But only 10 to 20 resumes may actually get that close read to get to do that last pass and decide who gets the phone screen. As for the other 450, the truth is they’re either put aside or declined. It’s bad luck. Oftentimes one’s resume may just not be at the top of the pile and it might not be seen.

So what does that mean? My goal in saying this is not to discourage you, it’s about giving you the perspective that the recruiter has. So you know that you need to stand out not within the first 30 seconds, but within the first five seconds and help them check the boxes they care about at first glance without making them think or look hard. And what this enables you to do is increase your luck surface area. So while luck is a huge aspect of the job search in 2023 when there’s so many talented qualified people, it doesn’t mean you can’t create your own luck. Increasing your luck surface area means giving yourself more opportunities to get lucky. Whether it’s exhausting your network by speaking to every human being you’ve met professionally, applying to 500 jobs. But it also increases your luck surface area to make it a no-brainer for anyone to say yes to your resume after a quick scan if you’re qualified for that role. So let’s dive into the tips and how you can increase your luck surface area by making it effortless to say yes to your resume.

So the first tip, and this is the thing that I see wrong with the most number of resumes, is making relevance clear by providing critical context. So when I see something like this and it’s a company I’ve never heard of, all I can think is I have no clue how relevant your experience is to my role. Is this a medical device company? Is it a SaaS platform? Is it a children’s toy company? Is it a startup with 10 people or is it a multinational corporation? How do I know whether you’ve been in environments that look similar to my own and similar to that in my role, are you familiar with our business model? Right now, this is a real customer resume, by the way. I just have no idea.

But look at it now. Now I don’t need to Google aware to try to find out what it is. Oh, it’s an early stage AI SaaS startup with 100 employees and this candidate owned an $8 million book of business in a sales role, including four Fortune 50 companies, which means that he’s worked with large enterprise at a small startup. So if I’m hiring at a startup, suddenly this experience is looking a lot more relevant to me because it means this customer probably knows how to operate in low structure, high ambiguity, fast-paced entrepreneurial environments. Oftentimes candidates will remove context in order to keep things vague to keep their options open. But the truth is trying to be everything to everyone makes you an obviously great fit for no one. No one will give you a chance in this market if you leave them to wonder, they’ll just decline you and find someone whose experience is obviously relevant for what they’re looking for.

So what this means for you is for each of your roles, add one to two sentences to provide context for the reader, especially for companies or products that they may not be familiar with. Even if you work at Google, what division and product did you work in? What is the business model of that product? Because that may influence how much you can hit the ground running at this new role. And also remove friction for viewers to learn more about your experience. If they are compelled by this, they may want to learn more. Don’t make them Google it. These small kindnesses like giving them a link they can click on, make it effortless for them to learn more about you and make it effortless for them to say yes. And it doesn’t mean you necessarily even have to write a huge paragraph about what you did.

So for example, if I’m recruiting for an early stage healthcare startup, my dream PM may be someone who has that early stage PM experience in a consumer health company. So if I see this person’s resume, I can just by reading this first line, which is what six words about what this product is and the stage it’s at, I immediately know that this person’s experience is intriguing to me. And just their first bullet, which says that they’re the first PM hired says a lot about them, that they’ve spent a long time working closely with founders in that entrepreneurial environment and was able to successfully launch a product that I can look up myself if I want to see if this is credible. You don’t necessarily need to write paragraphs to give context. This is a very short resume section, but for a relevant company, this is going to be extremely compelling.

And also knowing what the business model was. In this case, a marketplace makes it very obvious that this candidate as a product manager is probably familiar with the metrics and KPIs we’re going to care about and how to measure them. So next one is supercharging one’s promotions. We haven’t all been promoted, but those of us that have really need to stop burying the lead. People do not make their promotions obvious. Being promoted is one of the things that can make you look most desirable. And so you want to flex that as much as humanly possible. So if you look on the left here, you’ll see that this person has two roles on their resume. However, by repeating the company name twice, that’s Definitive Healthcare in red, it’s not obvious at first glance it’s the same company and the person’s been promoted. Use hierarchy, visual hierarchy to make it crystal clear that you’ve had multiple roles in the same company.

So look on the right, for example. By having the company name further to the left and a very different font and the two titles underneath with the dates near them, it becomes obvious at first glance that this person has had multiple roles in the same company, thus has a longer tenure there and has also been promoted. So they must’ve been perceived as a high performer, which makes them more desirable. So this next one is about supercharging your status signals by prominently name-dropping. This applies more to people who have worked at any sort of name brand company or even a startup that a recruiter may have heard the name of a few times. The truth is, brands carry a certain amount of status or authority whether we like it or not, whether we think it’s justified or not, because people perceive brands a certain way.

Think of your own stereotypes when you hear that someone works at Google or OpenAI or even just a hip startup that you know is growing quickly but don’t happen to know much about. You might be more intrigued. Most people would assume that you might be more competent at your job if you’re able to get higher there. Again, whether or not this is true, these biases are real and recruiters share them. So if you’ve worked at a name brand company, make sure that name is high up on your resume, bold it, underline it, make it impossible to miss. You want the first thing someone notices on your resume is that you’ve worked at a company that they are familiar with, if this is true.

So these two resumes are from the same customer. You’ll notice that on the left, well, it’s hard to know what to notice at all. There’s so much going on. And when a recruiter looks at your resume, the first thing they look at is your most recent role to see how relevant and compelling it is to them. And the one on the left, it’s very hard to tell where the first recent role even is. And you have to look all the way down to the bottom half of the first page to see that this person was in a sales role at Oracle, which is a very respectable company, very prestigious in the sales field, but it’s hard to notice that. Whereas on the right this resume that actually has gotten this user and this candidate interviews Oracle, being underlined and higher up on the page is one of the first things that pops when you first glance at this resume.

So be sure that anytime you’ve worked at, whether it’s a big name company or a startup that they may have heard in passing, don’t make it hard to find because it creates a halo effect that may really work well to your advantage. All right, so this is another big one, which is supercharging your credibility using stories and specifics, not buzzwords. You’re competing with hundreds of people who are also using ChatGPT to write their resumes. And the thing with buzzwords is that it’s hard to turn them into believable stories about what you’re capable of and what you bring to the table.

So let me give you an example. When a recruiter or hiring manager reads something like this, they think, why should I believe anything that ChatGPT wrote about you? This looks like it was just copied and pasted from some template for 2000s resumes. It’s extremely generic and provides no evidence that you’re capable of doing these things. I frankly am just not going to buy it. Even if you throw in metrics. Everyone at this point has read the articles about stuffing every bullet with metrics and they oftentimes look and read, forced and made up.

Real impact isn’t always easy to quantify in a tidy way. And we all know that oftentimes these things can be hard to measure. And if you don’t provide specifics as to what you’ve actually done, what relatable problems you faced to get to these metrics, I’m going to have a hard time believing that this is actually true and you didn’t just make up these numbers. So to give you an example of something that shows impact with a story and specifics, look at this person’s resume. This is someone who worked in government but actually got interviews for for-profit startups. If you look at the bottom two bullets, you suddenly read something and you’re like, this was unexpected. Wow. 80% of the team quit and she had to accomplish this impossible task. And she provides specifics about the exact tactics she used to accomplish it. Notice she’s not using any buzzwords, she’s speaking exactly the way she might speak to her friends about this. And suddenly you have something that’s relatable and believable.

And now I see this person, I think, wow, this story doesn’t seem like it could have been made up. I need to talk to this person. They sound like a superhero. Even this last bullet shows a ton of impact without even one metric. So focus on telling stories about impact. Humans relate to stories. So I’ve actually left the most controversial one for last. It’s about supercharging your job titles. And that does not mean misrepresenting your level. It doesn’t mean that you are a front end developer and you add the word director to your title.

It means that you’re tweaking your title to make it easy for recruiters who are oftentimes not sophisticated or not familiar with your field to say yes to you and remove any uncertainty or doubt for them that you’ve held the responsibilities in the job description. So for example, I saw this resume, someone who’s worked at Salesforce and their literal title was member of the technical staff. I had no clue is this person junior, are they a director? Do they have reports? Because I’ve never seen this job title before. It’s a Salesforce specific title and I could not figure out how to place this person. But then I asked them to give me the title they would be given at any other company in this role. Oh, it’s software engineer, it’s an IC software engineer role. Okay. That makes it much more clear what you do without me having to carefully read your bullets.

