Affirming expertise
I was asked recently by a senior colleague if I know what a circuit breaker is. It was genuinely well intentioned; many engineers haven’t encountered them before. However, as a backend engineer with 15 years’ experience, 5 of those at a company with global scale, circuit breakers are a design pattern I’m very familiar with. So the question seemed odd, but I said “yes” and continued the conversation without thinking about it.
A couple of days later the memory of that conversation resurfaced, and I unexpectedly broke down crying. Not from this one small incident, but from the many small incidents over my career which sum up to me not feeling like I have the same expert standing as my men colleagues.
It reminded me of other conversations where I have been given the definition of a thread, or end-to-end encryption. The men, who are very nice people, did not intend to call my expertise into question by stating definitions. Their intention was to “state premises” as a foundation for the rest of the conversation. The problem is, after a decade of not feeling technical enough — of getting questions at conferences like “But are you deep into coding?” — being given basic definitions when you wouldn’t have given them yourself in the same situation, are a painful reminder of how women have to continually struggle to be seen as experts in our field.
To try and cope with these feelings, I shared this incident with my network, and got a wealth of sympathy in return. Women reached out to share their similar stories, helping me feel less alone. And many men in my network expressed dismay, and wanted to know how they could help.
With so many potential allies, I figured this is a good moment to encourage all of us to take action, by considering how we might make a habit of affirming the expert status of marginalised people in our industry.
To affirm is:
1. To declare positively; assert to be true.
2. To declare support for or belief in
as opposed to confirm:
To support or establish the certainty or validity of; verify.
I don’t need confirmation of my expert status: it’s self-evident. What I need is to be able to use my expertise without feeling that I have to prove it again and again. I need to be able to have the confidence to state a considered opinion, without expecting it to be dismissed or ignored because I’m not seen as credible. I need to be able to admit when I don’t know things, without that being construed as evidence of my lack of expertise in general. And I myself need to affirm the expertise of others who are affected by systemic bias, which might lead me to not immediately perceive them as experts.
So what can we do to avoid the trap of unintentionally disregarding someone’s expertise or competency? Here are some quick tips:
- Assume a common base of knowledge, but be approachable so people can comfortably ask if they need to.
It’s not easy. It’s a skill.
2. Find out your colleagues’ backgrounds. Learn their areas of expertise. Be curious.
Feel free to check my LinkedIn (maybe that gives me an incentive to keep it up to date!) Ask new teammates what are the things they are most proud of in their career so far, and what technical areas they are interested in and why.
For less experienced engineers, this might not be the best approach — I would love to hear from you about how to do this in a way that best respects engineers in the starting years of their careers.
3. If someone from a group who is marginalised in tech is giving a technical talk, try asking questions in a way that affirms their status as an expert on the topic they are covering.
For example, I once asked a speaker, “Do you know whether there are metrics exposed for xyz?”. I was trying to be kind in allowing them to easily say they don’t know, but later realised with shame that I was accidentally undermining their status as an expert. I used it as an opportunity for reflection, and after speaking with some friends about it decided I should have assumed they knew, and said instead “Are there metrics exposed for xyz?”
If you have more tips, or more resources, please comment below or do your own research and write your own blog posts! Reach out to your colleagues for feedback! You know people in the target affected group are already depleted in terms of their energy. All the help we can get to affirm all genders indiscriminately as experts in our industry is needed and appreciated.
Big thanks to those who have reached out and to my dear friend for helping me with the writing.
