068: Hire Women, Inspire Women

30 March, 2022

Transcript

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[00:00:00] Ben: It's funny. There's those posters or memes that say like, be the person that your dog thinks you are like, uh, I,I almost feel like it works in the other direction as well. You're like, I could just use this to like, treat my loved ones as well as how I treat my

[00:00:15] Carol: oh man.

[00:00:16] Carol: That's

[00:00:17] Adam: Yeah. When you walk by the office break room and they're humping something, that out because.

[00:00:24] Carol: Do you just go pet them on the head and say, good boy. You'll do better next time.

[00:00:29] Ben: there's no emotional barrier when it comes to talking to the dog, she does something great. I immediately tell her how great she is and yeah, when it comes to people, I love it. It's just so much more weight to it for some reason. And that's probably all entirely artificial.

[00:00:45] Carol: Oh, it is. But it's normal. It's not abnormal. I mean, that's just kind of how a lot of people are and that's okay.

[00:00:53] Intro

[00:01:13] Adam: Okay. Here we go. It is show number 68. And on today's show, we're going to talk about women. I mean, um,we're going to talk about hiring women,

[00:01:21] Carol: I got a book full of them.

[00:01:24] Adam: binders and binders full of

[00:01:26] Carol: Damn it. I'm so bad at the, yeah.

[00:01:28] Carol: yeah.

[00:01:29] Tim: we

[00:01:30] Tim: still got the reference.

[00:01:31] Carol: Good, good,

[00:01:31] Adam: as usual, we're going to start with our triumphs and fails. I guess. It's my turn to go first.

[00:01:35] Adam's Failiumph

[00:01:35] Adam: I'm going to start us off with a failure. yes. today is day two for me of, minimal caffeine. so we've talked in the past, about. extreme abuse. I would say if caffeine,

[00:01:47] Carol: And mountain

[00:01:48] Adam: a good day for me was, only drinking like six mountain Dew cans.

[00:01:55] Carol: Oh

[00:01:55] Adam: don't know how much that works out to in leaders, but I'm sure it's a lot. and so for yesterday and today I have only had one can, and, I

[00:02:04] Ben: That's a big

[00:02:04] Adam: it's,it's rough. I feel like I can't taper down. Really. I have to just kind of go cold Turkey

[00:02:10] Tim:

[00:02:10] Carol: Quit it.

[00:02:11] Tim: I forget

[00:02:11] Tim: about the caffeine and how much sugar is that.

[00:02:14] Carol: Well, you drink diet, right?

[00:02:15] Adam: Yeah. So none.

[00:02:17] Ben: I find more than anything though. It's the, it's the emotion and the ritual of it. The can

[00:02:22] Carol: the

[00:02:22] Carol: grabbing it.

[00:02:23] Carol: Yeah. Going to the fridge.

[00:02:26] Adam: Yeah.

[00:02:27] Adam: Oh, there's nothing better than like something that's feels unreasonably cold.

[00:02:31] Carol: Yeah.

[00:02:32] Adam: You know what I'm talking about, you get that can, that comes out of the frigid, like the perfect time. It's like the condenser just went off or whatever. It's like, this is extra cold. It's perfect. So yeah, this week my brain meets, I've just been dry and cracked and I'm just my, I can't even words right now.

[00:02:48] Adam: I'm having a hard time,

[00:02:49] Carol: Have you had headaches from it?

[00:02:51] Adam: a few. Yeah. I think I've done this detox enough times that my, my body's starting to understand what to expect and it's not so bad anymore, '

[00:02:59] Carol: When I cut out coffee and caffeine, the headaches are like two days long and I'm like not worth it. So I usually take it et cetera, et cetera, migraine, because it has the caffeine in it. And I'm like, okay, give me what I need, what I'm addicted to. It was just caffeine

[00:03:14] Tim: What's the end goal here, Adam, you try and get like the completely, caffeine sober, or just trying to clear yourself out for a bit.

[00:03:21] Adam: Uh, you know, I don't even

[00:03:22] Adam: know.

[00:03:23] Carol: it's caffeine sober a thing.

[00:03:25] Carol: Oh,

[00:03:25] Tim: Sona sober.

[00:03:26] Carol: Hmm.

[00:03:27] Adam: I don't even know really the, I guess I was motivated by a couple of things. Like I knew I was drinking too much of it. It was just a choice I was making as the vice I was allowing myself to have. and like I said, I know it was a poor choice to make, but if I'm going to make poor choices, at least it was that one that's only affecting me or whatever.

[00:03:45] Adam: Right. It's not like I'm smoking or smoking around my kids or something. it got to the point where I was having like stomach aches and I kind of could tell is like bordering on acid reflux and just, it was bad. and also I got to the point where like, even with six or eight cans of diet, mountain Dew during the day, I couldn't think couldn't function.

[00:04:05] Adam: And I was like, okay, that's

[00:04:07] Carol: serving its purpose.

[00:04:08] Adam: yeah. So,

[00:04:09] Carol: Yeah. Are you replacing it with water?

[00:04:12] Adam: I am. I have two glasses of water here on my desk instead of my usual two cans of diet mountain Dew to

[00:04:17] Carol: Awesome.

[00:04:18] Adam: on days where record the podcast. I usually it's a normal day, so I will have had six to eight mountain Dews during the day. And then it's like, bring two up for the podcast too.

[00:04:26] Adam: So,

[00:04:26] Tim: Wow.

[00:04:27] Ben: mean just the fact that you can drink caffeine that late at night blows my mind

[00:04:31] Adam: yeah. And I'm out like a light man. I lay down and like 10 minutes later I'm out.

[00:04:36] Carol: Do you have add,

[00:04:37] Adam: I do not officially diagnosed, but like when my kids were getting diagnosed, the therapist looked at the way I filled out the forms. and she was like, yeah, you have ADHD too.

[00:04:47] Carol: We know where it came from. So I do T so I have ADHD. I've talked about that a lot, but caffeine is one of those things that I can drink it at bedtime, and I can still go to sleep. I mean, itit doesn't have any impact

[00:04:57] Ben: That's so interesting.

[00:04:58] Adam: I feel like the caffeine helps me overcome some of my ADHD. the ways it manifests.

[00:05:03] Carol: Yep. I agree. Thank you.

[00:05:05] Ben: Well, if that's true though, then you gotta kind of keep an eye on it

[00:05:08] Ben: because

[00:05:09] Tim: Yeah. If the

[00:05:09] Tim: show quality drops off because you're stopping lot to ask you to get back on the regimen.

[00:05:14] Carol: I'm going to need you to pick up mountain Dew,

[00:05:16] Adam: Yeah. I'll take caffeine pills before we record or something.

[00:05:21] Carol: you just going to like walk outside and we're going to have shipped like cases of mountain Dew to your house to attempt you.

[00:05:27] Adam: Oh God. Can't tell you guys anything. All right. Well, before we, spend the entire show talking about mountain Dew and

[00:05:33] Adam: we're not even sponsored,

[00:05:34]

[00:05:36] Adam: Tim, what do you got going on?

[00:05:37] Tim's Triumph

[00:05:37] Tim: so, so mine is not a work-related one either. so every year we have a tradition, the guy who started the company, I worked at, his dad who was a Korean air force pilot, he had a wild game dinner and, we'd cook weird stuff and I would help him cooking. And he died about seven years ago.

[00:05:54] Tim: And So his Gary is the name of his son, Gary restarted the tradition about five years ago. And, so I'm the chef for the dinner. And so we had a dinner this year and it just went gray. So we had, we had, alligator bites, lamb testicles, and then I did a Guana tacos and. I called the dish tortoise and the hair.

