This week I start a new job as VP of Engineering, Apps at Clue!
I made the decision to leave a couple of months ago and the recent news has been hard. SoundCloud has been the best company to work for: amazing product, amazing people, amazing work environment… it was an incredible 5 years. I greatly appreciate my colleagues’ and the company’s support and wish them all the best of luck for their next steps.
How to summarise 5 amazing years in a blog post? Not perfectly! Here is a list of a few meaningful things that stand out as I look back now:
I learnt how to write better thanks to Ursula and Jean E.
I worked in a small team with my first senior woman engineer, Tiffany.
I got to work for a while in german with Tobi B and Moritz in the Payments Team.
My curiosity in any aspect of the technology and business was welcomed and I got to pick many brains, you know who you are, thank you.
I learnt that my views on gender, race and sexuality needed an overhaul. (Shout out to Clem for presenting about gender, sex and sexual orientation at our company demos!) I’m glad we were able to use this knowledge to improve the SoundCloud product, like the gender selection on the SoundCloud signup form.
I instigated anonymous code reviews for coding challenges in the engineering hiring process with my women-in-engineering peers, notably Emily G, Erik MO, Sean B and Rich.
I put more women on our company jobs site photos with my women-in-engineering and women-in-leadership peers, notably Sarah B.
I was mentored by a senior woman in leadership, Sonia, our VP of International.
I helped 16 women start a career in Software Engineering via Rails Girls Summer of Code together with around 100 colleagues[1], the longest serving coaches being Erik MO, Tiffany, Ellen and Sergio. Shout out to all the Rails Girls students, you taught us to mentor and enriched our work lives in many ways.
I ran Girls Day at SoundCloud twice, where we introduced high school girls to coding and careers in tech, with at least 50 colleagues supporting over those two events, notably Tiffany, Stefanie, Claudia, Julia, and Jen.
I spent my “self-allocated time” (previous called “hacker time”) working with my lovely open source SoundDrop crew and diving into operating systems, concurrency and networking with Tam, a Rails Girls alumni, who I would invite to the office Friday mornings.
I got to work indirectly with NASA!
I was told so many times by so many people regardless of seniority or role that I was doing good things and that I was a role model.
I made many friends.
Thank you to SoundCloud for enabling all those things. [2]
Thanks to the 4 engineering teams I was part of at SoundCloud, with whom I learnt a lot, laughed, worried, who covered for me and saw the best in me: Payments, Eng Comms, Growth and Security — we did some great work together!
Thanks to the Mothership Collective who gave me a captain hat and no fear of Rails at scale.
And thanks to the women-in-engineering diversity resource group: that was always so much more than work.
So why am I joining Clue?
I was put in contact with Clue because they were looking to add another VP of Engineering. I’ve dreamed of such a role in the past. Initially I wasn’t sure it was something I was ready for, but many people persuaded me that I was, notably Alexander G, my first manager at SoundCloud.
Clue is not just a well-designed menstrual cycle tracking app. It is a company that champions using science and data to break taboos and improve female health. I use Clue and it has unlocked a new perspective on myself, something I wish I had had as a teenager. It’s a mission I am proud to work on and I have amazing women leader role models like Ida Tin, CEO and Tina Egolf, CPO.
Although I’ve been working as an engineer the last 11 years, the biggest impact I have made has been with my organisational and community work. This next step is a chance for me to step outside my comfort zone and step up to organise a team around a mission. I feel well supported by my new team at Clue (especially as I have a co-VP, Jón!), and by the many mentors and peers I have been privileged to gain from my years at SoundCloud and ThoughtWorks.
I’ll learn and share all I can. Follow my future writings on medium!
[1] We hosted summer-of-code students and provided follow-on internships for 4 years (the 5th year is still going now!). Each team had at least 10 engineers coaching them at various stages but people from all parts of the company reached out to support them.
[2] There are at least 100 things and names I could mention. I hope I thanked everyone enough. So important to thank-and-celebrate as things happen!
