Today was my first full day of the Grace Hopper Conference (GHC), and I am not going to lie: this morning I walked into the Baltimore Convention Center (where most of the sessions took place) skeptical about what I could take away from this conference.
Conferences that encourage women to pursue STEM careers were not new to me, and I suspected that GHC would offer me the same generalized and somewhat uninteresting career advice that previous events had offered me. Thankfully, I was wrong.
- Your work does NOT speak for itself: the speakers urged everyone who had good ideas to get them in the open. When you complete a great coding project or want to volunteer some insights on a particular problem, let everyone on your team know through something as simple as a blast email. You do not need to pretend that you effortlessly got from point A to point B—letting everyone from your colleagues to your manager know about the steps you took and the design principles you utilized can do wonders for your workplace reputation.
- Learn how to say NO: As someone who has a hard time saying “no” to anyone, this discussion hit home. One of the speakers mentioned how her inability to say no led to a constant influx of work that ultimately affected her performance at Google. She noticed that when she finally declined invitations to participate in certain projects or initiatives, people actually respected her and took her more seriously. I personally am working on learning to gracefully say no, so I’m glad that learning how to say no helped this speaker in the long run.
- Always Negotiate For What You Want: One of audience members mentioned that men who aggressively negotiate to get what they want seem more socially acceptable than women who do the same thing. The speakers’ advice: it doesn’t matter, embrace the part of you that knows exactly what you want. The speakers acted out a skit on how to negotiate salaries and respectfully decline a job offer—it was so helpful because I had always wondered how to do that. In the end, don’t feel afraid to ask for something reasonable after doing your research because the worst they can say is “no.” Even then, the prospect of rejection is not nearly as disappointing as not trying in the first place.
The “Tempering the Impostor Syndrome” was very illuminating because it discussed the notion of chronic self-doubt and how someone can feel inadequate even when information indicates that the opposite is true. I realized during the session that I tend to discount my own success or attribute my success to luck. For instance, when I first saw my Duke admissions letter, I was extremely ecstatic, but I always had this nagging feeling “Maybe the admissions office messed up,” or “I honestly do not know how/why they chose me—I got lucky.” When my manager at Microsoft told me in my midpoint review that I have great ideas, my first thought was: “Are you sure? Did you not notice that some of the features I designed were thrown out or that they could have used a little more work?” Many of the women at my table shared similar sentiments—an experience that was eye-opening because it reinforces that age-old cliché of “not everything is what it seems.” After that session, I decided that every time I do not understand what is going on in a conversation be it a technical discussion or an examination of British literature during the Industrial Revolution, I will not be ashamed of my ignorance. I am, after all, only human.
If the same speakers go to the next GHC, then I encourage those who will be attending to go to the sessions I described above because they are absolutely interesting! And a special thanks to the Duke Computer Science Department, Pratt, and Yahoo! contributing funds to help Duke undergraduates attend Grace Hopper.
