Women in Program Management
Recently, I interviewed a woman who asked me an interesting question - "How do you feel as a non-American woman to work for Microsoft?". I realized that I had stopped thinking of myself as something that is not the norm - a woman in a technical career.
Every year, the Engineering Excellence Group organizes an excellence day for all engineering disciplines. Its a day where folks from all disciplines have a chance to learn new skills, learn from others and network. This time around, they decided to try an interesting experiment for the Program Management discipline. The gist was - Get 25 PM speakers to speak on any topic of their choice for 99 seconds and strictly, 99 seconds.
I was one of the 25 speakers and the topic I chose was Tips for Women in Program Management. Why? For starters, I am a woman and have been in Program Management for over 5 years. Secondly, I am from India so I had a perspective of a culture thats not American. Thirdly, over the years, I have mentored and been mentored by women at the company and finally, I have an opinion :). I believed that over the years, I had learned something about working here that could help other women who were entering the field of computer science.
But this was a complex topic - Could I represent women across the company and simultaneously not generalize them? For each point I wanted to raise, I could think of at many women who didnt match that generalization and so, I asked myself a number of questions - "would I be able to present something that resonated with every woman?", and "Did I truly think it made a difference whether I was a man or woman at Microsoft?
Days of soul searching later, I arrived at this conclusion - this was my perspective, and yes, I am a woman and I do think that women are different from men. Not all women are the same and their dreams, backgrounds, cultures, personalities priorities, prejudices and expectations are different but there is something we all have in common - we are all women in a traditionally male world and we can help each other like no one else can. Just like we find our friends based on common likes and dislikes and yet different from us, we are women who share a bond but are still different. Yes, not all the tips apply to everyone but its good to be aware of how other women are coping and learn from it.
Tips for Women in Program Management:
1) Be yourself: Yeah, easy enough to say, you think but I cannot stress how important this is. If your style isn’t to be aggressive, please don’t try it. You are going to be uncomfortable and it will show. OTH, if you are more outgoing, don’t try to stifle it. You will hate being stuffed up and not being yourself. The reason you were hired is that you don’t fit the mould. So, why change?
2) Find your passion: The best PMs are the ones who are designing features in areas they care about. I know someone who is really passionate about end user UI but was instead designing APIs for a biz dev product. She felt out of her depth, didnt feel excited about coming into work and didnt know which questions to ask. When she moved to a team here where she was designing UI, she gushed about her work, came up with new ideas every day and really enjoyed it.
3) Be relevant: Don’t’ say something at each meeting because you feel like you have to. You will be far more credible if when you speak, you make sense.
4) Don’t just work hard, work smart: Create awareness on your work style with your managers and peers and just work hard. Ask around for help. Network so you know someone who does know.
5) Prioritize better: One of the biggest mistakes in my career was not to prioritize. Women are such good multi-taskers that we end up juggling a lot of tasks and feel terrible when we dont finish something.
6) Beat the imposter syndrome: Newer PMs particularly feel like they are going to get caught for not knowing what to do. Don’t be afraid to back up your ideas or ask questions. I know it’s easier said than done but I cannot count the number of times my "stupid" question has caused teams to change tactics.
Let me know what you think!