And as a recruiter who is not always an expert engineering, it’s very easy for me to match this title to the job description and assume you must be superficially qualified by your title alone. And so as I mentioned it’s unethical to completely misrepresent what you did, but to tweak your title to remove uncertainty is totally okay. Think of is it something you could defend in a background check where you’d feel comfortable explaining the situation? Put yourself in the shoes of a hiring manager. Would you feel lied to or would you understand? So for example, one example I give our backend developer versus software engineer, these can be used interchangeably at a number of companies. So if you want to create a variation of your resume that has your most recent role as software engineer instead of backend developer,

Angie Chang: [inaudible 00:18:42]. Sorry,-

Tal Flanchraych: It’s very [inaudible 00:18:44] explain for a background check. All done. All right, well it was,-

Angie Chang: I’m sorry. It’s time. Thank you so much. That was an excellent talk. I’m sure everyone’s going to want to connect on LinkedIn with you. You can share your slides and any resources there. Thank you so much. All right.

Tal Flanchraych: Of course. Got it. [inaudible 00:19:01]. Thanks so much everyone.

Sophie Novati, the founder of Formation, discusses the importance of understanding system design in engineering interviews. She explains that system design interviews test high-level problem-solving skills and real-world engineering experience, and emphasizes the importance of asking questions to understand the limitations and scope of the problem, as well as identifying technical challenges.

Transcipt:

Sophie Novati: Thank you so much, Amanda, for that wonderful intro. Thanks for everyone else for also being here in today’s session with me. I’m super excited to be here with all of you today.

And before I start, just wanted to say that please do drop questions as you have them throughout this talk. I know we don’t have a ton of time, but I’ll try to leave at least a couple of minutes at the end. And if not, I will definitely try to follow up with written or Looms or something, follow up to answer any questions that people have. Please ask them.

I think we mostly went through the intro already, so I’ll say hi again. I’m Sophie. I am the founder of Formation. We help people land top-tier engineering roles. This is just a really important topic for me because I remember starting my career as a software engineer at Facebook as a new grad just thinking that engineering was about just solving weird algorithms all day and coding, essentially.

And I distinctly remember throughout my career from Facebook to Nextdoor progressing to a staff level engineer transitioning into the mindset from being just a coder to being an engineer, which is really about building products that are actually changing the world and solving real user problems. And I think that this shift was the single most important change in my mindset that helped me become a way better software engineer, but it also made me just enjoy my work so much more. And I think that system design, understanding how your entire system works and the information, how it’s all flowing through the system to go from user input all the way to user response is very much part of that picture of progressing in your career as a software engineer. So anyway, to add a little bit to my background as well, I was one of those people that was very, very involved in our interviewing processes.

I was one of those people that did hundreds of interviews and I was very involved in thinking about diversity and onboarding and all things just bringing in new, great engineers related. And prior to starting Formation, I mentored at a bunch of different training programs trying to figure out why there was such consistently a skill gap I was seeing as an interviewer on my teams. And so I really started Formation because I just love the space and really want to spend my life hoping to create an impact in there. So I’m super excited to get to do this talk today. So today’s agenda, wanted to just really introduce you to the system design interview format. And this is roughly going to be the agenda. Obviously, it’s only 20 minutes, so you’re not going to become an expert at this at all by the end of it, but hopefully it gives you a little bit of sense of direction where to go.

So I want to start with talking about why system design as an interview format even exists, and from the perspective of your interviewer, what are they looking for, what are they thinking about? And then we’ll go through and we have this thing called the engineering method at Formation. And I’ll roughly just break down some of the stages of a system design interview. Note that these aren’t just orderly, like you do this, then this, then it goes back and forth between steps, but you slowly transition your way through these steps. And I’ll walk through an example as well. And then finally, I’ll leave off with a little bit of how do you actually prepare for this, knowing why it’s being done and what it looks like. Okay, so let’s get started. So the first thing is why systems design? So I think most people are usually familiar with coding interviews, so I’ll make a couple analogies.

But coding interviews, it’s really about testing fairly practical day-to-day coding skills. Now, I know the problems are oversimplified, so they’re not actually real problems that you’re solving, but it is fairly practical in that it is testing a skill that you will be executing every day, which is coding or most days. And system design is very much not that. It’s almost the opposite. It is really testing for high level problem solving and it is less practical because you’re not going to be building anything during a system design interview. You’re just going to be talking about a system in theory. And so it’s very high level problem solving. It’s testing for a lot of real world engineering experience, which is very different from coding, and so it relies on a little bit more theoretical stuff. And sometimes the system design is also meant to test for specific tech stack experience.

And this is sometimes, not always. Usually for specialized senior roles, system design will be very, very important because they might be looking for an experienced engineer who has worked with finance software specifically or security or some amount of obscene level of scale. And so for this in general, this is why I think it’s actually quite important, especially as you progress into your career, to really look at the job descriptions of the roles that you’re applying for, especially at these big companies where there are many job descriptions for the same level and each one might have a different thing because the different team needs a different skill.

And even if the interview format, like schedule is the same, like coding, then system design, then hiring manager interview, whatever the schedule is, the system design might heavily be influenced in terms of what the person is looking for based on the role that they’re trying to fill. And so really, system design also is the big seniority differentiator. So with a coding interview, it’s actually quite hard to disambiguate between a senior versus a junior engineer, but system design is where it’s at. And really, I like to say that it is trying to get a sense of how battle-scarred you are and the scale of problems that you’re really used to worrying about.

Okay, so how are we doing? So that’s the why behind system design. So let’s progress into the actual interview format itself. So the first step of the system design interview is somewhat, I find the scariest, to be honest, because it is often the time when you have the least amount of information. So classic system design interview, it’s like, hey, design Coder Pad and it is just incredibly open-ended and that’s it, that’s the prompt. And then you’re let go. And there’s a moment of just uncertainty because you don’t even know what problem you’re solving yet, yet you’re solving it. And so this step is really about discovering the limitations of the prompt on your own. And as part of this, you have to discover what is in and out of scope to be solved in this interview. And this is much more important in a system design than even in a coding interview.

This is an important step there, too. But you really want to be asking all kinds of questions and make sure you’re thinking about the system both at the macro level. So how many users are you supporting overall, right? What’s the scale of the system as well as the micro level? So what does the end to end end-to-end user flow look like? And the challenging thing here is that you don’t have infinite time, and so you also want to make sure you’re strategically asking the right questions in a binary search format so that you can quickly hone in on what it is that you need to focus the rest of your time on in this interview. And so quickly, to give an example, let’s go use our Coder Pad example. So what are some questions that you might ask for this? You might first ask, well, what coding languages does it support?

So briefly, what do you think about this question? I think that this question could be better, especially if this is your first question. And the reason is that by asking this first, it is implying that I think this is one of the core challenges of this problem, right? It’s like setting a code pattern. What coding languages does it support? And it’s like, oh, is that the most important thing? And I would say that this at the highest level actually feels like more of an implementation detail even though it’s a huge project to support many languages. But when we’re first starting off and slowly starting to expand breadth or depth first search of the problem space, it just feels like an oddly specific thing to ask about.

So a better question might be, Hey, do we need to support real-time collaboration? This is a fantastic question because it is immediately getting to the heart of why this prompt might be extremely challenging. If the answer is yes, we know we’re going to be spending a lot of time thinking about the idea of supporting real-time collaboration. And a few other good questions here are do we need to support code compilation or is it just display only? Do we need to be able to run structured test cases? Some things, like I’ve seen some products where you can input test cases and then it runs and tells you if it’s correct or not.

And then last one is, do we need to protect against anyone writing some kind of malicious code? Quick note on this, I oftentimes see junior candidates shy away from this phase because I feel like they’re nervous or panicking that they won’t be able to solve the problem they’re asking about, so they almost want to ask about things they are more comfortable with. And I would really urge you not to do that. Even if you have no idea how to do something, identifying the problems themselves can sometimes be just as important as identifying the solutions. And in fact, sometimes it is not an expectation at all for you to know the solution, but simply to identify the problem. I’m doing short on time, so I’m going to skip a little bit of the explanation as to why. But really here, focus on identifying where your major technical challenges are going to be through your questions.

