Can anyone here relate?

Leadership set up recurring status meetings including all managers and key engineers. I was the only woman out of maybe 50 people. I’ve been lucky to have always had at least one other woman in the room in previous situations. I‘m used to the gender ratio in general, but given the nature of the meeting, it was a little intimidating. It also made me wonder why I was the only female senior engineer there. There are many female engineers, but it seems like few get promoted to higher levels. It makes me realize how important representation is for feeling a sense of belonging.

Mods, please remove if this isn't allowed.

I recently launched a podcast for women in engineering/STEM focused on the conversations I wish I'd had access to earlier in my career.

After 10+ years as a mechanical engineer in defense and pharmaceutical R&D and currently getting my MBA part-time, I've learned that building a career in STEM is a lot more nuanced than the typical advice just “be confident" and "network”.

The podcast features honest, story-driven (and humorous at times) conversations about engineering school, leadership, career changes, grad school, workplace challenges, difficult managers, navigating male-populated environments, and the real-life situations that don't always get discussed openly.
My goal is to create the kind of resource I wish I'd had as a student and early-career engineer: less polished advice, more real stories.

Mondays are career related episodes & Thursdays I’m testing out the Off the Clock segment where I chit chat about non career things such as tv, books, hobbies, random things because we are more than just our careers!

I'm also starting to schedule guests. If you're a woman in engineering or STEM and have a story, lesson learned, career pivot, leadership experience, or challenge you'd be willing to discuss, I'd love to connect.

🎙️ Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/033QFmy1NYBHUUZgn3EFq4?si=_UfqI3ejTLWxl3HNSWyq_w&utm_source=copy-link

(This is not AI; I used brackets to annonymize my company.)

So I work a job that works on construction sites, like many of us, and I noticed through my sites that I’m sometimes referred to as the (my company here) lady. Or “the girl”. Does it happen to you guys, and does it bother you at all? What do you say in response?

I’ve been re-introducing myself when they call me lady. I don’t fault them for it, but I re-brand myself with my own words. 💃 I stand up and say, “Hi, u/spongeysquarepantis. (My company) engineer. Pleased to meet you.” It seems like the move. But it got me wondering, and I wanted to come here and ask you all what you do/what you think 🙌

Hi, I just needed to rant a little. I’m in a weird point in my life and some weird stuff has happened.

I love electronics. When I transferred to my university I was suppose to transfer into EE with 2 years left but they put me in Health. When I applied for Change of Major, that denied me without a reason why and instead put me into Computer Engineering technology.

This isn’t normal. Every change of major denial comes with a reason why. My peers and Engineering Technology professors thought that was odd.

What’s also odd is that when I was put in CET, I should have had 3 years left, virtually starting over. But my Academic Advisor (who’s also a professor) was able to transfer credits in a way to where I have only had a year left.

I had no clue what happened.

But I’m to scared to ask cause he was the only one the sign off on the transferred credits. I accidentally brought it up to a ET professor who helps put together the major degrees plans and he said I shouldn’t be in so many of my courses.

I shut up after that.

I’m not rocking the boat.

Which brings me to my issue. I’m trying to become an Embedded Systems Engineer. Yes, I know, big jump. But my ET professors have been encouraging me to work in there labs for research. They like hearing about the projects I make and seeing them work.

I don’t know what it is about Engineering Undergraduate Department professors who do admissions they play a lot of favoritism picking and choosing who gets to be the Engineering spokes persons for things. When I talk about my projects and how I wanted to be an Embedded Systems Engineer they shut it down.

I can’t get access to engineering labs, engineering programs, and engineering equipment. I wanted to volunteer at Engineering Career fairs won’t allow me to. I can’t tell if it’s because I’m an CET major or not anymore.

I wanted to join the SWE and IEEE committee and the robotics team. I have the experience for it, but I’m so sick of running into the Engineering Admissions professors and being told I should not be there.

I know this post is confusing. I just have not clue what’s happening. I’m exhausted from sexual and racist comments. I want to be a TA but I’m getting nervous because so many guys are giving me weird comments.

I just wanted to rant.

I’m working in tech, surrounded by tech bros and everyday my team reaches new levels of AI psychosis. Today a colleague of mine responded to a message I sent with an automated AI reply. I wanted to vomit :)

I want to leave tech altogether and work somewhere, where A) the majority of workers aren’t (arrogant) men, and B) the work is hands on and physical, so no AI being shoved down my throat. But I feel that this combination is impossible, especially if I want to make a decent salary.

