On being "good enough"
An anonymous game developer recently posted about her experiences at industry events. Just minutes after arriving, she is regularly asked if she's there because she's someone’s girlfriend or an artist. After explaining that she’s a game developer, she usually faces a credential check and is forced to "regurgitate" her resume.
Each time, she says, her experience is ruined. The unconscious demotion, and the fact that she has to prove her value again and again while male game developers are "considered to be valid just by showing up" eats away at her.
And that has material costs for her work. She writes, "I am less likely to attend industry events because of the psychological toll that springs from the constant invalidation of my abilities as a game developer." Her absence will both lessen the visibility of female game developers and potentially hold back her career.
If there have ever been three paragraphs that more accurately sum up my experiences working in tech, I haven't found them yet. From this article on the phenomenon they describe as 'unconscious demotions', it quite accurately describes the cost of going to industry events. (You know, aside from some of the other costs.) And this isn't just limited to events - I've occasionally had interviews where, as an interviewer, candidates condescendingly tried to make me "prove" that I was "good enough" to be interviewing them. Having to prove over and over that I deserve to even be here gets tiring, to say the least.
Working in tech, I feel like I always have to be on. I feel like I am never allowed to be simply good enough, I have to be even better. Unlike someone who fits the stereotypical expectation of "what an engineer looks like", I don't feel like I have the option of being just good at what I do; if I want to succeed, I have to be great.
Cate Huston wrote a wonderful post recently on job versus career stability. In it, she says:
One thing I’m grateful to from my time at the Conglomerate is that my fear of disappearing – again – keeps me pushing to make sure I stay visible. Women are only as good as their last, most recent, achievement, after all. So I get up at 6am so that I have an hour or so to write code on my side project before my first meeting. I spend Saturday morning in a coffee shop writing. I limited myself to six talks this year, but still – six is quite a lot. I choose this even though it sometimes means harassment, because the alternative – disappearing – is mostly, usually, much more terrifying.
This is what I've been struggling with for the past few years. Do I succeed and risk burning out, or do I take care of myself and risk disappearing? It's exhausting. Despite being relatively well known in my field, I feel like I still have to do more, still have to prove myself, prove that I'm technical, prove that I'm competent, prove that I belong.
And I'm tired. Tired of the proving. Tired of wondering if I'm doing enough, and still feeling like I never am. I cut down from 11 speaking gigs last year to 5 this year and I'm still tired. I worry that if I say no to a speaking invitation this year that there won't be another one next year, that if I take the time and the space to take care of myself then I - and the opportunities and career stability that come from the visibility I've created - will disappear.
Cate listed some great strategies for building career stability. To expand on a couple of those, here are a few things that I've found that help a bit. (Obviously these aren't perfect strategies for me or I wouldn't be this tired, but maybe some people reading them will be better at implementing them than I am.)
Documenting what you've done is great not only for proving things to other people, but also to yourself. It's easy to feel like an impostor in an industry that tells you that you don't belong. I have lists of the talks I've given, the podcasts I've been on, lists of things that feel like career milestones, and a folder full of emails from colleagues who liked various things that I've worked on. Sometimes when it feels like I'm not doing enough I will look over those lists and try to remind myself that I have done a lot and I do actually belong here.
Don't compare yourself to other people too much. There will always be people who have more energy than you, more time, more tolerance for being in the public eye, more whatever. There is always more you hypothetically could do in some alternate universe where you don't need sleep or have other responsibilities, but in this universe, there's only so much you realistically can do. At some point you'll have to decide what is and isn't important to you, and what success looks like for you, and remember that success doesn't look the same to everyone.
Building up a support network - especially before you need it - has been crucial. There are different kinds of support that people can give as well. I have people I can ask for practical advice and people who will just lend an ear if I need to vent or a shoulder if I need to weep despondently for a while. I have people who will remind me of the awesome things I've done and people who will tell me what I could do better. There are the people who say "If you ever get tired of Etsy, come work with me" and importantly, people who I would trust when they say that their work environment is safe and supportive. Most importantly for me, I have networks that include people who look like me - no longer am I the only woman or the only queer person in my circles of friends and acquaintances. That feeling of not being so alone helps to reenergize me even when everything else is exhausting.
Try to prioritize what you want to accomplish, not just in your career but in life. I could write another book, or I could spend my spare time in the next 15 months climbing rocks or learning cello instead. Hopefully I will never look back on my life and think, I wish I had spent more time in the tech industry. I'm much more likely to regret other interests I didn't pursue or friendships that faded away because I spent so much time at tech conferences.
Again, I know that I'm quite lucky to feel like I've built up enough career stability to say no to things (for a while, at least), and I know I don't have all the answers here, let alone universally applicable ones. I realize that there's not one universal yardstick that we can all use to measure ourselves (or each other) by. The less diverse an industry or a field is, the more limited a view we get of what "success" looks like or what "good enough" means for that field.
Not everyone is comfortable getting up in front of hundreds of people and talking about something, and not everyone feels safe contributing to open source projects. I hope both of those situations improve, but I also hope that we start expanding our definitions of what it means to be successful and to give back to the communities we are part of. I hope we can all start supporting each other more, questioning each other less, and working towards an industry where more people can feel like they are, in fact, "good enough".