Dive into the world of tech leadership with our latest episode, where we shine a spotlight on the career journeys of Christie Davis and Julie Roff from Wise.
Join us as we explore their unique paths into leadership roles, unveiling the diverse experiences and challenges they navigated along the way.
Our guests share their inspiring stories, revealing the obstacles they overcame to ascend the ranks in the tech landscape. Hear firsthand accounts of resilience, innovation, and triumph as they discuss the pivotal moments that shaped their careers.
Gain insights from the frontlines of tech leadership and discover how embracing different perspectives fosters innovation and leads to groundbreaking advancements in the tech world.
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Speaker 1:
Hello everyone. Thank you for tuning in Again. I am Katie Batesman, the content director at Sheikhan Code. Today we are discussing breaking the silicon ceiling Women pioneers in tech leadership. We’re shining a spotlight on the career journeys of Christy Davis and Julie Brough from Wires today, who were both here to explore their unique paths into leadership, unveiling the diverse experiences and challenges they navigated along the way. Welcome ladies, thank you so much for joining us on Spill in the Tea.
Speaker 2:
Thank you for having us.
Speaker 1:
It’s a pleasure to have you with us and I’m excited to hear about your journey today. So can we kick off with a bit of background from both of you, A little bit about you to set the scene for our community. Christy, should we start with you? Hi, I’m Christy my background.
Speaker 2:
I’ve been at Wires for so I’m an engineering lead at Wires. I’ve been at Wires for the last five years but, if you can’t guess from my accent, I’m actually originally from New Zealand. So I started my career in New Zealand where tech was a bit of a convenient path for me. I was aspiring sports person. Tech was one of the courses that was really conducive to not spending a lot of time at university and doing a lot of working, working from like the training center and this kind of stuff, which is how I got into tech and I’m so glad I did, because it also is great for your lifestyle when you give up sport, which is where I’m at now. Yeah, I have not gone to Tokyo, so yeah, that’s my journey into tech.
Speaker 1:
It was more a convenience thing than a real passion, andrew yeah, you weren’t with those children we say on here, those children that were taking things apart and then trying to put them back together. You weren’t like that, you just kind of fell into it education wise.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I wanted. Originally I was going to do go or very. I was going to go down the medical route, but that is not one thing you can do while you’re doing sports. You have to be in the hospital chopping people up. I think as a student. Obviously I didn’t pursue it. I don’t quite be honest, seems more attractive, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:
So I did university, did computer science. It was very fun, had a great time at uni and then got into mobile development, actually at an agency in Wellington, new Zealand, which was a great start. I loved mobile engineering. I loved I still love past tense I shouldn’t use but it was a really cool start because agency work, you got to see so many different industries. So I worked on really cool apps for really cool New Zealand companies that probably most of the audience hasn’t heard of, but we do a lot of like broadcasting, utility companies like radio TV, all sorts of really cool stuff. I honestly loved it, yeah. And then came to us. We moved to London doing my big OE, which I haven’t left yet. I joined WISE as a mobile engineer, obviously, and then pervaded within WISE. So I did a couple of years of mobile before I moved into doing some back-end engineering, decided I wanted to branch out and learn something new and then, maybe a year and a half ago, I moved down the leadership route. So, yeah, it’s been a fun journey.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, it tells it. Yeah, and we’re going to tap into a little bit about when you moved into leadership within this podcast today. So, julie, what was your route like? So let’s talk about you and who you are and where you come from.
Speaker 3:
So I’m Julie. I had a slightly more traditional route, I think. I came in through a very low-level programming so I started compilers and kernels. I did my well. My undergraduate was in computer science and I got very interested in programming languages and runtimes and that sort of thing, and so I am originally American and so I got my start out in Silicon Valley at Big Tech Company Very cool and so I worked on some of the compilers and kernels and build systems in Mountain View for a few years and then sort of moved my way up the stack a bit, worked on build systems, runtimes in the cloud, and then a few years ago I took an opportunity to move to Switzerland and started managing.
Speaker 3:
I made that transition a bit ago and I’ve only actually been at WISE for just under a year now. I moved to London last April and have been at WISE ever since and it’s been a fun ride. It’s definitely learning experience has been a really, really fun space to be really interesting things. I am now the engineering lead for one of the teams in the finance area sort of the finance area of a FinTech company. So my team is responsible for collecting and processing a wide array of information into the company’s raw finance data, which then is what the financial and regulatory statements are built from. Wow, I still retain a strong love and passion for very low level coding, but I think that I have gained a really strong appreciation for the stack sort of up and down. Yeah, yeah, joy, working with engineers at all levels. It’s really cool.
