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040 The Opportunities of Being a Woman in Tech Today with Elliotte Bowerman

By Michaela Light Leave a Comment

Elliotte Bowerman talks about “The Opportunities of Being a Woman in Tech Today” in this episode of the CF Alive Podcast, with host Michaela Light.

“I have actually spent the last dozen years in the tech industry. And it has been so incredibly fulfilling to be a part of technologies that are really changing the world. And I think that anyone who's called to this industry is, in fact, a unicorn. We want to make something bigger than ourselves, we see the magic in the ones and zeroes, and in the opportunities that technology opens up for the world.” – Elliotte Bowerman

Episode highlights

  • The opportunities of being a women in tech today
    • Focus on opportunities rather than challenges
    • Power, Pay, Play gaps
    • Women do better at crowd funding
  • Why you need to break The Rules in tech
    • You don’t have to fit into the culture
      • Still connect
      • Be more of you
    • Don’t be afraid of conflict
    • Need to 100% ready to leap up
      • Vs 60% for men
      • I can learn fast on the job
      • I can delegate
    • Salary negotiation
      • You are interviewing them as much as they are interviewing you
      • Don’t accept the first offer
      • 20% more or transparency
    • Be up front about your needs – hiring is a 2-way street
      • Being shy about your needs is not cute
  • Lean in vs Leap out
    • Lean in – taking a seat at the power table
    • Focus on ourselves
    • Overcoming the negative voices in my head
    • Growing up Awkward, chubby, ashamed of being smart
    • Get comfortable with discomfort ← reframe
    • Fear → I am excited
    • Power pose legs taking up space
  • Changing the bully dynamic of the tech industry
    • Meeting her high school bully on FB
  • Glitter is a Shame repellent
    • Glitter eye shadow – how do you want to be seen?
    • Sparkle back harder
    • Mind-set – what is YOUR glitter?
    • Hiding your special magic vs sharing it
    • Google #Iamremarkable
  • Are you wearing your Power bling today?
    • Overcomes not being noticed at meetings
    • Ready for battle
  • Avoid the zombie unicorn women in tech
    • Scarcity mentality
  • Why security is a lie, and the search for safety is dangerous and limiting for your career
    • Confidence in our skills
    • A community of support
    • “If you are not growing then you are going”
    • Save some money

Mentioned in this episode:

And to continue learning how to make your ColdFusion apps more modern and alive, I encourage you to download our free ColdFusion Alive Best Practices Checklist.

Because… perhaps you are responsible for a mission-critical or revenue-generating CF application that you don’t trust 100%, where implementing new features is a painful ad-hoc process with slow turnaround even for simple requests.

What if you have no contingency plan for a sudden developer departure or a server outage? Perhaps every time a new freelancer works on your site, something breaks. Or your application availability, security, and reliability are poor.

And if you are depending on ColdFusion for your job, then you can’t afford to let your CF development methods die on the vine.

You’re making a high-stakes bet that everything is going to be OK using the same old app creation ways in that one language — forever.

All it would take is for your fellow CF developer to quit or for your CIO to decide to leave the (falsely) perceived sinking ship of CFML and you could lose everything—your project, your hard-won CF skills, and possibly even your job.

Luckily, there are a number of simple, logical steps you can take now to protect yourself from these obvious risks.

No Brainer ColdFusion Best Practices to Ensure You Thrive No Matter What Happens Next

ColdFusion Alive Best Practices Checklist

ColdFusion Alive Best Practices Checklist

Modern ColdFusion development best practices that reduce stress, inefficiency, project lifecycle costs while simultaneously increasing project velocity and innovation.

√ Easily create a consistent server architecture across development, testing, and production

√ A modern test environment to prevent bugs from spreading

√ Automated continuous integration tools that work well with CF

√ A portable development environment baked into your codebase… for free!

 

Learn about these and many more strategies in our free ColdFusion Alive Best Practices Checklist.

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Bio

Elliotte Bowerman, is the Unicorn Muse and cofounder of the Unicorn Scouts.

Elliotte Bowerman, the Unicorn Muse, helps professional unicorns – women in tech – “get in their glitter” to get more pay, more power and more play in their careers and their lives. An award-winning journalist, tech PR executive and former VP of Marketing, Elliotte has worked with 20+ startups over the past dozen years. She's been the most senior woman at multiple tech companies, built and managed teams in difficult work environments, and learned how to bend and break “the rules” to turn her job into a lifestyle delivery system.

Elliotte is a single mother, soul marketer, entrepreneur, professional play-grounding guide, conscious life crafter, speaker, writer, workshop leader, artist, and magic maker. In addition to working with adults, Elliotte is also dedicated to helping “unicorn kids” – the magical ones that don't quite fit in with the herd – be seen, supported and encouraged to shine. In 2017, Elliotte co-founded the Unicorn Scouts with her 7-year-old daughter. She Kickstarted more than $10,000 to create a global community – a Glitter Guild – that brings artful, in-powering, magical odysseys to alternative folks of all ages. These adventures teach life skills – including shame resilience, creative self-expression, boundary setting, gratitude, mindfulness, and community – through interactive stories and playful missions delivered via physical mail + digital channels. A portion of all Unicorn Scouts and Glitter Guild proceeds go to support free outreach activities and sponsored memberships for at-risk youth.

Links

Interview Transcript

Michael:          Welcome back to the show. I'm here with Elliotte Bowerman, and we're going to be looking at the opportunity of being a woman in technology today. And we're going to also look at leaning in versus leaping out. Why you need to break the rules in tech, changing the bully dynamic of the tech industry. And glitter as a shame repellant. So, welcome Elliotte.

Elliotte:           Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited.

Michael:          Me too; and in case you don't know Elliotte, she is the unicorn muse and co-founder of the Unicorn Scouts. And we will talk more about that towards the end of the episode. But right now, let's look at what the opportunities of being a woman in tech today are.

Elliotte:           Yes, well, I have actually spent the last dozen years in the tech industry. And it has been so incredibly fulfilling to be a part of technologies that are really changing the world. And I think that anyone who's called to this industry is in fact a unicorn. We want to make something bigger than ourselves, we see the magic in the ones and zeroes, and in the opportunities that technology opens up for the world, right. Look at the incredible access that people have to money through technologies like PayPal and crowd funding. Kick starter has enabled myself to start a business and so many other people to turn their passion into actual products and into companies.

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