[00:06:15] Tim: It was a turtle soup or turtle stew, and braised rabbit. And then we just had a wildflower cheesecake at the end. It was really, I mean, it sounds weird, but it was actually really delicious. It

[00:06:28] Tim: not a bad dish.

[00:06:28] Carol: do you do testicles every year? Because last year you had

[00:06:33] Ben: At least

[00:06:34] Tim: Yeah. it wasn't last year. I didn't do it last year because of COVID. but The year before. year, before that we did, duck testicles.

[00:06:41] Tim: Yeah.

[00:06:41] Tim: Duck testicles. Yeah. Yeah. but so iguanas, just in case, you're wondering, they call it the chicken of the tree. And for good reason, it really tastes of nothing down in south Florida.

[00:06:52] Tim: Like when there's a cold snap, that on would just fall from the tree and they'll just pick them up and you can slaughter them. And it's, they're an invasive species down there. So you don't even need a hunting permit. You can kill as many as you want, but man, when you're cooking it, it stinks so bad.

[00:07:07] Tim: It smells like someone left dirty laundry in the washer for a week and a half. And it

[00:07:12] Tim: starts to get kind of funky and moldy that's that kind of smell. But as soon as it's cooks, it really doesn't taste of much. It just tastes like whatever sauce you put on it, but it was great for tacos.

[00:07:23] Adam: So what'd you put on an iguana taco?

[00:07:25] Adam: Do you treat it more like a

[00:07:26] Adam: fish taco or beef or

[00:07:28] Tim: yeah. And so it didn't come like little street tacos, little corn tortilla with a tomato sauce, little bit of, a little bit of onion. else about cilantro. And that's it. Yeah. And then I gave him my, I brought my homemade hot sauce from Carolina Reaper sauce. So, they want to put that on

[00:07:42] Carol: but you said that just absorbs all the flavors, right? So it's not

[00:07:45] Tim: Yeah. It's a kind of extremely neutral egos, like extremely neutral turtle with turtle was good, but the best was actually the rabbit. The rabbit was absolutely fantastic. So

[00:07:52] Carol: rabbit is the leanest meat you can eat. I don't know if he knew that or not,

[00:07:55] Carol: but if you have really bad, like stomach issues and like lots of acid reflux, rabbit is one of the proteins that your body can digest without like causing any complications.

[00:08:06] Carol: So you can't live off, you can't live off of it because there's not enough fat in it, but you can definitely, it helps with like acid reflux and stuff.

[00:08:13] Carol: So growing up on a farm, I know these things.

[00:08:16] Tim: I'm impressed.

[00:08:17] Carol: Yeah. I've had turtle before, too

[00:08:18] Tim: Yeah.

[00:08:19] Carol: out of

[00:08:20] Tim: that, that, was me. It was a good time. We had about, 15 people there and, they, they were shooting guns and drinking scotch and eat my food. So it was great.

[00:08:30] Carol: Sounds like the farm, Tim.

[00:08:32] Tim: I didn't know that. kind of farm?

[00:08:34] Carol: so everyone calls it a farm. Like I grew up, we had cattle, we had goat, we had chickens, we had everything, lots of, like, vegetable gardens more than anything. And that's what we sold. We sold the cattle at auction, for beef obviously. And then we also sold heifers just for like dairy cows, not dairy, but just like breed off.

[00:08:50] Carol: and then we also, I mean, the vegetables were the big thing. That's what we sold the most stuff.

[00:08:54] Tim: I definitely call that a farm.

[00:08:55] Carol: It was a farm. I get off the bus and I'd be like, how did the goat get on top of the house today? Like literally like, how is the goats? And I would go walk around the house and try to find some way that the goat climbed up there.

[00:09:07] Carol: I

[00:09:07] Carol: can never find it Hey, that was Alabama for you. Yeah, me. Yeah.

[00:09:14] Carol's Fail

[00:09:14] Carol: So I'm calling this a failure my weeks and Thursday, if you listen to last week's episode, you knew I dropped off our, we had some emergencies going on with code and it was just a disaster. Since that night, nothing has went, right.

[00:09:28] Carol: I mean, nothing. I have stitches in my foot, the dogs and sick, the kid got sick. had some fights with people I love. And it's just been traumatic this week has not been as fun. However, we did have another release that went out with no problem. So that's a plus side, but I mean, it's just been a solid seven days of nonsense and I am over it.

[00:09:50] Carol: So. It's just been the ouch week. I literally put in the show notes for you guys who can't see this, that my failures is Al Alycia more outs. Like it's just been an ouch seven days, but I know I'm going to like overcome it and I know I'm getting it through it and I'll do better. So yeah, that's the plus side.

[00:10:09] Ben: Can I ask, what happened to the, to your foot? How, why

[00:10:12] Carol: Yeah. Yeah. So step back, we had a really bad cold front come through and right at the beginning of the cold front, and we had super high winds, the winds were so bad that they actually blew the fence over in our backyard, which is why the dog is stressing out in sick now because the neighbor's dogs are vicious and they're in our backyard.

[00:10:31] Carol: So she is not happy about the fact that the neighbors, vicious dogs are in our backyard and we can't let her in the backyard because they may attack her. So it's just been like, not fun for her, but we were frustrated about the fence. So Steve and I went and got coffee, came back home as I'm walking in the front door, the wind gusts and blows the door, the screen door, shut on my foot and slices through the back of my foot.

[00:10:53] Carol: So I have, several stitches through the back still. yeah, it was not fun. I looked down the back of my foot and could see into my.

[00:11:01] Ben: Oh, no, no.

[00:11:03] Carol: I couldn't move. Steve's

[00:11:05] Carol: like, just sit down, just sit down, I was like, huh, I guess I was here to move. I flipped my fall off. Right. Like, of course it's not actually going to fall off, but in that moment I couldn't.

[00:11:15] Carol: So he picked me up. I was like, put the in the chair and he's like, we need to see a doctor.

[00:11:20] Carol: I'm

[00:11:20] Ben: Oh my goodness.

[00:11:23] Carol: So yeah, doors, aren't fun. When there's high winds outside, note to self Ben.

[00:11:29] Ben: Can you go to urgent care for that?

[00:11:32] Carol: Yeah. So I, we headed over to the urgent care cause it was right when they were opening. So I was like, perfect. I won't have to worry about waiting in line too long. This should be great. So I called on the way because of where the cut is. It is literally like in the back of my Achilles tendon, like it is right there to where it's questionable about where the damage could be.

[00:11:51] Carol: So as I'm talking to them, they're like, Hey, we probably just want you to go on to the ER, because there's,a high risk that you've damaged other things there. So I'm like, actually I'm at the red light in front of your office. So the doctor was super nice and was like, well, just walk on in and I'll take a look at it.

[00:12:07] Carol: So he looked at it and he was like, yeah, I think we're good. So he numbed me up and then took a better look and was like, yeah, I'm pretty confident that I can just stitch you up and you'll be good. So I didn't have to go to the ER, which was great. Cause nobody wants to go to the ER right now.

[00:12:20] Carol: Cause it just takes forever. So the urgent care was good cause they, got me in and got me out quick. And now I've just got to go get stitches out next week.

[00:12:27] Ben: Oh man. Brutal.

[00:12:29] Carol: Yeah. And side note, if you didn't know this, ginger burned through N seizure very quickly.

[00:12:35] Ben: I did not know.

[00:12:36] Carol: yes, I looked to see you. I was like, FYI. I was like in the seizure is not going to work that long, just so you know, and halfway through the stitches, I'm like crying.