Speaker 1:
Amazing. I have both incredibly well-travelled guests for today who have been around a little bit. So I am curious to ask what was it like working in Silicon Valley? Was it everything that you thought? It was going to be very different to working in London.
Speaker 2:
Was it stressful.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, I think Silicon Valley is a very unique place in the world and, in a lot of ways, I’m very fortunate that I got my start there, that I really got to experience what sort of tech in the 2010s was in that time in that place at really interesting companies doing really interesting things. It’s a very high-speed, high-energy intensity environment and there’s a lot of challenges that that poses, and so, having worked in Europe as well quite a bit, it’s definitely a change to come over here and, honestly, to a certain degree, it’s not even about being a woman in tech. In a lot of ways, it’s just a very different attitude towards work in.
Speaker 3:
Europe versus in America.
Speaker 1:
But a good baptism of fire, I suppose. Oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:
It was definitely a lot of learning experiences, both good and bad, yeah.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, so, on that, you’re both well-travelled, you have lots of experience and you’ve both moved into leadership roles, so we’re going to have a little chat about that today and your experience with that. I wanted to kick off with what inspired you to pursue a leadership role in the tech field, because it’s not for everybody and sometimes you reach a fork in the path of what you want to do with your career and not everybody wants to step into a leadership role. So what inspired you to take that role, christy? Should we start with you?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I guess, like you said, there’s the fork in the road right and it doesn’t.
Speaker 2:
Actually, you don’t have to choose at the time of the fork, you can make that decision whenever Not at a certain point in your career that fork remains there. If you’re on the IC route, it’s quite often the opportunity to step in towards management and so I think there’s a while that you end up pondering it. You know, you say on the IC route and you’re like is it the time? Is it the time? Is it the time? So for me I felt like it was important for my career, coming from the mobile background, to get a broad enough understanding, like it was important for me to have a broad understanding of tech and engineering and have done some of the backend stuff and get a bit more of a like full stack approach before I went into management, because I think I would have struggled to be like single discipline managing especially you know you get your imposter’s from your own I would have struggled to manage a whole bunch of backend engineers if I didn’t know what they were talking about.
Speaker 1:
You have to work that out a little bit before you step into that.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, like I needed to be at the right level of like confidence in myself to be able to tell people that they’re doing things wrong.
Speaker 3:
Having that confidence makes a huge difference.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, yeah, and I think like there was definitely a few points, like maybe a few years earlier in my career, that I was like maybe I could do this, maybe I could do this, but I’m so glad I didn’t. So for me the timing was right Like I’d done. Obviously there’s like infinite things you can learn before making this decision or like just generally in your career, but for me the timing was right in that I kind of felt like I had the confidence that I could take on like in my skills. Like I was like, yeah, cool, I can take this on. I can also at a certain point, everything is a little bit pattern recognition-y with most programming. So I’m like, yeah, I can understand it when you come to me with an Android thing, I can figure that out. Or a web thing and like, yeah, my skills are broader.
Speaker 2:
The IC path is like super interesting. But I think my skills speak like as a person. My skills are generally people skills, product skills. Those are the things that speak to me and I love owning like a big area of the product and like that is, at the end of the day, I’m accountable for my team and where we’re working on it, I love it. It’s so great. I see it’s really cool like you can do some incredible things. There’s like a big IC principal engineer, but I love having a group of people when we work to get there as a team and we’re all working towards the same goal. I’m a team gal, you know, so for me, that’s why leadership was the route I was eventually going to take. That’s why I ended up going when I did.
Speaker 1:
I said because you lit up them when you said like the team and working with the team. Perhaps if you’d done that at the wrong time you wouldn’t have just said to me I absolutely love that. It would have been quite actually a negative experience for you. I went into this way too early.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, panicking and being like oh my God. Why do these people like oh my God?
Speaker 1:
what do I do? Why do they ask?
Speaker 2:
me things that, yeah, what do I say to them? Like I don’t know what I’m talking about? But now, when I don’t know what I’m talking about, I just tell them I don’t know what I’m talking about and that’s not a problem, you know, because I’m confident in where I’m at.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, yeah, Julie, yourself did you have a similar experience. You kind of reached a point where you thought, yep, leadership is for me and, as we said, it’s not for everybody. Some people don’t reach that, Even 20 years into their career. They don’t want to manage people, look after a team. So it’s kind of inspired you to take that leap.
