039 How Women Can Get Ahead in Tech with Sami Gardner

Sami Gardner talks about "Smart Developer Career Strategies and How Women Can Get Ahead in Tech" in this episode of ColdFusion Alive podcast with host Michaela Light. "It is a bare minimum to be hardworking, competent, and skilled, and have a degree. That's like saying a car has wheels. Nobody's going to buy a car just because it has wheels. Nowadays, you have to really position yourself. So, when you're thinking about the type of job that you want, how you're going to get there. You have to be strategic especially when you are in something like tech where people want to get into tech." - Sami Gardner Show notes Smart Career strategy - how to get to your ideal job Reverse engineer your dream job skill set from LinkedIn searches Be ok learning on the job Specialized vs full stack Getting over the full stack mentality Lack of on the job training → turnover The consequences of poaching staff Lack of job loyalty and faster raises 2 year average stay Job ad buzzword overload What are issues you have experienced with being a woman in tech Gender Confidence differences when applying for jobs and tasks Women need to feel 150% confident that they can do a job or to even attempt anything Men are ok to feel 60% confident that they can do a job + think they can learn the rest at the weekend Job title rolette Different titles in different companies for the same job Getting your own job title vs programmer 1-4 Detail work Lunch and learn - the why vs the how Desire for job stability vs risk Freelance rates vs permanent jobs salary How to deal with not being listened to in meetings Use the “man microphone” to repeat what you say so that people pay attention Being discouraged from going into tech when in school Being redirected into nurturing careers by school officials Wanted to join the electronics club but was told she couldn’t Don’t worry about about math, because you are a girl Persistence and working around obstacles Hiring pool male bias University bias Networking to get junior devs - ask existing staff “do you know someone?” Why are you proud to be a woman in tech? Mentioned in this episode LinkedIn Advanced Search Listen to the Audio Bio Sami Gardner Sami Gardner is a Career Stagnation Stopper, Librarian, and World Traveler. She inspires technical, artistic, socially conscious types to craft their career on their terms. With experience in peer counseling, higher education, and facilitating career services at international tech bootcamps, she guides clients in evolving their careers.   Links Sami Gardner  Facebook LinkedIn Interview Transcript Michael:          Welcome back to the show. I'm here with Sami Gardener, and we're going to be talking about smart developer career strategies, and also how women can get ahead in tech. And we're going to look at how you can create, having your ideal job over a few years with a strategy which many people don't even think about. So, some new stuff in there. And also, we're going to have a look at some of the consequences of how tech careers are currently set up and or how they're not set up. We'll also look at some of the gender confidence differences between men and women when applying for jobs, and doing projects. How to deal with not being listened to in meetings, Job Title Roulettes and how she deals with the desire for job stability versus risk. Also, we'll look at how to deal with being discouraged from going into tech when you're in school. So, welcome Sami. Sami:               Hi, thank you Michael. I'm glad to be on. Read more   And to continue learning how to make your ColdFusion apps more modern and alive, I encourage you to download our free ColdFusion Alive Best Practices Checklist.Because… perhaps you are responsible for a mission-critical or revenue-generating CF application that you don’t trust 100%, where implementing new features is a painful ad-hoc process with slow turnaround even for simple requests.What if you have no contingency plan for a sudden developer departure or a server outage? Perhaps every time a new freelancer works on your site, something breaks. Or your application availability, security, and reliability are poor.And if you are depending on ColdFusion for your job, then you can’t afford to let your CF development methods die on the vine.You’re making a high-stakes bet that everything is going to be OK using the same old app creation ways in that one language — forever.All it would take is for your fellow CF developer to quit or for your CIO to decide to leave the (falsely) perceived sinking ship of CFML and you could lose everything—your project, your hard-won CF skills, and possibly even your job.Luckily, there are a number of simple, logical steps you can take now to protect yourself from these obvious risks.No Brainer ColdFusion Best Practices to Ensure You Thrive No Matter What Happens NextColdFusion Alive Best Practices ChecklistModern ColdFusion development best practices that reduce stress, inefficiency, project lifecycle costs while simultaneously increasing project velocity and innovation.√ Easily create a consistent server architecture across development, testing, and production√ A modern test environment to prevent bugs from spreading√ Automated continuous integration tools that work well with CF√ A portable development environment baked into your codebase… for free! Learn about these and many more strategies in our free ColdFusion Alive Best Practices Checklist.