Work Blog Archive
Posted August 7, 2007 at 3:16 AM in Business, Meeeeeeee, Women!, Work | Comments (1)
In this recent study, a Yale post-doc has found that a woman who shows anger in the workplace is likely to be seen as incompetent and out of control. In order to achieve status at work, women may have to behave calmly in order to be seen as rational. In fact, an “angry” woman is also likely to make less money than an “unemotional” woman, though in either case is still likely to make less than a man.
No wonder why so many women end up adopting a “nice girl” approach in business. But you know what? That doesn’t work either — at least not for the woman trying to always be so nice. That’s why I’m glad to see that Erica wrote up her 5 steps to stop being too nice. I was also pleasantly surprised by the book Ambitchous by Debra Condren, which promotes embracing ambition as a virtue, standing up for one’s self, and being authentic in order to be achieve success on one’s own terms and to be happy with one’s life.
I could go on at length about the “nice girl/angry woman” paradox, but I won’t because I resolved this internal conflict a long time ago. Ultimately I only care about being authentic, because when I’m not true to myself, everything else in my life goes to hell.
Sure, I try to be nice, and yes, I get angry. I don’t let people step all over me, but I also don’t run around yelling and screaming (much — hey, I’m Italian!). Some people will think of me as the crazy lady but really don’t care. I simply hope that others will remember that I behave the way I do because I care about myself, my work, my people, or whatever the issue is at hand. It’s in expressing some emotion that I am (and I think most women are) most comfortable demonstrating my commitment to my work, by showing how much I care about what I do. An unemotional response might help a man better understand my point, but wouldn’t be an authentic expression of myself.
To those that know me and work with me, I hope the above is either already apparent to you or is now clear. To everyone, here’s what I ask of you: The next time you encounter a “nice girl”, ask her if she’s being true to herself by always being so nice. And when you butt heads with an “angry woman”, acknowledge her commitment to the work and doing what is right. Encourage people be themselves, to be authentic. I bet that you’ll find that you can then do the same, and everyone will be all the happier for it.
Posted June 26, 2007 at 10:28 AM in CSS, Web Standards, Work | Comments (2)
Head over to PayPal and check out the redesign beta! Only the main pages have been redesigned, but you can go through the whole site with a new header/footer for a feel of what’s to come.
Feedback on the code welcome here!
Posted June 14, 2007 at 1:03 AM in Industry Events, Meeeeeeee, Web Standards, Work | Comments (2)
I owe some thanks to colleagues and friends in the Web world for recent highlights and opportunities, so here goes…
Kudos to Meri Williams for setting up the Make Me a Speaker site and thanks for interviewing me for it! Meri set up this site after the topic of women speakers at conferences came up back in February. A lot of the hype has died down, but I hope that the information and resources on the site will continue to be useful for anyone seeking to start or improve their career as a speaker/presenter.
Kit Seeborg and I met at SXSW last year, and this year she invited me to speak at WebVisions in Portland. I was grateful for the opportunity to start speaking about how I’ve made process the driver behind integrating Web standards, but I was even more grateful for the chance to finally visit Portland (having heard so much about it from Ben Henick) and to meet some great people, like Erica O’Grady (yet another woman who does so much for the Web industry, and just so much in general!). Sadly, I didn’t get to spend any time with Kit, but Erica and I did have a good heart-to-heart while perusing the shelves at Powell’s Books. It was a great conference and a great weekend, and next time, Kit, we’re doing dinner — work be damned!
Then I was absolutely bowled over when Rob Dickerson invited me to give the closing keynote at the Penn State Web Conference. I’ll admit that, at first, I wasn’t sure how I’d translate my industry experience for an audience that was supporting academia… but then I realized that that’s how I started out, and academia actually helped prepare me for much of what I encountered in industry! I just hope that all of my ‘how to be an evangelist and advocate for processes and roles that support standards’ mumbo-jumbo translated well, and that attendees will find it useful. I was thoroughly impressed by the other presenters, most of whom were from the university system, and I had a great time at Quaker Steak and Lube (a restaurant… really!) with Jared Spool, Dan Frommelt, and company. And I got to have ice cream at the PSU Creamery! Mmmm!
Posted May 23, 2007 at 10:30 AM in Business, Just Sayin, Work | Comments (1)
Robert Scoble alerted readers to Jeff Barr’s post about Google recruiting. I had to laugh out loud here, because I’ve also been subject to some strange Google recruiting crap myself.
Most recently, I got an e-mail from a Google recruiter (who clearly did look at my Web site, because she commented on the pink-ness of my blog) with regards to a technical solutions engineer position. The first thing that struck me as odd is that, if you actually read my resume, you’ll learn that I’ve been in management positions for a while… so why would I be interested in an engineering position? The next oddity was the requirement that I complete a self-evaluation before discussions could proceed. Uh-huh. No thanks.
Of course, when I got that e-mail I was laughing pretty hard, because in the many years I’ve attended the Grace Hopper Celebration I’ve talked to Google folks many times about job opportunities there — and was basically told again and again that “Google doesn’t recruit Web developers because that’s not important to [their] business”. Whatever.
I have some friends that have gone to Google, but honestly, the more I learn about them, the more suspicious I am of them. I feel like they’re one giant social engineering experiment, and we’re all their guinea pigs.
Posted January 29, 2007 at 9:10 AM in Technology, Women!, Work | Comments Off
Via eWeek, we learn that the gender wage gap in tech is narrowing (from 10.9% to 9.7%) and that, in certain areas, women are earning more than their male counterparts!
Finally, some good news about women in tech. It seems that recent articles on women in tech have mainly focused on the number of women leaving careers in technology. Of course, I wonder when those articles are penned by men — they frequently cite what I consider to be bogus reasons for women leaving (things like “male counterparts too techy” and “not willing to work long hours”). Is it possible that these authors stir up this hype in an effort to scare away women? I think so.. since I’ve never heard of any woman leaving a job solely because of the hours being too long or because they weren’t geeky enough to get along. Honestly, I doubt that most men could fully understand the reasons why a woman would choose to leave a job… but that’s a whole other discussion…
Anyway, knowing that one has a better chance of being paid equally, I hope that more women will opt in to technology education and careers. More women are certainly needed, and most places I’ve worked, I know they’d be most welcome!
Hi, my name is Kimberly Blessing. I'm a computer scientist, Web developer, standards evangelist, feminist, and geek. This is where I write about life, the Web, technology, women's issues, and whatever else comes to mind.