Speaker 3:
Absolutely. It is a totally different job managing people. In tech we very much emphasize the tech, lead your piece of it, where you’re sort of expected to still be very technical, very much contribute to things, even as you get very high up, but it really is managing people is a different skill and it’s one that I genuinely enjoy. I really like helping people reach their potential and sort of enabling the impact that my team not just me, my team and sort of this larger group of people is able to make is incredibly satisfying and seeing people grow. What originally inspired me to take this track is I’ve very much had really really amazing managers to in particular in my career, and I’ve had really really terrible managers.
Speaker 1:
It’s good to have a balance of what you would love to be like and actually all the experiences of. I don’t want to repeat that.
Speaker 3:
It was a long list of things that I would never do. Great for your confidence right?
Speaker 2:
Oh yeah, can’t be worse than that.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, so low bar, but that’s kind of it very much hit home to me, I think, right around the time, and it was the my second really really good manager that I had who gave me sort of opened the opportunity for me to start managing and those two really amazing managers showed me just how much good a really good lead can do, not only for individuals but for the team, for the organization, like the real change you can drive in a real positive way that impacts the team, the company, individual people and, on the flip side, sort of looking back at the really, really bad managers that I’ve had, just how much that impacted me as a person in terms of my career, in terms of my willingness to go to the wall for the team and really even sort of some of the really interesting projects that I was working on.
Speaker 3:
It just doesn’t balance out Like if you have a bad manager, it doesn’t matter how interesting the project is, it’s not good. And so I like, like Chrissy said, I reached a point where I was kind of I was confident in myself. I wanted to be a part of the conversations. I wanted to be involved in the discussions about the future, about sort of the goals, where we were going, how we were going to get there, and management was kind of that next step and a really really rewarding experience in a lot of different ways.
Speaker 2:
Yes and exhausting.
Speaker 3:
Definitely exhausting.
Speaker 1:
Many, many more and exhausting but very rewarding. Yeah, on that note, what challenges did you encounter as a woman in leadership, so within tech and how did you navigate them? Have you experienced any challenges as a woman in tech I suppose is the first question and moving into a leadership role, and how have you navigated them? Julie, should we start with you on this one?
Speaker 3:
Sure, unfortunately, I think in this day and age, it still is what challenges as opposed to, did you experience challenges?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I think we’re lucky that there’s not quite so many challenges.
Speaker 3:
Yes in many ways, but it is still. We’re not quite at the point where you can ask did you experience? What were your challenges? I think for me, the biggest ones I’ve faced sort of at all levels of my career, both as a junior software engineer beginning and as a team lead even today, is gaining credibility as an engineer and as a leader. In a lot of cases I have had to work quite hard to reach that sort of base level of trust that other mostly male engineers seem to get by default, and as part of that I’ve worked through some really difficult situations, some that resolved in a really positive way and were a really good learning experience for everyone involved, and others that didn’t go well on a number of levels.
Speaker 1:
The key. I think it doesn’t help with that imposter syndrome feeling either If other people are making you feel that way and it’s already your. I mean, we all get that feeling sometimes of I’m not meant to be here or people will find out. Maybe they’ll find out that I don’t know or that I don’t know everything, and that kind of doesn’t help if you’re getting a bit of a vibe from your team as well, like you said, that perhaps you have to over prove that you can do things. You have to open Codd and say it a little bit.
Speaker 3:
Exactly, and the sense that, even when it’s not, the worst ones I think are, when it’s not even related to imposter syndrome it’s no, I’m quite good at this, I have done that, please listen to me.
Speaker 3:
So that could be a real challenge and it’s one that I’ve faced in a few different directions and I think the key for me in overcoming them and navigating that kind of situation is to just have a really good support system, and I’ve been incredibly fortunate both in the mentors that I’ve found, some managers, a lot of people who are not I don’t report to in any capacity just really good for us, and friends that I’ve made in the industry have made just a huge difference in lifting me up and giving me the confidence to keep going, whether or not, whether it was a case of I don’t know if I’m able to do this, but I think I can, or I know I’m able to do this and we need to get through this but having that sounding board, that place to vent frustrations, get good, solid advice when I’m in a place where I’m like what is happening.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, almost as a sanity check. So you just need to say someone is it just me? Because I think I know this yeah.
Speaker 3:
That’s so often is no, it’s not just you. And you can’t be more hopeful to have people in your world, in your space, that say no, it’s not just you. That wasn’t. That was a weird interaction, that wasn’t great. Move through it.
Speaker 1:
What kind of challenges have you encountered along the way? The same stuff.
Speaker 1:
honestly, you mentioned a little bit before about, like when you do step into a leadership role and that feeling of you know, suddenly people are asking you things and you suddenly you know you have to be confident that you know what you’re doing. And there’s been a few ladies on this podcast who said to me when I stepped into a leadership role I thought I had to know everything and then actually you said you become quite comfortable in the end saying I don’t know, because it’s ridiculous to think that you have to know everything just because you’re leading the team.
