8. Navigating a Lasting Career: The Adventures of Women in Tech

Episode Transcript
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Alexis (00:05):
Hey, I'm Alexis Booth and welcome to the Breakout
Booth.
I was a senior manager atGoogle.
I'm a wife and a mother, and Ilearned the hard way If you're
not fired up, you're on hold.
I believe success is closerthan you think.
There's a set of skills andhabits you can grow to unlock

(00:26):
unbelievable outcomes.
In this podcast, we'll explorethem through real talk and bold
conversation, because I want tohelp you break out.
Hey there, folks, and welcome tothe Breakout Booth.
I'm Alexis Booth, and today weare going to discuss how to

(00:47):
navigate a lasting career.
Longevity and endurance are thetwo words I invite you to keep
in mind throughout the episode.
Now we'll specifically discussthis in the context of being a
woman in tech, but I believe alot of the themes we'll explore
are relevant to many differentindustries and paths, and it'll
be useful for you to listen in,no matter how you identify.

(01:10):
In case it's not obvious whyI'm focusing on women in tech,
well, it's who I am and it'swhat I've spent the past 25
years doing.
It's my own lived experience.
But beyond that, our guest fortoday literally wrote the book
on it.
In just a little bit, we'llbring Alana Karen to the mic.
She wrote this beautiful booktitled "the adventures of women

(01:35):
in tech how we got here and whywe stay.
In addition to getting myofficial thumbs up, it's won
several shiny awards and it'salso been celebrated in quite a
few different places and forums.
Alana is also currently workingon a fifth anniversary edition
of the book, which will includesome reflections on what has

(01:56):
happened in the years since shefirst published it.
But before we dive into ourdiscussion with Alana today, I'd
like to share some reflectionson my own adventures as a woman
in tech.
Going back through her bookhelped me realize that so many
of the things that I've lovedabout tech, as well as the

(02:16):
things I've struggled with overthe years many of which I've
never talked about with bossesor colleagues because I thought
they'd make me look weak areactually common threads that I
share with so many other people.
Since I love the rule of threes, that's how we're going to talk
about my experiences today thegood, the bad and the ugly.

(02:40):
First off, let's talk about thegood stuff
.
I love solving technicalproblems.
Tech gave me the opportunity totinker and play on a daily
basis, but not only did it giveme access to fascinating
problems and a constant streamof puzzles to wrap my brain
around.
I actually got paid to do it.

(03:01):
It's been incredibly satisfyingand gratifying to do tech work.
Even as a young kid, I wasnaturally drawn to toys and
challenges that fit in thespaces of math, science and the
arts.
When I was in elementary school, I used to spend hours upon
hours playing ColecoVision thatis old school gaming right there

(03:25):
, nintendo and later on Sega,although I gravitated toward
games that involved solvingpuzzles, not guns and killing.
In high school I wrote mathprograms on my TI-85 graphing
calculator.
It wasn't part of anyassignment.
No one told me to do it, butsomeone else showed me something

(03:46):
they'd made and I wondered if Icould do it too.
It turns out I could and Ithought it was the coolest thing
ever.
In college, my favorite classin my entire four years of study
was Java programming.
So if I were to describe why Ilove tech in bigger terms, I

(04:06):
love the challenge of problemsolving and I especially love
tech because the problems in itultimately have a binary answer.
You build athing and it either works or it
doesn't.
You know right away if yourcode compiles and whether or not
the application you wrotesatisfies the set of

(04:28):
requirements or plans that youimagined when you designed it
For me.
I love the types of problemsthat I've been able to work on
in tech.
On to our second point, let'stalk about the bad.
I am a rarity as a woman intech, and that's not a good
thing.
It's lonely and I've often feltlike I'm on an island all by

(04:51):
myself.
Also, tell you what I'm notalone in feeling alone.
It's why community andbelonging are so incredibly
important for us to forge andfind as women in tech.
As for exactly how lonely it is, a quick round of research
suggests that women currentlyhold somewhere between 20 and 30

(05:14):
percent of tech jobs on thewhole, which is pretty
consistent with what I've heardover the years.
So, basically, for every onewoman in tech, there's three
guys, and whileI do want to celebrate the fact
that many of the men I have hadthe privilege of working with
over the years are fantastichuman beings, but there have

(05:36):
also been plenty of dudes andbros that repeatedly talk over

me mansplain things problem: that sexual no, (05:41):
undefined
I really don't need to hear fromyou, or they exhibit a
particularly irritating qualitywhere they don't hear something
valuable I have to say, and thentwo minutes later they echo the
very same point I just made andget rewarded with a room full
of ahas or a thing that you'llnever hear me describe in a

(06:06):
positive sense violent agreement.
What the hell even is that?
And if I had a nickel for everytime that I was the only woman
in a work meeting, let's justsay I would have a very, very
heavy piggy bank, very heavypiggy bank.

(06:29):
There is an incredible wealth ofresearch that demonstrates the
value of diversity.
It is beneficial to a company'sbottom line and if you're
creating products for the masses.
50% of human beings on theplanet are female, and herein is
the difficulty of being ararity as a woman in tech and
the reason that I've filed it inthe bad category.

(06:51):
There are plenty of other folkswho do not believe in the value
of diversity.
It's a problem that definitelyqualifies as outside of my
control, which means it'ssomething I've inevitably had to
learn how to deal with, and Icould easily talk about all the
twists and turns I made on mylonely path as a woman in tech.

(07:14):
But I want to make sure wetouch upon one other topic today
, and that is the ugly.
There are several deep anddifficult challenges that I'd
put in this category, but theone I'm going to focus on here
is an age-old problem Sexualharassment.

(07:35):
I personally endured a lot ofthings, especially early on in
my career, that made itdifficult to stick it out as a
young woman in tech.
I was hit on, I heardinappropriate jokes and I
experienced microaggressions sooften, especially in the first
10 years of my career, that Isimply learned to filter out the

(08:00):
noise and I was conditioned tothink that doing so was part of
the job.
I had to develop resilience andthick skin real fast if I
wanted to survive and tough itout.
Within four months of startingmy first job after college, I
was groped by a senior colleagueafter he told me a totally

(08:22):
inappropriate not-safe-for workstory.
I've been stalked by a coworkerand pursued by someone else
persistently, despite turningthem down many times, and I
stuck it out for far too long ina particularly gross workplace
where in the first week of myjob there, my boss made jokes

(08:43):
with sexual innuendo about me toa client that we were pitching,
and when I walked into hisoffice for a one-on-one meeting
in that first week there was abig screen TV on the wall
playing porn I'm not joking.
And when I made a stink aboutit, the guy played it off like
it was my problem that Icouldn't just avert my eyes and

(09:06):
shut my ears.
He totally gaslit me in themoment, but I stuck it out
because I needed the job.
I was reeling from being laidoff and I was already swimming
in thousands of dollars of debt.
Sadly, there are many otherwomen who have experienced far
worse things than I did.
I do suppose I did learn onething early on as a result of

(09:31):
all of this, which is how tohave direct and uncomfortable
conversations with people whoare way out of line, but I
wouldn't wish these experiencesupon anyone.
It's also worth noting thefirst four places I worked were
all incredibly small businesses,and only one of them even had

(09:52):
an HR person.
This is not a department, itwas an individual.
So while the challenges andmistrust of HR departments is
well known, it's also not greatwhen you're at a business that's
too small to Karen evenhave one.

