Tech Refactored

S2E23 - A Crossover Episode with the Girls Code Lincoln Podcast

January 12, 2022 Nebraska Governance and Technology Center Season 2 Episode 23
Tech Refactored
S2E23 - A Crossover Episode with the Girls Code Lincoln Podcast
Show Notes Transcript

This week we're featuring an episode from Girls Code Lincoln, a local nonprofit which we support in their endeavor to empower girls to learn more about STEM and technology. 

Elsbeth Magilton and Aakriti Agrawal profile Hollywood starlet Hedy Lamarr and interview  Ash Banaszek, Associate of User Experience, at Union Pacific Railroad about their career, education, failures, and successes. 

Each month they profile a historical woman in STEM and introduce listeners to a coder in or from the Midwest. 

Girls Code Lincoln is a community organization in Lincoln Nebraska that focuses on teaching 4th-9th grade girls coding and confidence through free weekly clubs, as well as public events to promote technology literacy across the community. 

Theme music is 'Then it Went Like' by Grace Mesa. 

Lysandra Marquez is a producer (and a Girls Code Lincoln volunteer and teacher).

Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and has not been thoroughly reviewed for completeness or accuracy.

[00:00:00] Elsbeth Magilton: This is Tech Refactored. I'm your host, Elsbeth Magilton, the executive director of the Nebraska Governance and Technology Center at the University of Nebraska, and a producer of this podcast. The Center is a proud supporter of Girls Code Lincoln, a local nonprofit teaching four through ninth grade girls to code.

I am also proud to say that I am the board president of Girls Code Lincoln and my tech refactored co-producer Li Sandra Marque is one of our amazing volunteers Each month with one of the founders of Girls Code Lincoln, I co-host a podcast featuring a profile of a woman in tech history, an interview, a coder, or a scientist in or from the Midwest.

This podcast is perfect for family listening or car rides with your fourth grade and over kids interested in technology. [00:01:00] This week on Tech Refactored, we're proud to be sharing an episode of the Girls' Code Lincoln podcast and highlighting the gender gap and diversity in technology. You can find the Girls' Code Lincoln Podcast wherever you get your podcasts or by going to girls code lincoln.org.

We hope you enjoy the episode. 

[00:01:19] Music: A 1, 2, 3, 1.

[00:01:32] Elsbeth Magilton: Hello and welcome to the Girls Code Lincoln Podcast. Girls Code Lincoln is a community organization in Lincoln, Nebraska that focuses on teaching fourth through ninth grade girls coding and confidence through free weekly clubs as well as public events to promote technology literacy across the community.

I'm one of your hosts, Elizabeth Magilton, and I am the Board President for Girls Code Lincoln With me is our co-host, one of Girls Code Lincoln founders former president and our club's director of operation.

[00:01:59] Aakriti Agrawal: Hey everyone, I'm Aakriti Agrawal [00:02:00]. We are so excited that you're here to join us today. We know that you have millions of options when it comes to awesome audio content out there from podcast to audiobooks, and we appreciate that you're here with our community organization dedicated to teaching girls about coding and confidence.

[00:02:17] Elsbeth Magilton: Our episodes have two distinct segments, and our first segment will be interviewing women who are from Nebraska area or working here en coding in computer science related positions. There's so many women across the entire world who deserve recognition, but I think it's so important for girls in Nebraska and the Midwest area to see that there is space for them here and that this sort of education and work is happening all over the country, not just on the coasts.

[00:02:41] Music: A 1, 2, 3, 1.

[00:02:51] Elsbeth Magilton: Our story starts in 1914, Vienna, Austria, where he, Lamar was born to a well todo Jewish family. She was an only child, and so she received [00:03:00] a lot of attention from her father who was a bank director. Her father was also very curious himself and took Lamar on long walks where they discussed the inner workings of machines.