Speaker 1:
That’s what your team is there for and you don’t know, just say you don’t know because if your team think you’re not authentic, they’re not going to trust you and they’re not going to follow you because you’re not humble enough to say you know what I don’t know.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I actually think some of the people I’ve had the most problems with in my career are the people that won’t tell you that they don’t know, and the people that actually know everything and you’re like you’re lying, like you’re talking nonsense yeah exactly, exactly, and I think that humility of like, just say when you don’t know, that stated is what people respect. At the end of the day, if you don’t know the answer, you’re not helping anybody by pretending you do.
Speaker 1:
Have you experienced other challenges, like with Julie, where perhaps you’ve found yourself in a situation where you’re thinking you know, I know this, or you need that sanity check sometimes, or you know, a lot of our ladies that come on here as well have said I haven’t faced as many challenges as I thought I was going to face as a woman, not just a woman in tech, but sometimes a woman that’s stepping into a leadership role. I had a lady on here she is in a sales role and she said that, being in tech and which is now dominated, but being in sales, which is now dominated, she was always told that she sounds very direct, whereas you know, other men that were sales were just kind of getting to the point and she said but I was always told I was rude. She said, no, I wasn’t, I was just being sales, but I have different roles and get told different things. Is that when you stepped into leadership, was it kind of like, oh, she’s just being she too direct?
Speaker 2:
I’ve definitely had that feedback and I think it’s funny because I don’t think I’m that direct.
Speaker 2:
But clearly maybe I’m not self-reflecting.
Speaker 2:
I also think maybe I feel like when I say stuff I’m often targeting it for my audience because as part of like a lot of girl chats and like hanging out with your friends, as a woman there’s a lot of like social interactions that happen where you target what you’re saying for your audience. You know, like with one group of friends maybe you’re you’re talking about you’re gossiping in one way and one group of friends you’re gossiping in another way and you wouldn’t necessarily do the same gossiping in the same groups. And I think that’s a skill that is like white female coded and I think sometimes when people, when I’m talking to them, they’re not understanding that the way that I’m going to speak about a certain topic might not be the way that I’m going to speak about it in all the circumstances. Targeting or messaging I think is something that I feel is a strength because I’m a woman, but I think sometimes people think I’m I’m being direct because they don’t understand that that is going to come across differently in a different situation, you know.
Speaker 3:
Yes, yes, I think that that’s actually part of it’s such a lack in tech broadly and even sort of not even gendering it. But there’s a lot of generally who don’t necessarily communicate in a way that understands not only real they’re communicating, but telling it to, yeah, yeah, and it’s to a certain extent, it ends up being like marketing. It’s like, yes, telling your ideas to, but like you’re not going to explain the same idea to an intern yes, the way the husband, the idea to the director yes, it’s a very different interaction and that’s obviously an extreme. Yeah, yeah, yeah, at least that’ll nuances all through that, and I think that’s a skill that is lacking in tech in a lot of different ways, and I’m obviously haven’t really worked outside of tech. Yeah, I imagine it’s one that’s a difficult one to find in corporate generally.
Speaker 1:
Yes, yeah, and actually that’s a conversation that we talk about a lot within she can kind of community that a lot of people think working in tech you have to have lots of techy skills and you have to have tech qualifications and then you get in and actually you realize one of the most important things is soft skills communicating. You have to communicate your idea. Even sometimes you have to sell your idea and skills. You don’t pick up until you’ve been in work several years.
Speaker 2:
That’s not something you necessarily learn at university, regardless of how you are Even things like showing initiative, having like the energy, like what can I do next? Like these are the skills that, like as a manager, I’m like oh my God, you are the perfect person. I’m so happy you’re here. Nothing to do with your technical prowess. If you’re enthusiastic about your job, I’m here for it. You want to improve, you want to get better. We can talk about it in an open way. Definitely, all those skills are so important.
Speaker 1:
Definitely and talking about all those different skills and all those different backgrounds in terms of having a diverse team and the importance of having all of those different skills and backgrounds that come together, why do you believe having a diverse team is essential for creating successful and globally resonant tech products? Why do you think it’s so important that you have different people from diverse backgrounds that can build products that really resonate with your audience? Julie, should we go with you?