[00:12:44] Carol: Cause I can feel every state she's like, I'm going to numb you back up some more. He goes, you weren't kidding. I was like, yeah, gingers don't do well within the seizure.

[00:12:52] Ben: That is so fascinating.

[00:12:54] Carol: It's something about our metabolism and how we process things. I don't know what it is scientifically, but yeah. Anyway, so Al chin more ouches for me, but I'm going to be okay.

[00:13:04] Carol: And that's the key thing.

[00:13:06] Adam: positive mental attitude.

[00:13:08] Carol: I will get through this. What about you, Ben? I hope it's better than my Salyers.

[00:13:13] Ben's Triumph

[00:13:13] Ben: It's going to be, it's going to be triumph. I'm going to go with a double triumph, actually two things I want to bring up. I peopled today for the first time in a really long time, which was pretty exciting.

[00:13:22] Carol: Awesome.

[00:13:23] Ben: I was totally panted out to the nines. I live about an hour north of New York city. And I went into the city today. I actually took the day off from work, went to the city and I met, Gert Fronz

[00:13:35] Carol: Oh,

[00:13:36] Ben: yeah. Of Rialto and the Lucy CFML platform. and I thought I was just going to have lunch with him and, and then suddenly out of nowhere showed up, mark drew and Sharon Diorio.

[00:13:47] Ben: So yeah, that was a surprise little, gathering. And I, I haven't seen, I saw Gurt in the city maybe two years ago and I mean, I must've seen mark. I feel like at the last CF objective, which was

[00:14:01] Ben: probably like four years ago or something like that five years ago. So that was just really nice. It was exhausting for me because I'm an introvert and I've got like a solid two hours in me and it went like four hours.

[00:14:13] Ben: So it's like. I had all my emotional tickets had been spent. but then, so that was, I felt good about that. And then my other triumph this week is that,I monitor the support channels in our chat at work. And I try to get a sense of things that get brought up over and over again. And, on Monday or something, someone brought up this idea of being able to bulk delete users in the system, just like dumping a bunch of email addresses into a system and deleting them all.

[00:14:38] Ben: And, it's been brought up a number of times and then someone brought it up again on Monday saying that customer really wanted it. And I was like, you know what, it's time to do something about this. I created a JIRA, epic threw down. Some tickets, started working on it one morning and was done by the next morning.

[00:14:51] Ben: And,it was very simple, basically just a form of the big text area can throw a bunch of IDs or a bunch of emails on it and then just call it an existing API. So I didn't even have to build much of the backend stuff. So it was a. It was one of those things where you're like, how have we not done this?

[00:15:04] Ben: How did we not do this the first time someone asked for it?

[00:15:06] Carol: Yeah, I

[00:15:07] Carol: think, I think some of those are, some of those are, once you realize the needs there, you do it. Like, I can't ever imagine someone requesting to bulk delete users from our system. We don't bulk delete users. Like that's not one off delete is a one thing, but we don't block delete. So it's not something we can, I can imagine getting a request for, but once you get the request, then you're like, oh yeah, that makes sense.

[00:15:27] Carol: Is that if it makes sense for your application,

[00:15:30] Ben: Well, that's what that's, what's part of the, part of it is so fascinated. You get to understand how they view the system. And the reason that this keeps coming up with them is because it's a subscription model and they pay per seat. And so at the end of the quarter, or however, they figure it out, they look at all the people who've used the application and some customers will actually send out internal emails and say something like, Hey, respond to this.

[00:15:54] Ben: If you still want to be in the system, otherwise we're kicking. And that's to make sure that they don't go over their quotas and then to, it's good on their end for contract negotiations next year. That kind of stuff.

[00:16:03] Carol: that makes sense. It's all about how your users are in the system. Yeah,

[00:16:06] Ben: Yeah.

[00:16:07] Adam: Maybe it's just the lack of caffeine, but I swear you said prescription model, not subscription model.

[00:16:12] Carol: I'm pretty sure he said subscription.

[00:16:14] Ben: Like scrap increased contracts for all clients.

[00:16:19] Adam: Okay.

[00:16:20] Carol: Love

[00:16:20] Ben: So, yeah. So I'm going to go double triumph this week and feel good about it.

[00:16:24] Carol: Well, I'm taking your triumph as part of my Salure. So then does that make us happy? Like now we're like into like

[00:16:29] Carol: three triumphs.

[00:16:31] Ben: There you go. We're bouncing it out.

[00:16:33] Carol: So the last time I met up with Gert, he and I met for dinner one night and we sat the entire dinner and we code like just wrote down problems on napkins and tried salute, like try getting solutions for them.

[00:16:47] Carol: So I hope you're like Astrodome was with them was as simple as that is. Cause I love just writing things on napkins and being like, here, your turn, go solve this. Cause that's just fun.

[00:16:58] Ben: Absolutely. in some ways that's the whole basis of this podcast is a skin together and talking about code

[00:17:04] Carol: on napkins.

[00:17:06] Ben: napkins.

[00:17:08] Adam: D canal,

[00:17:08] Audible

[00:17:08] Carol: Hey, y'all it's Carol here. I love to read, but I have no time to just sit with a book in front of my face and read. I always am multitasking to accomplish everything I need to get done in a day. So when I'm driving the kids around or I'm working out, I can use audible to get quality of reading time in while also achieving the goals I need to, to maintain my.

[00:17:34] Carol: When really cool thing about audible is they also include a wide selection of free books with your monthly subscription. And it's not just books. They also have podcasts. So you can listen to your favorite podcast like us over there as well. So, if you want to support the podcast and get a free month subscription head on over to workingcode.dev/audible and get your free trial, you'll also pick up a free credit for a book and you can browse all of that free material and see what I'm talking about.

[00:18:03] Carol: Again, that's workingcode.dev/audible happy book adventures. My friends.

[00:18:08]

[00:18:08] Carol's Experience In Tech

[00:18:08] Carol: So, I suggested that we have a talk about women in technology, and this is all brought on because it's international women's month. So yay to me, I do my thing and I do it well, some days I fall apart and need stitches, but most of the days I do it.

[00:18:25] Carol: Okay. And I feel like it should just be, like I don't feel like this is something that should have to be said, like hire women. Like, why would this need to even be said, but it needs to be said because there aren't enough women in technology and in what we do. And I just kind of wanted to chat about like my history with everything and how I've seen things play out.

[00:18:47] Carol: You know, I've been doing this for 12 years now and I didn't realize that until this year. I was like, man, I just hit 12 years. Like that's a long time to be in this career. And I've seen a lot of things and I've seen. Women are not represented and what we're doing. Like we're not represented in the engineering side of it.

[00:19:05] Carol: We're not represented in the leadership. And I just kinda wanted to chat about that a little bit. If you guys are cool with that,

[00:19:12] Adam: And I guess one of the things, if I could throw in the beginning, Carol, when you and I were organizing CF objective, we brought in a keynote speaker that was a woman, and she did a similar topic as her keynote speech about increasing diversity and women in tech type stuff. And I just remember the comments that we got, like in the feedback forms on the keynote, there were so many people that were negative about this.

[00:19:34] Adam: Like, I have no words. I don't understand how people can think that being more accepting of women in tech or promoting them or just anything is a bad thing.

[00:19:46] Carol: It should never, ever be a bad thing. It, you should, it should never be a bad thing to promote diversity in any way possible.