Alana (10:08):
Now

Alexis (10:09):
, thankfully, the proactive acts
that I took to call out badbehavior and take a stand
against these men made it clearI wasn't interested.
I wasn't having it and for themost part, it prevented future
occurrences, but it also left mewith an overwhelming feeling
that I always had to beready to defend myself, and I

(10:33):
learned a necessary butunfortunate habit of putting up
walls to protect myself as soonas I stepped into the building
of my workplace.
It wasn't until I'd alreadybeen at Google for several years
so this was well beyond 10years into my career that I was
finally able to set down my maskof self-preservation and start

(10:58):
bringing my full self to work.
There were two male leaders inparticular that I consider
myself incredibly lucky to haveworked under Alex and Patrick.
They created a safe environmentat work that made all the
difference in the world for me.
So, in case either of you everhappened to hear this episode,

(11:20):
thank you.
You changed my life in far moreways than you probably know.
Now, let's be clear no oneshould be put through these
types of situations, but thereality is it happens, and I
think your best bet is to beprepared for it.
My number one piece of adviceis to take a self-defense class.

(11:42):
If you haven't, they're a greatway for you to boost your own
sense of confidence that you canhandle an unexpected situation
where your body is at risk.
Now there's plenty more storiesthat I would love to share with
you about my career journey,but they are simply going to

(12:03):
have to wait for another time,because I'm super excited to
bring to the mic the one andonly Alana Karen.
Thank you for joining me todayand welcome to the Breakout
Booth.

Alana (12:19):
Thank you for having me.

Alexis (12:20):
Whenever you're bringing someone up on stage or you're
getting ready for a firstone-on-one with someone, what
are some of the things that youdo to help get them comfortable?
A first one-on-one with someonewhat are some of the things
that you do to help get themcomfortable?

Alana (12:29):
I like really rely on humor maybe too much, honestly.
So I think I'm always like alittle jokey about something.
I'm a little self-deprecating.
I think I got used to that atGoogle because as I got longer
tenured I found that a lot oftimes people knew that and were

(12:51):
already sort of pre-scared of me, which is hilarious because I'm
like five foot one and reallynot that scary.
But I think that just thatsense of like wow, she's been
here 10 years, she's been here,however, long.
So I think I just got into ahabit of sort of being a little
jokey, a little self-deprecating.
A good amount of eye contactunless they are someone who

(13:13):
doesn't love eye contact and Ican usually pick up on that
pretty quickly just payingattention to physical cues and
usually just like easy questionsat first Life, anything you
would just know.
So that's usually my go-toingredient.

Alexis (13:29):
All right.
Well, I love that.
That is awesome.
Alana is a well-known femaleleader in the world of tech.
She spent the majority of hercareer - 23 years at Google! But
the last 16 of that or so wasas an executive.
So not only were you shapingthe people who were on your
teams, you were actually shapingthe company as a whole, which

(13:49):
is just really cool.
And over the last 10 years orso, Alana has really leaned in
to giving back and stepping upas a role model and as an
advocate to women in tech acrossthe globe.
I never got the chance toactually work with Alana

(14:10):
directly when we were at Google,but I do recall a discussion
that she graciously hosted forthe women's ERG that I'd
co-founded.
She'd shared some of the keymessages from the book and
reflected on people's reactionsto it.
But I also remember asking aquestion at the end of the
session, because the discussionwas right after my first time of
getting rejected in my pursuitof becoming a director there.

(14:32):
I was still nursing an openwound because I didn't get it.
But what Alana offered in thatdiscussion was compassion.
She gave me some advice and itcame from her own experience of
having gone through similarstuff in her own experience and,
perhaps most importantly, shemade me feel heard.

(14:52):
She didn't know me, but I knewshe cared about what I was
feeling and what I had to say,and she knew what I was
struggling with.
And so she couldn't give me apromotion, but she gave me the
next best thing that I couldhave asked for.
Can you share a little bit moreabout yourself and the things
that you're most passionateabout with our listeners?

Alana (15:13):
Sure, I mean, you covered my career very well.
I got into tech notaccidentally, but my educational
background had nothing to dowith it.
I was a history major, I didlike creative writing.
I could have minored in Frenchbut I gave up, like I was very
much humanities.

(15:33):
But in college I got interestedin the then new world of web
design and creating websites forthe world and self-taught
myself HTML, some JavaScript etcetera, and just forged a path
there for myself on the side,which ended up becoming my

(15:55):
entrance into tech later, firstas a webmaster and then at
another startup and then atGoogle.
So I think that I'm just like abig proponent of people of
different backgrounds exploringtech.
Because of that, I think itadded a lot to my career.
It's a huge part of my identity.

(16:16):
I fancy myself as creative,even though I didn't necessarily
go down that career path, and Ithink, separately from that, I
am a mom.
I have three kids, two dogs anda cat, which you know you never
know when they'll show up, sowe might hear them at some point
and I think that gave me likeanother balancing characteristic

(16:37):
to my journey through tech.
At the same time that I wasbecoming a leader, I also became
a parent, and so I think whatyou were talking about in terms
of sensing that I really caredwas a characteristic throughout
that I was building this.
What would it be to be apeople-focused leader, and what

(16:57):
would that look like in theworkplace?
That was often very business orfinance-focused or
product-focused.
What would that look like toforge that for myself?
So definitely some big themesyou've picked up on there, cool.

Alexis (17:10):
Well, thank you so much for being here today.
Let's start off this discussionexploring some of the backstory
around the book that you wroteseveral years ago now.
What led you to do the work inthe first place, and what's the
reaction been to your book?