And from there, we do have to come up with some form of solutions, right? And an important thing to keep in mind here is that there is no right solution for any problem and especially, especially in the system design interview. So try to reduce your stress. This is a conversation, not just a test of getting the right answers all the time. It is not about that. In a great system design interview, in fact, you should be offering up solutions and immediately almost critiquing your solutions to break down where the problems are. And I think I see people not doing this because it’s almost like, oh, well, if I attack my own solution, then I am not defending it and making it seem like the right answer. And that is very counterintuitive, but the right way to think about it. For example, let’s say we’re thinking about how to do session replay on Coder Pad.

And so the first thing that you’re doing is you need to be able to show edit history. And so it means that instead of storing the whole text document, you also have to store every single change that the user has been making in order to play it back in session replay. And so the second you think of this solution, you’re like, well, what’s wrong with this solution? What would cause this to be a problem or create a scaling bottleneck? And just a really simple one to me is now we’re storing a ton more stuff. We have to store maybe in a database every single character change.

And then there’s a lot of follow-up questions immediately. It’s like, okay, well, how long do we need to store this for? How much time afterwards do we support session replay? Do we have to be as live as character by character? Things like that. And then the answers to those questions can then inform the solutions that you choose. So from there, you have identified some problems, created some solutions, critiqued those solutions, and this is also a very hard step. I see people not doing this, which is making recommendations. Again, I feel like people think that we need to produce correct answers, and I almost see people asking the interviewer, do we do this? Is that the right answer? And actually here, in coding interviews, I would say it’s somewhat just about the execution sometimes because you’re producing correct code, but in system design interviews, you are literally being tested for your judgment. You’re being tested on which choice that you make.

And so the more decisive you are able to be and the more you’re able to create rationale for why this is a good solution, you don’t even have to have the best solution. It’s possible that you have other ones, the better it is. And by the way, a lot of times you’re going to make recommendations and your interviewer might challenge those recommendations. They might say like, well, what about this? And that does not at all mean that you’re doing a bad job. If you’re able to respond to it, then all you’re doing is participating in a very healthy engineering conversation, which anytime you’re working on products as an engineer on a team, that’s what you’re doing. You’re constantly being like, what about this? Well, that has this problem. What about this then? Well, that has this problem. Well, how about let’s approach it a totally different way?

And that’s how you battle test the solution that you want to implement. Okay, I’m not doing good on time. Making recommendations. Final thing is verifying your solutions. This is also I find a skipped step. So you just get to the end of the interview and you are starting to just say like, oh, we’ve done all the parts. From here, I would recommend for you to take a user job to be done and really show it how each user request will flow end to end through your system. I forgot to mention, actually, earlier step one, when you’re asking questions, by the end of it, you should have as output a list of requirements, product requirements, system requirements for the system that you’re building. And when you have that requirement, that should be written up so you can see it in the interviewer can see it the whole time.

And if you’ve done that, then here in your verified solution step, you should have a fairly easy job and you basically just want to go through each of the requirements and verify that your system supports the thing that you decided was a requirement. Okay, I have two minutes. Okay, so how do we prepare? So I want to talk about things that I’m seeing people not do. So I already see a lot of people reading and consuming a lot of material that is very theoretical. And by the way, all of that is super needed. There’s a lot of great fantastic resources on system design out there that I highly recommend to people. So what I want to share to add on to what people are already doing is I have a very strong sense that the most important thing to develop here is real engineering experience.

And you don’t necessarily have to be the person experiencing it, so you don’t have to be on the teams doing it, but you can really accelerate your growth by reading, learning, hearing about other engineers solving problems and hearing about their battle scars. So things I’ve recommended, reading engineering blogs from other top companies, talk to other engineers, build a diverse network of engineers that you can speak to and ask them, what are you working on? What are some of the challenges of that? Are you guys using AWS technology as well? Why or why not? And this is I guess the long-term solution that I would like everyone to do more of. In the near term solution, I think that system design, you can only bridge small gaps in a short period of time. And so for that, my top recommendation is don’t just consume in theory. System design is an entire interview of talking.

And so practice talking about real solutions. Super specific recommendation is find a friend, an engineering friend, come up with a prompt that is something you are familiar with, like a problem you have solved yourself so that you know it pretty familiarly. And then have your friend do the same thing and then trade stories. Okay, so I see that Amanda is back here, which means that my time must be just about up. So I am putting up my LinkedIn. Please feel free to connect with me and I would love to answer any additional questions. I’m taking note of all of the questions that are here and I’ll be more than happy to send follow-ups on any questions that you guys have. I’m so sorry I didn’t plan my time better, but it was wonderful being here with everyone. Thank you so much for your time. And Amanda, I think that is…

Amanda Beaty: These questions may disappear for you when we end this, but we will collect them and send them to you if they do.

Sophie Novati: Yeah, okay. That would be fantastic. Let me try to take a quick screenshot. Here’s a couple of good ones, but yeah, if you could send them to me, that would be fantastic.

Amanda Beaty: All right. All right. Thanks, everybody. We are out time and we will see you in the next session.

Sophie Novati: Thanks, everyone.

In this session, Agatha Agbanobi discusses the racial implications of psychological safety for people of color. She shares how psychological safety takes into account systemic oppression and how community building can foster psychological safety. The session focuses on three objectives: discussing a popular teaching of psychological safety that excludes people of color, exploring an equity principle for differentiated solution design, and examining a skill for cultivating psychological safety through an anti-oppressive lens.

Transcript:

Agatha Agbanobi: Hi everyone. Welcome to this session about the racial implications of psychological safety for people of color. My name is Agatha Agbanobi and I am a DEI consultant, coach and founder of the DEI firm Relevé. And I’m excited to be engaging with you all today on this topic. So I’m going to provide a brief intro about me, my background, and my approach before we dive into the session itself. I’ll quickly just say that I’m a former educator who was heavily focused on education equity work both internationally and also stateside. Specifically in Texas for many years before transitioning to focusing on team and leadership development for diversity, equity, and inclusion in the corporate workspace.

The three guideposts that generally lead my work or guide my work, I should say, are anti-oppressive or liberatory frameworks, systems change and community building. And I want to say that these are the guideposts specifically for how I frame my work on psychological safety. So some of the questions that I like to frame around this question is, how does psychological safety take into account the interpersonal and systemic oppression that people of color are those who face identity-based oppression? How does that take into account that oppression due to historical and present day context of systemic isms?

And then how do we leverage community building, coalition building to build psychological safety within ourselves, individually, self to self, but then also within community, with others across differences? So today we’ll be focused on three objectives. First, we’ll discuss briefly one popular teaching of psychological safety that excludes the experience of racialized individual or people of color. We’ll talk briefly about a crucial equity principle for supporting differentiated solution design for psychological safety, and then we’ll explore one of the skills for cultivating psychological safety through an anti-oppressive lens.

So the first question I want to pose you all is this. How do you define psychological safety in a teamwork environment? Go ahead and drop your responses in the chat and then also take a moment to see what your peers have said. See if anything resonates. So here’s just some of the common and well-known characteristics of psychological safety at work. So team-orientedness is one of them, being willing to take interpersonal risk or feeling that you have the freedom to do that, having mutual respect or experiencing mutual respect within your team from other team members, having the freedom to challenge the status quo.

Having the freedom to share your knowledge, ideas, ask questions without fear of retaliation or any sort of reputational risk, feeling like you matter to the team and the organization, more broadly. Inclusion, belonging, that sense of feeling included, feeling like you belong and mattering to your team. Feeling a high sense of value, having the permission to make mistakes and to fail again without risk, a reputational risk or just fear of folks viewing you differently. And then also the permission or freedom to learn without limit. So a lot of these definitions come from well-known researchers and practitioners like Amy Edmondson, Christine Comaford, Timothy Clark, and even mental health experts and therapists such as Nedra Glover Tawwab.

One of the popular frameworks of psychological safety I want to kind of zone in on is Timothy Clark’s four stages of psychological safety in the workplace. It begins with inclusion safety, which is the feeling of being included, and then it moves on to learner safety, which is safety to learn. Then contributor safety, which is safety to contribute. And lastly, challenger safety, which is safety to challenge the status quo. All without fear of being embarrassed, further marginalized or punished in some way. And so this definition, of course, sort of assumes that everyone is starting off at the same level of psychological safety in a way when they come into the workplace.

And while these definitions lay a foundation for psychological safety within a work environment and/or within a team, it’s really important to understand that our racial and intersectional identities are playing a role in what it takes for us to really feel psychologically safe when we arrive at the workplace compared to our white peers in any given work environment, and especially in industries like the tech industry that are historically racially homogenous. And so I want to pose this next question for you all then, since I’ve brought up the racial implications of psychological safety.