Speaker 3:
I think the biggest flaw you can have in the design of any product is unknown. Unknowns it’s the things you don’t know that you don’t know. As part of that, you can’t solve problems that you don’t know exist, and it’s really hard to understand problems that you’ve never experienced or known anyone who’s experienced. So if you build a more diverse team, if you have more people from more places and more experiences, walks of life and general diversity, you can increase your awareness as a team, not only of experiences but of needs, flaws and requirements that you might have missed otherwise, and you can uncover those things earlier in the process. Like in a company like WISE, we aim to serve global audiences Like we’re talking about I mean, I was talking about Japan earlier today and the game up and we have people in America who are doing things and it’s just this huge contingency in Brazil and there’s a lot of really interesting regional spaces here that the problems that you’re going to solve for somewhere like New Zealand are going to be very different than the problems that you’re solving for Switzerland, because the people who are doing transactions in those places just will have different patterns of use and having insight into those.
Speaker 3:
You can get some insight through user testing, user research. But having diversity on the teams that are building, that uncovers those kinds of questions much earlier in the process, and so you end up with a stronger product, a stronger design, a stronger plan when you have that level of variety on the team that’s building.
Speaker 1:
Yes, definitely.
Speaker 2:
I think, we’re.
Speaker 1:
I can see you nodding, Chrissy.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I was going to say I think we’re really lucky at WISE because we have such a diverse company. The people that we work with, even if they’re not directly on our team, there are so many. I think we have people from almost every country in the whole world. I’m definitely lying by fact at me, but it’s pretty amazing and an example I can give of somewhere that we absolutely must I’m so glad we had the diversity is actually the US, and one thing we released actually many, many years ago is local account details, and we spend a lot of time in my team working on how we surface people’s local account details. It’s this great product where you can receive locally an account details that aren’t your current country and we do a whole bunch of different things with them and they’re super cool.
Speaker 2:
But one thing that’s really different about America is the banking culture around account details. In most of Europe you share your local account details. It’s totally fine. Nobody has any security issues In America. It’s a hard no. You would never share your local account details publicly. You wouldn’t post them on the web. It’s super frowned upon and we had no American people in our team or no one from North America. So we went live, we released this thing where you could put your local account details on the web and we just started getting all these contacts people coming in like what you’re publishing my account details. This is terrible, like da da, da da. And it was a case where diversity we didn’t have any American viewpoints, and I think that is so interesting, like that is such a huge thing for America, which is what? Like 55 million people or 550 million people and we’re just completely, and there are so many more things we must be missing, because if we don’t have a diverse teams, what do you think?
Speaker 1:
Such a learning curve, though, because some companies some companies will see that and almost do nothing about it. But you guys kind of looked at it head on and thought, oh my gosh, you know what, we hadn’t even thought about it. How do we plug that gap? How do we make sure we work for Americans? How do we get their view? Because you know Julie had been there. She would have been like. You know, I don’t think people can see this. So, it’s just somebody jumping in and saying that’s not how I would do things.
Speaker 1:
And that doesn’t happen overnight, eva, like some said that so often on this podcast that really good companies that are working on diversity strategies and diversifying the teams. It’s part of a broader strategy. It’s not you change one thing and or you go out and you do a diversity campaign and you add five ladies to a team and you think that’s it, I’ve cracked it. It grows and grows, yeah, and something that grows with those learning experiences, like you said, you know. Then you’re figuring out where your gaps are and you learn from them, instead of ignoring them sometimes and thinking you know what, we’ll just keep repeating the same mistakes, but you just learn from them.
Speaker 2:
So, yeah, we’ve been lucky. Now we do a lot of internal dog food like internal testing, so we share our products a lot more within WISE, which is super great. But we also have some really cool programs around getting people from different backgrounds into WISE, which is really cool. I’m lucky enough to have an apprentice on my team who has come from an underrepresented background and also like a bootcamp grad and we do some really cool stuff and the difference of opinions they have in the different background you can see. Even these are junior engineers and it’s amazing like the impact and the experience that they bring to the table. Yeah, so cool.
Speaker 1:
Because I was going to ask what kind of organizations have actively promote and support the growth of women in tech leadership positions. But actually you just mentioned there that something at WISE is, you know, you have an apprentice on your team which would help, you know, retain talent and hopefully move them through the pipeline and eventually they can retain them all the way through to leadership. It kind of just gets off on the right foot there. Is there anything else that you think organizations can do to promote and support the growth of women in tech, or kind of feeling like you’re, you know, supported within your career development and that you get to a point where you both reached and felt like you were ready to take that leap. Julie, you said it was a manager, a really good manager that actually opened that door for you Was that you just landed in the right company at the right time and perhaps there’s something that companies could be doing to help you along the way.
