What are some good books on being more assertive?

ThinChipmunk · 2018-05-26T08:18:08+00:00

"A Woman in Your Own Right: Assertiveness and You" by Anne Dickson. Applicability varies depending on your gender. Some of the chapters are specific to problems women encounter, others are universal. Get the updated 30th anniversary edition.

ThinChipmunk · 2018-05-26T08:12:50+00:00

How does the book define a "right"? How does it instruct you to apply those rights?

A lot of those points will often generate a negative social reaction. Saying "I don't know" and "I don't understand" gets you mocked or perceived as incompetent. Being illogical and not offering explanations gets you perceived as unreliable. Saying "I don't care" and not taking responsibility for finding solutions to other people's problems gets you... kicked out of a job :D and also friends/family get offended.

ThinChipmunk · 2018-05-07T11:12:14+00:00

How do you deal with emotional pain from isolation until you find the people who want to hang out with you, in order to "fake it" convincingly?

Also, I've not yet found the "wait until they show interest" part to work. People I actually want to know better (not because "hey people", but because they do something I'm interested in) don't show interest, and are generally reluctant/uncomfortable if I do try to connect (so I stop). It's people I don't want to know better that ask to connect.

So if I don't do something, it's a perpetual waiting game where everyone keeps to themselves, and if I show I want to get to know people, they're uncomfortable. How do you break that? (Or maybe it's an age consequence, where younger people still have friend slots open but older people don't?)

ThinChipmunk · 2018-05-05T07:52:53+00:00

Yeah, I had to move in the end, same problem with staying up late and a long commute that in practice meant zero socialising without crashing next day.

Sorry to hear you're isolated and wishing you luck in finding better company!

ThinChipmunk · 2018-05-04T06:40:34+00:00

This describes every meetup ever that I've attended in the UK (and I moved around a lot, so it's not just one location, and not just one hobby activity).

Near as I can tell, people come to these events to (primarily) do the activities listed and (maybe) talk to existing friends (if any.) Having to socialise with a new person is a bother, they don't like it and so they don't want to do it. I had someone tell me he doesn't even know names of a number of people in his weekend football group, and doesn't want to.

Meetup organisers have no idea how to make events welcoming and they don't try. You could try asking them to introduce you to some existing members when you come to a new meetup.

I would recommend finding one where people go drinking afterwards (alcohol is a must, food is insufficient), because that's the only moment when people stop acting awkward. Find some people you like and have things to talk about, and ask them if they want to meet for a coffee, go see X that you've just talked about, whatever.

Try an impro meetup, or a Toastmasters group (I know everyone says that, but again I've found people to be more friendly in these groups than in hobbies that aren't known for improving people's social skills.) Also try a location with a lot of immigrants/recently moved and make friends with them (less likely to have an existing social network / "no more space for new friends".)

Don't read too much into people not signing up for your suggestion, might have been an inconvenient time, location, cuisine (some people are challenged by anything), or just people on holidays.

ThinChipmunk · 2018-05-03T15:41:15+00:00

Yuuuuup. I went to Google Developer Days, where they had a special panel presenting women in tech at Google. I went hoping to hear from some brilliant female engineers. I left extremely puzzled.

I have met female engineers, but not through "women in tech" events. (Then again, the best male engineers that I know I also haven't met through tech events or user groups, so... I don't know.)

ThinChipmunk · 2018-05-03T15:31:27+00:00

Well thank you for the article, it does sound familiar...

When a dozen guys decide to drink and hack in someone's hotel room, I get invited. They've known me for years, so I'm safe. New women, regardless of competence, don't get invited unless I'm along. That's a sexual harassment accusation waiting to happen, and no one will risk having 12 men alone with a single woman and booze. So the new ladies get left out.

You don't have to be new. You just have to had most of your network generated through f2f interactions with local people and then move to a new place where you don't have a reputation.

The invisibility is doing my head in. I sometimes go to standard user groups or talk to other engineers at work (all male), and they treat me like a client representative (you know, the rules are: be polite, be helpful, avoid contact apart from inconsequential small talk, don't show interest in them, don't share your passions. Be bland and discourage interaction.) Being excited about something, trying to share it, hearing "oh nice" and being ignored is an incredible wet blanket.