[00:19:53] Adam: even, I don't know, part of me is like, even setting aside the fact that it's a woman, like it's just another person and they're doing a good job. Like promote them

[00:20:01] Carol: Yeah, do it. It's easy, but it doesn't always happen. So, yeah. So I guess, like I said, I've been doing this for 12 years. Right. And I really feel like that women are. Not represented as engineers and in leadership. Like I see women in leader role in like the leadership roles when we're talking about HR and we're talking about finance and we're talking about customer service.

[00:20:25] Carol: Yeah. Marketing, like I've even seen lots of females there, but when we start looking at the places I've been and the roles I've been, alongside of they're all filled by men. And I never really thought much about it early on. It wasn't until I started feeling like I was getting passed up for things.

[00:20:45] Carol: And I never knew if it was because I wasn't good enough because to me, my technical skill is wishy provoked me. My technical skill is how I should grow. And when I realized on paper, I. Could you more than some of these guys, but I was still being passed up. I was like, okay, we have a problem. Like Houston, there is an issue here.

[00:21:04] Carol: The ship is going to crash. And usually when those things happen, I would just leave. I just be like, all right, cool. You have a company culture. That's not conducive to me working here. So I will find somewhere that does. So, I guess I wanted to bring up like a few things that I think are key and crucial areas where women play a role in technology.

[00:21:26] Carol: And to kind of start that off, I feel like women and okay. I keep saying women, I should just say female now. Right? So females, I mean,

[00:21:37] Adam: Yeah. I don't know. that's a big thing. Like, I feel

[00:21:40] Adam: like I would never choose to correct you on it, but when I hear men or males, if that's where we're going to go.

[00:21:50] Carol:

[00:21:50] Adam: but, but when I hear other men saying females, it, to me, it feels like them objectifying women, like, like looking at them as though they're a scientific topic to be researched versus peer.

[00:22:08] Carol: So you think men and women sound better than male and female?

[00:22:12] Adam: I feel like that's the more inclusive term

[00:22:14] Carol: Okay. Yeah,I don't know that I have a strong opinion anyway. I just don't want anyone to feel excluded in the conversation. So, and I tried to like be inclusive of everything. So anyways, the actual where I was so as a, like a minimum women think differently and the way our brains process things are not the same.

[00:22:34] Carol: I feel like we come to resolutions different, we say things completely different. And that's key when you're talking about building a team and you're talking about building, like a product and. I think that, okay. I should also say a lot of this is what I think, and this is what I feel. I don't know if I've said that already, but it would be clear this isn't like some data or some point that you need to take in that's factual.

[00:22:57] Carol: This is just me.

[00:22:59] Ben: not

[00:22:59] Ben: talking for all women.

[00:23:00] Carol: Yeah. I'm not talking for all women or all men, because most of the men I've ever worked with have been absolutely amazing. Tim Cunningham is one of those guys. He has built my career up from when I left college. He hired me as an intern and he promoted me in my growth and he made sure that I had everything I needed to succeed.

[00:23:22] Carol: And I am grateful for that, but I've also had the guys along the way who sent me the pics and who, made it clear that the only way I was going to be promoted was suspend time in their office. So I have both sides of it. So I'm not saying that either is, forced on anyone. So please don't take it that way.

[00:23:40] Carol: So I feel like guys and girls communicate differently, right? So men and women communicate completely differently. Like we're wired differently. We don't talk the same way. We, we've learned things differently. We've grown up differently.

[00:23:55] Carol: So Yeah, absolutely. So one thing I've realized over the years is that when I'm sitting at a table with a whole bunch of guys, I automatically assume I know what most of them are. I assume that I know what's going through their heads because my assumption is all guys think alike and that's not fair. It's not fair at all, but it's just the way I go into things. So when I'm preparing for a meeting and it's just the same group of guys, I don't put as much effort into it because I make the assumption that I know what they're thinking, and I know how they're going to like handle this where, when my meetings or my projects are stacked with a bunch of diversity at the table, then suddenly I plan for everything.

[00:24:36] Carol: I prepare for every question that could be asked because I don't know what's going to come from it. And I feel like we get lazy when we have. A team that is lacking diversity. And then the know if you guys agree with that, or if you've can see what I'm saying, but that's just how, like I've seen things play out over the years is that diversity forces me to prepare and it forces me to expect the unexpected.

[00:24:57] Carol: Whereas when I'm on a team that I kind of assume what people are going to do, then I don't go into it like prepared. I go into it with the assumptions and I just kind of go with what's going to happen.

[00:25:09] Carol's Experience With Meetings

[00:25:09] Ben: Well, let me ask you a question because I've been working remotely for basically the last 10 years now. And so all of my meetings have been.

[00:25:18] Carol: Sure.

[00:25:18] Ben: I know you are now working remotely, but you have not always worked remotely as a woman in meetings. Do you find it easier to participate? Do you feel like you're heard differently in a virtual meeting than you are in an office meeting?

[00:25:33] Carol: So, yes, I feel like it is much harder for me to be on camera because guys will show up with their baseball cap on right. They'll show up in a t-shirt and a baseball cap.

[00:25:44] Carol: I feel like if I turned my camera on and I don't look a certain way, I'm going to not be taken seriously. If it's with the people with is with like a group of people in the meeting that they don't know me. If I turn my camera on like this right now with my team, they'd be like, oh my God, what's wrong.

[00:25:59] Carol: Are you okay? I'm like, Hey, yeah, just I'm a nerd. I have allergies and asthma get over it. Right. Like, it's just what happens for us. It's what we do. But, if it were with like management and stuff, I just wouldn't turn my camera on because I feel like I wouldn't be taken seriously if I don't have on something good, or I don't have a makeup or I haven't taken the time to prepare my.

[00:26:19] Carol: And I do feel like that it's harder to have virtual meetings that in-person because when I was going to the office, I would, I'd get up every morning. I take a shower, I would put on makeup, I'd do my hair and I'd be presentable. I would make sure that I fit what you thought of when you thought of how a woman should look.

[00:26:36] Carol: Right. I didn't want to show up looking like a guy with a baseball cap on, because I don't want to be the guy on the team. I still want to be a female member of this team, and I want to be taken like seriously in that role.

[00:26:48] Carol: So.

[00:26:49] Ben: interesting. I have to say, because it is exactly the opposite of what I would have expected. And I think part of that is, is me reading my own sensitivities into it because I'm introverted. And so for me, being in an in-person meeting is much more intimidating than it is being behind this sort of digital abstraction.

[00:27:09] Ben: Somehow having all the little squares be equal size and of equal importance, so to speak, I feel much safer speaking up for, from an introverted standpoint. So I just assume that sort of a zone of safety extends to everyone. So it's fascinating to hear that you're actually the opposite.

[00:27:27] Carol: Nope. I speak much more when I'm at a table with people, when I'm in a virtual meeting, I am more likely to just turn off my camera and be in the background and only speak up when I really liked me too, when I feel it's necessary. Otherwise I'm like, you guys got this.

[00:27:41] Carol: Yeah.

[00:27:42] Ben: It's so interesting. Now, do you feel, I mean, I hate to say this, do you feel then turning your camera off almost puts you at a disadvantage because it's and I hate to say this for anyone who's involved in digital meetings, but when most of the people are on video and some are not, it's a little strange, cause party was always wondering, like, what are those people do and why don't they have their cameras up?

[00:28:05] Carol: when we're in meetings and I do have my camera on, I've noticed that the people I speak to you and the I address directly are the people that have their cameras on. So if someone doesn't have their camera on, I assume they're not paying attention and don't care about the meeting and that's not at all what's happening to me.

[00:28:20] Carol: It's that I don't feel like you would take me seriously in this moment. So I'm not turning my camera on.