Alana (17:27):
I was really annoyed.
It's always how I start, it'seven in the book jacket, because
I do think sometimes a passionproject.
I was working full time.
My youngest was like maybethree years old.
I think taking on something likewriting a book sometimes needs
a real spark, and for me it wasannoyance, both where I saw the

(17:52):
overall market heading but alsojust personally for myself, and
what I was seeing was that theMe Too movement, which had been
very useful in getting outstories that needed to be out,
was also producing kind of achilling effect in the media,
where the articles that I wasseeing had sexy headlines like

(18:15):
can women even make it in tech?
Like should women come to tech,and I was like, who are these
articles benefiting?
Like, when you are an editor ata newspaper, you don't
understand the high schoolers,the college kids, the women in
tech that are going to see thatand what that's going to mean to

(18:36):
them.
And so, instead of the feelingbeing like, oh, here are the
challenges we need to address,it was much more like oh, maybe
you shouldn't even bother ladies, even though most industries
have challenges and that's justknown for.
So it was just sexy headlinesand people not realizing what it
meant.

(18:56):
And, at the same time, when youlooked at books that were out
there, often the books capturedthe stories of women who'd made
it to the tippy top but didn'tnecessarily represent the
majority that hadn't.
And I also wasn't seeingstories about women of all
different types, all differentbackgrounds, all different paths

(19:19):
, non-technical and technicalwho journeyed through tech.
And I just had one of thesemoments, kind of triggered by my
own angst, where I was like Ican write that book.
I know people.
I call it Google hubris, by theway, because I've been at
Google so long that you start tojust think like there's a
problem, I can solve it, I getit.

(19:40):
And I don't think I would havethought that way earlier in my
career.
I think it definitely was likesomething I learned along the
way, you know.
So I just started doing it.
I did it in my evenings, I didholidays, I did it all the time
I wrote it.
I, you know, figured out how toself-publish when I realized I
wouldn't be able to get apublisher.
That's a whole anecdote in atraditional industry.

(20:02):
But in the end, I thought thereception was what I was looking
for, honestly, which was Iwould hear back from people who
said, oh yeah, I like saw myself, or I wouldn't have done this,
or I wouldn't have thought Icould do it if I hadn't read
that at that time, or even ifthe book as a whole you know,

(20:25):
they weren't huge commenters onit they would be like that story
that I saw that story wasreally helpful.
And so I think that's what Iwas looking for was really this,
this thing that if you werelooking for yourself or you were
looking for evidence that youcould belong, that you would
find it.

Alexis (20:44):
I love that.
It's really cool.
It's funny.
You're saying you wereirritated or you were annoyed.
I'd actually say that my ownreasons for the podcast.
I spent my own second half ofGoogle as a senior manager.
I was responsible for growingteams and hiring people, but I,

(21:13):
as a woman who wanted to havemore women around me, I and the
recruiting teams that I wasworking with we could not find
women to bring in.
And it wasn't just a matter ofwe had these like really diverse
sets of candidates who werecoming through and it was just
like at that last interview,like nope, we're gonna give it
to the guy.

(21:34):
When you think about hiring,it's a funnel.
It starts with all of the leadsand the potential you know
people you're going after.
There were no women in it andin fact it wasn't just women, it
was diversity of all forms, andwe did a lot of things trying
to go after this.
I did a lot of my own personaloutreach.
I was trying to find people.

(21:54):
So if they weren't applying,they must be out there somewhere
.
Let me go find them.
I could not find them.
And ultimately what it led towas I was unsuccessful in
building a team that was asdiverse as I wish that I could
have, and what I realized isthat if I wanted to actually
make a difference, I had to getmyself inserted earlier in the

(22:16):
pipeline and actually make adifference.
Too many young women and girlsare dropping out of tech way
before they would have ever beenable to send me a resume if
they're even getting to collegeto pursue technical fields.
Or, like your experience, youdidn't get a comp sci degree but
actually you have the abilityto do tech and you picked it up

(22:38):
later on.
There's all sorts of differentprofiles of people who have
excelled and done amazing things.
Now the second part of my story.
I've talked about burnout in aprevious episode, but the long
and short of it is I had to hitrock bottom in my mental health
to get there, and then I had tofind a coach who was capable of

(23:00):
actually calling me out andhelping me unwind all of these
pieces along the way.
This is not something that weteach people how to do and, in
fact, if you find yourself beingburned out as an adult, what
you have to do is unwind abelief system that started in
your childhood and you have tolike dismantle it and start over

(23:22):
.
And it's a long process.
Ultimately it's with a lot oflittle steps along the way, but
that's really what I'm trying tohelp bring to the forefront
here is helping people see theselittle tiny things that can
start becoming bigger and biggershifts, because I think this is
also part of this set of skillsthat you need to be able to

(23:43):
sustain a long career.
If you can't manage your energyand you're hitting burnout, you
have to change what's going onbefore you can actually fix it.

Alana (23:53):
Yeah, absolutely.
And I don't think a lot of uswere taught to value ourself or
think about what long-term wouldlook like.
I think we were very muchtaught to just win, win, win,
win, win, succeed, succeed,succeed and then you will be
successful in life.
And I grew up in New Jerseywhere no one even brought up

(24:17):
happiness for the record.

Alexis (24:19):
T he armpit of America, as I sometimes - sorry if you're
from New Jersey!

Alana (24:27):
I don't know if any East Coasters are listening.

Alexis (24:29):
Well, I lived in New York for a long time and
definitely, my Midwest mindsetchanged a lot when I was living
there and I came back from

Alana (24:38):
There was no East Coast sense that you were aiming for
happiness, to be clear.
Like, this is very much like theother parts of the country
maybe, cool.

Alexis (24:49):
Let's come back to our discussion here.
I would love to go into all ofthe different skills and habits
that are in the book, but sincewe have problems with attention
in our culture today, we'regoing to go to shortcuts.
What are the shortcuts that wecan all take?
What are the hacks and thetricks?
Because we just need to gostraight to the punchline.

Alana (25:10):
Straight to the punchline .
Yeah, I talk about - afterhaving interviewed 80 women and
talking about their challengesand things that they learned
along the way, I boiled it downto five main tools that, if
people were attentive to, it,would certainly help them in
their careers, because itclearly helped these women as
they formed them along the way.

(25:31):
And often it would take a whilefor these women to realize that
like they needed to work onsomething.
So can we just cut to the chase,tell you what they were all
earlier and speed this all upfor us, and the five things were
resilience, the ability to getup when you fall down, the
ability to like keep going afteryou don't get that promo right.
Number two self-marketingmarketing 101, something that

(25:56):
women often either don't learnor when they first try to do it
are basically like put down forit or face penalties.

Alexis (26:05):
It gets called bragging or we're trying to be too humble
, Like we value humility whichcomes at the expense of actually
letting people know what you doand you're good at.
Absolutely.