He inspired her to see the world with open eyes, and even at the young age of five, Lamar would take apart and reassemble her music box so she could understand how the machinery operated. Lamar's 

[00:03:19] Ash Banaszek: mother was a concert pianist and introduced her to the arts, and Lamar took both ballet and piano lessons from a young age, 

[00:03:27] Elsbeth Magilton: as was common at the time.

[00:03:28] Ash Banaszek: Her brilliant mind was ignored and she was only seen for her beauty. At the age of 16, she was discovered by Director Max Reinhardt. Who put her in her first movie. 

[00:03:39] Elsbeth Magilton: That's just all too common, isn't it? Right. But at least she was discovered and could pursue acting in music and her love, love of the arts, and one of her adoring fans, an ammunitions dealer.

[00:03:51] Elsbeth Magilton: Fritz Mandel married Lamar in 1933. But it was short lift as she felt unhappy and escaped four years later by fleeing to London, taking with her the [00:04:00] knowledge that she gained from the dinner table. Conversations about wartime weaponry while she was in London. She was 

[00:04:05] Ash Banaszek: introduced to Louis B. Mayer of the famed MGM Studios, and she secured her ticket to Hollywood.

There she ran a variety of quirky, real life characters such as businessman and Pilot Howard Hughes. 

[00:04:18] Elsbeth Magilton: She dated Hughes, but was very interested in his 

[00:04:21] Ash Banaszek: desire for innovation. He encouraged her curious mind and gave her a small set of equipment to use in her trailer on set, allowing her to work on her inventions between takes.

He taught her all about how airplanes were built and introduced her to the 

[00:04:37] Elsbeth Magilton: scientists 

[00:04:37] Ash Banaszek: behind the scenes. 

[00:04:39] Elsbeth Magilton: Use aimed to create a faster airplane to sell the US military. So she combined the fins of the fastest fish and the wings of the fastest bird into a sketch for new wings for use plane. He explained your genius and she was, she continued to innovate.

She once said, Improving things comes naturally to me, and I just [00:05:00] love that, right? So if you love improving, Own it. Just like he Lamar, she went on to create an upgraded spotlight and tablet that dissolved in water to make soda. Similar to Coca-Cola. However, her most significant invention was engineered as the US geared up to enter World War ii.

We're now 

[00:05:19] Ash Banaszek: 1940 where he meets George Anal, who is known for his writing and film scores, but also shared her inventive spirit and wanted to help with the war just like she. Bill recalled had said that she did not feel very comfortable sitting there in Hollywood and making lots of money when things were in such a.

She had a purpose and she was motivated to to work towards it. After her marriage demand, she had the knowledge on ammunition and various weaponry that would prove beneficial in the work that she had to do. The two 

[00:05:50] Elsbeth Magilton: came up with an extraordinary new communication system used with the intention of guiding torpedoes to their targets during the war.

The system involved the use of [00:06:00] frequency hopping among radio waves, both with the transmitter and receiver hopping to new frequencies. Doing so 

[00:06:07] Ash Banaszek: prevented the intersection of the radio 

[00:06:09] Elsbeth Magilton: waves, thereby allowing the torpedo 

[00:06:11] Ash Banaszek: to find its intended target after its creation. Lamar and anal sought sought a patent and military support for the invention even though they were awarded the US patent.

The Navy decided against the implementation at the system in August of 1942. The rejection led Lamar to instead support the war efforts with her celebrity by selling war bonds. Happy in her adopted country. She became an American citizen in the, in April 

[00:06:38] Elsbeth Magilton: of 1953. Meanwhile, Lamar's patent expired before she ever saw a penny from it.

While she continued to accumulate credits in film until 1958, her inventive genius was yet to be recognized by the public. It wasn't until Lamar's later years that she received an any awards for her innovation. The Electronic Frontier Foundation jointly awarded Lamar and an [00:07:00] Anthem their pioneer Award in 1997.