[00:28:25] Adam: Is that there's like a, an aspect of privilege to that too, right? There's a privilege of a low bar for physical appearance for men. Right?

[00:28:33] Carol: yeah, you guys don't have to, make sure that your eyebrows look right or that your

[00:28:39] Carol: lips don't

[00:28:40] Adam: We talking about my eyebrows are always on

[00:28:42] Adam: fleek.

[00:28:43] Carol: your eyebrows are always amazing. I'm jealous of those eyebrows. Actually, I try hard to get them and I can't, so I'll keep working. Okay.

[00:28:50] Adam: That is literally the first nice thing anybody has ever said about my eyebrows.

[00:28:55] Carol: you tell, have a union brow.

[00:28:57] Adam: Yeah, just acknowledging that there are two of them. Sometimes it's an accomplishment.

[00:29:02] Carol: No, they look great. But yeah, I mean, I kind of touched on this a little later. It's that it's hard to remain. Like it's hard to keep that feminine aspect of it when you're doing a job surrounded by all men and you don't want to lose that part of yourself because I am seminal and I want to be treated that way at time.

[00:29:23] Carol: So it's just, it's a weird dynamic. And sometimes that's hard to explain, but yeah, that's one of the things like what Adam said, like guys it's okay. If you show up with a baseball hat, like a baseball cap and a t-shirt. If I show up at a baseball cap, a t-shirt they're like, oh, are you okay? Like everything?

[00:29:39] Carol: All right. I'm like, why can't I wear a cap to work?

[00:29:42] Communication

[00:29:42] Ben: I was just listening to an episode of hidden brain that's a podcast NPR, and they were interviewing this woman. I don't know if she was a psychologist or she was just an author that talked about psychosis. but she was saying that if you look at, photographs of young girls all over the world in groups that there's inevitably a photograph of one girl whispering into another girl's ear, and she said, you almost never see that with young boys.

[00:30:09] Ben: And she was saying that so much of the female experience is about communication and

[00:30:14] Ben: about yeah.

[00:30:15] Ben: and that young boys tend to organize around one dominant voice. Who's the leader of the pack and that's how they socialize. And,and it did, it's interesting to think about that. how, and if it translates into a female leadership and what kind of communication styles that cultivates.

[00:30:34] Carol: completely agree with that because. I feel like the majority of the times I can mitigate any situation that arises so I can talk a problem down. I can talk down conflict. I can ease tension when it's going on. And I think that we're taught that from a young age, like as females, like how you stop fights, how you raise your kids, like how you handle your siblings.

[00:30:59] Carol: Like all of that's just kind of. Ingrained in us slightly different than it was my brother. My brother was always taught to be a breadwinner and to be strong and to carry the family. And I was taught to make sure things went well and to make sure that the family worked well. And I take a lot of that into what I do now.

[00:31:18] Carol: Like raising two boys has been a nightmare most days, like there are days I wish I could do over just to attempt to get it right. But I also learned how to resolve conflict between teenage boys. And that's not the easiest to do at times, or between teenage boys and adult teachers who aren't necessarily treating them.

[00:31:38] Carol: Right. And to get them to a point where they're able to communicate to adults in a way that makes sense. that's not easy to do. And I take a lot of those skills that I've learned as being a mom. Into what I do at work every day. So I can mitigate conflicts and I can stop things before they happen, because sometimes I just have the foresight to say, you slapping your brother on the face.

[00:32:02] Carol: That's not going to end well, so let's not do that. And it sounds silly, but when you're looking at someone's PR feedback on something, and the way that they're talking to someone is very rude and very demeaning, you can immediately go, Hey, that's going to cause a problem. And we should address that now, not when the problem arises, because now it can be resolved.

[00:32:22] Carol: Now you can learn from it later, there may just be consequences. So I feel like the mom's side of me definitely helps and my leadership roles and it helps in communication. So I'm sure dads have the ability to communicate just as well as moms do, but this is women's month and moms are great.

[00:32:40] Ben: I mean, I can only speak from my own experience, but definitely when I was growing up, I loved my father. but I definitely communicated much more with my mother. I felt very much closer to my mother because my dad was a symbol and my mother was a relationship. If that makes sense.

[00:32:56] Carol: it completely does. Yeah. I get that.

[00:32:58] Compassion

[00:32:58] Carol: I was asked when I was doing these interviews recently, what was something I felt that was important in a leadership role. And one of my answers was compassion. You can't be a good leader if you're not compassionate because your people and the people you're leading are gonna say.

[00:33:14] Carol: And they're going to fall on their face and you have to be compassionate and you have to be able to help them get back up on their feet and you have to show them that they can fight through this and they could do better that it's okay. Like you have to have compassion and I can tell you, like, growing up, my dad was never like that.

[00:33:30] Carol: That was my mom. My mom was the one that was like, you be okay. My dad was like, rub some dirt in it. You're good. Just move on. And my mom was like talking me through it. So I think compassion is huge when you're talking about any leadership position.

[00:33:45] Ben: I'll tell you a, in a professional environment. I can open up. I feel comfortable opening up to men. I feel like it takes me a period of time to get there. if I meet a male companion at work and we're talking, it's, it's going to be months of, did you see the movie?

[00:34:03] Ben: Did you see the TV show? before I even broach much more personal up, I feel like if I talked to a woman at work, I can, like, I can immediately go into the,I didn't sleep well last night because such and such, and my wife's stressed out. And I don't know, I just feel much more comfortable opening up to

[00:34:20] Ben: two female coworkers.

[00:34:22] Carol: I get that again. It goes back to the most females have that compassionate side of them that Mel's can't necessarily show. And in the media conversation, like if you walked up to me and started talking, I'd be like, oh yeah. Oh no, what's going on. Like, tell me what's happening. Like, how can I help?

[00:34:40] Carol: Like, do you need a nap on my couch? Let's take a nap real quick. You'll probably feel better after now. I'm sure you'll feel better. I think guys, again, like my dad rubbed some dirt in it, move on. And I think women are just really good at listening. Trying to find solutions to problems and trying to make you feel like it's okay to have emotions.

[00:35:00] Carol: It's okay. To feel things. And a lot of guys were raised with the, you shouldn't be expressing that and you should be carrying all of this

[00:35:07] Carol: on your shoulders. Yeah, exactly. And it's awful to say that, but that's just kind of, the generation. That is how it was. Yeah. So I mean, women are good at saying, look you're okay.

[00:35:17] Carol: How's your emotional day? Do you want some ice cream and cake? Cause I'll have ice cream and cake with you.

[00:35:22] Adam: I had that, you know exactly what you're describing as my upbringing, my dad, I mean, it's what both of you have been describing? Like in my house, my dad was more of a symbol. He was the breadwinner, he was the workaholic. He was never there.

[00:35:34] Adam: Not because he was, out getting drunk, but because he was, working his butt off to provide for the family. Yeah. And my mom was the one who dealt with the fact that we were people living in a society with feelings and problems. And,I have kids, my kids have their own personal issues.

[00:35:51] Adam: And, because of, in part, because of my upbringing, I had my own personal issues. And just in the way I dealt with my feelings and my relationships, and it took a lot of work in a long time to improve myself. And I would say improve my emotional intelligence, like my emotional.

[00:36:07] Carol: emotional IQ

[00:36:08] Adam: and I did that entirely focusing on my relationships with like my friends and my family, mostly my family.

[00:36:15] Adam: but after having like reached a few milestones in working on that, I have totally seen how that's affected and improved my ability to get work, done my ability to see problems before they become problems

[00:36:29] Carol: It's all of it.