Alana (26:17):
Related
Ask for what you want.
Ask for what you need.
Fourthly, finding support.
A lot of us go it alone andthen, in fact, it's a value of
independence of us go it aloneand then, in fact, it's a value
of independence, but then thatends up harming us over the long
run.
And then, lastly, owning yourawesome, which is probably the
thing that takes the longest todo in our careers, but to feel

(26:39):
inherently that we are amazingand valuable without anyone
telling us for it, and that weare inherently worth the other
things.
So if I'm giving you quick hacks, I would probably say finding
support.
I think it's probably the toolthat naturally leads to the

(26:59):
other ones.

Alexis (27:00):
Sure.

Alana (27:01):
And it can go in all kinds.
I think sometimes we over talkabout, for instance, mentorship
or sponsorship, which can soundlike a lot of effort, and like
you're marrying someone and Iprefer to talk to people about
speed dating.
What about if you just havelittle interactions with lots of

(27:22):
people?
You request a half hourone-on-one because you saw that
they're great at givingpresentations and you want to
learn their quick tips.
You ask for, like, a coffeechat because you saw them
describe their work really welland you're trying to figure out
how you describe your workbetter and you just want to have
a conversation about that,right, I think too often we're

(27:44):
like is this person wonderfuland amazing at all things and
would they take the time to talkwith me?
Oh my gosh, I'm nobody, I won'treach out, yeah.

Alexis (27:54):
I actually love the way that you just described even the
.
.
.
maybe you're not even lookingfor a mentor, or at least out of
the gate, that's not whatyou're asking for.
You're simply going like, Alana, wow, I saw you do this
presentation.
It was so amazing.
How did you do that?
Can we have just, you know, 20,30 minute chat, like I'd love

(28:17):
to know how you got to that.
And so you're like, oh, I couldtalk about that for hours, like
sure, and I appreciate howforthright you're being in this
request, but I think one of thethings that I've always had a
challenge with is I know I needmore mentors, or I'm supposed to
have more of them, but it feel,you know, like the alternative

(28:39):
of what I've always thought it'ssupposed to be is like hey,
Alana, you don't know me.
You're really cool, can you bemy mentor?

Alana (28:48):
Totally.
Will you be my mommy.
Like that little book where,like you, just like wander
around asking people to be yourmommy.

Alexis (28:53):
That does not work.

Alana (28:54):
Yeah, no, it's terrifying .
And so it sets up this likeweird blocker that most people
are never able to get over,whereas I think that this is so
much easier.
Like you, you've paid attentionto something that you like
about the person.
You go, you compliment themabout it and you ask for a
minimal amount of time and mostpeople not everyone, but most

(29:16):
people will say yes to that,mainly because you complimented
them, but also because you'rerespecting their time.
It sounds finite.
It's easy to do right Now.
If you click, you can always tryto translate that into like oh,
you know what I'd love could,could we do this quarterly?
That was so valuable.
You could always try to turn itinto a long term relationship,

(29:38):
but either way, you've builtthat connection and the next
time you have a question aboutthat, you could go back and say
hey, I remember we had thisgreat conversation about this.
I have this follow-up, and justbuilding a bunch of those
starts to build you this networkthat I think then you might be
able to do the next thing, whichis build a little board for

(29:59):
yourself, right, like you've gotmaybe five people you go to
when you're about to make a jobchange and they help talk to you
, and then maybe it graduates tothe next thing where you've got
a couple people who will callyou on your crap and say, hey,
you're not describing your workwell.

Alexis (30:15):
So I think it's just a great beginning, stepping stone,
and it gets the fear out ofnetworking which most of us and
I love where you're going withthis too of their very tactical
interactions and they can be inthe context of a much deeper and
longer relationship, but it's Ineed time to talk about this
particular thing.
I think one of the things that,as I'd signed up for mentor

(30:38):
programs and I offered myself ondifferent forums that we had
mentoring and I'd have peopleshow up and they're like, Hi,
I'm here.
I was like, okay, step one ofthis discussion is for you to
tell me what you want, andoftentimes that wound up being
like, oh well, what do I want?
Well, what should I want?

(30:58):
Coming back to some of yourshortcuts, it's really you know,
knowing what it is that youwant.
I'd say for me some of myshortcuts that I would talk
about, there's really two ofthem, and the first one is
notice the things that I'mcurious about or that bring me
energy, or, on the flip side,notice the things that deplete

(31:19):
me.
And then part two is do more ofthe good stuff and less of the
bad stuff.
.
You know, when I was burned out,literally the way that I got
through it I took a week off ofwork and I dug up my yard.
I was like your dog.
I was planting shrubbery andflowers.

Alana (31:38):
I like how you said shrubbery.

Alexis (31:40):
Shrubbery.
So, I was like getting my handsdirty and then, over the course
of the next several months, Iwatched things grow and I also
watched a lot of things die andit was like, oh, I guess that
didn't work, let's try somethingelse.
But it was this.
.
.
it was this like beautifulthing.
I'd never gotten into gardeningand suddenly I had this like
wonderful thing that justbrought me joy and energy and it

(32:02):
was something to look forwardto.
It keeps you moving forwardrather than stagnating in a
place that, ultimately, whenyou're stagnating, those are the
things that are depleting you,those are the things that are
not filling your life with joyand goodness.

Alana (32:19):
The only thing I will say is and I think you're treating
this quite healthily I have seenpeople use it unhealthily,
where they literally don't wantto do anything they don't want
to do, and then you're coachingin the opposite, which is like
well, every job has some percentof treachery,

Alexis (32:37):
100%.
Well, not 100% of the job, 100%, agree with you.

Alana (32:41):
Yeah, you can never have like a hundred, like there's
always a 20% of record keeping,20% of something manual Like,
and I think that I would seepeople misperceive that if you
were getting more senior, youwould stop doing those things,
you would graduate out of them.
And then they would tellthemselves the story that they

(33:01):
were too senior for that, andthen I would have to say, as
like a senior director, no, no,no, every job has this stuff.
But I like what you're talkingabout in terms of your energy,
right Like you are payingattention to what gives you
energy and you are trying tomake more and more of your job
reflect that.

Alexis (33:20):
I agree with you.
I also do personally think,when I go back in my own career
and I look at other people, I dothink that there are periods
that you definitely need todouble down and like really dig
deep into things that are hardif you're going to grow and get
better.
And I do think you shouldalways be focusing on maximizing
the positives and the goodthings that you have.