How do you think that your racial identity has affected your sense of psychological safety at work in the past in a way that maybe it’s not affecting your white peers? Go ahead and drop your response in the chat. And so as you all are dropping your responses in the chat, I want to just remind you all about racial identity, the different layers of racial identity. I think a lot of times when people think about race, they think of it in sort of like this one track lane or this single lane where it’s just race or your racial identifier. So Black, Latina, Asian, Asian American, so forth. But it’s way more than that.

There’s so many other layers to one’s racial identity that impacts how accepted, included, valued, and overall psychologically safe that they feel at work. So there’s the racial and ethnic group that one belongs to, that sometimes it’s incredibly visible and sometimes it’s not. Sometimes we can make assumptions, but we’re not always clear. We always have to verify with the individual. The other part is, the other layer is skin tone, how light or dark one skin tone is. The other is facial features, how closely aligned one’s facial features are to typical western features. The next is hair texture, how closely aligned one’s hair texture is to thin, fine hair textures.

That is usually what you’ll find in western parts of the world, even in Southeast Asian cultures. And then sometimes one’s nationality is another layer if that primary nationality is a global north nationality or a global south nationality. So all of these layers of one’s racial identity, sometimes it’s incredibly visible. I can say that if someone was to see me in person, they would probably be able to pinpoint that I am a West African woman. They can see that I’m dark skinned and darker skinned than most. My facial features, of course, are leaning more towards West African features and so on.

They can deduce that I belong to a Black racial group and so forth. The key here is that there is a racial hierarchy. That the closer one is to some of these aforementioned characteristics like lighter skin tone, being in some of the racial groups that are higher ranked, right? So white folks felt like people being at the top, and then Asian folks, then fine hair in terms of hair texture and so on. And so the closer one is to the top of that racial hierarchy scale, the less systemic and interpersonal racial oppression or biases and discriminations they’re going to face at or outside of work. So I want to emphasize that there are layers to racial identity, and there is a racial hierarchy that exists.

Another example is lighter skinned Asians and Asian Americans are often thought to be at the top of the racial hierarchies, second only to white folks in the west and white Europeans, white Americans. Because of the model minority myth, which of course stems from the racial tensions of the 1960s when civil rights movements were underway and the battles being fought in Asia during Vietnam War was on the minds of everyone. And there was a prevailing narrative that Asians were able to succeed in spite of all the hardships, but Black folks weren’t able to do that, quote unquote, and only complain and protested about their inequalities that existed.

And then another example is that you also have darker skinned Black people. So not just thinking about race, we’re also thinking about colorism, right? So you are going to have darker skinned Black people who are thought to be at the very bottom of this racial hierarchy. And it just continues in terms of facial features, leaning more towards where typical Western features or more towards Afro or African features. And all of that impacts how folks are experiencing the world that we live in.

So I’m going to break down what exactly systemic and interpersonal racial oppression is, how that sort of manifest. There are three ways, or some of the ways, I’ll name three. One of them is unnecessary suffering. So we’re constantly going through unnecessary suffering because of how we’re perceived racially. The other is inordinate use and depletion of energy. And I’ll dive a little bit more into that in a minute. And the last is social and systemic undervaluing. We get all these messages from the media, from people, even in our social groups, that somehow our value is less than folks who are at the top of that racial hierarchy.

And of course, it impacts the opportunity gap, career wise, education wise, it just impacts every aspect of our lives. And so the phenomenon I want to focus on today specifically is the inordinate use and depletion of energy and what that means. So you’ll see here on the screen that I have, the first person here on the screen has identity safety, and I’ll explain that in a minute. And the second person has a couple of things that probably is taking up some energy, that they’re navigating in the workplace aside from their regular job. And then the last person is maybe more closer to the bottom of the racial hierarchy or the racial scale.

And so they’re experiencing even more. They’re having to expend more energy just to exist at work in a way before they can even begin to feel like or think about their sense of inclusion, their sense of belonging. They’re navigating these other things as well as their job. I do want to also note that these different scenarios and examples that I’ve pulled are still kind of general because different racial groups experience different types of microaggressions and microinvalidations in the workplace. There are some that are very common for us and then across racial groups or non-white racial groups.

But then there are some that are unique to, for example, Black and African-Americans in the workplace. There are some that are very unique to Black immigrants in the workplace. There’s some that are unique to Latin or Latina individuals in the workplace and so on. So you get the picture. So looking at the first person here, identity safety. Identity safety essentially is the idea that one feels incredibly safe in who they are and how they show up without any effort, right? That they aren’t having to navigate different belief systems, scenarios, and situations that are constantly making them have to prove their value and their worth and their right to exist in a particular space and in this situation, the workplace.

And so when we look at this right here, the second person, the different aspects of their workday, these are just examples that they’re navigating that is taking away energy from their energy at work. One of them, an example is you show up to the workplace, your office, and you show up there all the time. Maybe there’s a new security guard. For some reason he doesn’t believe that you actually work there, even though you’re showing him your ID badge, he’s assuming that something is off or maybe you forgot your ID badge and you are trying to navigate, calling your manager and all of that. And so they’re giving you maybe more of a hard time than they might give someone who is lighter skinned or someone who is white.

There are a lot of real life stories like that where folks question folks of color who are at the workplace, they question whether they’re actually really working there or they mistake them for the janitor or whatnot. The next I want to talk about is different microaggressions that, specifically I would say maybe more so women of color experience microaggressions about our appearance, right? Example for black women, it’s often about our hair. It’s often about our makeup or what we’re wearing. And then another one that’s pretty prevalent and definitely you’ll see this on the racial scale.

This is something you will see specifically when you think about colorism and racism. The only feedback that one might be receiving after a presentation or a project is probably more aligned to their personality or how they conveyed their ideas during the presentation or how they worked with the team. It’s not actually about the content itself. Some of the meaty things that actually matter. We often find ourselves having to ask for that feedback, having to advocate for more critical and constructive feedback about the core goals of projects or the core goals of a presentation.

And then you’ll see in the third row, we have some other examples in there. And I also have there too, advocating for more actionable feedback. Other feedback that women of color get specifically darker skinned women of color or Black women is not actionable. And there’s a statistic on that in an article I did for HBR. Don’t quote me on it, but I think it’s… I’m going to say it wrong so you got to go back and look at my article. But compared to white men, we’re getting way less actionable feedback at work. And so all of these things are affecting our energy in the workplace and how we show up for the work itself.

There’s a term that we use now called weathering, which describes the high effort coping mechanisms that we are using to manage the constant stress of racial biases and discrimination that may lead to, of course, premature biological aging, poor, physical and mental health outcomes. And also just our ability to show up fully a hundred percent at work. And so while this term originated from a study to describe the unique stress from racism, that Black, especially dark-skinned Black people face, other racial groups at the bottom of the racial hierarchy arguably are facing some level of weathering as well.

So we’re constantly weathering these daily or unique incidents of racial biases and discrimination inside and outside of work. So quickly just let us know in the chat how are you able to relate to this. Have you ever noticed a difference in your mental or intellectual or even emotional energy when you are in an environment where you feel safe in your identity? So not when you don’t feel safe, but when you actually do feel safe. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to work in an environment. What I’m talking about doesn’t mean that you have to work in an environment where everyone looks like you.

But rather it’s that everyone possesses a high skill in navigating and this is all about cultivating equity, leveling the playing field, cultivating that sense of belonging, community and inclusion where everyone possesses, not just leaders, but also team members. A high skill in navigating relationship care, trust, safety, and safety with individuals of different identities. So what does this all mean, right? It means that there are elements to our sense of psychological safety as people of color that we have to confront before we can feel inclusion safety, learner safety, contributor safety and challenger safety, for example.

We first need to get over that hump of identity safety. And I think it’s also important to note here that we have to determine for ourselves how much responsibility we hold within ourselves to give ourselves that level of psychological safety. And then how much responsibility do we need to hold the organization and our team accountable to in securing that identity safety for us. So we’re not constantly having to navigate and spend energy defending our right to be in a space because of who we are. So now I want to briefly focus on what is within our power to get to identity safety for ourselves.

We have to definitely recognize that there is a role that workplace leaders, middle managers, and peers play, like I said before and there’s also a role that we individually play in getting to psychological safety for ourself. In looking at this specific category or phenomenon of systemic and interpersonal oppression that is identity-based. This category of inordinate use and depletion of energy. We can be reflective and strategic about how we use our energy or how much effort we decide to use to cope with different incidents and issues. And so what I’m talking about is sort of taking some of our power back.

