If you recently joined tech as a developer, are a career changer, and your previous career happened to give you great communication, project management and stakeholder management skills, read and watch this talk now:
You might have recognised that a lot of the skills that you know are considered glue work in this industry. Great, right?
You would have also likely received a lot of reassurances from your employer, line manager, leaders you look up to who are in favour of diversity in tech, that your experience matters. Your voice matters.
The only thing is, not yet.
Glue work is expected when you are senior, and risky when you are not.
– Tanya Reilly
This is the one thing that I wish I knew much, much earlier.
I was getting good feedback about all the non-programming efforts and activities that I have been involved in (because I was told that they were important to a team), but I also thought I should be contributing by working toward becoming a better developer. Time is limited, how do I choose? 50/50?
I struggled through this for a whole year. My first performance review outcome was not bad, but it was also as described in the talk. I asked myself: Did I misinteprete the level of importance of the work that was done? Did I not sell myself hard enough? Did I …..
Glue work gave me the language that explained the whole thing.
It clicked. It made sense. I am starting to see how the perceptions are formed.
Knowing this, I continue to do things that come naturally to me – write documentations wanting to improve things for the next new joiner, lead regular catch ups between developers of different teams, between designers and developers, spend time thinking about user journeys…
However, I am mindful on the time and effort I spend on these things, and err towards contributing to the more technical part of my job.
Getting promoted is diversity work. Being visibly successful is the most powerful diversity work she can do. She can be the representation someone needs. She can be in a much better position for mentorship and sponsorship.
– Tanya Reilly