(33:43):
But ultimately, if you don'taddress the things that you're
not good at or you're not well,it's really if you're not
focusing on or you're not well,it's really if you're not
focusing on progressing thosethings they will hold you back.
So I do think that's a reality,but it's not a shortcut.
That's actually like the someof the tough stuff that I think
you need to do.

Alana (34:00):
Yeah, a little bit of a hidden, hidden problem that
could get you later.

Alexis (34:04):
All right.
So you have been working on afifth anniversary edition of
your book.
Can you give us a littlepreview of what you are
expecting in it?

Alana (34:14):
Yeah, a little sneak peek .
So, like I said earlier, thefirst book really focused on
this kernel of a problem, whichwas the story of belonging, and
the book really focused on thentelling stories about people
from all different backgroundsmaking their way into tech.
All different jobs, alldifferent paths, Then some of

(34:37):
the challenges that they faceand the skills that help them.
But overall, a pretty positivetilt on the whole.
Come to tech because you couldand it's and people can have
meaningful careers here anddon't tell yourself you can't
right Like you could belong toyou.

(34:58):
Fast forward five years and Ifelt like maybe a little bit
more had to be written, Becausetech has gone through a journey
where a lot of people arefeeling let down, disappointed,
and some of it has to do withthe maturation of big tech

(35:18):
becoming quite traditional.
Some of it has to do with whathappened during the whole
pandemic arc with getting moreflexibility and then having it
retract, taken away and nowhaving to come back to the
office.
Some of it has to do with theoverall product direction of

(35:39):
tech.
Is it really solving theworld's problems?
What's happening with AI?
Are we creating more problemsthan we are solving?
So there's all kinds of aspectsto it, but I felt like not
having written about that andtalking about oh, do you want
tech?
What's going on with it, whatis our journey through it, what

(36:02):
are our paths through it andwhat has happened Like a little
bit of group therapy what hashappened in tech over the last
handful of years giving peopledoubts, pause, et cetera and how
is that then relating to howwe're thinking about whether we
want to stay in tech, leave tech, et cetera?

(36:23):
So a bit of a fast forward fiveyears.
Oh, wait a second.
Where are we with all of this?
And I just felt pretty hauntedby the fact that if I didn't
write more, that it would end upbeing this weird like archaic
view of tech.

(36:44):
But also I liked the idea ofcoming back to it five years
later.
There was something pleasingabout this idea that if you're
talking about an adventure ofwomen in tech, the adventure is
long, the adventure will haveups and downs, and where are we
on that journey.
So I'm adding a few chaptersthat really focus on that sort

(37:05):
of history of where we are, thetrust loss that we're seeing in
tech as an industry, but alsothe tech major, tech employers,
and what's that mean for thespace?
And then where we go from here.
What are the different pathswomen seem to be taking?
Honestly, I will say that theaddition is probably quite a bit
more gender neutral, because Ido think all genders are

(37:28):
probably facing very similarquestions in this regard, but
women continue to lag in all themajor metrics.
Minorities continue to lag inall the major metrics in tech,
so I still think it might bemore prevalent in certain places
, and so I'm continuing myminority focus take.

Alexis (37:46):
I think it's really cool, the first one is really
you can belong.
The additional chapters, itsounds like, will be more like
do you choose to belong?

Alana (37:58):
You chose to, and I talk a lot about agency in the
addition, because I do thinkthat one of the things tech was
really benefiting from was thatit was the hottest thing around
and that then all the companiesreally made it seem like an
imperative everything that theywere doing, and that it was an

(38:21):
imperative to be your everything.
You would succeed.
And that was true for a lot ofpeople for a while not everyone,
but it was a pretty common taleto hear people join tech and
grow quickly and continue tomake more and more money.
But all of a sudden the storieschanged.

(38:41):
All of a sudden the stories arelike well, maybe you joined and
then you were laid off, ormaybe you were employed by that
company for years and then oneday they laid you off with no
notice, right, and that reallybreaks the relationship that I
think people have had with theircompany and made them feel
often very powerless and maybethey always were, by the way.

(39:03):
So maybe this is just a harshawakening, but I think it's a
really interesting thing tothink about now.
Well, what agency do you havein this and where else would you
go?
What else would you do?
What could you do and stilljourney in tech if you're not
liking where you were, and soit's been good to dig into, well
, what's really interestingabout these two different

(39:24):
dimensions you're taking.

Alexis (39:26):
We talked in my burnout episode and there's three
components of burnout.
One of them is a lack of agency.
So the choice, the feeling likeyou have a choice the reality
is, you cannot control all ofthe things but the sense and the
belief that you do have achoice and that you can you know

(39:46):
direct where you're going withthings.

Alana (39:48):
Yeah.

Alexis (39:49):
Yeah.
The second one is communityHaving a place that you belong,
having people.
So even if things are terribleat work, that there's at least
someone that you can gocommiserate with.
That counts.
Like you have your tribe, youhave your people that you can be

(40:09):
with.
The third one is actuallyoverwork and overwhelm, because
as you get more and moredepleted, you actually have to
work harder and harder and yousort of fall into this pit of
despair.
I do think that a lot of whatpeople are reporting in tech
really ultimately speaks toburnout, and you're actually
addressing two out of the threepillars of what comprises

(40:32):
burnout.
You may not have meant tospecifically address it from
that standpoint, but it actuallyaligns very well.

Alana (40:41):
Yeah, and I think that the real thing about burnout
usually is that it's notnecessarily the hours that you
work.
It's the feeling of excitementof what you're working on and
that you're in it and you'repart of it and you get it and

(41:01):
you believe in it.
And I think tech reallybenefited from having everyone
in that belief system for solong.

Alexis (41:11):
Oh, totally, it's a virtuous cycle.
Actually, your products arebetter.
You wind up doing, I mean, likeGmail didn't exist, except that
people were like, no, we haveto do this! No one assigned it
to them.

Alana (41:23):
Google News is another one Like oh, we should have done
that better.
I'll just do it on my weekend,right?
So I think that that's reallybeen degrading and, honestly,
everything that these CEOs aredoing is a little bit misplaced
to try to get that back, butthat's a whole other episode.

