The Adventures of Women in Tech by Alana Karen

Author:Alana Karen [Karen, Alana]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-63489-390-9
Publisher: Wise Ink Creative Publishing

Looking Ahead

Georgia is now where Ginny and Ching once were and is starting to think about what her career should be while having a family. “I am pregnant with my first, and so I’m really thinking a lot about how to make both career and motherhood work in the future.” She thinks her career will remain in tech because she likes the flexibility it supports—of going to the doctor when you need to, of arriving late as needed, of taking calls from home. “What exactly that looks like, I don’t know. I think as I learn more about parenthood and what I need to do in order to kind of have that healthy balance, I’ll figure more of that out.”

One thing she’s wary of is a job that requires her attention 24/7, even if the job is flexible. “This is always my joke about how much I love the flexibility; there is a dark side to it, which means because it is flexible and you can work from anywhere, you can work from anywhere, and so you’re always on in some sense. My joke with my job right now is that I have to tell somebody if I’m going to be on a plane for more than two hours, because truly being MIA for two hours, even on a weekend, is incomprehensible to people.”

She looks ahead and thinks about the obligations of both motherhood and her job. How will she be able to protect her time for either? “I certainly hear women talk about it more in regard to kids. Because it’s much harder to keep time sacred with their children.” While this can also apply to men, “I don’t hear men talk about it as emotionally as I hear women. I think not being able to know that you can shut off and go home and cook dinner and really be present, I have heard a lot of women struggle with.” She doesn’t know yet what this will mean for the future, but she’s thinking about it now in this time of her life.

Similarly, Carol is thinking about what happens if she has kids, and wonders if she would quit to spend more time with her child. This is a call she thinks she needs to wait to make, though. “Usually I like thinking about the future and trying to plan around it. [But] I realized that it doesn’t matter how much I plan because I’ll follow my heart.” For example, she knows an engineering director who has always been a very career-driven woman. “It changed after she had a kid. She decided to go for smaller opportunities so that she could spend more time with her kids.” Carol wants to wait and see how she feels, noting that once she’s in that situation, she’ll figure out what to do.

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