Speaker 3:
I think to some extent making the switch is being in the right place at the right time. It’s management is not quite the same as an IC promotion just because there needs to be a open space of a team to manage. But getting into that right place is something that companies and organizations can help with. And I think a really important piece of that is within the team and within the company is constant awareness of toxic behavior and constant fighting against toxic behavior. Because when a group steps up regularly to call out negative behaviors, to fight against them, to make it sort of very clear that this sort of thing is not acceptable it’s not something that we believe in that builds an environment where the members of that organization will feel secure and comfortable enough to take that risk and to express an opinion and say I don’t necessarily agree with what we’re doing or where we’re going.
Speaker 3:
On the other hand, if I guess the more group allows toxicity to pass by unremarked, to let offhand comments happen without being called out, to belittle people behind their backs without mentioning it, belittle them to their faces without anyone calling it out, the less likely it is that anyone, particularly underrepresented groups, will feel that comfort and that willingness to step up and say something and therefore not be seen. If you’re not going to, because, to a large extent, getting yourself into the right place at the right time, you have to be seen. You have to be visible not only to your direct manager but to the organization you’re stepping into.
Speaker 3:
And coming in externally is a very different story. Coming in as a manager, there’s a certain it’s a very different kind of credibility establishment, but most people will make the leap to management within the same company and that jump requires you to be seen as a viable candidate.
Speaker 2:
Yeah.
Speaker 3:
On a position where you feel comfortable putting yourself out there, making statements, taking responsibility, you’re not going to be in the right place at the right time, and so that, I think at an organizational level, is a huge, huge thing, that is, everyone needs to be an active participant in fighting against that. All it takes is one person who’s allowed to get away with it.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, Is this one thing getting people in, but keeping them in that environment where they feel safe. Which said, if you need to speak up about something whether something’s been said to you or you’re speaking up in defense of somebody else you need to know that, yes, it will be listened to, and if the environment is toxic, that it won’t be tolerated. Otherwise, people just think that’s okay and then eventually the good talent just thinks you know, I’m not going to thrive here, I need to get elsewhere.
Speaker 3:
You know, leif and that is often what happens in toxic environments I mean I’ve left and it sucks. It sucks to feel like you have to leave and it’s the only choice you have to thrive and to move, and it takes a lot of sort of confidence and courage to say that, to make that decision, to say, look, this isn’t healthy, this is a good place, like, I don’t think we can fix this here or fix it for me, and so I’m going to move on.
Speaker 1:
Yeah.
Speaker 3:
And.
Speaker 1:
I find as well, when you’ve been through that and you do find a company where you think you know what things are good here, or people might complain occasionally, day to day about the little things, but overall you’re thinking this isn’t toxic, this isn’t bad. I can really get on here and we have our ups and downs, because all companies do and all companies have challenges and that’s how you move forward as a team. But I would rather make this work than go back to an environment that I worked in that was toxic and, as you said, you’re not going to change their opinions, not going to change and you can’t. You know that just affects everything in your life when you work in something like that. Yeah, and I’ve, I mean.
Speaker 3:
I’ve there. It’s never going to be perfect, there’s never going to be the ideal situation, but it really does. It only takes one person Completely torpedo a work environment yeah, really easy. If that person’s a manager yeah. But it only takes one person who’s allowed to kind of get by with negative behaviors. And that’s why it’s so important for companies to be on high alert for leadership, in particular the people who live in a corporate world. There is, there is a power imbalance between reports and managers, between different teams, between all sort of different, different groups of people, different functions, and it’s really important for people in leadership to be aware of that and to be constantly on the lookout and willing to call out negative behavior when I see it.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, and what about? I mean, that’s obviously talking about more on the toxic side and the negative side, and obviously that has to come from the top down. What about fostering a culture of innovation within your team or organization? Christy, you mentioned about when you’ve got a certain team member on your team that might be using their own initiative and they’re thinking of things that you haven’t even asked them to do or haven’t even thought of. Like, how do you foster that, where people are thinking you know what. We need to be innovative and we need to keep thinking of things, even when you’re not asking your team.
Speaker 2:
I think honestly for me, I believe a lot of it is about like confidence, and confidence the person has like the drive they have to do it and like the fact that they know that you believe in them. I think if you have a manager that believes in you, it makes a big difference, yeah.
Speaker 3:
It’s not just an assumed thing. It’s a very active.
Speaker 2:
Yes.
Speaker 3:
Have their confidence.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, like I’ve got their back, if they have the freedom to go and do something or like go and experiment, like, oh cool, I’ve got this proposal. This is this idea that I want. This is like this. One of my reports has a great project that he wants to do which is super cool, and to have the back, like if it falls apart and it goes badly. I think that’s super, super important as a manager, and when I think of my manager, who I think is very good- I know that, and then I can just tell you, before it falls apart, that they think it’s falling apart and not before.