Alexis (41:45):
Cool.
I'm very, very excited to readmore of what you have to say
here.
I mean, I think the other thinghere too is as a parent I have
seen some of the more negativeimpacts of tech.
Like I think about the book,Jonathan Haight?
I don't know how you say hisname, do you know the book The
Anxious Generation, How theGreat Rewiring of Childhood is
Causing an Epidemic of MentalIllness, it's basically speaking

(42:14):
to the presence of mobilephones and social media and how
much time children are spendingon this.
The rates of anxiety haveskyrocketed in children since
that became a common thing.
We are starting to see and cometo grips and actually make

(42:34):
realizations of some of thesenegative impacts.
It's not like anyone set out tosay, I'm going to launch these
things and destroy our children.
That was never the plan, butit got used and adopted in ways
that were .
,

Alana (42:54):
Right, right.
And I do write about how techthen was slow to accept that
unintended consequences they arein fact responsible for, and
that has degraded trust in theindustry.
Teenagers, when surveyed, havevery low trust in tech companies
.
So they are self-aware, maybemore self-aware than the adults.

Alexis (43:17):
Probably more self-aware , because this is what they know
.

Alana (43:21):
But I think it's interesting to think about.
If you've got generations nowgrowing up with it and they're
skeptical, what is that going tomean for the future?
I think there's someinteresting things that we'll
see play out over the next fewdecades.

Alexis (43:36):
Yeah, very interesting.
All right.
So another thing I'd like totouch upon here.
Throughout the podcast, I amexploring this idea of power
moves.
So these are past actions thatyou took that wound up changing
your trajectory.
Somehow they have to be in thepast, because you're making
different decisions and movesall the time.

(43:57):
You never know which ones areactually going to be the most
meaningful or impactful.
Can you think of any powermoves that have made a big
difference in your life orcareer?

Alana (44:08):
Well, the one that I thought of right away was when I
made my first big pivot atGoogle.
So I had organically grown forabout the first 10 years at
Google, first on the front linesof being essentially a customer
service rep for our ads product, but pretty early on taking on

(44:30):
a project around documenting adspolicy which turned into a
full-time role creating,implementing and maintaining
policies for ads and otherproducts, and I organically
started to become a manager andultimately got supported for the

(44:51):
director promo for thatorganization.
But I had essentially sort ofstuck with the same thing,
riding the initial rocket shipand taking it about as far as I
could before my firstintentional okay, what's next?
And I think the power move init was feeling that okay, I've

(45:17):
done this 10 years in thisfunction in this team, but I'm
going to look elsewhere and I'mgoing to market my skills from
that as general strong skills,meaning like I'm not going to
look for another job in policy.
I'm not going to go tosomething highly correlated like

(45:40):
legal necessarily.
I'm going to say this job wasdecision making boot camp.
I ran internal teams thatsupported all kinds of
escalations and questions.
I was involved in productdevelopment and worked closely
with engineering and highlycross-functional teams and

(46:02):
negotiations right.
So I took the core of that andremarketed it and landed an
internal role elsewhere atGoogle in a totally new product
we were doing Google Fiber andessentially a somewhat different
function, although it was stilloperations.
I was going to run customersupport and installs in home

(46:26):
installations, so direct withconsumers for Google Fiber.
Now there were parts of thatthat were a ginormous leap and
benefited from my tenure atGoogle, my great reputation
within Google and the fact thatI knew internal systems very
well and that was partiallysomething that they wanted to

(46:48):
see.
But the fact that I had theconfidence to remarket myself,
that I had the confidence tofigure out how to describe my
skills, that I just kind of didmy own independent research,
figured out what was wrong withthe ISP customer service
industry and walked in with astrategy right Like.

(47:08):
I think there were things inthat that I really had to learn
along the way in those first 10years about marketing my skills
and about having the confidence.
And I will say that I thinkthere was a little bit of effort
sprinkled in where I wasn'tgoing to go back to the other
role for sure for variousreasons, and I'd already been at

(47:31):
Google 10 years.
So if it didn't work out, whereI wasn't going to go back to
the other role for sure forvarious reasons, and I'd already
been at Google 10 years.
So if it didn't work out, if Icouldn't find anything else,
okay fine, maybe that was theend of my Google journey.
I wasn't not stressed out aboutit.
I was somewhat stressed out.
I was going to come back for mysecond maternity leave and
maybe I wasn't going to have ajob.
But I think that littlesprinkle of like well, let's see

(47:53):
, worst thing that can happen isit doesn't work out and I'm
looking for a job in the openmarket, right Like I think that
that helped me.
Just take risks, throw myselfout there and see what happened.
And yeah, I think that's thefirst one I thought of.
Just like, go out there andtell the story you want and
they'll take you or they don't.

Alexis (48:14):
Out of curiosity, how long was the process?
So, like once, you decided Idon't want to go back.
Though was it just while youwere out on leave that you were
working through this, or wasthis a period of a more
elongated period that you wentthrough?

Alana (48:24):
I mean you could answer it different ways, because the
the job search like fromstarting the job search to
starting the job was only acouple months, so that part was
pretty rapid.
But for probably about twoyears I'd been starting to sense
like, oh, maybe I'm gettingtowards the end of this journey.
And then I got reorg'd into anorganization that then ended up

(48:52):
really convincing me.
It was time to go the way.
Organizations, oh sure.
And right before I was going togo out on maternity leave, my
then manager, in a very sort ofMachiavellian way, revealed his
master plan, and it was aboutripping apart my team,
regardless of what I thought orsaid or anything.

(49:12):
And I was like, okay, I meanlike I was upset.
Sure, I was also super pregnantand hormonal.
So thanks for waiting until Iwas like you were.

Alexis (49:22):
You were going to be out for a while anyway.
What control do you have overthat?

Alana (49:27):
Eight and a half months pregnant to reveal your master
plan.
Yeah, I was going to be out andand I I basically had to march
back to my managers and be likeprepare, because I'm out, right.
Um.
So the whole thing wasn't great, but I think that it I had been
warming up to the idea, to thefact that, like I was probably
getting towards the tail end ofmy energy and interest, like I

(49:49):
was probably getting towards thetail end of my energy and
interest, and then there was aforcing function, and the
forcing function helped me getmy ducks in a row and figure out
what was next, in a way that ifthere hadn't been, if it had
all been nice and everyone wassupportive, you know, like maybe
I would have dragged it out, ornot even knowingly, but just

(50:11):
like I would have had the energyto keep going, even if it
wasn't sparking me quite as much.
So in the end, I think it allcame together as it should, but
there were definitely some likebad things that forced it and
then meant that I mentally waslike great, I'm going to have
the baby and then, around threemonths into my maturity, to
leave, I have to start lookingfor a job.

Alexis (50:30):
It's funny I love the story that you're describing
here when I think back toespecially at Google the two
biggest changes that I made.
So one of them was I moved outof my immediate team.
It wound up being to asupporting function.
So instead of doingclient-facing work, I wound up
training the people to do theclient-facing work.

