Inclusion in Tech

Creating a Cultural Shift for Effective Meetings: Building a Writing Culture

Poor documentation can be risky for businesses, but adopting a writing culture can help to increase inclusivity, reduce meeting time, and increase productivity. To build a successful writing culture, it is important to make it collaborative, document the process and make it accessible, and encourage people to read it. Remote work requires trust, focus time, and asynchronous ways to collaborate and discuss.

Using a Compelling Narrative to Influence Leaders and Investors

This article discusses the importance of presenting a clear and compelling narrative when attempting to influence senior product leadership, angel investors, and VCs. The author shares their experience of not presenting a clear narrative when discussing the Facebook photos strategy to Mark Zuckerberg and the lessons they learned from it. They also provide a template of an 8 slide presentation that they have found to be successful in influencing strategic thinkers. The article emphasizes the importance of understanding the root assumptions and creating a narrative that is aligned with the needs of the organization in order to be successful in influencing leadership teams.

Building trust in remote working

The Covid-19 pandemic has forced many companies to switch to remote work, which has posed many challenges. To address these issues, the author implemented strategies such as setting strategic goals, taking constant feedback, and creating fun activities to keep team members motivated. Additionally, they focused on connecting with team members on a personal level to ensure that no one felt isolated. These strategies have helped the author to better manage their remote team and have taught them the importance of flexibility and trust.

Establishing A Career Ladder By Involving Everyone

When Hired joined, they had a broadly designed career ladder matrix that led to engineers aiming to become managers who had limited experience and inflated titles. To solve this problem, the VP of engineering and a director created a new career ladder with input from the engineering team and feedback from outside the organization. They also did an anonymous poll across the engineering team to determine if they wanted to be re-titled, which resulted in almost all of them voting for it. In the end, they created individualized growth plans for every engineer and only had to re-title two of them. This process taught the importance of involving the engineers in the process and being open and honest.

Developing Culture Through Gratitude

To create a highly collaborative environment, a chat bot was modified to allow people to thank each other and track 'karma' points. This humorous interaction encourages collaboration and appreciation for people's work, and is more popular among engineers than business people. It should not replace in-person connection or public praise, but it allows introverted people to receive and give recognition.

Retaining Women In Tech

After leaving her engineering manager position at Apple due to burnout and lack of supportive leadership, the author started her own small business helping other small business owners with their technological needs. Through this experience, she realized the importance of resilience, an inclusive environment, and strong leadership for women in the tech industry. She encourages women to network outside of their own organization, and to stay in and influence the industry in order to shape the future.