And what I really mean by this is that we need to get in the habit of taking stock of what depletes us in navigating and in coping, and how it depletes us, what type of energy or effort it takes to get over the different humps or the different things that roadblocks that come into play at work. And then plan accordingly so we can be our best in the workplace. So what routes or peers do we need to avoid? When I say routes, I mean when we’re walking to our office, for example, what routes do we need to avoid? Who do we need to avoid? So think about peers.

And then when do we need to be sure to avoid them, right? For example, if there’s a big project coming up and you really want to make sure that you are conserving your energy as much as possible to complete it. You’ll definitely need to be mindful of how much energy you use to navigate different identity-based issues or conversations, whether they’re project related, team culture related or not. And this is one of the reasons why people of color, statistically, people who experience the most microaggressions at work in the workplace prefer working at home.

They’re not having to navigate these different barriers, specifically interpersonal barriers at work in order to do their job. So your emotional energy and positivity for your sense of self impacts your intellectual energy to fully show up, like I’ve mentioned before. All the studies show that you have a higher chance of reaching your full professional potential and become really good at a specific skillset if you are able to set the right boundaries for yourself. If you are able to really be careful about how you’re using your energy and if you’re very intentional about exercising your self agency.

Another example for me is just a personal one. When I’m working on a big presentation, I tend to limit my interactions with people in person, but specifically folks who I know who have been racially microaggressive in the past, even if it’s just subtle things that maybe they’re not aware of, that’s subconscious that I just sort of let slide because not everything warrants a crucial conversation. Those people, I’ll tend to just avoid that. Sometimes when I say communication interaction, this also includes email and phone communication and sending a nice message. Letting folks know that I’m working on something right now and I’ll get back to them at a later date usually works just fine.

So there’s definitely… This is very high level. There’s a little bit more to this, including how you communicate your boundaries to different types of stakeholders at work, because it’s not one quick broad brush stroke, but how you’re setting and communicating those boundaries without having to even use the word boundary is something that I’ve dove deeper with clients. And then also thinking about how you are communicating it in a way that sticks and is sustainable for folks no matter what type of work environment you’re in. So we don’t have much time to go into all of the details of that today.

But I hope this provides a good snapshot for you of a crucial skill when we think about cultivating psychological safety, which has the key, I want to say, core factor identity safety for ourselves in the workplace. So to quickly recap some of the key points or the main key points of this session today. The first one is feeling safe as we are in our identity is the primary stage of psychological safety for people of color and/or those who face identity-based, systemic and interpersonal oppression.

The other key idea is that one of the key pillars for cultivating psychological safety for ourselves is taking back some of our agency and being strategic about how we use our energy, knowing we have a limited daily supply compared to others because we’re not just dealing with what’s at work, but also outside of work in terms of social and systemic identity-based privileges. Or you could go the other way in terms of biases and discriminations that were confronting it or fielding every single day. So as we wrap up, I want to ask you all, what are some of your key takeaways?

Research says that if we’re able to clearly share new knowledge with a peer or even practice what we’ve learned after a session, the more likely we are to remember, internalize and even practice it. And so I’m going to ask you all or challenge you to find a friend or a peer who might be interested in this topic. Tell them about this session and tell them what is still circling around in your head that’s not quite clear, or that you have questions about. What do you understand now that you didn’t understand before?

And then what is one takeaway that you think you can start applying immediately as you navigate the workplace? And then lastly, if you’d more presentations like this, of course, feel free to get in touch with me. Here’s some of my information. And that’s it for today. Thank you all so much for engaging with me in this session. I hope that you all were able to take away some key nuggets, and this really sparks the conversation further about the racial implications of psychological safety at work. Thank you so much. Bye.

Elevate conference keynote speaker Lakecia Gunter shares her personal journey in tech and the importance of building supportive networks. She highlights the impact of leaders who believed in her and invested in her career. Gunter emphasizes the need to say yes to opportunities and cancel self-doubt, and encourages attendees to reflect on their vision, seize opportunities, take action, and build relationships.

Transcript:

Angie Chang: Welcome to the Winter Elevate Conference. My name is Angie Chang. I’m the founder of Girl Geek X, formerly known as Bay Area Girl Geek Dinners where we hosted over a decade of Girl Geek dinners in the San Francisco Bay Area and over five years of virtual Elevate conferences where we’ve created opportunities to give even more women the mic on stage. So thank you for joining us. Every quarter, we’ve been gathering over a thousand women online for career and tech talks, networking first annually on International Women’s Day and now quarterly at Elevate virtual conferences. And this time we have added two mentorship hours in the mentorship lounge, which people are just coming in from. We just started that in this fall and we found it to be a great success for having dozens and dozens of women experts in tech, AI, LLMs, data science, non-coding roles in tech, volunteering to share their expertise with women in tech online around the world.

So thank you so much for all of the volunteers who’ve just joined us from that mentorship lounge and that mentorship lounge is a place where we hope you make connections at people on LinkedIn and stay in touch. There is a second mentorship hour that will be happening at 1:00 PM Pacific Time and you can visit the mentorship lounge to meet even more mentors. It’s a different set of mentors, so I encourage you to go look at the list of mentors will be joining us in the afternoon and the Girl Geek X team will be in a booth in Elevate on this platform. So if you want to meet us and talk about potentially sponsoring one of our virtual events or hosting a Girl Geek dinner at your company, head over to our booth to meet the Girl Geek X team and ask any questions you have about potential partnership or sponsorship.

And we have a participation leaderboard going today. So you’ll be rewarded for what is it, putting little emojis in people’s sessions, cheering them on, messaging each other, asking questions. So please show our speakers some love during their session. You can also schedule meetings with fellow attendees in this air meet software by using the attendees search bar to browse profiles or click on someone’s name in the chat or at a table in the mentorship lounge. And at the end of the event, the top three folks on our leadership board will get a Girl Geek X swag bag of cool stuff. So if you’re one of our top participants today, you get really cool stuff, so encourage you to participate. One of the things that we did in the pandemic when education was disruptive is we began volunteering with the East Oakland School in partnership with a nonprofit called the Oakland Public Education Fund.

And if you happen to be in the area, you can join us in Oakland or you can sign up to volunteer through Tech Link, which is a virtual or hybrid mentorship program with the East Oakland Public School. It happens Fridays in February through April, and as I said, it’s virtual but with the option to go in if you would like to, and you can sign up for that and find out more about that at our website @girlgeek.io or in our weekly newsletter. And this is the third year that we’re partnering with this nonprofit to bring our professional network of women and allies to the local schools to provide a helping hand for educators and introduce students to role models. As you know, probably in our lives we didn’t have that great role model working in tech to meet us when we were in high school or junior high school. So it’s really a great opportunity to help be that role model that you always wanted in your life. And if given our current economic climate, if you know someone who’s looking for a job, we do have some job listings at our website @girlGeek.io/jobs. There’s a diverse set of remote and hybrid roles from some of our partners this year. I’m going to hand it over to Amanda.

Amanda Beaty: Hi, my name is Amanda Beaty and obviously I’m used to being in the background here at Girl Geek X. I do things like social media and working on YouTube videos. Our co-founder Sukrutha is usually here in this spot, but she’s unable to join us today, so I’m filling in. Today we will be hearing from a diverse set of women working in tech from executives to individual contributors. We love hearing from women about their unique expertise and inspiring stories, all the cold job titles and incredible passions and values. Hopefully our speakers will inspire you to do that hard thing that you wanted to do or help you think differently about something. We’ll be learning so much today and we encourage you to help us amplify and elevate the incredible takeaways our speakers will be sharing with us today. If you want to share on social media, please tag Girl Geek X and use the hashtag #ElevateWomen.

All of our talks are recorded and put on our YouTube channel later. You can also immediately hit replay in this air Meet platform after the session ends, so you can re-watch this later today or later this week. So if you’re interested in speaking, 95% of our speakers today submitted speaker submissions on the Girl Geek X website to speak here today. You can go to our website, girlgeek.io and go to the speak at the top of the menu and just click apply to speak at an upcoming Elevate conference. Our next one is in March on International Women’s Day, and then we’re doing this quarterly for the rest of the year.