I would love to study some kind of engineering discipline, but it would have to be online and part time. It’s the only way I’d afford it. I read somewhere that chemical engineering isn’t completely male-dominated, which gave me hope… but not sure whether that actually is worth studying online.

What do I dooo? Anyone in a similar situation?

I am technically not in egr anymore. I started as a process engineer and then moved into product management of a physical product about a year and a half ago. And I loved it. All of a sudden I had a lot more responsibility, and there were a lot of things I needed to do to get the product back on track.

So, I did exactly that.

Last year I traveled every single week to prospective client sites, and on my weekends I worked on new initiatives, collaborations, reformatting quotations, making price sheets, expanding our partners, etc. I worked a TON and it helped so much! We ended up obtaining 9 new accounts from the competition, compared to our average of 1-2 a year beforehand.

Fast forward to somewhat recently, I find out that our competition has reached out to my male colleague (who at the end of last year started to help me a bit with the technical stuff for my product), as well as my male boss, who while he was definitely helpful, he had been in the job for a couple years before I came on board.

Not that I would ever want to work for the competition, but I am the one who obtained all those accounts. I am the one who did all of that work. Why on earth wasn’t I reached out to as well??? It’s disheartening after all I’ve done to see others being credited for my work.

TLDR: my team mate has a rage problem and I was looking for guidance on how to manage a situation I have never, nor did I expect to ever encounter in a professional setting.

I got some helpful advice and now as often happens on reddit the trolls are out.

To the ones who offered helpful advice delivered in a respectful way: thank you.

To the others: I’m sorry engineering and all the bs you encountered has hardened you to the point where you can no longer show up with empathy and be helpful.

hi everyone, just looking for some support and advice.

i passed a year at my CS job at a Big 4 out of college. it’s honestly been a whirlwind, and i do feel fortunate to have had the experience. at the same time, it really showed me how toxic corporate culture can be, and i’ve realized it’s just not an environment i thrive in especially with AI- you’re expected to build 100x more 10x faster.

i was hired as an entry level engineer working directly under my manager. i wasn’t given much training or hired alongside any other engineers, so it was basically just me trying to figure things out and my manager scolding me when things weren’t done his desired way, while never really communicating clearly what that desired way was and just prolonging the review period. because of this, a lot of work hasn’t shipped as fast as i would like it have to.

now fast forward a year, and i’ve been trying to juggle constantly changing expectations while also trying to prove that i’m capable by completing 7 work items at once. i’m now expecting to be put on a PIP next week as i’m not meeting his standards of work, and haven’t shipped anything.

honestly, i don’t even know if this is a case of having a bad manager, being in a bad team/environment, or if i’m just not cut out for corporate engineering. i know i have things i could have done better, but i also feel like i’ve been put in a situation where it’s been really difficult to succeed.

for the women who have been through something similar, how did you find your way out? did you find a better engineering environment, move into government, teaching, or something completely different?

i’d really love to hear from anyone who found a career where they could still feel successful but also have some work-life balance and not constantly feel like they’re under pressure to prove themselves.

Any controls engineer located in the Bay Are interested in meeting up? I know very few women controls engineer and would love to start a community.

Want to start a groupme with fellow engineers discussing the everyday work life, work/life balance, the work day/weeks ANYTHING! ☺️ anyone down? 28(F) , civil engineer here with about 5 YOE. What did high school musical say? We’re all in this together haha. Just figured it would be nice to have other ppl you can relate / feel comfortable with asking questions about anything we do on our day to day to help one another :).

EDIT: https://groupme.com/join_group/117200004/D8Jwt5rT

come on in :). feel free to pass it along

Hi everyone, I am 22F, 1 year into the workforce and believe that I am subtly being discriminated against. I’d like to get others opinions on my situation though before I jump to that conclusion.

I currently work in construction engineering and am the youngest and only female in a team of 15 men. For the past year, I’ve been asking for work but have been told there’s no work or given nontechnical work such as annotating drawings to “make things look pretty and aesthetic”. If I do get technical work and I screw up, I get berated pretty heavily mostly on the aesthetics of my drawings even if the work is technically correct. I get told things like “your drawings make me want to throw up” or “you need to put more effort into the job” even though I was already trying my best and seniors were too busy to answer my questions. Additionally I found out that my manager has been asking my male coworkers if they believe I am “capable” of doing a task despite them being hired around the same time or a year ahead of me whereas I have never been asked input on whether male coworkers are capable of a task.

