Irina Stanescu

People rarely think of me as a software engineer when they first see me. As a woman in Tech, I’ve carried this awareness with me my entire career.

I’ve been in multiple situations where people assumed I was a recruiter, in marketing, even a product manager, or a manager who isn’t technical.

I never let that stop me. However, the unspoken need to establish my technical background when meeting new people never left.

Little do people know that I actually coded almost every day until last July when I quit and started working for myself. In fact, I actually wrote my first program more than 22 years ago.

This awareness is probably why personal branding was something I thought of even before I knew it was called that.

I was aware of how I was perceived and wanted to align that with who I was and my knowledge, which made me intentional about how I carried myself and held myself to very high standards. I had no other choice.

The purpose of this post is simply to acknowledge the imbalance we face as women. If you’re also a female engineer working in tech who constantly feels like they have to battle first impressions: “I see you, you’re doing great!”.

#softwareengineering

When I became a Tech Lead at Google, one of my biggest fears was: What if my team asks me technical questions I have no idea how to answer? Would they still respect me? To avoid that scenario, my strategy was to be super prepared and always have answers. That worked well, until it didn’t. 👇

When it finally happened, I wasn’t sure how to react. My impostor syndrome was panicking. I chose to be honest saying “I don’t know the answer, but let’s think about it”.  That led to an exchange where we analyzed what we knew and what information we might need. Essentially, we figured out together what the next step should be and focused on getting closer to the solution. Within 30 minutes we found the correct answer, and we both learned something new.

That moment taught me an important lesson: it’s okay to not have all the answers. My job is to guide people towards finding the answer and figure it out on the spot. If I am able to do that, it’s a job well done.

To my surprise, being honest had the opposite effect to what I was afraid of. Admitting I didn’t know something made me more “human”—aka relatable—in my team’s eyes, which made them feel more comfortable admitting when they don’t know something. Also, their respect for me grew even more and our connection became stronger. Win-win!

What moments in your career changed how you think about leadership?

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#leadership #collaboration #softwareengineering