Women in Tech: Take Your Career to the Next Level with Practical Advice and Inspiring Stories

by Tarah Wheeler

Find your own success. Don’t let your mother or boyfriend or colleagues define it for you. Try to create your own job. If you want to found companies, do that.

Nothing irritates me more than hearing women tell me, “Oh, I could never do what you do. I’m just not smart enough.” Let me assure you that, in fact, there are smart people in tech, dull people in tech, and everyone in between.

The secret to being in technology is simple: find the thing you love and never let it go. If you love programming or making websites or developing new technology or building robots or soldering boards or being a hacker, just keep doing it,

Choose comfort over fashion.

Mantra!

Listen with your eyes.

It’s no longer just about your skill set; it’s about your network, your image, and your personal brand.

Save Time by Being You

Golden!

Ask yourself what you are stopping yourself from being because you think you’ll never be done becoming.

Contribute to your community before expecting anything in return, and you may end up learning more from your mentees than your mentors!

“If you want it, get out there and build it” attitude in

A leader is a servant to the people around her, and not one of them. At the same time, she is the one others look to for inspiration and guidance. Make no mistake, leadership is a learned skill, not an inborn trait.

Think very hard about the people you surround yourself with.

“you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”

A leader’s job is to make good decisions about everything from which pencils to buy to which vision of your company to embrace. Whatever your framework for decisions is, include both ethics and practicality, and constantly refine.

Don’t not think.

Do not get so caught up in your idea that you forget to produce.

Do not start a company with your best friend. Start a company with someone who you think works as hard or harder than you, whose skills complement yours, and who has excellent communication habits.

Your physical and mental well-being are the fuel that lets you pursue your dreams; maintain them diligently.

your dreams about and joy in creating new projects and products do not drag down your goals—they fuel and supercharge them.

WOMEN ARE NOT DECOR