Speaker 1:
I say actually, can you help me out before this falls apart?
Speaker 2:
Yes, yes, but the people that I see big growth in like having initiative and like increasing their scope, increasing the impact, are the people that I’ve had those conversations with where I’m like I think you are great, I think you could do more and I will like help you. You know, like if you’re going the wrong way, I will stop you from going that way. Like you can trust that I will not let you fail, but feel free to like explore a little bit more and do a bit more like those kinds of things. And I think when I think of my reports that are showing initiative and going out there and doing this crazy cool stuff, they’re those people that I’ve had those conversations with. And when I think of the times that I’ve done those things, it’s when I’ve trusted my manager will do those things to me as well. So I think, yeah, for me that’s that belief is a real important thing, and trust.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, julie, is that something that you would echo? And I completely agree with Christy when she says that’s when you’ve done it, it’s when you think that’s what my manager would do for me, and also when your manager is that person that says we’re going to do something and they execute it and you have complete faith in that manager that that plan is going to happen, that they are they’re not just the idea factory, that it actually comes off and that it’s so. You know, have those ideas, be innovative, but actually execute them is something that you really follow a manager through, because you know you would go to war with them, because you know what they say is what you’re actually it’s going to happen so, and that kind of inspires you as well and that builds that culture of innovation. Is that something that you’ve experienced, julie?
Speaker 3:
I mean, I completely agree with Christy that it’s when you feel trusted, when you feel supported as an individual and as a team, when you have a clear vision and a clear direction, but the space to be able to explore new places within that vision, that’s when really cool things happen. And it all comes back to having that leadership, that really strong sense of confidence in people. And also, in a lot of ways, a really good lead is one who shields the team in a way, distractions from, yeah, feelings within the organization.
Speaker 3:
I think that was a huge learning curve for me when I became a manager was how best to protect the team, make sure they have the information that they need to do really cool things to push the envelope forward, to move us in the direction we wanted to go, but also to protect them from headwinds to sort of make sure we’re moving in the right direction, avoid sketchy bits of the best. I think that’s certainly something that I have a lot of growth to do in that space, but I think that that’s such a huge important part of building the space for innovation is having people who are willing to take that initiative, to really kind of lead to our willing to go to the wall and create that space for engineers to do cool things.
Speaker 2:
Yes, I also think definitely the other kind of leads that have been super useful are the ones that challenge you when you like the creative innovation, are the ones that you’re like I think we’ve done this really cool project, like this is how we’re going to do it. And then, why didn’t you do it like this? Not, why didn’t not not actually even, why didn’t you do it like this? Why doesn’t it just work? Or like why have you only released it to X amount of customers? Why does it not already do?
Speaker 2:
You know cross currency conversion? But those are good questions because I think as a team and as like individuals in a team, it’s very easy to see what you can’t do and it’s very easy to see all the roadblocks and see the reasons, and you’re in the day to day and in the grunt and stuff and having those leaders who will challenge you with like, yeah, why not? I think that is a really useful thing as well to create innovation and to be able to sit back and challenge your team and be like I will protect you, to do it in a way that feels supportive as opposed to yes.
Speaker 2:
definitely not. You have done it wrong.
Speaker 3:
I think the key there is the support, rather than yes, yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 1:
For sure. Rather than this is wrong, go back and do something else.
Speaker 2:
Yes, I would be crying Rather than just doing some cross currency.
Speaker 1:
We are almost out of time, ladies, and I wanted to ask you one last question. Do you have any advice for listeners who might be thinking about taking that leap into a leadership role soon? Is there anything you wish somebody had told you before you took the leap into a leadership role? I?
Speaker 2:
was really lucky. I had a couple of female leads in my network that I spoke to a couple of times before making the move into management, and the first one I spoke to was brilliant and she was the one that advised me don’t do it yet. Like you can do it at any point in your career as an IC. It’s likely that this could be an opportunity for you. But take the time to be sure it’s what you want and to build your confidence and make sure you’re really, really Because if you’re good at being a manager, there’s often it’s going to be very unlikely that you’re not going to have the opportunity to continue being a manager. And that advice was really good because I think early in my career I felt this like I must go and manage people. It’s the next step in my career, this urgency and the competitiveness you know, like I’ve got to be the best, the next best thing. So having that advice super great to just be like slow down, think about your career properly, Like is this what you actually want to do? Do what’s best for you. That was super, super useful at the time and something I really appreciated as feedback.
