Things I am sorely tempted to post on Linkedin
For more than a decade, I've been asked regularly for tech-job advice, as someone who started young and worked their way up self-taught from basement mechanic to manager, fighting the women-in-tech battle the whole way.
Today I tried writing down my situation the way I would if I were coming to myself for advice the way so many others have, and I read it and asked myself what I'd tell a friend who sent me that message. And the answer I would give them was, "You're fucked."
I'm still so angry about the whole thing, about all the work I put in and all the crazy shit I did "for my resume" basically being completely worthless now (if not a detriment - ask me how many low-level would-pay-the-bills-at-least jobs I've not gotten because they don't want someone with management experience, or who might leave for a better job), that I can't quite tell if I'm actually being shoved out of tech by circumstance, or so sick of it after all the bad luck and obstacles and consistent lack of support from any employer ever that I'd actually just rather sling burgers (or words) for less than half the money than even try dealing with it again. …I know it seems like it should be easy to tell the difference between the two, but it's not. I ask myself constantly, "Am I really trying as hard as I can here? Or am I sabotaging myself because on some level I'm just so fucking done that I physically can't push past it?"
Sometimes you break up, and you realize all the things about your ex that made you friends to begin with. And sometimes you break up, and you realize that your ex was never really good for you *at all*; you just felt like you needed them, so you ignored it. Believe me, growing up in a shit town with "escort" being the most common job the other girls had in high school, having computers skillz seemed like a magic save. But no job I've ever had has given me any technical training, and the only promotions I've ever gotten were to shove me, the lone woman on the team, into more managerial and therefore less valuable positions, and every single company I've worked for that didn't go out of business let me go the second they could save money doing so, even if I'd worked my butt off for them for years.
It made me good money a few times, for a little while, but it's never been fulfilling, and it's been rare that it was even marginally okay or morally not-grotesque. I've not been the only woman on a team I was on once, a decade ago. (A high point was last year when the boss stood up at an all-dev meeting and apologized to me for my being the only woman there. I had to thank him, profusely, for being the only boss I'd ever had acknowledge it.)
This whole thing is somewhat like getting a divorce, the kind where you're not really sure if you're better off now or not. Tech broke up with me, but the moment it left I noticed how much nicer it was to not have it around. Maybe, if I can replace the key things about it (like, you know, paying rent), I'll eventually be glad it's gone. For now though, I'm still just so stung over the time wasted, the effort that feels like it was for nothing, and the sheer fail of the entire career I cared about so much for actually-literally-twenty-years, that it's hard to see anything past "Yeah, you're fucked".
Originally published at counterclockwise. You can comment here or there.