Lamar also became known as the first woman to receive the invention convection Willie Nas Spirit of Achievement Award. Although she died in 2000, Lamar was inducted to the National Inventor's Hall of Fame for the development of her frequency Opping technology in 2014, such achievement has led the mar to be dubbed the mother of wifi and other wireless communications like GPS and Bluetooth.

[00:07:27] Ash Banaszek: A 1, 2, 3, 1.

Hello, listener. My name is l Sandra Marque and I'm the technical producer of this show. Interested in supporting or getting involved with Girls Code Lincoln. How about volunteering to teach or assist during our weekly? You don't need to be a girl or know how to code. In order to help out, go to girls code lincoln.org and click on Get Involved to learn more about volunteer opportunities, or click on the donate button to support our mission and ability to [00:08:00] keep providing these opportunities in our community.

And now back to this episode of The Girls Code Lincoln podcast. 5, 6, 7, 8. Keep this trash can 

[00:08:11] Elsbeth Magilton: keep going. Te. Today we'll be talking to Ash Banza, who is the associate of user experience at Union Pacific Railroad, about their career path to coding and success in the Midwest. And our second segment, we'll explore a historical woman in coding like we do each week by telling their story.

Today we're learning about Hollywood Starlet he Lamar. Hi Ash, thanks 

[00:08:32] Ash Banaszek: for joining. Thanks for having me. Let's jump right 

[00:08:34] Elsbeth Magilton: in here. Uh, so can you tell us a little bit about your current title, and this is, and tell us, you know, what you 

[00:08:40] Ash Banaszek: do and who you. Yeah, so right now I'm an associate on the user experience team at Union Pacific Railroad.

Basically what that means is, uh, user experience or UX is the combination of psychology and technology. So I make products simpler and easier to use for [00:09:00] our end users, which are both inside the company, like our railroaders, our engineers and conductors, and outside of the cus the company like our customers.

So 

[00:09:10] Elsbeth Magilton: let's, let's take it kind of back old school. Right? Where are you from? 

[00:09:14] Ash Banaszek: Where am I from? Well, I'm from Missouri originally, the St. Louis area. Uh, born and raised. Pretty much spent about 16 years of my life there, and then moved to Maryville, Missouri, and then to Ralo, Missouri, and then finally graduated and moved up here at Omaha.

[00:09:32] Elsbeth Magilton: So there are coders in your family, or did you grow up knowing you wanted to work in technology? 

[00:09:39] Ash Banaszek: I was very much into video games and I really liked that aspect of things. But as far as my parents go, neither of them attended college. My mom got her g e d and my dad was a high school graduate, but his parents wouldn't let him go to college cuz his brother dropped out and they said, Well, if your brother dropped out, well you don't get to go.

So he got to go to like air conditioner [00:10:00] college. and I just remember neither of them kind of really enjoying their careers. My mom was a server and my dad worked at a gas station as a manager, and both of them just decided to self teach them self tech and kind of wound their way into tech. And I kinda saw their path and I realized, well, I don't wanna take that path, but I do wanna work in technology too.

And here I am. Two things 

[00:10:30] Elsbeth Magilton: in there that I just love is a gamers, right? The video games can be an inroad into thinking about how these things work, uh, and sometimes they get a bad reputation. And so I love that that was one of your inroads into your career. Uh, I also love hearing about first generation student stories, and it sounds like you were a first generation college student, so what was your path to college like, and, and what college did you go 

[00:10:53] Ash Banaszek: to?

My parents throughout my entire childhood told my sister and [00:11:00] I, We can do whatever we want as long as we go to college. So they're very much like beating that drum. I don't really believe that college necessarily is required. Uh, you can do code schools and that sort of stuff. I don't think that necessarily a traditional four years is perfect for everyone.

But for us, it was pretty much non-optional. And my sister is the main reason that I got into this school that I did because when she was 15, She found this program called the, uh, Missouri Academy of Science, Mathematics and Computing, which was a two year program during your junior and senior year of high school.

