The reality faced by women working in tech

While Michelle Robbins had incredible support by the people who gave her the opportunity to work in tech, she also faced a fair deal of distrust from other partners who couldn’t believe that women can own and dominate tech.

TAMAR: Hi, everybody. Today I am on episode 41 of the Common Scents Podcast. And I have an awesome guest, somebody I’ve known for over a decade now. It’s crazy how life goes by and all of a sudden, you’re like catching up again, basically. So, I have my awesome friend Michelle Robbins, from the other coast here. Thank you very much for joining.

00:42

MICHELLE ROBBINS: Thanks so much for having me Tamar. Great to see you and connect with you again. And I’m excited about podcasts.

00:47

TAMAR:  Yeah, yeah. So, give us a little bit of background what, wherever you come from, what do you do? What’s your life like? Where? What’s your career story?

00:55

MICHELLE ROBBINS: It’s pretty interesting because I’ve been working in technology, and programming development for the past more than 20 years. But I actually started in college. My major was not technology, it was not a computer science major. And in fact, I was pre-law. I majored in psychology and criminal justice because I thought I would go on into working as a criminal prosecutor, that was my path. And then I worked throughout college, at a law firm, and I was cured. Near the end of my senior year, I went to each of the partners and the law firm, actually, to the partners and the associates. And I asked them all, if you had to do it over again, considering after five years, double majoring all of that in college, then heading to law school was a big decision. So, I wanted to make sure it was the right next move. And I was kind of on the fence. So, I went to each of them. And I asked, if you had to do it over again, would you do something different? And to a person? They said, yes, there was one associate who didn’t, he said, I still do it and do it for the money. And I said, well, I’m not really motivated by money. So, that’s not a good reason for me. But I was really struck by how many of them would have done something completely different, but felt really stuck because of the choice they had made. And they’ve gone too far by that point, to turn back and do something different. And that made me consider, what do I want to do now? You can always go back to law school, right, you could always pursue it later. In fact, that’s what a lot of them suggested. So, I had been in college radio, in college as well worked at the radio station, had a lot of friends in the music industry. And after graduating went to work at Disney’s commercial record label in the radio promotion department. I went from pretty much a clear path to law to working in the music industry. And I spent about four years there, which was pretty incredible. I had a great time with so many of my friends from that industry. We have a lot of fun working with artists and traveling around. But the music industry was not a friendly place to women. Let’s say everything that we’ve learned in the Me Too movement went on a percent cosign true. So, I realized that wasn’t going to suit me in the long term. So, I, at that point, had been contacted by a friend that I had gone to school with to UCI, and some other friends of ours from UCI had started startup in Orange County. And it was a combination of a software development company and an online presence, digital agency. And that’s where I met Danny Sullivan. So, we work together and maximize software online.

04:15

TAMAR: So yeah, I want to talk about Danny because we know each other through this mutual friend. Well, not even just through the industry. Michelle and I really date back to the search engine marketing industry. It’s funny, I’ll probably share my story afterwards. I was taking a little bit of notes here. Like I majored in psychology and then in technology and here I am in fragrance. But it’s funny, I was a private investigator for a while and I was actually interested in criminal justice and looking into that as an option. My mother always had told me, you’re going to be the lawyer and I had pursued education that kind of was headed in that trajectory. But yeah, I also hear the same thing if you go so far. You feel like you have to do it. That’s why I majored in computer science, I struggled in computer science, but then even thinking about law school another three years, and then once you’re there, I mean, where I live, a lot of my friends are former lawyers, like they actually left ent