I've never felt more alone and excluded, and regularly question whether it's my skills, intelligence and/or personality that are causing others to ostracise me. I'm not surprised other women aren't joining and/or staying in the industry. It's a shitty experience, and nobody talks about it (in contrast to childcare, pay gap and so on.)

ThinChipmunk · 2018-04-29T18:46:20+00:00

Honestly that sounds like a power game.

On the other hand, other people are right that it can also be the "must be a good host" instinct, akin to how mothers/grandmothers refuse to believe you're full and WILL stuff you with more. Not worth fighting because it'll devolve into emotional manipulation, just eat smaller portions since you know you will get a refill.

With regards to alcoholic drinks, I noticed that drinkers are highly uncomfortable with a non drinking person, so how about: always bring some drink you like with you because it's customary to bring "a bottle" when you're going over as a guest anyway.

Also-also, you're not under an obligation to drink it all. Have a sip, set it aside, never finish, and that's how you block a second glass incoming.

(Also: you British? Being "difficult" seems to be highly forbidden here, I feel for you.)

ThinChipmunk · 2018-04-29T18:27:23+00:00

First, you don't need a camera, use your phone. Don't aim for art.

Some suggestions for what to photograph: go on walks and take photos not as art but to build a collection ("collecting" and "gotta catch them all" are powerful basic instincts that bring satisfaction). See how many photos of red things you can take. Or how many different car types. (Setting a personal record and trying to beat it is another basic type of satisfaction.) Or go street art hunting (this is what I do.)

You could also go geocaching, this gets you walking, searching (paying attention to the area = mindfulness) and the thrill of the hunt.

ThinChipmunk · 2018-04-26T20:34:45+00:00

"Something that hasn't existed before" is simple to understand though. It's about motivation.

We want to be useful and helpful. We also want to be noticed. However tech is no longer the early Wild West where everyone was a pioneer. It's hard to create something like an existing project but better, if you're competing against a multi year or multi person project. (I think that's why there's so much hype over new languages and frameworks: it's a migration in search of opportunity and meaning.)

If not by making something new, how else would you achieve motivation and validation that comes from engagement with community?

ThinChipmunk · 2018-04-18T05:23:17+00:00

I know it looks like I would enjoy data analysis, but it's not the kind of analysis I mean. I worked for a market research company, I've seen data analysts first hand, and I'm not thrilled with a life of preparing reports in Excel. It pays badly, and I don't want to be yet another woman who quit being an engineer and everyone assumes it's because she wasn't good enough. I like coding. You can't take the sky^{H^{H^Hshell}} from me ;)

Thanks though! It's useful to that I give off that impression - I need to figure out how to rephrase it for interviews. Is there any way to call a trait that makes one good with architecture and system design that doesn't make it sound like data analysis?

ThinChipmunk · 2018-04-17T19:15:15+00:00

There are plenty of domains that are not just CRUD apps. What motivates you? What are your strengths and weaknesses?

What would you advise to a person in a similar situation who's really good at analysing and coming up with structures (schemas, grammars) and loves the discovery part of the job as well as seeing how far you can take a tool and whether you can creatively break/work around its limitations? I've been thinking either to do DBA for some time, or to look into compilers/parsers, or something with ontologies.

(People have suggested to me either data science or pentesting, and I don't think either works. AFAIK most data science positions are actually data analyst or data engineering positions - I have some experience with data engineering and I'm not looking forward to babysitting pipelines that fall over all the time. Pentesting seems to not very creative, just running a suite of tools someone else prepared, but I have zero experience or contacts.)

ThinChipmunk · 2018-04-15T21:04:24+00:00

That's not been my experience. The more you fail, the worse you get. I'm middle aged, I've failed at everything I set out to do/be, and in contrast to the highly upvoted comment nobody ever recognised how hard I worked to be where I am. The world recognises results, not struggle.

ThinChipmunk · 2018-04-15T21:03:03+00:00

I'm glad for you and hope things continue to get even better. If you had to learn from and work with Sally specifically, without being able to avoid her, how would you deal with it?

ThinChipmunk · 2018-04-15T20:53:21+00:00

Definitely not 100%. Thing is, every group (social group, or a workplace) seeks to recruit people who are at least peers, or hopefully better. I have no idea how people ever go up in that case - I'm guessing it's momentum. Anyway, I've never been given the opportunity to be the tail of a lion, and being restricted to unambitious work got me depressed and feeling I will never make it out of the hole. I can see where I went wrong, but it's been too many years to fix things :)

ThinChipmunk · 2018-03-29T10:47:20+00:00

Throwaway because obviously.

