Yesterday Salma Alam-Naylor posted an incredibly thoughtful blog post, Why Women in Tech isn’t enough, about her personal experiences, the downsides of dedicated, exclusionary spaces, and the responsibility of men in tech to lead systemic change.

It got me thinking about my own experiences in the industry and where we all go from here.

Can’t say I wasn’t warned

Early in my career, I had the privilege of getting invited to a wine and vent session with some impressive professional women who were 20 years ahead of me in tech. At the time, I remember hearing their stories and thinking:

SURELY, it won’t be that bad for me. Things are changing. Things are getting better. I’m not even sure sexism is a real problem anymore…

Boy howdy, was I wrong.

In the more than a decade since those early meetings, I have observed:

• So. Many. Women getting fired on their maternity leave. Especially in Sales
• The best woman managers I’ve ever worked with dropping out—making lateral moves, demoting themselves, or leaving tech completely
• Leadership teams that started out with women leaders for half the department heads reshape and diminish until the only woman left is the Head of People Ops
• Well-meaning Employee Resource Groups and programs causing more damage than good, while also requiring additional free labor from the same people they’re supposed to benefit

While I’ve certainly witnessed a few jaw-dropping instances of true capital “S” sexism and harassment in tech, most of the issues I’ve experienced have been much more subtle.

It’s getting feedback on your personality instead of the results of the programs you own.

Wondering whether you have enough social capital left to speak up about something offensive when you see it.

It’s women getting pitted against one another, throwing each other under the bus so they can get their hands on that last open seat at the table.

Even the women who seem like they’re always winning effortlessly by being one of the guys get screwed over eventually. At some point, there’s no amount of beer, golf, or nachos that can protect you from getting pushed off the glass cliff.

The back channels are full of burned out girlbosses, women who were doing it all to have it all before they finally hit a wall.

Meanwhile, my Facebook feed is plastered with genAI tradwife cartoons, illustrations styled like a Mary Engelbreit calendar, celebrating a soft life at home, wearing clean, swaddled babies, baking bread in front of an open window out to a garden with a cat perched on the sill.

In the United States, we’ve rolled back Roe, they’re dismantling the Department of Education, and it seems like the national plan is to force all the women out of the workforce and into domestic caretaking roles. We got a trial run during Covid-19 lockdowns. 2 million women left work and never went back.

In tech specifically, all the big ticket issues haven’t budged:

1. Leaky pipeline
2. Unequal pay
3. Women founders getting 14% less funding than their peers

So, what’s giving me hope right now?

Bright spots

First, those “wine and vent” sessions from the 2010’s have morphed into real communities with real resources. We aren’t just getting together for cheese and chit-chat once a month. We’re not just posting on internet forums, either. Now, we’re waking up and logging into Slack groups 2,000+ members strong where people are sharing templates, tactics, introductions, and discount codes. It’s like having a keycard to a digital co-working space where every person is rooting for you to succeed. The groups chats have operationalized with technology and the positive impact is outsized.

Second, I do think we’re getting better at grappling with intersectionality. Yes, it is clumsy and imperfect. We may be unfairly flattening entire groups of complex identities and representations into not the cishet 6 foot tall white dudes. But it’s obvious to me how whether you’re non-binary, trans, intersex or queer, Black or Asian or Latine, Jewish or Muslim or Mormon, disabled or facing ageism, adopted or working on a visa because you’re in the process of immigration—all of these underrepresented classes, identities and statuses do affect our experiences at work. As much as we all wish we could just be treated like Humans, the big problem on the global stage is Dehumanization based on social constructs. That doesn’t go away just because we wish we could be valued for our skills and contributions alone. Having the courage to name this and try to face it together—as complicated and uncomfortable as that feels—is a step toward the kind of solidarity that will amount to meaningful change.

To Salma’s point, and as many commented yesterday, segregating groups into “safe places” formed on the basis of identity gets problematic pretty fast.

But I also think trying extra hard to bend and reshape the existing system has not served us so far. At some point, most people who benefit from the current power structure are not willing to risk their livelihoods to improve the circumstances of others. There’s always a line, even for the most well-intentioned.

Instead of continually trying to change the way the dominant industry works to accommodate our existence, let’s try re-imagining what work looks like from the ground up.

At 37 years old, I’m one of those women who has survived the industry past the point where most people drop out.

I’m not where I imagined I’d be in my career progression, and in some ways I’m barely holding on by the skin of my teeth, but I’m not planning on quitting. I love software and startups and code editors and great customer experiences, and I don’t see that fizzling out anytime soon.

As I’m thinking about the next 15 years in tech, the questions top of mind for me are:

• How do we build new businesses on top of stronger values?
• How can we activate our wealth to move toward equity?
• How can we become successful enough to provide viable alternatives for people who are sick and tired of contributing their precious energy and genius into toxic industries that cause real harm?

If our allies can’t fix everything from where they work on the inside of Big Tech, there’s plenty of space out here for something different.

The system won’t change because it’s working as designed. Let’s design something new.