Can women have meaningful careers in tech? Are diversity efforts in Silicon Valley failing? Should women avoid working for technology companies? Alana Karen was annoyed every time she saw the latest headline questioning women's survival in tech. She pictured a new graduate deciding on her career and only having one-sided articles to help make her decision. She saw colleagues roll their eyes at books about C-level women in tech and heard jokes about how inaccessible those stories sounded. She wondered how women could feel like they belonged if they didn't see themselves reflected in the media. Inspired by women she knows in tech—women with diverse backgrounds, education, and ambitions—she wrote The Adventures of Women in Tech to fill that gap. A twenty-year tech company veteran and leader, Alana Karen brilliantly and systematically replaces what we think we know about women in tech with more than eighty women's stories of what it's honestly like to join, lead, and thrive in today's top technology companies. The Adventures of Women in Tech delves into why we join tech, the challenges we face, and the skills and support we need to succeed and stay in an often challenging environment. In twelve chapters filled with intimate stories, insights, and advice from women working in technology companies and start-ups, Alana Karen demonstrates that we all belong in tech.

Hear the voices of women recount their stories of triumph, and, alas, frustration, as they navigate their technology careers. Alana Karen, a director of search platforms at Google, recounts how women succeed in tech careers and why they stay despite the myriad challenges the industry presents, including an inhospitable work culture, persistent pay inequity, and the daily demands of balancing work and home responsibilities. Karen surmises that resolving these issues will require the collective effort of tech companies and women in senior roles to foster inclusivity and improve overall diversity. This officially licensed summary of The Adventures of Women in Tech was produced by getAbstract, the world's largest provider of book summaries. getAbstract works with hundreds of the best publishers to find and summarize the most relevant content out there. Find out more at getabstract.com.

THE WORKBOOK COMPANION TO THE ACCLAIMED BOOK, THE ADVENTURES OF WOMEN IN TECH: HOW WE GOT HERE AND WHY WE STAY Navigate your career with practical and life-tested wisdom. Based on the top-selling job advice and career book, The Adventures of Women in Tech: How We Got Here and Why We Stay, explore specific steps you can take in your life and career. Pace yourself with short, easy-to-understand exercises designed to accelerate your personal progress and help you find your way during the toughest of moments. Focus on building your tool chest leveraging five key tools Resilience: building the grit and the power to withstand adversity Marketing 101: speaking up and promoting our talents and accomplishments Ask!: having the confidence to network, reach out, and ask for help Finding Support: seeking out those who will help us navigate our careers and provide a sense of belonging Owning Your Awesome: Knowing you are enough and you are worthy Whether you're at the start of your career or building skills along the way, or whether you want to gain a new opportunity or build a current one, The Adventures of Women in Tech: The Workbook guides you through your thought processes and helps you build the tools you need to more than survive and thrive in tech.

“Jam packed with insights from women in the field,” this is an invaluable career guide for the aspiring or experienced female tech professional (Forbes) As the CEO of a startup, Tarah Wheeler is all too familiar with the challenges female tech professionals face on a daily basis. That’s why she’s teamed up with other high-achieving women within the field—from entrepreneurs and analysts to elite hackers and gamers—to provide a roadmap for women looking to jump-start, or further develop, their tech career. In an effort to dismantle the unconscious social bias against women in the industry, Wheeler interviews professionals like Brianna Wu (founder, Giant Spacekat), Angie Chang (founder, Women 2.0), Keren Elazari (TED speaker and cybersecurity expert), Katie Cunningham (Python educator and developer), and Miah Johnson (senior systems administrator) about the obstacles they have overcome to do what they love. Their inspiring personal stories are interspersed with tech-focused career advice. Readers will learn: · The secrets of salary negotiation · The best format for tech resumes · How to ace a tech interview · The perks of both contracting (W-9) and salaried full-time work · The secrets of mentorship · How to start your own company · And much more BONUS CONTENT: Perfect for its audience of hackers and coders, Women in Tech also contains puzzles and codes throughout—created by Mike Selinker (Lone Shark Games), Gabby Weidling (Lone Shark Games), and cryptographer Ryan “LostboY” Clarke—that are love letters to women in the industry. A distinguished anonymous contributor created the Python code for the cover of the book, which references the mother of computer science, Ada Lovelace. Run the code to see what it does!

For over 40 years, the tech industry has been working to attract more women. Yet, women continue to be underrepresented in technology jobs compared to other professions. Worse, once hired, women leave the field mid-career twice as often as men. In 2013, Karen Holtzblatt launched The Women in Tech Retention Project at WITops.org, dedicated to understanding what helps women in tech thrive. In 2014, Nicola Marsden joined the effort, bringing her extensive knowledge and research on gender and bias for women in tech. Together with worldwide volunteers, this research identified what helps women thrive and practical interventions to improve women’s experience at work. In this book, we share women’s stories, our research, relevant literature, and our perspective on making change to help retain women. All the research and solutions we share are based on deep research and user-centered ideation techniques. Part I describes the @Work Experience Framework and the six key factors that help women thrive: a dynamic valuing team; stimulating projects; the push into challenges with support; local role models; nonjudgmental flexibility to manage home/work balance; and developing personal power. Employees thinking of leaving their job have significantly lower scores on these factors showing their importance for retention. Part II describes tested interventions that redesign work practices to better support women, diverse teams, and all team members. We chose these interventions guided by data from over 1,000 people from multiple genders, ethnicities, family situations, and countries. Interventions target key processes in tech: onboarding new hires; group critique meetings; and Scrum. Interventions also address managing interpersonal dynamics to increase valuing and decrease devaluing behaviors and techniques for teams to define, monitor, and continuously improve their culture. We conclude by describing our principles for redesigning processes with an eye toward issues important to women and diverse teams.

An accessible and timely guide to increasing female presence and leadership in tech companies Tech giants like Apple and Google are among the fastest growing companies in the world, leading innovations in design and development. The industry continues to see rapid growth, employing millions of people: in the US it is at the epicenter of the American economy. So why is it that only 5% of senior executives in the tech industry are female? Underrepresentation of women on boards of directors, in the C-suite, and as senior managers remains pervasive in this industry. As tech companies are plagued with high-profile claims of harassment and discrimination, and salary discrepancies for comparable work, one asks what prevents women from reaching management roles, and, more importantly, what can be done to fix it? The Future of Tech is Female considers the paradoxes involved in women’s ascent to leadership roles, suggesting industry-wide solutions to combat gender inequality. Drawing upon 15 years of experience in the field, Douglas M. Branson traces the history of women in the information technology industry in order to identify solutions for the issues facing women today. Branson explores a variety of solutions such as mandatory quota laws for female employment, pledge programs, and limitations on the H1-B VISA program, and grapples with the challenges facing women in IT from a range of perspectives. Branson unpacks the plethora of reasons women should hold leadership roles, both in and out of this industry, concluding with a call to reform attitudes toward women in one particular IT branch, the video and computer gaming field, a gateway to many STEM futures. An invaluable resource for anyone invested in gender equality in corporate governance, The Future of Tech is Female lays out the first steps toward a more diverse future for women in tech leadership