the triketora press

I still remember the 1:1. We were in one of the corner rooms of the third floor, where the white walls were bright in the late spring sunshine and the minimal and mismatched office furniture was as awkward as our conversation. There was a white noise machine on the floor, droning quietly. My manager had anonymized feedback to give me, feedback that he had thought to solicit while I was out of the office on vacation.

Amongst other complaints, he told me that a coworker of mine, whose identity he protected, was critical of my attempts to highlight diversity issues — that they thought I was only talking about diversity as a political move to gain more power in the workplace, that I didn’t actually care about hiring more women in engineering, that I was insincere.

I remember staring at the sunlight streaming in the windows, listening to the sound of traffic filtering up from the streets below. I didn’t know what to say. I was indignant and hurt and angry and had to choke back a deep swell of emotion. “But they’re wrong,” I finally said. “That’s not true.” My manager seemed uncomfortable too, but he continued, “It’s just important that you know that what you’re doing makes people believe these things about you.”

Our living room is mismatched and haphazard, barely an upgrade from the quarters you’d expect of students on a limited budget, happy to have furniture that’s functional. A hanging dress rack is pushed up against the far wall, my roommate’s wardrobe a tell-tale sign that someone occupies the living room. A pile of bedding sits carelessly on a plain futon that is draped with an unfitted sheet, limp and faded teal; the futon is twice a hand-me-down even after a friend’s cousin rescued it from a street in New York City. Otherwise, though, the room is tidy enough, and the blonde wood IKEA table that serves as our dining table is a very acceptable place to work, clean and uncluttered. The space is open and bright with the lights of the kitchen adjacent.

Earlier this week I did a talk on tech diversity as part of a series that the San Francisco hub of the Global Shapers is running. (We’re the under-30, “youth” community supported by the World Economic Forum, organized as hubs in different cities across the world; we seek to make local impact as well as to reflect the voice of youth in the global agenda.)

The turnout surprised me—up until a few days before the talk, I’d been expecting a group of 10-15, mostly Shapers, and that I could ad lib a casual fireside chat and Q&A. In the end we even had to turn away people at the door (sorry!) and I tried to prepare some remarks and to not disappoint horribly. It was heartening to see so much interest in the subject, and from not only women but men as well.

Afterwards, actually, there were a number of men who asked for additional resources and recommended reading, as well as guidance on how to support female friends in engineering, how to be an ally in unsupportive organizations, how to encourage technical study in different communities… All of these topics could be turned into extensive Medium blog posts or even books or lengthy academic treatments, but here’s just a quick roundup of some starter resources, more for context than for instruction:

1. Unlocking the Clubhouse, by Jane Margolis and Allan Fisher [book]
2. What Works for Women at Work, by Joan Williams and Rachel Dempsey [book]
3. Whistling Vivaldi, by Claude Steele [book]
4. Why women leave tech, by Sue Gardner [Google doc, compilation research]
5. Diversity collection on Product Hunt, by Nichole Elizabeth [apps, podcasts, books]

The bouquet was sitting in front of our apartment door when I got home. Bright pink roses and yellow Gerbera daisies paired with rustic milk thistle and stems, a mason jar vase tied with ribbon and burlap and nestled in a white cardboard box, bunched red tissue paper spreading in its own bouquet. Not pretentiously elegant, but pretty enough to be romantic. We wish we knew where it came from; and was it meant for me, or for Debbie? Was it a late Valentine’s delivery? There was no note and no indication of the provenance of the flowers.

I’m sitting in the corner of Coffee Bar, at an ample communal table ringed by MacBooks and glowing Apple logos. It’s February but it feels like summer, both because of the heaviness of the hot air being blown around by whirring ceiling fans, and because it’s unexpectedly a holiday and I’m free to luxuriate at a coffee shop instead of being at the office. Of course, I’m still pretending to do work, and I have all the right windows and tabs open, but my productive procrastination of choice today is reviving a defunct blog.

Hello, dear blog reader. Behold!

I’m not sure that I have anything particularly interesting to say, or that anyone wants to hear what I have to say, but I’m embracing my new life mantra of “Lord, give me the confidence of a mediocre white man” and besides, I might as well have a place to put my 141+ character thoughts.