So we’re also looking for sponsors who are hiring women in tech to partner with us to showcase their top leaders and talent to put more technical women leaders on stage and create more role models. If your company is invested in hiring diverse female talent, come visit us in the booth later today that Angie mentioned earlier. And now Angie’s going to introduce our keynote speaker for the day.

Angie Chang: Yes, so our keynote speaker today is Lakecia Gunter. She is the chief technology officer for the Global Partner Solutions Organization at Microsoft. GPS is the largest partner ecosystem in the industry, empowering partners to drive digital tech transformation. And prior to joining Microsoft, she held several leadership roles at Intel Corporation, including technical assistant and chief of staff to the CEO, as well as vice president in the Programmable Solutions group. You may remember her from Intel Girl Geek dinner in 20 27, 20 17, and today we are excited to welcome our keynote speaker. Welcome.

Lakecia Gunter: Thank you Angie and team. “You may write me down in history with your bitter twisted lies. You may trod me in the very dirt, but still like dust, I’ll rise. Does my sassiness upset you? Why are you be set with gloom? Because I walk like I got oil wells pumping in my living room? Just like moons and like suns with a certainty of tithes, just like hope springing high still I’ll rise. Did you want to see me broken, bowed head and lowered eyes, shoulders falling down like teardrops weaken by my soulful cries. Does my hotness offend you? Don’t you take it awful hard because I laugh like I’ve got goldmines digging in my own backyard. You may shoot me with your words, you may cut me with your eyes, you may kill me with your hatefulness, but still like air, I’ll rise.”

I love this poem by Maya Angelou. It is one of my absolute favorites, and if you’re like me, when you hear this poem, you imagine, no you remember the obstacles that stand in the way of women rising. It can be so difficult at times. In fact, I often reflect on my own journey and think you should not be here because the odds of becoming a vice president at Intel, a CTO at Microsoft and a corporate board of directors member at IDEX Corporation seemed insurmountable. But as Maya says, “still, I rise. Still, you rise. Still, we rise.” My intention today is to inspire you to think about the ways you can be a force for blazing a trail for sisters around you and those coming behind you so that as we are leading, as we’re moving forward, as we are rising together, we can lift others to rise with us to lift as we climb.

Good morning. I’m Lakecia Gunter, as Angie said, and I am so elated to be here with you this morning. I don’t take this opportunity lightly to connect with amazing women in this room, in this virtual environment on this call. It’s an absolute pleasure and as Angie said, I’m no stranger to the girl Geek community. I love the Girl Geek community. It’s so empowering and supportive of women. So Angie, thank you. Thank you to you and your team for your passion, for your focus on increasing the number of women leading at the highest levels in tech. My hope is that one day very soon, the rooms in the tech industry will be overflowing with women and I believe with each of us working together, we’re going to make that happen. There’s no doubt about it in my mind. I cannot believe it, but we’re less than 30 days away from 2024?

Can you believe this ladies? 2023 has flown by, I don’t know about you, but I’m determined to make 2024 my most transformational year yet. How many of you guys agree our most transformational year yet? No matter what you faced in 2023, we know at times, it can be so challenging, but remember, you are resilient. You are an overcomer. I want you to know that there’s no obstacle, no setback, no mountain that can prevent you from dreaming those big dreams and achieving what others may think is impossible. And when we support one another, we are an unstoppable force. I know this firsthand because I’ve experienced this in my life. If I’ve done anything right along this journey, it’s been connecting with the right people at the right time, building strong supportive networks, supportive relationships has really been the key to my success. It’s what I call my secret sauce.

I’m excited today to really just kind of walk you through my story and my journey into tech and my journey absolutely began in a small town in Florida. Yes, a small town in Florida called Hane City. It’s right outside of Orlando. Our claim to fame was being one of the top producers of the most delicious oranges in the state and being right next door to all those theme parks that we love to visit in Orlando, like Walt Disney, universal and the likes. I was raised by a strong and equally amazing single mom of three who had a heart of gold age, supportive grandparents and a phenomenal family and a community that really looked after its own. I was surrounded by faith, love, strength, and unity. My mom instilled in me the value of hard work. She set an example of how to stay vigilant in the face of adversity, never allowing challenges, which they came in life or in the environment to dictate how her life story would be defined, and she made certain that it wouldn’t take mine early in life.

I discovered my love for computers and I have to tell you, my mom certainly encouraged me. One year, she worked extremely hard to make certain that I could get a computer. She worked extra shifts to make sure I could buy my very first computer for Christmas or she could buy my very first computer for Christmas, let me just say that it was her buddy, but it was a Commodore 64. I know I’m taking some of you guys way, way back. How many of you guys remember the Commodore of Vic 20, the Commodore of 64? Am I by myself in this Ataris? You remember ladies, but that was one of the best Christmases I’ve ever had. My mom was my biggest cheerleader and she never missed an opportunity to show me. She always invested in me in my future, equipping me with the resources, the tools to achieve my wildest dreams.

That was my mom. I love this quote by Marilyn Monroe. It says, “Give a girl. Give a girl the shoes….” Excuse me. “Give the girl right shoes, and she will conquer the world.” And in my case, it was more like give the girl the right computer and she will conquer and travel the world, and I did. For me, age 12 was just the beginning. I never could have predicted what was coming next. It has been a whirlwind. I had been so extremely blessed with a phenomenal career and the opportunity to work for so many different companies. That deep love for computers would take me from that small town in Florida to some of the top universities in the country, University of South Florida, in Tampa to Georgia Tech and provide me with the opportunity to work with some of the best companies on the planet, top Fortune 100 companies I’ve been able to work for in my career.

As Andrew said earlier, currently I’m at Microsoft. Like some of you though, my very first job was at KFC. How many of you guys remember that fast food experience? Was it just me? I don’t think so. That’s where I got my start. Mr. And Mrs. Tinsley, entrepreneurs in my hometown, African-American entrepreneurs at that they owned the franchises and one of them was a KFC. They spotted my promise as a young team, and hired me as a lobby hostess at age 14. I had my first job making my own money. By the time I was a senior in high school, I was assistant manager, working with my peers, working with my classmates, I was making my own money and contributing to my family’s success. There was no greater feeling than that. This opportunity was so meaningful to me. It really made a huge difference in my life and the life of my family, and this was my very first experience of being lifted up.

As I reflect on my career journey, there’ve been several people that made a huge difference in my career. And on the screen, you see a couple of them, these leaders really invested in me and I know that my career journey and any success that I’ve achieved has really been because of these men and women who believed in me. They invested in me, they empowered me to pursue my dreams and goals. More importantly, they put themselves in my shoes and remembered what it was like when they first got started in their life and in career. And as I said earlier, being in tech can really be hard without the support of community, including managers and senior leaders. I know for me, one can feel very alone in Fortune 50 companies with over a hundred thousand employees with very few women and people of color. I want to highlight three leaders who changed my life and career trajectory.

The first Bob Swan, former CFO and CEO of Intel. Bob was always a huge support for me in my career. As Angie said, I had an opportunity to be chief of staff and technical assistant to Brian Krzanish, the former CEO of Intel. And Bob was CFO at the time and I would never forget, he always made me feel like a leader on the team, like a part of the management committee. One time I put together a leadership offsite and it was a two-day offsite and it was just a lot of great work around strategy, team building and the likes, and we were done. It was the end of the day, we’re actually in the jet center about to head back to Santa Clara and he came up and he put his arm around me and he said, Lakecia, you make us better. Wow, that touched me so deeply in my heart I felt like, wow, he sees me.

I’m adding value to the team. I will never forget that moment in my career ever. And Bob continued to be a major supporter for me in my career. So much so that when I was interviewing for him for a board opportunity with Idexx, he was one of my references and he was so excited to be a reference for me. He said, Lakecia, I just talked to Igon Zender and let me just tell you, you’ve got this, so proud of you. It’s a done deal. And of course I did get the board seat, and so he’s continued to be a shining light, a bright light, a mentor, a sponsor, even until today. He saw me, he recognized my value, he recognized my impact, and he has continued to enable my growth and my success. I’m so grateful for that. The second picture is Rodney Clark. Rodney recruited me from Intel to join Microsoft.

