A year ago, a job interviewer asked me about this newsletter. She pulled up a post I had written that was critical about tech interviews and asked me why I didn't propose solutions to any of the problems I was writing about. As a tech leader, she said she learned that the most effective way to inspire change is to propose a solution rather than just calling out the problem.
I understand this perspective and believe that future employers have every right to get to know me better by reading what I knowingly put on the public internet.1
However, when I consider proposing solutions to some of the biggest problems in the tech industry—racism, sexism, gender imbalance, pay inequality, devaluation of less technical workers, and large-scale layoffs— I come up short. Maybe I'm not confident or experienced enough as a tech leader, or perhaps I don't feel like preaching to the choir by telling my mother and my eight friends how to solve problems they also can't control.
From where I am standing right now, it seems like it would be impossible to change any of these things without fundamentally changing the culture and incentive structure of the entire industry and, for that matter, the rest of late-stage capitalism.
After the interview, I took down the post and stopped writing.
I stopped writing, partially because my life got in the way but mostly because I feared current and future employers would see me as a liability. Loose lips sink ships and sometimes stock prices.
A year later, though, I'm not entirely satisfied with this conclusion.
Writing helps me feel connected to the world and the other people in it. The words "me too" are perhaps my favorite two words in the English language. When other people write about the world through their eyes, it helps me feel less alone.
I realized recently that I know a way out of this dilemma. Two summers ago, I took a class on storytelling for the stage. I stood in front of an audience in a dark theater next to the Seattle Gum Wall and told a story about a Christmas pageant in Guatemala. It was terrifying, and I loved it.
Stories can be funny, engaging, sad, or maddening. They don't have to have neatly tied-up endings. They resist corporate America's urge to form a concise argument and call to action.
I recognize that this path also isn't risk-free—particularly because I know I already face more intense scrutiny as a woman working in a man's industry. Stories can point us to uncomfortable realities no matter how much we try to tell them fairly and truthfully.
I think I am going to take that risk.
So, let me start over. Hi, I'm Becca. I used to be an elementary music teacher, and now I have worked in the tech industry as a software consultant, manager, and front-end engineer for the past eight years. To this day, my career highlight is the day I went viral because I tweeted2 a shout-out to the Ikea developer who was logging a cry for help in the developer console in March of 2020 while I was trying and failing to buy a bed frame. Today, I like JavaScript, data visualization, and web performance, but I wouldn't say I like the hyper-capitalist system that makes these skills useful.
I am also very burned out.
I thought I had experienced burnout before, but 2024 caught me off-guard. For reasons I cannot fully explain, I returned to work in January after a week and a half of mandatory time off3 and could not function anymore. My heart rate spiked the minute I opened my computer. My (often contentious) team meetings began to feel seven hours long. I tried writing code, but my brain was too clouded and murky to remember basic syntax. I was deeply unhappy at work and taking it out on the people I cared about.
So, I did the thing I hadn't done since before the pandemic: I stopped working. I am not job searching. I'm still employed, but I am taking a couple of months of unpaid leave.
While I don't want to trade one all-consuming job for another while trying to slow down and treat my raging amygdala, I do want to spend some time writing about life in the tech industry. I want to tell my stories and help tell other people's stories because I know my life as a white, straight, cisgender American woman doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of what it is like to work in a big, diverse, international industry.
If you are also struggling to figure out how to move forward during this moment in the tech industry, I can't offer much in terms of solutions or advice. I'm not going to tell you to adjust your mindset, stand up for your own needs, or tell your obnoxious coworker to cut it out already. I don't know your life, and you're probably a very competent professional who already thought about all of these things but still feels a little lost right now.
What I can offer you right now are the words "Me too." Or maybe, "Wow, I haven't had your exact experience, but that sounds hard." We might not be able to fix shareholder-enriching layoffs, bro culture, or anything about Elon Musk, but who knows, maybe a little bit of solidarity can move the needle.
I'm still working out the details. I'm unsure I can commit to a regular cadence like a real professional Substack writer. I'm also not sure what to do about the whole thing with Substack and Nazis. But I am re-committing myself to figuring some of these things out.
As you might have figured out already, I don't have a neatly tied-up ending to my burnout story because I'm still in it. I honestly don't know what my next move will be.
But today, I felt energized in a way I haven't felt for a long time because I told a story. For today, this is progress.
This company later rejected me after the final interview, and when I asked for feedback, the head of people told me I "wasn't a culture fit" because I was "too creative for FinTech.”
What do we even call this now? I X-ed? Boo.
My company required us not to work but also took the days from my already negative PTO balance. Everyone I have explained this to has said, “Wait, they can do that??”
Oh my. That’s my fear too! It’s very hard to write and put it out there knowing a future employer could look at it and say “nope”. A dear friend of mine posted about the orchestra interview process and it completely destroyed many of her friendships. She felt compelled to write her solutions much as you were told to do, but that didn’t help. It wasn’t actually the problem. The problem is the people in charge like the discriminatory system. They don’t want to fix it, it got them where they are.
I’m sorry you had that experience. Creativity is always a good thing!