Ever wonder what it’s like being a female engineer in the male-dominated tech industry? How did these women get to where they are in their careers, and what path did they take to get there? While more schools are offering and encouraging STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) programs to get girls interested in science and engineering, the truth is, not many women actually pursue a career in engineering. The US Dept. of Commerce reports there were 2.5 million college-educated working women with STEM degrees in 2009 compared with 6.7 million men.
The encouraging news is while there are still reports of bad behavior in Silicon Valley, more tech companies are working to promote diversity in the workplace.
So, if you’re contemplating a career in engineering, you may be wondering how do you make that happen, what degree do you need and how do you find a mentor to help guide you? We reached out to female engineers at various stages of their career and asked all those questions and more. Over the next few months, we’ll be featuring a 6-part series; Cyber Coders Conversations with a Female Engineer. These are conversations with women working in the world of tech, sharing their journey and career path with us.
We’re kicking it off with a conversation with Lorraine Bardeen from Microsoft.
What is your current role and how did you get there?
I’m currently the general manager of mixed reality workplace at
Microsoft. I lead cross-functional engineering and product teams to envision, build, ship, and support mixed reality apps and services for the modern workplace that are a key part of digital transformation across industries.
I’d attribute a lot of my journey to my commitment to seeking the highest level of impact I'm capable of reaching. I am passionate about having real, meaningful impact on people, and in order to get there, I have to hold the bar high for myself. I make sure I don't ever get comfortable. If you let yourself get too comfortable, you start displaying behavior that is not helpful to your peers, customers or employees. By maintaining a level of discomfort, I can keep myself growing.
Did you always want to work in tech?
No, I started in business and finance and started my career at a major consulting company in New York. When I began working at Microsoft, I fell in love with the potential to empower people and organizations to do more and was inspired by how rapidly technology changes and evolves to allow us to continue to learn, discover, transform. Along the way, I’ve done an immense amount of self-study, learning on the job, and formal training to develop a strong technical foundation that gives me the perspective and confidence to make decisions for our products. The combination of those two things are what did it for me and have shaped the role I’m in today.
What was your educational path, did you study engineering in school? STEM or arts?
I don’t have a computer science degree. When I started school, I thought I wanted to work in anthropology because I have such an interest in people. I eventually shifted to business and finance, which led to the first part of my career. And now that I’m working at Microsoft and in the constant digital transformation of society that is tech, I’ve discovered that I’m actually working more closely to that anthropology role (of understanding humans) than ever before.
How important is female leadership in a company?
It's no surprise that female representation is important. Overall, diversity helps with decision making: when you broaden the perspective, you’re able to rapidly address a broader audience. If you have diverse kinds of brains in the decision-making process, (gender, orientation, diverse cultural, and privileged/underprivileged backgrounds), you're able to bring a certain richness to the table in decision making that translates into products that are more real and relevant for a broader audience.
Did you have a mentor? How important is mentorship in keeping young women in the tech field?
Yes, mentors and sponsors are incredibly important. Unquestionably, earning and having sponsors makes a radical difference. That said, I don’t believe you can be assigned a sponsor. You must earn one who is willing to take a personal risk or commitment to support you, who believes in your credibility and ability to confront a challenge. For instance, if you’re someone who shows evidence of being able to solve challenges, your sponsors likely have a broader landscape view and can help connect you to other challenges for you to tackle. I think of and use mentors differently – as advisors and coaches to work through problems I encounter. Both mentors and sponsors have been really important to my career!
What advice do you have for women who want to enter the tech field?
Don't pour all of your energy into your job so that you can grow laterally, learn new things, and most importantly, get really good at prioritization. I had my kids in my 20s, which was unusual for many people I worked with. I credit it with accelerating my ability to prioritize and with giving me new ways to think about many things, which has given me huge career benefit. Women sometimes feel more torn and/or apply more guilt to this, but the point applies to everyone.
How can companies encourage more women to work in tech?
If we want to encourage more women to enter the tech field, we should embrace nontraditional backgrounds. For instance: I’m now a leader in the technology sector of Microsoft, but before I started here I hadn’t ever explored computer science. And that didn’t matter for my particular career path: because what is really important for me is the ability to rapidly learn technology and develop the ability to make tradeoffs as the technology industry shifts. So even if you don’t have the technical background, don’t be discouraged, because the tech landscape is constantly changing and increasingly open to fresh, non-traditional perspectives.