And what I loved about that opportunity is that he said, “Lakecia, not only am I hiring you for a job, I’m really sponsoring you into a career at Microsoft.” That meant the world to me. It wasn’t that, hey, I’m just looking for someone to fill a spot. No, I’m looking for someone that can grow their career at Microsoft and someone who I believe has a long trajectory at Microsoft. So grateful for Rodney. Every year he made certain that I was growing. He made certain that I had new opportunities with bigger scope. He believed in me and my potential to achieve at the highest levels. Such an amazing leader, so empowering, one of the best. And last but certainly not least, the beautiful face on the slide is Pamela Lusardi, affectionately, we called her Pete. Pete hired me into Intel in 2008. She was a 27-year Intel veteran and a phenomenal leader.

She believed in me from day one ladies, she told me, so Lakecia, you and I we’re going to change the world of of silicon validation of intel. No doubt about it. We’re going to be the dynamic duo. The first few days on the job, she said to me, Lakecia, you have to make this a hundred thousand person monstrosity at Intel seem like a family. You’re going to have to. You need to make sure you create that very small, tight-knit community or more importantly, she said, you won’t make it because that’s been her experience. She said, “I want to help you build your Intel family.” So let me tell you what she did. The first few days on the job, she said, “You’re going to kill this job. I’m not worried about that.” But she gave me her Fab five or her fave five, whichever you want to call it.

She gave me five women in her network to go and meet. She truly embodied the #Liftherup. She is me. I am her. That’s what Pete did the first week on the job. She absolutely had a vision for my career. There was no doubt about it. We met every week, strategize for the week ahead, put our game plan together. We were just in lockstep making changes in validation, changes that were really well received. And one of my weekly one-on-one conversations after I had been on the job for about six months at this time, it was March 31st, 2009, I’ll never forget, she began to share a vision for my career at Intel. She said, “You can become a technical assistant and chief of staff for one of Intel’s c-suite leaders.” My first thought was, wow, this is awesome. And my second thought is, but what is that?

I had no clue at the time, I’d only been in the company for six months. I had no idea. She said, also, you can become one of Intel’s rock stars and I’m going to help you do both. Ladies, let me tell you, I was in tears in the room. I never actually cried in front of my manager, but I was in tears because I’m like, wow. I never had a leader see me that way and I never had a leader tell me, here’s where your future is and here’s where I’m going to get you to together. We’re going to do it. Not only was Pete a smart, beautiful country girl, she loved family, she loved farming and she loved animals. Dob Lewis was one of her charities that she absolutely enjoyed serving and spending time and donating her dollars to. And guess what? She was a licensed pilot.

She owned her own plane. She loved flying and many times she would actually fly her plane to work. Yes, my boss flew her plane to work. She would park it in the Hillsborough airport hangar right down the street from Intel and she would ride her bike to the office. She was so cool. I called her a pint-sized powerhouse. We adored Pete. On April 1st, 2009, the next day after our one-on-one again the night before, she shared with me her plan for my career and what we were going to do together.. The next day, what was April fools day, I’ll never forget, we actually got news that we were not prepared for. Pete’s plane had crashed on the way to work.

I remember looking for her that morning. She was supposed to be in the cafeteria with her manager and it had been raining that day, very rainy. And so we thought, well, she doesn’t fly her plane in the rain, so she’s probably driving. She was a little bit late, but unfortunately her manager confirmed that on the way to work, her plane had crashed. I lost my career best manager at that time. And so Pete’s impact on my life has been phenomenal, is tremendous. There isn’t a day that doesn’t go by that I don’t think about her and what I learned from her in those short six months. And so I dedicate this talk to her. I really do. She absolutely was amazing. And as I said, one of the most important things that she told me to do when I first started at Intel is to make sure that I build my network.

And so Pete’s wisdom continues to resonate with me. I know she attributed her success at Intel to not just hard work but the power of her network. And I’m forever grateful to her for extending her network to me. She was giving me access to women who could help me, who would provide guidance and insight to help me navigate my career. Women who shared their experience, their resources and their relationships to help me accelerate my success. Her fab Five supported me and encouraged me during one of the most difficult times in my life. They helped me to actually achieve the dreams and visions she set out for me to become a chief of staff and technical assistant to a c-suite leader at Intel. I was so proud to be able to realize the things that she had planned, not just for me but the entire team.

She wanted us to be an award-winning software development team at Intel. And of course we achieved that in three years. Again, Pete encouraged me to develop those trusting relationships that help support and encourage you on your career path through every step of your journey. That’s what we want to make sure that we’re doing. Something as personal as dreaming truly starts with the relationships that you make. And as you heard me say, in my case it did. I didn’t have a dream to be a chief of staff and technical assistant, but she had that for me and that enabled me to realize that dream. And so I continued to expand on everything that she taught me about building my network and making sure that my team was growing. And as you can see on the screen… Yes, as you can see on the screen, I continued to expand my network and I continued to expand my network to make sure it absolutely even included male allies.

That was just as important. I continued to grow that network. People that are a part of my network made certain that whatever I needed they could provide and whatever they needed, I could provide as well. All of these people have shown up for me in so many ways. And the same can happen for you. This is what I call my Team Lakecia, my squad, my personal board of directors, my personal board of advisors. It is truly an interconnected network of mutually supportive relationships that Elevate not just my capability but the capability of the entire network. You too can build your team. And we’re going to talk about exactly how to do that.

In a recent survey, 88% of women surveyed said they absolutely wanted to advance to the next level. 70% have a desire to be a senior leader. But many times when we’re presented with opportunities, women, we say women typically say no. We let fear stop us from pursuing our desires. I have fallen victim to this a couple of times. You see the beautiful picture on the slide, that’s Mary Wilner, she’s the vice president at Intel. And Mary and I connected a number of years back. I heard her speak and she was amazing and immediately said, I need to know her. I want to learn more about her story. I want to learn how she achieved at the highest levels. And Mary willingly spent time with me in one-on-ones. And over the course of some time, I shared with her that I was looking for my next opportunity.

And so she would always send me different roles across Intel that may have come her way. And on this one particular occasion, she actually had a couple roles that were available in her organization and she was so excited to share those with me. She sent them to me an email and said, hey, let’s get some time together. Lakecia, I want to talk to you about these opportunities. I think one of them may absolutely be right up your alley. And so I had a one-on-one with Mary. We talked about the role. Well, even before I met her, I thought mmh, this looks quite interesting. Although I’m not sure I have everything on the list, but I’m still going to have the conversation with Mary. So I went in, I had the conversation, we had a good time chatting, and so she began to outline what she was looking for in the role and then she also even went as far as to say, here’s where I think you’ve got tremendous strength in the role and your skillset.

And so we continued the dialogue and I said, well, thank you so much for thinking of me, but as I look at this, I only have 7 of the 10 items that you’re looking for. And so she said, Lakecia, don’t you ever do that again? Surely you have strengths for this role, but there may be some gaps, but that’s okay. You can go learn those things along the way. And she said, you know what? I sit with men all the time and I’ve never had a man tell me he wasn’t qualified for their job. Even if he thought he had one of those items, he would say, I’m in. I got this. And so my point I,s many times we say no because we’re afraid to fail or we are afraid to succeed in some cases. I have learned to say yes, actually I can.

And I learned that from the conversation I had with Mary. Because you know what, we’ve got a certain set of qualifications and skills that really enable us to do any job and wherever we may have gaps, my idea was you know what, call your team Lakecia, and just say, you know what? I told Mary I can do this job. I have no idea how I’m going to do it. I even got the job. I don’t know how I’m going to do it. And they’ll help you get prepared. So I’m being facetious a little bit, but the point I’m making is say yes to opportunity. We’ll figure out the next steps to close any gaps or perceived gaps that you may think that you have. So what am I saying, ladies? I’m saying today it’s a new day. It really is a new day. It’s time to transform our thinking altogether.

It’s time to really realize that you know what, our dreams are on the other side of fear. So in 2024, we’re going to render fear powerless. We’re going to make sure that fear no longer has a control over us. I always say, look, fear directly in the eyes and say, hello, I see you, but we’re going to move past it. We’re going to feel it. We’re going to use it. We’re going to operate through it. Fear really isn’t an obstacle, but it’s an opportunity. An opportunity for us, for you, to uncover the next best thing or even the path to achieve your dreams and goals. If you want to live your best life now, allow yourself to experience more fear. When you do this, you open yourself up to the unknown and it can be mind-blowing everything you want. Everything you desire is on the other side of fear, so it’s time to face everything and rise.