[00:36:29] Adam: in communication

[00:36:30] Adam: and everything. Yeah.

[00:36:32] Carol: Yep.

[00:36:33] Ben: It's funny. There's those posters or memes that say like, be the person that your dog thinks you are like, uh, I,I almost feel like it works in the other direction as well. You're like, I could just use this to like, treat my loved ones as well as how I treat my

[00:36:49] Carol: oh man.

[00:36:50] Carol: That's

[00:36:50] Adam: Yeah. When you walk by the office break room and they're humping something, that out because.

[00:36:57] Carol: Do you just go pet them on the head and say, good boy. You'll do better next time.

[00:37:02] Ben: there's no emotional barrier when it comes to talking to the dog, she does something great. I immediately tell her how great she is and yeah, when it comes to people, I love it. It's just so much more weight to it for some reason. And that's probably all entirely artificial.

[00:37:18] Carol: Oh, it is. But it's normal. It's not abnormal. I mean, that's just kind of how a lot of people are and that's okay.

[00:37:26]

[00:37:26] Expressing Emotions

[00:37:26] Ben: if I can interject with one more podcast aside, I was listening. I think it was to an episode of. There are no stupid questions, another, NPR podcast. And I don't even remember what the topic of the show was. It had something to do with emotional intelligence, I think was the topic of the show.

[00:37:44] Ben: And they had asked people to call in and do little recordings about how they were raised to express their emotions. And they said, when they got the results, when they got all these recordings, they were surprised all of these men had called in and left these messages about how, as a male kid, they were raised not to have emotions, not to express, anxiety, not to express fear or be weak.

[00:38:07] Ben: And they were saying that as adult men, they feel completely disconnected from other humans. They feel disconnected from their family. They don't know how to talk to their wives. They don't know how to talk to their children. And they feel just like terribly isolated. And it was just shocking. They said, how many men called in to leave messages?

[00:38:24] Ben: Just like.

[00:38:25] Carol: It's crazy. Cause raising my boys, I've always been like. Tell me what you're feeling like, try to express what you're feeling because your feelings are, they matter, they need to be validated any, you need to tell me what you're feeling right now in this emotion. Like, I can tell that you're angry with me.

[00:38:42] Carol: I could tell that you're angry with your brother, but we need to actually like express what that is, rather than just sitting here and holding it in a ball. And then exploding later on, like you have to express what's going on. I said, cause later on, you're going to be married and you don't want to blow up at your wife or your husband.

[00:38:58] Carol: You want to be in a relationship where that you express what's going on and you work through things together. You don't want to be in a spot where you just can't express what's going on because you never learned how to express what's going on. So I tried, let's see how it works. I'll let you know in like, a couple of years when the oldest gets married and he expresses emotions maybe, but yeah.

[00:39:20] Carol: All right. So we talked about communication, right? That's key.

[00:39:23] Recruitment And Diversity

[00:39:23] Carol: So the second thing that I feel is critical in any technology company or any company in general is recruitment. Like how do you recruit female into your workforce if your entire board of directors or your entire executive team is of the exact same like race or the exact same gender?

[00:39:44] Carol: Like there's no way I would ever want to work for a company that the board of directors is nothing but men, because no matter how hard I feel like no matter how hard I fight to fit. I'm never going to be part of that group. I'm always going to be the outsider on it. So you've limit your talent pool by not promoting women and by not hiring women, you exclude people up front from ever even trying to get a job with your company.

[00:40:09] Carol: Because I only want to work for a place that accepts diversity and a place where they're going to value my talent. And I'm not just going to be put back to just do nothing, just sit there. Like I want somewhere that my talent is going to be used and I want to know that I can grow. And if it hits a board full of guys, I would feel like I'll never get to that level.

[00:40:31] Carol: They're never going to let me in.

[00:40:32] Ben: Well, we actually got called out on that one time.

[00:40:35] Carol: Bravo. No

[00:40:37] Ben: there, there, was, or is still, I don't know, there at the time there was a website called something like a hundred percent men, something like that. And it was all just people getting companies being called. For exactly what you're saying, having nothing but male leadership and where I work, w I mean, this was probably seven or eight years ago was called out on it.

[00:40:59] Ben: and it was super embarrassing. and I am happy to say that we have a DEI diversity equity and inclusion, I think is what it stands for.we have a DEI program at work and they really have made significant inroads. the, just getting on a zoom call, we're nowhere near where we need to be, but it is a very noticeable change.

[00:41:19] Ben: And so I'm

[00:41:20] Ben: happy about that, but Yeah.

[00:41:22] Ben: we

[00:41:22] Carol: You have to start somewhere. Good. And I think that should happen often. usually companies like that, like they're not promoting people who are valuable to the spot or they're not looking outside of exactly what they know. So how do you grow your company? If the views you have are always from the exact same race or the exact same gender?

[00:41:43] Adam: Yeah.

[00:41:43] Carol: I just don't understand that, like you need diversity to make things work.

[00:41:47] Adam: So since you're here speaking for all women, Carol.

[00:41:51] Carol: I was speaking for all women tonight.

[00:41:54] Adam: So, I mean, I'll go ahead and call myself my company out. We are currently all middle-aged white men. there's five of us.

[00:42:02] Carol: but there's five of you. Right,

[00:42:04] Adam: yeah, I mean, and it's, I mean, when you first start, you got to hire the people that, will get the job done and you have to start with people that, you don't start a company and then hire people off the street.

[00:42:15] Adam: and we fully acknowledged that we need to focus on, other races, other genders. but it's, it feels especially like what you're saying. I totally understand. And sympathize with, I wouldn't want to work somewhere where I was the first,woman or whatever. I get it, but somebody's got to be the first.

[00:42:32] Carol: Yeah.

[00:42:33] Adam: Right. Like,

[00:42:33] Adam: and maybe, and there's only just now occurred to me, but maybe one possible way to do that, to help with that problem is that first woman or first minority that you're hiring hire into a leadership role of some sort, right? Like

[00:42:50] Carol: Yeah.

[00:42:50] Adam: with a junior.

[00:42:51] Carol: Yep.

[00:42:52] Carol: Yep. I love that. Our new high, like our new vice president of technology as a female, like I know we talked about that on the podcast one night, it was a triumph for me. Like I got so excited that someone was hired into the position that is like me, someone who I can look up to you, like as a role model, someone who I can go, if she can do it.

[00:43:14] Carol: So can I, like, I don't have to feel like I am fighting this battle alone or that I am being. Making the track in front of me, the rows already kind of been paved. So it does make it easier when someone else is there, but that first person coming in the door, it's hard. It's hard. You're not gonna have an easy time

[00:43:32] Carol: getting students out of college to like join your company. If they're females and all you have are men they're immediately going to be turned off to that. And you, again, lose valuable people just because of the current company culture. And I mean, it may be even worth, laying it out there and be like, look, we've been small.

[00:43:51] Carol: We've really want to diversify. We want to bring in talent. We want to bring in good people. And we know that you may be struggling with taking this position because you're the first female, but we respect what you're thinking and we respect you. And that's why we want to put you in this leadership position so that she knows that it's not just a token female it's that we want the diversity.

[00:44:12] Adam: Yeah.

[00:44:13] Carol: Yeah, recruitment's hard when you don't have diversity.

[00:44:17] Ben: And I think we've probably brought this up before many episodes ago, but I'm sure. Many of us, if not all of us have had the conversation or been in a conversation that goes along the lines of, obviously we want to have a diverse workforce, but we also want to hire the best person for the

[00:44:33] Ben: job. It's the worst.