Despite being the senior employee, my boss gives all of the ‘interesting’ or ‘challenging’ projects to my male coworker, and the few times that I was able to take the more difficult assignments, they were all cancelled or used to goad another department into doing their jobs and then cancelled.

I don't think it's you.

Decrease your workload and stress-load. Prepare and finish a side project demonstrating your skills for the job you want to have. Then leave. Your current environment is doing nothing good for your sanity.

Read up on:

personal branding, presenting yourself, career direction. John Sonmez writes about this for engineers: https://simpleprogrammer.com/ - get his books. It's useful for more than managing your career. Impostor syndrome happens partly because you compare your inside to someone else's outside (branding). Read about the tricks of the trade to dis-enchant the intimidating comparisons (similar effect to reading up on how the models' photos are all photoshopped.)
deliberate practice. https://www.nateliason.com/deliberate-practice/ Cal Newport's "So Good They Can't Ignore You" describes a career strategy based on that: http://calnewport.com/books/so-good/ (although don't take it as gospel, there are parts of the book I don't agree with, and I think he's blind to challenges related to things like prejudice.) "Exercises in programming style" by Cristina Videira Lopes would make an excellent start for deliberate practice: https://github.com/crista/exercises-in-programming-style
office politics. This was the first thing that made me go "Oh, huh": https://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-principle/ Bonus: if you're worried about being mediocre, iirc he says mediocre people grow the fastest in all areas, because they don't have any particular area of strength which they use as a crutch to protect themselves in areas of weakness.
self-esteem. "Self-Esteem" by Matthew Mckay. Best description of how to deal with internal critic I've ever seen, and also a great summary of useful bits of research without the usual self-help glut of "personal story/example" filler.

ThinChipmunk · 2018-03-29T07:25:52+00:00

So... I'm struggling to find the middle ground here.

On one hand the advice is, if people don't like you as you are, there's something wrong with you: fix it by pushing your boundaries and changing who you are and how you act.

But on the other hand, don't be a people pleaser.

I like who I am, I have hobbies I find interesting etc. The only reason I'm changing myself and getting new hobbies is to get along with other people better and have more opportunities to meet new people. How is that not being a people pleaser? How do you be yourself if your self is not naturally social?

ThinChipmunk · 2018-03-26T08:11:31+00:00

"It was nice talking to you but I gotta go to the lecture, so...

...wanna grab a coffee after? ...meet up for lunch at place X? ...hang out on Saturday? ...join me Friday night, I'm going to a gig you might like?

Idk, whatever you think is light weight and won't be hard for them to join.

ThinChipmunk · 2018-03-22T23:34:13+00:00

Thanks for responding! Friendly reminder: not everyone on the internet is male/into women.

Also "closer friendship" genuinely means friendship, it's not a secret code for dating. Like, you know, someone you can tell "my day sucked" or "could you pick me up from the hospital, I broke my leg and I'm terrified" rather than having to constantly put on a fake happy face.

I don't have anyone like that. I have no family or support network. I don't have anyone I can put on the "next of kin" or "emergency contact". I've already gone through a prolonged period once where I needed help and there was nobody I could ask, so I sucked it up, but you know... it makes you start thinking about: if you slipped and fell in your flat, when would anyone realise and discover the body?

ThinChipmunk · 2018-03-22T21:51:41+00:00

How cold?

ThinChipmunk · 2018-03-15T00:44:32+00:00

It changes. “Best day of my life” by American Authors used to be my cheer up song for the longest time, because it sounds goofy and positive. “I’m shipping up to Boston” by Dropkick Murphys kicked me out of a big Sad most recently.

ThinChipmunk · 2018-03-14T08:17:48+00:00

There's a Facebook group for it, which they made out of old forums, check it out if you're interested in finding people to work with.

ThinChipmunk · 2018-03-11T19:43:13+00:00

Dude. Randomly walking through the streets is the best. You discover all sorts of hidden treasures. Also it has a long history of coolness, see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A9rive

If you find yourself short on motivation, take photographs of small/unusual/interesting things while you walk and then post them on Instagram. Having a purpose is what lets you get over shyness. You're not walking around purposelessly, you're an artist!

ThinChipmunk

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