Speaker 2:
And then the other piece of feedback I had of feedback advice was from my other manager who told me to go over myself, which I think is the other side of the coin. Yes, because I was all like oh no, I don’t know if I’m ready, Like is it the right choice? And I think it is. The other side of the coin is, yeah, overthink it. You know yourself best. Sometimes you just have to give it a go, Like check with your organization. Often the possibility of switching back to IC is still there. If it’s not for you, it certainly is at WISE, which was made it much easier for me. But yeah, she told me, go over myself, You’ll be great. She believed in me and I was like, okay, fine, I will become a manager.
Speaker 2:
And so far I’m enjoying it.
Speaker 1:
I mean both brilliant pieces of advice, Opposite pieces of advice and things that we need to hear and another fact that your first manager said about you. Know, you have your whole career to choose whether or not you want to do that. There really is no rush, and sometimes thinking it’s what, it’s almost what other people expect you to be doing, do I want to be doing that? So sometimes it’s just taking a step back and thinking you know, what do I want to do? Am I going to be happy? Am I ready?
Speaker 1:
Rather than what you think, everybody else is thinking of you, especially if you’re quite new. We have a lot of ladies in our community that transition into tech for the first time and they’ve been in work 10 years already. So they might be junior in tech and not ready for a tech leadership role, but they might be thinking, you know, everybody thinks I’m meant to know everything. I’ve been in work 10 years already. It’s not the right time for them. So it’s really you know it’s quite personal to think is it right for me at this moment?
Speaker 2:
And I do think having that network of people you can ask and like speak to and like get their advice is just so key. You don’t need to rush and, honestly, the time you have as an IC while you’re learning and growing, that is honestly such a precious time that you should treasure, because once you go into the management route, once you go into, like, the staff route it sounds like I’m talking about having a child you have all this responsibility. Honestly, when you’re in the first few years of like I see you’re just asking questions you’re learning Writing code. I wish I had a kind of yeah, writing code. What a dream. Honestly, I love it, I love it. I love managing. I do too, but I don’t go through it. Yeah, imagine, julie, can you?
Speaker 3:
imagine eight hours a day.
Speaker 2:
Don’t have to go on a zoom meeting.
Speaker 1:
Julie, do you have any advice for our listeners that are thinking about taking the leap into leadership for the first time?
Speaker 3:
Yeah, I think, in the interest of kind of knowing when whether it’s whether it’s time to wait or time to go I think one of the best things you can do if it’s something that you want to do but you’re not quite ready for is learning, but not necessarily about your specific area, your specific space, because by the time you get too close enough to be thinking about moving into management, you’re pretty good at your space, your area, your immediate impact. So much of being a manager is connecting dots, it’s making sure the right people are in the room to have the conversation, Because if you don’t have the right people in the room, you’re not going to get any of the answers that you need. And so what? One of the key skills I think of managing that is often lost over as you’re starting to think about it is understanding neighboring areas. It’s knowing sort of who, like meeting people across the country.
Speaker 3:
To a certain extent it’s networking, but it’s more than that. It’s kind of understanding which components you need to work. You need to make work together. What seeing down the path, what your engineers will. They don’t need right now but they might need in the future, like whether they need platform support, whether they need access to a particular data set, whether they need user research. I think there’s a lot of things that, as a manager, it’s hard to teach, but it’s a really key part of the job. Is that sort of breath as opposed to the depth? Obviously, you’ll come up with some depth because you’ll have come up through a particular team, but getting that breath is one of the best things you can do to repair yourself, because that will be the biggest learning curve right after you’ve started.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, and that’s brilliant advice because I think sometimes we can and making time for that as well to think ahead and what’s coming up and what your team might need, instead of always getting bogged down in your day to day as well. It’s a very different mindset. When you do step into leadership, it is a very different mindset. You have to think about other people.
Speaker 1:
I don’t think about your team, where they want to go, what they want to do, not just about yourself, which, as we mentioned right at the start, you do. Sometimes you reach that fork in the road where you think do I want to concern myself with other people and manage people, or do I just want to stay doing what I’m doing and progress in that area and just be really good at what I’m doing? And it is a decision that we all suddenly face in our careers. So it is great to hear that both of you made that leap and that you’re both very happy at WISE and doing great things. Ladies, we are already out of time. It’s been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for sharing your story with Chic and Coates community. It’s been a pleasure having you on here.
Speaker 2:
Thank you for having us. Thank you for having us.
Speaker 1:
Thank you and all of our listeners as always. Thank you so much for joining us and we hope to see you again next time.