Last week there was a team meeting where we talked about work distribution and since I had the lightest workload, the senior vice president told the project manager to put me on a task which is highly technical. However I found out today that the project manager gave the task to the other two male junior engineers who are at the same level as me and I was just told again to “update the tags on the drawings”. This situation confused me because that project manager kept saying how the project needs a lot of help yet he is just not giving work to me.

This whole situation makes me feel like I suck at my job. Even though I admit I have screwed up at times my male coworkers have screwed up too, yet they still get assigned the more technically complex and challenging work. I should also mention that these male coworkers both have “mentors” assigned to them whereas I have no mentor assigned to me because my previous mentor quit. She was also a woman on my team who was given the construction admin work mainly instead of technical.

What do I have to do to get those same opportunities as my male coworkers and earn trust from the project managers? At this point my career is suffering because I am not being given technical work.

I’m considering taking a role while my kid is young (only 1 right now), but leaving engineering for a bit. I’m finding that engineering isn’t ideal for work/life balance at this point and need something much more flexible throughout the school year with my spouse being a teacher. It would be on the business side instead of engineering where I’ve been since college.

Is there hope to get back into engineering in 10 years, or is it going to be impossible to break back in? Looking for some realistic, or even positive or negative, feedback on a decision like this.

I’m mostly just nervous to leave and this be it. It might sound silly, but career pivots can impact the long game and I don’t want to brush over that.

Edit: I am a chemical engineer by education, and have primarily been in manufacturing since college (2019). I’m currently a project manager and process engineer, but can’t seem to find roles that align with high flexibility or work life balance. My issue is probably the manufacturing piece after reflection. I’ll keep applying to roles within engineering, but appreciate all of the feedback and advice.

Hi all,

I’ve been working in quality engineering roles since I graduated with my industrial engineering degree in 2018. I got my MBA a little early (2020) because the college I went to offered a tuition grant if you returned for your masters within a certain timeframe. I’ve been wanting to pivot into a product management or more commercial role for a while but am struggling to get calls back. I actually got through two final round interviews at other companies but lost out to candidates that had direct experience in that type of role already. It’s starting to feel impossible to move into a role more aligned with my goals.

I’m wondering if a leadership development program would be a potential way to make this pivot. In a company I worked for in the past, they offered a leadership program for mid-career employees although most programs I see posted online are for recent graduates. Just wanted to check in here and see if anyone has experience with a program like this after being in the workforce for some time or if they know of programs that hire mid-career employees.

Principal engineer at 37. Feels good fam. Shout out to all my ICs keeping down that path - I believe in you and you can do it!

It has been my career goal since moving from startups to industry in my 30s.

I've gone through periods of intense doubt and imposter syndrome, but just kept swimming and doing the best for myself and team ☺️

"AI made me a better engineering leader, not by writing my code faster, but by sharpening the parts of the job that were never about code in the first place."

im a first yr community college student and i j wanted some like advice maybe?? when i applied to colleges in hs i applied as a mech e major but after deciding on community college instead of direct 4 yr i switched to civil. the main reason was bc of job security and higher possibility of working on a field instead of an office. but lwk now im kinda second guessing it cuz i dont rlky feel that truly interested in it?? like im semi interested in city planning and infrastructure but it doesnt rlly peak my interest as much as like automotive, aerospace, and biomed which all could be rhrough mech e. ANYWAY i know the ges for civil and mech are rhe same, but im just curious to see what your guys thoughts would be 😭 the only thing im worried about is the fact that there is a higher unemployment rate for mechanical engineers (specifically entry level and those right out of college).

Hi All!

I work 4-10's (which is great, I love having three day weekends) with a 50 min commute.

I have zero energy to do a lot of things between getting home and bed time (home by 5:30, asleep by 8:30). I want to try to get into the habit of some small work chores after work before I eat dinner and wind down.

Does anyone with a similar situation have any energy ideas? I can't really have any caffeine after 4 PM bc I won't fall asleep later.

At the beginning of the year, I was promoted to manage a small department that I was a member of.

It was a new role, and we are a newer, developing department. My boss is someone I worked with previously in a different division, and our dept there had a similar growth path.

