Girl At Work (GAW)’s second guest interview is here. To jog your memory, we started with the first one last month, in an attempt to bring in perspectives from different contexts across industries and geographies.
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This week’s guest is Rajalakshmi / Raji. Raji did her masters in engineering in the US and has been working there for almost 15 years. Today, we cover some of her perspectives as an Indian woman in tech in America.
Hi Raji. Welcome to GAW.
Hello. Happy to talk to the GAW readers.
Can you tell us about the kind of work you started doing, how it has evolved, and what you do now?
I started off as a software developer engineer. I then transitioned to automation frameworks & optimizations for mobile devices. By this time, I was nearing a decade into my career & I was ready to try something outside of only software, dabbling in hardware too. As part of my current role, I focusing on delivering the best battery life and also user experience on laptops. With all of these shifts within the same organization across 15 years.
How do you navigate understanding and building tech for different industries / segments?
Any segment or sector I pick needs to have a goal, path to grow and impact. The next important thing is being aware of the nature of work by asking myself - is this work repetitive or open research? Am I learning new things? Most importantly, am I able to articulate what I do in a way that can be understood by my son and grandmother?
As a woman in tech, do you have communities that you are part of?
I have been a part of communities like IEEE, Grace Hopper, Women in Tech associations, mentor circles for girls in high school & undergrad etc. Informal ones include lunch meets, tech talks & panels with peer & senior tech women at my company.
The communities have helped me understand how privileged my growing up years were, financially and emotionally. I hear the background and childhood stories of highly accomplished tech women growing up in abusive homes with no steady income and disparity vs the boys. This perspective inspires me not to give up easily & grow with strength in my career. I have also got ideas on how not to just work hard but ensure I have the right conversations regularly to get rewarded & recognized. Instead of asking "How did I perform?" & getting an answer "Oh you did great!" but end up seeing no hike or promotion in the year, go for "Do you think I am performing at my grade level & what do I have to accomplish to go to the next level?" and then hold them accountable when you check off what they asked for.
Did the pandemic impact your having support systems at work / communities at work? How is it evolving as you slowly get back to work?
With the onset of the pandemic, cross geo work picked up at a very fast rate which meant meetings & work started at 7am, the kid started school by 8am, and meetings could go on till 10pm or 11pm. There was no boundary between work & home, with little to no time left for networking.
The pandemic took a huge toll on the communities as F2F interactions stopped. As much as we attempt to have "virtual" meet & greets, I have to admit they end up cold and short. Not having these communities during the pandemic tended to push us women back into the work hard at office & home forgetting that we once had organic access to a circle of mentors, friends, senior advisors. Rather, now, it's a formal 1:1 meeting that we have to set up which leaves us wondering whether we need it so often, what’s there to talk after all. Career discussions that used to happen on the fly & easily as part of regular conversations have started becoming formal meetings. It's hard to understand emotions without the face in front of you or read what the other person's thinking.
It took more than a year for women to ease up to show their faces in a video call as most of us are indisposed at home. It's easier said than done when people say "Hey no need to dress up, no one's judging, just turn on your cameras". But honestly don't we all tend to pay attention? I wanted to ask "Are you saying you would go with a towel on your head, a nightdress or a facemask?" You will say "oh yes why not" but we all know that's not happening.
Gradually I can see a subset of women getting back to be a part of these communities but with the expectation that the management would support and encourage, calling these networks an integral part of work life. Right now, I grabbed the opportunity to go to work a few days during the week & I am already starting to feel how nice it is to randomly meet a team mate for lunch or take a small walk while I get to chit chat about work and other things. Hopefully, this run continues.
Thanks Raji, for your time and insights on women in tech and the importance of communities. The takeaways are incredible.
Thank you for having me at GAW. Bbye.
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Looking back at how communities shaped up for me during the pandemic, there are a lot of points I relate on. I did try the 20-minute formal catch-ups to talk to mentors and guides but they ended up quite robotic, and the cadence fizzled away soon enough. Just recently, I had a F2F with one of my mentors after a long while, and we caught up on so much more and got so much done in a span of 10 minutes that’s unprecedented on Zoom calls.
As we ease out of the pandemic, have you got back to communities and networking? Have you found yourself a set of mentors and guides, in a bid to intentionally focus on your career? If not, now is as good a time as any other to think and act.
P. S. Views strictly personal. Post doesn’t refer to any organisation that I am currently associated with.