Let’s begin to access our courage and live boldly into the greatness that we all are capable of. In 2024, we’re transforming. We are absolutely going to cancel self-doubt. That’s exactly what we’re going to do, ladies. It no longer has any place in our future. We’re going to not entertain it at all for me, and I know we’ve all had those moments of self-doubt. I can recount numerous times where I’ve doubted my ability and my capability. Like maybe when I was overlooked for a promotion several times. At that point, I decided to open up my aperture to new opportunities across the company and even externally. I said, you know what? It may be time to go where you’re valued. Or when I was standing at doors of new opportunity, that doubt started to creep in and I really kind of felt like an imposter. But I called my team Lakecia and they said, “Girl, you are a super bad sister, you’re up for this challenge. We got you.” I’m like, you’re right. I could do this. Self-doubt can creep in when people speak over you and interrupt you in meetings.

I’m sure I’m not the only one. I’m reminded of Vice President Kamala Harris when she said, “I am speaking and I say, I am speaking.” Or when those voices say that you’re not enough, maybe at the end of the day where you’re thinking about tomorrow, and sometimes those little voices, those old tapes start to play and say, you know what? You’re not enough. But I remind myself, you know what girl, you have graduated from Georgia Tech. You worked in some of the top Fortune 500 companies. You are all that in a bag of chips. Whatever that self-talk is for you, we have to make sure that we’re playing those positive tapes in our mind. It is truly time for each of us to be the hero of our own story, our own lives, and cancel self-doubt in 2024, we’re going to do this together.

No doubt about it. And when you do that, you’re getting yourself ready to roar in 2024. That’s what I’m talking about. Roaring in 2024 so that you can soar in 2024. I started a podcast a few years ago, not necessarily willingly, but one of my coaches said, “Lakecia, I think it’s a great thing for you to do. You should start a podcast.” I’m like, well, okay. And it absolutely was the best thing I could have ever done. I have the opportunity to talk to Fortune 50 business and tech executives and women leaders about the hidden power that’s inside of us as women. It’s a fire that’s in all of us, and we talk about how often that fire is suppressed by fear. Well, I’m here today to tell you ladies that this power is your birthright. It’s your roar and it’s waiting to be unleashed.

As you can see, ROAR stands for reflection. In 2024, it’s time to clarify your vision, believe in your potential, begin to reflect on your own wins. You are a winner, and whatever you do next, you’re going to win at that too. Opportunity, sit in your power and say yes to opportunity. Don’t say no. Say yes, actually I can. And then begin to phone a friend and say, let’s put our strategy together so that I can really knock it out of the park when I start my new job. Action, it’s about tapping into your network, articulating what the right next steps are and running towards the thing that you might be afraid of because that one thing could unlock so many new opportunities. Relationships, we’ve talked about pulling together your board of directors, your board of advisors. Begin to assemble that team and make sure that you become a part of someone else’s.

Ladies, it is time to release your ROAR. Get ready. I love this quote by MLK. He says, “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, what are you doing for others?” Well, we can answer that question. Let’s answer this question by elevating and empowering women in industry and becoming a part of their personal board of directors, because you and I both know that behind every successful woman is a tribe of other successful women and male allies who have their back, and let’s make sure that we’re also paying it forward. On this slide, you should see four beautiful women on this slide. They’re absolutely amazing women. They’re rock stars and they’re dear friends of mine. I love this tribe that you see on the slide. We support each other, we mentor, we sponsor. We’re sounding boards. I wear their T-shirts and rooms that I’m in and they wear mine.

It’s been an honor to play a small role in their career success. As I said, these are super bad women. They’re total rock stars. Kelly on the left hand side is a new VP at Isotope. We work together at Intel. Diane is a VP at Lululemon. We worked together at Microsoft and she was an amazing partner to me and really enabled my success in so many ways. Phenomenal sounding board. Panya is a senior director at Meta. We’ve been friends for over 25 years. Phenomenal leader, Paan Diane are a part of Black Woman on board Rising program and just kicking butt, taking names. Karenga, the last picture you see as a senior director at Intel, I was part of her recruiting process into Intel. I hired her into my org and I promoted her. It was a well-deserved promotion and she earned it even before I hired my organization, we’re making this happen.

I also sponsored her into a leadership program for IWF. She had an opportunity to meet phenomenal women across the world, go to Harvard. Again, it is important that we are lifting as we climb, that we’re supporting other women through their career journey. So my question to you today is who will you lift up? Who will you put in those circles? What four women will you put in those circles on the screen? Who will you open doors for? It’s so fun to be able to do that. And the next thing I want to ask you is who will you add to your team? Who is going to be part of your personal board of directors, your personal board of advisors? Who are you going to make sure you can support them and they can support you? Build your team, build your squad, build your personal board of directors. It’s so important as Pete said to me from day one. It’s to build that community of supporters. It starts today, and I’m here to help you in any way that I can.

Now ladies, I want us to really imagine the lift that we will see as a group. If all 1000 plus attendees at this conference take the actions I just outlined in the next few days. Imagine the beautiful mosaic we can create in corporate America when we’re intentional about lifting each other up. If everyone lifts up one more woman, the tables and the rooms and the C-suites will look so different. Imagine the difference we can make by lifting others up and calling on our squads to lift us.

Imagine the strength we will create collectively as women lifting women. Just like moon and suns with the certainty of tides. Just like hope springing high, still, we rise. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you for the opportunity to spend time with you guys today. It’s been my absolute pleasure to be a part of this conversation. Thank you Angie and team for including me in this amazing conference. Let’s start the movement. Lift her up, lift as you climb. We’re going to fear less and roar more. We’re going to roar with Lakecia Gunter. Thank you so much for this opportunity. It’s been an absolute pleasure to be with you today. Angie, thank you.

Angie Chang: Thank you so much for that inspiring talk. I learned so much from your slides about your team, your stories of inspiration, of receiving sponsorship, and also the encouragement for women to sponsor others. So that’s a really great call out. We have a lot of people chatting away. I don’t know if you want to take a question?

Lakecia Gunter: Yeah, happy to take some questions. My pleasure, thank you.

Angie Chang: Two minutes left in this session.

Julia: Hello? I’m here waiting for something, I don’t know what I was waiting for. I do have a question. First off, thank you so much for such a strong… I’ve just been sitting here just watching with just awe.

Thank you so much. Oh, actually, let me show my face if I can. There we go, hello.

Lakecia Gunter: Hi, Julia.

Julia: Hi. So yeah, I’ve just been sitting here like this the whole time. Yes, thank you so much. This was a phenomenal talk. And I guess my question is, I am currently trying to build my squad. We’re trying to roll. And so how do you know somebody is for the squad? Because not everybody’s for the squad. And so I’m trying to build quality squad here. And do you have any tips on building that squad, finding the people to get into that squad and stuff like that? Thanks.

Lakecia Gunter: That’s a great question, Julia.

Angie Chang: One minute. Sorry. Just a reminder, we’re going to end in one minute. So yeah.

Lakecia Gunter: One minute, okay, I’ll be very quick. Thank you. We’re right at 9:39. So what I would say is, for instance, Mary Wilder became a part of my squad, the picture that I’ve shown in terms of the job opportunities, because she was speaking and I was so inspired by her talk. I simply said, I walked up to her and I said, hey, I love to get to know you. A few years in my career at Intel, you are super successful. I’d love to learn from you. And so we had a one-on-one. I always just ask people for 15 minutes and that 15 minute coffee chat, we began to connect on so many things.

She was from Florida, I was from Florida. She was Cuban American, I’m African American, we both were engineers. And so we just began to find those common trait dialogue. And once we did that, she became part of team Lakecia. So it’s about finding connection. So as you begin to meet people, you’ll know, and they all know that, you know what, we want to be connected. We’re forever friends. Mary has retired from Intel. We’re still friends. I had her on my podcast. So it’ll come to you as you begin to connect with people, you’ll find those natural connections, and that will be a person who’s willing to be a part of your team Julia. Thank you for the question.

Julia: One quick follow up. What’s your podcast? I think other people ask that too.

Lakecia Gunter: Sure, it’s Roar with Lakecia Gunter. I’m so sorry. So yeah, you can find me on Apple, Spotify, Roar with Lakecia Gunter. I’m putting it in the chat. If you search on that on Google, my podcast will come up. And I’m working on season two as we speak. It’s been a phenomenal experience for me. I’ve learned so much by doing the podcast. Thank you so much.

Julia: Thank you.

Lakecia Gunter: All right, thanks ladies.

Julia: Thank you.

Lakecia Gunter: Bye.