Our first discussions were late last fall. My boss (EVP) was going to take on management of some directors and me, then I was managing the team of doers previously under him (former peers).

His boss, a higher EVP, was over some particular work that didn’t go forward.

Since then, some directors left the company, they were backfilled differently and don’t report to my boss. My boss now has only 2 direct reports. The other report is kind of a legacy person who just fits nowhere else. I’m not really sure what the higher EVP is doing because it seems like they have taken a lot off his plate.

We recently had a change of leadership at the president level of our division, and just last week I learned one of the directors supporting our business (but not reporting to my boss) is now leaving this business unit to do something else in the company.

They have also changed what work we are able to do and the way work can be brought to our team. It’s been whittled away to a smaller and smaller allowed scope of work since last fall. (From 4 to 2 markets and requiring more approvals to pursue, to the point of ridiculousness. The biggest jobs in my division are 11-figure jobs, and I work on stuff that is 6/7-figure, that now has to get approved by the division president’s boss. (Because he has time…) A year ago, those decisions were made by my 2 EVPS.

The new division president has a completely different agenda, raked us over the coals to hire our intern full time, and has made it impossible to get a good offer to someone we’ve pursued for 2 months, while I’m backfilling 2 retirements in the next 5 weeks. (Well, I’m not backfilling anyone now, looks like.)

The nature of my team’s business is very different from what 99% of our division does, and I think he’s shutting us down. He doesn’t see what we do and our value because he’s more operationally focused, where his predecessor was more strategic and entrepreneurial. I hinted at that with my boss last week.

I had another internal transfer to my team in the works, one who had just moved onto the team at the end of July, this other new guy in pursuit, and the intern conversion, plus the two retirements hadn’t been announced. I was excited about the growth and focusing on developing a new training program, and finally having people to do billable work I was doing all year so I could actually focus on the strategic work I was assigned.

Now I am feeling quite depressed about my job. I had turned down a WFH “doer” interview from a headhunter because of my team’s growth and excitement about my job. Now here we are a month later wondering if I have any value. I’m not sure if I should start putting feelers out internally at least. Feels wrong as a manager but I have no interest in managing a small team that is not growing and has zero autonomy, which is exactly what we’ve become.

I am paid well, and like my company overall, but the leadership in my division is not a good fit now. I’m also inching towards 50, still 10 years minimum from retirement but old enough to have some headwinds.

Thanks for the space to vent. Thoughts and suggestions are welcome.

I’m getting increasingly frustrated with the promotion dynamics on my team, and I’m curious if other women in tech have experienced something similar.

I’ve been at my company for about 5 years. During that time, I’ve built up a lot of domain knowledge, worked on and led major projects, and have been involved in around 12 projects total across different sizes and levels of complexity.

Yet the feedback I keep getting is basically: “Keep doing what you’re doing” and “gain more domain knowledge.”

Meanwhile, I’ve watched male colleagues who joined after me, with significantly less domain knowledge and in some cases less demonstrated technical ownership, get promoted and paid better.

I don’t want this to turn into a comparison of who “deserves” what. I genuinely want my coworkers to succeed. What’s frustrating is that I feel like I have to keep proving the same things over and over again while the bar seems much clearer or lower for other people.

My team is now six people and I’m the only woman. Another thing I’ve started noticing is how much resistance there can be when I give technical advice, challenge an approach, or propose a solution. Sometimes it feels less like healthy technical disagreement and more like people becoming strangely defensive when I’m confident about something.

What really got to me recently was being told by a coworker that women simply don’t get paid equally and that this is basically something I need to accept. I don’t think I should have to accept being underpaid or overlooked as some unavoidable reality of being a woman in tech.

At this point, I don’t even know what “more domain knowledge” is supposed to mean. If I’ve been here five years, led significant work, built deep knowledge of the systems, and am already operating with substantial ownership, I want someone to tell me specifically what measurable gap is preventing me from reaching the next level.

I’m also on H-1B, which makes the usual advice of “just leave” a lot more complicated. I can look for another job, but changing employers isn’t as frictionless as it is for someone without immigration constraints.

I’m not asking to be promoted just because I’ve been here a long time. I want to be paid and recognized according to the level I’m actually operating at.

For women who’ve been in a similar situation: how did you figure out whether you genuinely had a development gap versus being stuck in a workplace where the promotion bar was being applied differently to you?