(50:51):
So I moved into the relatedlearning organization, but
ultimately, the decision of mequitting last year both of them
were ideas that I had beentoying with for some time and
then there was a forcingfunction that actually was like
oh, okay, it's time.
And so I think what youdescribed there I relate very

(51:12):
much to it and I have a feelingthat many of our listeners.
It usually doesn't happenovernight, although sometimes it
does.
Sometimes you also.
You get laid off and, all right, what am I gonna do?

Alana (51:24):
I will say, though, I do think that and one of the things
people don't maybe talk enoughabout, although I'm starting to
see it talked about a little bitmore is that there is an
emotional arc to acceptance.
And if you get laid off whilethe forcing function happened
overnight, your like grief aboutit, your acceptance about it,

(51:44):
your ability to like harnessyour logical mind and figure out
a plan can take a little time.
And I think often people feelI've seen like people feel bad
that six months later they'restill looking or they're
emotionally still in shock anddenial.
And while I think it, youshould move through your change

(52:08):
curve and if you're not, maybeyou need a little help or
support or someone to talk to tolike help you through it.
I do think sometimes it takestime and it's also not linear.
You could like be totally fine.
And then you see someannouncement your company makes
and you're like back in the rage.

Alexis (52:26):
Or or you're bawling, suddenly you're like curled over
on the side of the road, likeah, I mean.
Yeah, I'm saying this frompersonal experience.

Alana (52:35):
Absolutely so, I think.
No matter what, there's alittle bit of a journey to it
and it's not usually overnight,Unless you truly are someone who
tends to make those kind ofsnap.
You just get an inspiration andyou make those snap decisions.
But that varies.

Alexis (52:54):
One other comment too many people who have been
impacted by layoffs havecommented on LinkedIn, but I
also have friends who have alsosaid it was the best possible
thing that happened to me.
I was unhappy in my job and,yes, it was a forcing function.
It was hard, but it ripped theBand-Aid off for me.
I needed to make a changeanyway and I would never wish a

(53:15):
layoff upon anyone.
I have been laid off muchearlier in my own career.
It took me many, many years tobe comfortable and confident in
a job again.
I'm not meaning to diminish thefeelings of it.

Alana (53:28):
No, no, no no no.

Alexis (53:29):
But I also do think that there can be a silver lining.

Alana (53:33):
If there's anything that I think has helped me mentally
grok what happens here, it'scomparing your relationship with
your company to a relationshipoh, totally Right Like if you
have a bad boyfriend and theyfinally break up with you,
you're like, oh, ok.
I mean I'm so sorry.
Yes, let's go.

Alexis (53:53):
I had codependency issues with work.
Work gave me purpose.
Work gave me a reason to behere.
The problem is I stopped havingmy own purpose and it was
literally, I had to reclaimmyself my value, and it changed
my relationship with workdramatically.
I think so many people areaddicted to the value that they

(54:18):
are able to derive out of a job.

Alana (54:20):
Oh, absolutely.

Alexis (54:21):
The attaboy kind of stuff.

Alana (54:23):
Yeah, who are you without it?
But also, are you acceptingthings that you should not right
?
Are you accepting a reallyunhealthy dynamic because you
think that that's what you haveto do and then you're just
grateful when they fire you andgive you severance because
you're like great Right.
So it's just like a reallyinteresting place.

(54:43):
And the minute I sort ofaccepted Google as the bad
boyfriend that I was choosingfor very specific reasons to
stay, I think it helped me getthat appropriate distance and I
find that people stay in a zonewhere they're in the
relationship with the boyfriendbut angry at the boyfriend all

(55:07):
the time for a very long time,and I think that's a little.
That's something to puzzlethrough.

Alexis (55:14):
So I want to share a power move for me that is quite
unrelated to all of this, but Ithink especially - this is a
women in tech episode.
I took a public speaking classthat changed my life.
I know it sounds ridiculous.
Let me describe what happened.
I went to this class I actuallyam, I mean, I've spent years on

(55:35):
stages and so, like I'm a, I'ma good presenter.
The issue was a body languageissue.
I tilted my head and I fussedwith my hair and my face.
And guess what those are?
Those are flirtatious signs andso, basically, even though I
had great things to say and Icommanded respect with my voice,

(56:00):
I was doing these other thingsthat made me get perceived in
yucky ways.
And what happened - this wasover 15 years ago.
This was before I was even atGoogle.
I took this class and thefollowing Monday I showed up
back at work and I had todeliver some really tough
feedback to a senior executive.
It was when I was at Accenture,so I was a consultant.

(56:21):
Basically, we had to delay theproject.
Who the hell wants that?
And it's going to cost themmore money.
So, like yuck, no one wants tohear this stuff.
But so here's the deal.
I was trained to hold my chin,between my forefinger and my
thumb.
I'm showing Alana here.
I can't show you listeners, butI practiced in front of a
mirror, literally not moving myface, and even as I hold this

(56:47):
you can see.
Anyway, but I practiced in themirror, not holding my face.
It was so awkward.
But basically in this meeting Iheld my head straight and I
didn't move and it felt veryrobotic.
And after this meeting I hadlike seven people come up to me
and say, wow, that was awesome,like really great job in

(57:08):
delivering that.
I know that was hard for you todo.
I had never in my entire careerhad I don't even think like one
person come up to me, let alonea handful of them.
The other thing that happenedafter this is I was never again
sexually harassed and I wasnever again hit on by a married
man.

(57:29):
It is so huge body language.
I want to do an episode on this.
I actually need to find someoneto dig into this.
I think it is this thing that,even though I had all these
skills, I was being perceived ina way that was not helpful to
me and was holding me back and,seriously, it changed my

(57:51):
trajectory in so many differentareas of my life.

Alana (57:56):
I love that.
I will say that I often tellpeople that the most horrible,
worst class to take is publicspeaking, and it is absolutely
the best class to take, and thereason that it's the worst is
that they will record you.

Alexis (58:10):
Oh yeah, you have to watch yourself and it's like oh.

Alana (58:14):
You will have to sit there and watch yourself, or
you'll be doing it in front of abunch of people and they will
like clap every time you say um,or every time you tilt your
head or whatever it is.
So it is the worst.
But then you will learn thingsfor the rest of your career,
both when you're just one on oneor in small groups, but also

(58:36):
the public speaking stuff.
I just it is huge.
Yes, it is, but horrible.
But just take the hit.

Alexis (58:42):
It's so uncomfortable and it's worth it.
I mean it's it's totally worthit.

Alana (58:48):
If you are at a company that regularly offers these
classes and you can get them forfree, take it.

Alexis (58:52):
That was, that was why I did it so

Alana (58:54):
Yeah, just take it.
Just take it.
Have the terrible few days.