[00:44:34] Ben: and I feel like at some point you just have to be, you have to, give into the idea that hiring the best person for the job. It includes a sense of diversity and a new perspective that you can't just brush all of that aside and be like, well, but that doesn't like, none of that doesn't count.

[00:44:50] Ben: That's just nice to have stuff you're like, no, that's required in order to have a well-functioning.

[00:44:57] Carol: Like, I couldn't imagine trying to create a product without people pushing my boundaries and without people pushing my buttons, like, I couldn't imagine trying to develop something new without being challenged on my thoughts. And without diversity, you don't have that. Like, I don't have someone sitting at the table going, what about this?

[00:45:15] Carol: Or what about that? It's literally just me sitting at the table saying I want a, B, C, and D, and nobody pushing back and nobody challenging and nobody making me think through anything. So you need diversity to make innovation. Like it doesn't happen without it, and it doesn't succeed.

[00:45:32] Adam: Yeah. And it, it all, I mean, I feel like it's easy to forget that the word diversity in what you were just saying is not just a diversity of types of people, but those people are, they come from different backgrounds, they

[00:45:45] Adam: have different life experiences. They have different perspectives, not just from their upbringing, but from their everyday life being.

[00:45:52] Carol: what they do. Yeah. Like one thing I saw was just talking about consumers and general. When you talk about who purchases household goods, it's usually the more feminine person in a relationship. So it's usually the female or the more feminine the relationships. So then they're going, okay, I'm going to pick out what couch we're buying.

[00:46:11] Carol: I'm going to pick out what TV we're hanging on the wall. I'm going to pick out every appliance that goes in our kitchen. So when you're talking about people, making the decisions of what consumers are purchasing, why do you not want those people in the spot before the decisions made? Like why do you not want them making the decisions about what's going out to the market?

[00:46:32] Carol: Because if they're making the decision about what goes in the house, then why not have them up front? So what you put out to market already as appealing to them, and it's just, you need the viewpoint of the people making the decisions. So.

[00:46:44] Adam: What do you think Tim, are you agree with all of that? The last 40 minutes of.

[00:46:49] Tim: Yeah, man. I mean,

[00:46:51] Tim: yeah.

[00:46:51] Tim: I mean, I couldn't put it better.

[00:46:52] Carol: more women

[00:46:53] Carol: hire more. Women's what I heard

[00:46:55] Carol: you

[00:46:56] Carol: did I I said that early

[00:46:58] Carol: on you just, skipped out a minute.

[00:47:01] Tim: Yeah, I'm back. I'm back. I'm supporting my wife. Who's working in any Hollywood.

[00:47:07] Adam: Yeah.

[00:47:10] Tim: That's what we call the Atlanta. They do so much filming here in Atlanta. All them pretty much all the Marvel movies, et cetera. Yeah.

[00:47:17] Tim: It's called. So they call it instead of Hollywood. It's y'all

[00:47:19] Tim: he

[00:47:19] Tim: would like

[00:47:20] Tim: Y'all

[00:47:21] Carol: come back now. You hear

[00:47:22] Adam:

[00:47:22] Adam: Okay. Sorry, Carol. I just had to call Tim out for not paying attention to, for the last 40 minutes.

[00:47:27] Carol: Good job. Good job. So communication recruitment.

[00:47:31] Role Models

[00:47:31] Carol: And then I think we touched on this one already, but role models, like role models are key to me. Like that plays into recruitment as well. Like young females who are coming up in the stem fields. Like they need to see that we celebrate when women achieve and when women do well in the field.

[00:47:49] Carol: And if they don't see that, then how do you expect to get them to push through like the challenges they're going to face in this. If there's nobody ahead of them. Like most people don't want to take on the challenge. If they know there's a good chance of failure, like I would much rather pick a career where I know I can succeed at and then pick one where I'm going to have to set the way.

[00:48:09] Carol: And I'm going to have to like create my path. I want to go somewhere to the past, already creative, where I have an opportunity to grow. So if we aren't putting females and women in these leadership roles and in places, so where we can celebrate their victories and their successes, then how are people behind them supposed to know that it's an opportunity for them?

[00:48:30] Carol: So role models are key.

[00:48:32] Ben: I feel like that's one of those things that it's like, I'll never be able to relate to that because I've never been in a situation that has not been having strong male leads as examples. It's like, it's just, I intellectually understand exactly what you're saying, but it's impossible to, to sip sympathize empathize. I can re I can't relate, but I completely understand.

[00:48:54] Carol: So I have like a little background story for why role models are important for me. If I can go to that for a minute. Like I grew up in Alabama and it was always like push us a lot about segregation and about inclusion and the whole history behind everything. And one of my role models growing up was always Rosa parks because I was going through a lot of challenges. When I was a kid, like I was from an abusive family, like there was just a lot going on.

[00:49:20] Carol: And I felt like if some woman had sat there and prove that she was capable of doing it, that maybe I could too, maybe I had the power to like overcome this and maybe I had the power to stand my ground. And it was just one of those things that made me realize that some point maybe I will be a role model for someone, whether that's my boy is, or that someone who I'm mentoring through girls who code, it's going to be through some process.

[00:49:46] Carol: So where I have to be in a position though, that they see that I can succeed to where they then feel like they can succeed. So if we aren't promoting women in technology, then that role model doesn't exist. If we're not hiring people into those roles and the role model doesn't exist, and these girls are sitting there without any idea of where they can go and they kind of feel defeated upfront.

[00:50:08] Carol: So I think it's key that we, give them good role models and that more women push to get into leadership. those were my three key points, communication, recruitment, and role models. CA

[00:50:19] Ben: very nice.

[00:50:20] Carol: yeah, I do have two things to add. I have two rewards, right? So your kids come at you, with things all the time, like as a mom, right.

[00:50:27] Carol: And one thing that my son said to me, and I think we've talked about this on the podcast before, but I'm going to say it again. My son's in college and he's working on his computer science or computer engineering, his degree in computer engineering. And he asked to write a paper about me. And he said that he had to explain why he decided to go into engineering.

[00:50:47] Carol: Like his teacher wanted to know what push, like what, what made them decide to do this? And he was like, kids talk about money, kids talk about, creating a next big thing. And he was like, my mom is amazing. She not only raised. Amazing boys, but she kicks ass every day and she's just absolutely a rock star.

[00:51:07] Carol: And he said, if he could be a fraction of the engineer, that I am, that he'll be just fine. And that made me feel amazing that

[00:51:16] Tim: did you cry?

[00:51:17] Carol: cried. Oh, I cried. Butit's crazy to feel like his dad's an electrical engineer and he wasn't like, oh, I want to be an engineer because my dad's an engineer. He's like, I want to be an engineer because my mom's amazing at it.

[00:51:30] Carol: And she showed me that being an engineer is freaking awesome. And if I can be a fraction of what she is, I'll be okay. And that's just, that's really cool. You guys,

[00:51:39] Ben: awesome.

[00:51:40] Carol: I did cry. I cried a lot, so yeah, that's my reward is that I get to, raise engineers now.

[00:51:49] Tim: That's awesome.

[00:51:50] Education

[00:51:50] Tim: So I don't know if you guys covered this, but I noticed that there's not in school. Cause I've got high school aged kids that the pathways that they're taking it, when it comes to computer science, It tends to be predominantly male.

[00:52:06] Carol: is.

[00:52:07] Tim: and so, how do you get girls interested in. At an early age in, coding. Cause, so last night max had a followup star student thing. It was like the regionals, he didn't win, someone else won, but there was about 35 star students, as a star student, they had the highest sat in their school. And so they had an award ceremony. And so all the girls were going into sort of like medical or pharma, pharmaceutical type things, not all of them, but not a single female.

