5 things I’ve
learned working with a women-dominated engineering team
Fairygodboss’s chief technology officer shares his lessons
learned from managing a team that is 70% women.
MINUTE READ
In the summer of 2017, a male software
engineer published a 10-page anti-diversity manifesto that gained notoriety. He
inferred, among other things, that men are naturally more suited to careers in tech.
Three months later, I joined a female-led
company, Fairygodboss,
as its chief technology officer. One of my tasks was to build the engineering
team from scratch. In the end, I had a team that is 70% women. The makeup of my
team may be uncommon, but it happens to be particularly beneficial to my
company–a career community for women–and to our mission to advance gender
equality in the workplace. In the past year, we have rebuilt 90% of our core
engineering platform while still accomplishing all of our goals on time, within
budget, and without sacrificing any product quality.
Despite the success of my team, the tech
industry as a whole continues to be mostly male-dominated. Women who choose to
pursue STEM careers face an uphill and continuous battle as they enter the workforce. As Jane Porter previously reported for Fast
Company, these problems include a sense of
isolation, lack of mentors and sponsors, and a hostile work environment that is
not conducive to their success.
Facing gender biases in tech has its toll,
which is why a high number of women in STEM jobs leave 10 years into their careers. During my career, I’ve noticed about a 10:1 ratio of men to women in
the tech startup space. But after a year of managing a team made up of mostly
women engineers, I’ve found this makeup has uniquely positioned our products
for success.
I’m not saying it’s been a smooth ride.
Anyone who has the mandate to implement significant changes in a startup (and
in a short amount of time) will come across challenges with their work and
their team. But I can tell you that the positives outweigh those obstacles.
Here are a few of my key learnings:
1. WE COLLABORATE BETTER THAN THE MAJORITY OF MY PAST TEAMS
When I interviewed candidates for our
engineering team–I’d hear one “concern” again and again. The majority-female
makeup might lend itself to “cattiness.” Of course, this thinking directly ties
into age-old gender stereotypes about the way women are primed to treat each
other. Interestingly, these kinds of comments typically came from female
candidates.
But the data shows otherwise. Research
indicates that having more women collaborate on teams helps women advance. In a
recent Harvard Business Review article, researchers found that “when another woman was added to a
company, it increased the likelihood a woman would progress from year to year
by 2.5 percent.”
At Fairygodboss, the presence of several
women on the engineering team has only had a positive influence on the company
and individual team members. Because my staff is uniquely invested in and proud
of our platform–as they are its target audience–we’re able to have unusually
honest conversations about product decisions. Our team’s inclination to
collaborate rather than to silo themselves has made our workflow more seamless
and made our output more cohesive with that of the rest of the company.
2. WE COMMUNICATE MORE EFFECTIVELY
Simply put, the communication I see at
Fairygodboss–between my team members and across other verticals of the
company–is the best I’ve seen throughout my career. They’re willing to be
transparent, and they also have the desire to communicate openly in the first
place.
To me, this emphasis on positive, productive
communication speaks to the genuine investment team members put in seeing the
company–and, more specifically, in helping each other–succeed. An example of
this is the way we navigate User Acceptance Testing (UAT); unlike teams I’ve
worked with in the past, our engineering team gathers together and tests new
features as a group, identifies bugs, self-assigns work on them, and then
reconvenes when they’ve addressed those bugs. It’s a connected process that
allows us to tackle challenges as a team.
3. THE WOMEN SOFTWARE ENGINEERS ON MY TEAM HOLD THEMSELVES TO
EXTREMELY HIGH STANDARDS
It’s abundantly clear to me how seriously the
women engineers on our team take their contributions to the site. Sometimes,
I’ve seen this manifest as a tendency for people to be too hard on themselves, as they believe they must succeed at something on the first attempt.
Though this diligence has overall had a positive
influence on our workflow–they complete tasks better and faster–it’s something
I’ve had to keep in mind from the standpoint of a manager. Previous teams I’ve
worked with tended to take things less seriously, which required me to be quick
and direct when explaining issues or handling emergencies, which brings me to
my next point:
4. I’VE HAD TO ADJUST MY MANAGEMENT STYLE ACCORDINGLY SO THAT MY
TEAM MEMBERS TO DO THEIR BEST WORK
My team at Fairygodboss truly does care about
their work and product, both on a professional and personal level–meaning I’ve
had to adjust my communication style to avoid having urgency be interpreted as
criticism when a bug arises, for example. When you have a dedicated team, it’s
unnecessary to overemphasize the importance of fixing something.
5. IN THE END, WE ARE PRODUCING A QUANTITY AND QUALITY OF WORK THAT
CONTINUES TO EXCEED MY EXPECTATIONS
Having a team that mostly consists of our
target Fairygodboss user–professional women–has had a tremendously positive
impact on our department’s and the company’s success.
While engineers at most companies primarily
focus on technical quality and output, our team is also sincerely invested in
the vision and goals of the company from a product and mission perspective.
Frequently, this interest–and the tendency toward collaboration–has led people
on my team to provide feedback or suggestions that have resulted in improved
product features that are better aligned with company goals. The women on my
team, in particular, have been able to conceptualize and implement what they
would want to get out of Fairygodboss as a user–and the results speak for
itself. Since the engineering team at Fairygodboss first assembled, traffic to
the site has grown by nearly 500%.
Women are users of tech platforms, so tech
companies can only benefit by actively making sure that they’re represented on
the engineering team. No one can deny that having a greater understanding of
your customers will lead to a better product, and that a better product will improve
the bottom line.
My ultimate takeaway? The next time anyone
wants to dismiss the value women can (and do) add to engineering teams, they
might also consider attempting to explain away the success of teams like my
own. In the meantime, they can find us hard at work, propelling our companies
to hit–or even exceed–our goals.
BY MICHAEL HARROUN https://www.fastcompany.com/90304317/a-male-ctos-lessons-on-working-with-female-majority-team?utm_source=postup&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Fast%20Company%20Daily&position=4&partner=newsletter&campaign_date=02092019
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