BlogSat

Black Panther is releasing on my birthday. I'll actually try to watch it on that day. I'm easily excited about movies, but I think this may be the most I've been looking forward to a movie in a long, long time. I've been watching the trailer twice with my son each night before putting him to bed for the last week. And it's also the first time I remember I've been watching out for early reviews and being relieved it was a good movie. (Phew, looks like it's really, really good  - I'm not allowing myself to read the reviews yet). Now, obviously there's a cinematic argument. The Black Panther is a great character - and was so well introduced in the Civil War movie . The trailers look really good. the soundtrack is probably most interesting I've heard in a long, long time  ..and the guy who directed Creed is going to direct a superhero movie!!!! Come on!! But here's a much simpler reason, I'm rooting so hard for this movie - ho

When I read  Susan Fowler's post last year, I was shocked. I couldn't believe a company of that size would tolerate such behavior - especially in Silicon Valley, where I thought people were supposed to be nicer! These were supposed to be my people. I knew most of them were increasingly not like me, but still... We discussed the post that week in my team meeting at work, and I brought it up in all my 1:1s the next week. What shocked me even more was the reaction of the women in my team - they didn't seem surprised that something like this could happen, or that it was crazy that the behavior was tolerated. While I know that men find ways to treat women terribly in all sort of different ways and places in society, I thought modern workplaces at least were safe. Over the next year, as revelation on revelation mounted and my own awareness grew - of the discrimination, the systematic preying on women, and the cover-ups that seemed the come from these companies, it was pretty

One of the things I've really enjoyed doing over the last year is teaching and presenting on the work I do more. I do it mostly because I enjoy doing it, but once in a while you hear back about the impact it had and feel better about the fact that you're taking the time to do it. Last year, I conducted a workshop on Product Management ( write up about it here). Within the last week, 2 people got in touch to tell me how that workshop actually helped them - one who used it to have a better summer internship and the other on how it helped him interview better and get a job offer because of it. 3 others also got in touch over the last month to ask about the materials since they're conducting trainings of their own. The materials themselves aren't perfect (my slides are really meant for presenting and not great reading material in themselves), but I figured if it might actually still help some folks - either to prep themselves or conduct these kinds of workshops. I