[00:52:40] Tim: And it was pretty split evenly. not a single girl star student said that she was doing computer science, but overwhelmingly, most of the boys said there was computer science, so they're going into it. So I think that is part of it as. Is educating early that yes, you can do this. This is a job that, that you certainly, there's no reason you can't do it.

[00:53:01] Tim: getting that aptitude and taste for doing an early.

[00:53:04] Carol: Yeah. I mean, I think, it may have been in our like intro session, like our intro podcast or whatever I talked about when I was just trying to sign up for classes, my advisor, when I told her what I wanted to do, she's like, are you sure you want to do that? English is so much easier to take. Like, why would you want to take all these extra classes?

[00:53:26] Carol: And I'm like, no, this is what I want to do. She's like, are you sure? Cause that's really hard. And it made me go, oh my God, like, why is she telling me this is so hard? Like I can, like, I'm good with the challenge. I'll do fine. But that made me go. Maybe this isn't for me, maybe I shouldn't be doing this. And then I walk into my classes and I'm the only female in the class or one of two females in the class.

[00:53:47] Carol: And I'm like, oh, it's because only guys do this. And it's not that maybe she thinks I can't do it. It's that she's seen who goes through it. And those initial conversations are what set a lot of students in general into their path. So counselors and advisors play a key role in. So when the student comes to you and is like, Hey, I'm thinking about taking science.

[00:54:12] Carol: Hell yeah, go take science. Woo. Do your thing. Like, don't be like, oh, you should probably take American literature because I feel like you are going to do better in that than physics any day. Like let them try. And if they fail, guess what they fail. They tried it and they figured out what they want, but say succeed.

[00:54:29] Carol: Then you've just put someone in the technology field. Who's probably going to do amazing things and love their life.

[00:54:35] Tim: Yeah,

[00:54:35] Tim: that's truth. I mean, so that, that innate bias, right. That, that people have. So in middle school, I was a mentor for, the Lego Mindstorm that where the kids would build and program the little Lego robots And to have to fill out the, do these assignments and they compete against other schools.

[00:54:54] Tim: I noticed that the first year I did it is that the teacher, she was like guiding all the girls. Cause there was also like a report section we had to build like, tri-fold boards and do the project stuff. And she was pushing all the girls to do that stuff. And all the boys, she let do the programming in the building.

[00:55:11] Tim: Yeah. Yeah. And so, the next year I'm like, I think we need to have a boy and a girl. and, I didn't mentor that year, but she did that. It actually worked out quite well. And actually at the competition, we went up against a girl only team that the school had two teams in one was just only girls and one's only boys and the girls trounced us.

[00:55:31] Tim: I mean, they just absolutely killed us and they were so excited. They were just, you could tell they were really enjoying It So I think just giving that opportunity to play and not be like, oh, that's not, that's a boy thing. but I don't know how you make that change in the schools.

[00:55:46] Carol: takes a lot of work. Cause even when I was in class, it would always be like, oh, you handle organizing all the projects and we're going to do the projects. And I was like, no, you're right. The papers I've already started the project. So either join me or don't I'm doing it myself without you. So

[00:56:04] Tim: yeah.

[00:56:06] Tim: But that, that, that takes a lot of, I mean, People male or female, don't have that level of self-awareness to say, you know what? You guys are trying to put me in this box. I don't want to be in this box. I'm doing it myself.

[00:56:17] Carol: And see that's where I think when you put females in the leadership role, so where they can go to the schools and they can mentor these, students and say, Hey, you can succeed. You can do okay. Then these advisors and these counselors start seeing that. And they're like, okay. Yeah. Like I see the, like, I still like, they'd be like, yeah.

[00:56:35] Carol: Okay. Maybe you can do okay. I'll stop pushing so hard. it's a hope. Right. But

[00:56:40] Carol: maybe who knows? I just think we need more females in leaderships. We need men pushing to put female in leadership roles and world just gets better.

[00:56:50] Adam: maybe when I retire, I'll become a guidance counselor and I'll on encouraging. Young

[00:56:56] Adam: girls to get into computer science. Hopefully the problem is solved before I retire, but it

[00:57:01] Carol: Agree agree. Right, right. Or just don't deter them. That's the key thing. Like, I don't, like, I don't think anyone should push a kid anywhere, but you just, if someone's trying to dry something, let them try it. When you're a college kid, that's when you're supposed to figure out life.

[00:57:18] Carol: That's what you're supposed to be. Figuring out what you're good and bad at. So figured out

[00:57:23] Adam: Word.

[00:57:24] Carol: I think we have covered my key points. We've talked about a lot of things and I appreciate your time.

[00:57:30] Carol: I appreciate you guys listening. I've kind of rambled a lot, but it's something I'm passionate about and

[00:57:35] Tim: I love the whole thing.

[00:57:37] Carol: I know you said,

[00:57:38] Carol: even when I called you out for being the best boss I've ever had.

[00:57:43] Tim: Did you

[00:57:44] Carol: I did it did. So we'll step back. I basically said, you push me into something that I wasn't totally comfortable with. And I appreciate that.

[00:57:52] Carol: Like, I've had really good guys in my life. And as

[00:57:54] Tim: push you I

[00:57:56] Carol: you encourage

[00:57:56] Carol: me, and I also had the really bosses who've sent me pics. So I've had both sides of it. And I appreciate that you were a good guy and that you showed me the way and that you taught me. And for that, I will always be your dad. Yeah.

[00:58:12] Tim: no, let me

[00:58:12] Tim: cry.

[00:58:13] Carol: I love you.

[00:58:14] Tim: But if you do

[00:58:15] Carol: I love you too, Adam. And then just Tim, a little more here. Did.

[00:58:24] Patreon

[00:58:24] Adam: So this episode of Working Code is brought to you by listening to this entire episode, which is something Tim has totally already done

[00:58:29] Tim: Hey.

[00:58:33] Adam: and listeners like you. if you like what we're doing here, you should consider supporting us on Patreon. We have a bunch of really great people helping us out over there, and we appreciate every single one of them special. Thanks, of course, to our top patrons, Monte and Peter, you guys rock. if you'd like to help us out, you can find us at patreon.com/WorkingCodePod.

[00:58:49] Adam: All of our patrons get early access to an ad-free version of new episodes and our after show, which should be a good one tonight.

[00:58:55] Thanks For Listening!

[00:58:55] Adam: it really easy and really helpful way for you to support the show would be to retweet our new episodes. we post a tweet every Wednesday morning with a clip from this week's new episode.

[00:59:03] Adam: And if you could retweet that to help us get exposure to more people would really appreciate that you can find us on Twitter @WorkingCodePod. I guess that's going to be it for us this week. We'll catch you next week. And until then,

[00:59:14] Tim: remember your heart matters, even if you didn't listen to the entire episode, but you were supporting a woman in your

[00:59:20] Carol: Yes. Perfect.

[00:59:22]

[00:59:22] Bloopers

[00:59:22] Adam: From WBZ, Chicago. This is working code podcast.

[00:59:48] Carol: So I grew up in Alabama and I grew up learning a lot about Montgomery and about segregation and it was just embedded to us a lot that in breaded is that the right word might not be the right word.

[01:00:01] Carol: It was implanted into us in breeding is Alabama thing. Let's go back here.

[01:00:06] Adam: Maybe it wasn't bread.

[01:00:09] Carol: We're excited. I'm sorry, guys. Okay,

[01:00:12] Carol: him for eating. Oh my God. On the farm. So,

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