Now, what’s the advice you ask?

Don’t be apologetic about what you want.

I’ve always been very nice. I grew up in a culture where being respectful is everything, but I’ve always been mindful of the things that I want in life also. The general rule of thumb was to step on as few toes (if any) as possible to get to where I want.

I’m not in one of those situations currently. I’m in a position to stomp on more than a few toes if I really go after what I want and I’ve been quite wishy washy about making the decision. Even though this decision will most likely be a positive career change, it’ll probably burn some bridges. While it may seem like the best thing to do is to minimize the amount of damage I’m about the cause, it seems like this may unconsciously sabotage any respect people have for me because it seems like I just can’t make up my mind.

There’s an interesting article about 10 ways women are unconsciously sabotaging their careers. Number 2 rings true here.

It’s important for both men and women to be well liked at work-but you can’t build a career solely around being liked. The trick is to find a balance between being a wishy-washy “nice girl” and a woman who’s too headstrong.

Sheryl Sandberg talked about this in her book Lean In. She states that if you please everyone, you’re not making enough progress. Every time I change my mind about my situation, I’m taking two steps forward and one step back. It’s progress, but at this rate, I’ll never get to where I’m going. So now I’m going to live by these words…I’m not going to be apologetic about what I want. It might put me in a position that takes me out of my comfort zone, but there will never be a big reward without a bit of risk and improvisation involved. It’s just the way the industry works.

I decided to attend Celebrating Women in Computing So Cal Conference literally the day before the conference last weekend and I’m happy to say that it was a great experience. This is my first time attending one of these types of conferences and I regret never going before now.

There’s plenty of experiences that I could touch on from the conference itself, but I wanted to discuss a point that got me thinking that was brought up during dinner the first evening. We had been praising one of the guys for being one of the few males that attended the event and I began to question, why don’t more men attend these types of events? Most of the speakers, events and workshops had very interesting topics that would have attracted both men and women. Not only that, but the conference is called Celebrating Women in Computing. It shouldn’t be just women who celebrate the fact that they’re in computing. Men should also be a part of the process.

A few of the speakers urged for women to not only encourage other women to get involved in computing, but also to make sure that men understand the importance of getting the word out also. If only women are actively trying to recruit other women, it’s going to be exhausting. There’s not too many of us; let’s delegate some of the work.

As the President of the ACM student chapter at UCSD (The Computer Science and Engineering Society), I have the ability to speak to some of the guys in our department at our meetings. However, when I explained the benefits of outreach and urged them to volunteer and get involved, there wasn’t very much of a response. When we opened up our position for an outreach officer position, I received several inquiries and applications. Guess what? ALL of them were from women. Not even one guy was even remotely interested in getting involved in that aspect. I think this type of thinking needs to change if we want to significantly see a difference in the ratios of men and women in computing.

To all you men out there, help us.

Share your passion for computer science and engineering and help us outreach to the younger generations. Together we can change how computing is perceived and make the world take notice. Celebrate women in computing and we can celebrate together.

Cross posted at the WIC UCSD CWIC blog.

I was mostly inspired to start keeping a blog again at the CWIC-So Cal conference. I feel like there’s so many things that need to be said and done after listening to all the inspiring speakers. I hope that I can talk about what it was like going through college as one of the few females in Computer Science and what perhaps we can do to change this for the future. I also hope to share my passions and abhorrences when it comes to topics in user experience and software engineering. Maybe I’ll just be talking to myself for the most part. After all “never have so many people with so little to say said so much to so few” (probably my favorite description of blogging).