Alexis (59:01):
Mine was one day.
That was all it.
One day and two awfulrecordings.

Alana (59:07):
Mine was maybe a couple days, but probably not full days
, and what I was going to sayabout it that really helped me
was that when I get up in frontof a crowd I have a lot of
nervous energy that I thoughtpeople could see, because I
literally shake, not like a hugeshake, but like jitter.
So in my head people could seebecause I literally shake, not

(59:28):
like a huge shake, but likejitter, so in my head people
could see that and I talkedabout it as something that made
me nervous.
And then people were like, oh,we can't see it and I was like,
oh, it's not actually noticeableto the other people.
It's not noticeable, and so therest of my career.
I've accepted my jitter and itdoesn't make me nervous because
I mean, listen, maybe somepeople can see it honestly, but

(59:48):
I don't know.

Alexis (59:49):
All right.
Last question for you today.
Let's say someone comes up toyou and says Alana, I want to be
a woman in tech and I want tostick it out for 25 years or
more, just like you.
What should I do?
What's the advice?

Alana (01:00:04):
What should you do?
What should you do?
I think there's an interestingcombination of patience and
agency that I think you aregoing to have to figure out,
because if you want a longcareer in tech, you are going to
have amazing days, you're goingto have bad days.

(01:00:26):
You're going to be on teamsthat you feel a lot of alignment
with and teams you feel almostnone.
You're going to be insituations where you are
learning a ton and situationswhere that seems to dry up and
you're going to be told you'revaluable, and then you're going
to get reorged and somehow sameexact stuff you're going to be

(01:00:49):
told isn't valuable.
So there is going to be a lotof years in time and exercising
some amount of patience.
A bit of this, too, shall pass.
A bit of noticing the patternsand being patient with them,
knowing that when you get a newboss you're gonna have to do

(01:01:09):
some retraining, yada, yada.
But at the same time, balancingthat out with a sense of agency
.
I started to give a lot of folksis set a timeline, right, if
you notice that something isn'tgreat, think about a couple
things.
You can try to change that andset a timeline.
I'm going to try these X thingsand if that doesn't work, in

(01:01:33):
six months I'm going to decidewhat to do next.
If you can do that, I thinkit'll both give you the patience
to get over some hurdles sothat you continue, you don't
overreact, you don't getdisengaged too early, you don't
start distracting yourself andlooking for a job when really

(01:01:54):
all you need to do is doubledown and get through this period
.
It'll get you over some ofthose humps but at the same time
it won't make you too patient,it won't make you complacent, it
won't make you accept thingsfor the long run that you
shouldn't in your career,because you've given yourself a
timeline and you can go back toit.
So endurance, I think, is goingto be the name of the game, of

(01:02:17):
that right.
Like, how are you going toendure through some of the bad
times but also take advantage ofthe great times, right, hurdle
through them, enjoy them, lovethem, but have a plan B when
times get rough.
I think that's the .

Alexis (01:02:34):
I love that.
Endurance.
That is such a great word forit.
If I had to give advice, I thinkit is make a decision about
what it is that you want, andthe caveat is it's okay for you
to change your mind at any point.
You know, I like what you'retalking about, though, because I
do think that I myself,especially when I was younger I

(01:02:57):
remember my parents used to,they used to call me fickle and
like, especially my first fiveyears out of college, I had five
jobs in five years.
This was not by choice, thiswas.
.
.
I graduated right after thedot-com bust and I moved to New
York right before 9-11.
Like everything was just wildand crazy.
I was just trying to survive.

(01:03:17):
But I also remember they usedto talk about like me being very
fickle and just jumping to thenext thing.
.
I like what you're talking aboutof having endurance and giving
something enough time so thatyou're not just being flippant
because like, oh, this dude saidsomething that really pissed me
off.
I'm done.
It's like yeah, they saidsomething.

(01:03:38):
What can I do about it?
Let's try some things.
Do I even need to listen tothem?
Or should I maybe say somethingback like hi, that was a
jackass thing you just told meand guess what?
It didn't feel very good.
Can you not do that anymore?
Or change Like?
There's all sorts of things thatyou could do just out of that

(01:03:58):
one interaction, let aloneeverything that goes on over the
course of a day or a week or amonth in your work.
But when I think aboutespecially, make a decision and
go after it, what's your plan?
Come up with a plan, beflexible, both in terms of your
own decisions but also thethings that are changing around
you.
You might get offered a newposition or, ooh, a manager role

(01:04:20):
opens up.
Do I want that, Do I not?
By the way, both of those arefair decisions.
Neither one of them is good norbad.
And then stick it out.
Perhaps six months is like agood place to start with, or
three months, you know just someperiod of time.
So you're giving it space.

Alana (01:04:36):
It's completely your thing and it's going to vary,
right, because some things areknowable quite quickly and some
things take longer to work out,right, like at Google, the
promotion cycle was every sixmonths, so to really know if
you're on the path towards whatyou want, sometimes it's a

(01:04:58):
little bit longer.
So, yeah, I think you set thetime Again.
You have the agency for what.
You will be patient for, youwill tolerate whatnot, but I
think being too reactionarysometimes cuts off opportunity.
I think we've seen lots oftimes where you just got to get
through a little bit of a hurdleand then that manager would
have given you a 2x larger team,right?
And so I've had people lookback and be like, oh, I should

(01:05:19):
have, I should have tried X, Ishould have tried Y, and so I
think this gives you a happymedium on both.

Alexis (01:05:26):
Yeah, I like that.
Well, this has been a fantasticdiscussion today.
Thank you so much for beinghere, Alana, on behalf of our
listeners as well as me, becausethis has just been delightful
to have this conversation.
Thank you.

Alana (01:05:41):
Thank you for having me.

Alexis (01:05:42):
Before we close out our episode today for our listeners,
I would like to invite you toget in touch with me.
You can text me any reactionsor advice or suggestions that
you have for this episode or theshow.
You can find this in my shownotes.
I'd love to hear from you.
If you have enjoyed what you'veheard also, please subscribe to

(01:06:03):
the show, Leave a comment.
It's a small thing, but itmeans so much to me and a world
of difference for the show.
As always, I will share linksto notable reference in the show
notes and I'll give a couplelinks for Alana.
I mentioned a few earlier thatI really love that interview you
did with Cheryl that was great.
But Alana's website, alanakaren.
com.

(01:06:24):
I'll send a link to where youcan sign up for her newsletter
and also her book, because it'sawesome, and with that, all of
our listeners.
I wish you a very fond well andI hope you have an awesome day.
Thanks.
.

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Alexis Booth

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