And instead of going to high school, you went to Northwest Missouri State University and you attended college. And so she applied for that. She got in and she convinced me to apply and I got in as well and basically went to college early. So that let me get about 60. College credit, 60 hours of college credit before I even enrolled into my [00:12:00] college program.

And that let me change majors a bunch of times because I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. Ash, I think a lot of students don't know what they're gonna major in. Well, how did you get into engineering? Well, I actually started in computer engineering. That's what I decided to turn roll in. Realized really quickly that I wasn't super interested in circuitry and the hardware.

It was really neat, but, And gates and or gates and man gates just weren't terribly appealing. So then I switched to computer science and I was in that program for about a year when I realized it. Wasn't teaching me what I wanted to learn. I was learning a bunch about c plus plus and that sort of coding, but it wasn't really what I thought of when I thought of development.

And so I switched to information science and technology, and then I began to panic because it was my junior year and I hated pretty much everything I, I did. I tried networking. I didn't like networking. I tried, uh, SAP systems and [00:13:00] enterprise. Planning systems and I hated it. Their nightmare and usability.

And I kept trying different things and and hating different things. And I thought to myself, Wow, well I need to graduate at some point. I guess I'm just gonna hate my job, but at least still pay well. And then I took a course on human computer interaction. And it was my worst semester as far as health goes.

I broke my foot that semester. There was an ice storm. I was crushing around campus in an ice storm, and I also got hospitalized with mono for a week and almost died. But I still remember it as my most successful semester as far as my career went, because I finally found the thing that I loved. And right after I took that course, I, I dual enrolled in grad school and emphasized all my HCI or human computer interaction courses.

Got graduate credit for them and then leaped into my master's degree right [00:14:00] after that. And I was like, this is what I'm going to do. I love this. I love the 

[00:14:03] Elsbeth Magilton: story of, of the class that changes your life, right? I think there's so many professionals I know who can like even pinpoint a semester like that or, or so many poem moments where like, this was the thing where I, I caught the bug, I got the fire.

Um, so while you were in undergraduate and graduate school, did you work anywhere? Intern externship? 

[00:14:22] Ash Banaszek: Oh gosh. I was one of those poor college students, so I had a full ride, but. I didn't have a ton of money, so I worked 30 hours a week. I worked part in, um, our campus, like Factbook area, the, I forget what they call it.

It's basically all the statistics of the university. I worked in that area and did that, and then I also worked in our, uh, human Computer Interaction lab and I was a lab manager there. and I had one brief internship at a telecom company, and that was [00:15:00] before I found HCI , and so it was in networking and it was the most miserable summer of my life.

I highly recommend taking internships and things that you're not quite sure about because they'll let you know in that three month period if this is something you can see yourself doing or if you're gonna have a midlife. Immediately. Um, so that's why I, uh, I, I do recommend internships, but I really only had the one, and then the rest of it, I was pretty much just like grinding, trying to get grad school and my, my bachelor's done at the same time, and it was, so yeah, 30 hours a week in adjacent fields.

And yeah, it was, it was a nightmare. I don't recommend that . Wow. 

[00:15:44] Elsbeth Magilton: Yeah. 

[00:15:45] Ash Banaszek: Can you, so can you tell us how you got from your first job and kind of what that professional career looked like for you to where you are now? Yeah. So my first job, I was fortunate enough that my university, which was the Missouri [00:16:00] University of Science and Technology, had one of the biggest, uh, career fairs in the state.

And so they, they do that every semester. And those career fairs were huge for us cuz there's, you know, hundreds of employers, there's like 400 employers at least at those career fairs. And so you get to network and practice. What I would do is I would find an employer that I didn't particularly care to work for and I would practice on them and then I would go to employer that I actually wanted to work for.

And I didn't actually wanna work for Union Pacific. I was told by my professor, one of my professors, my advisor, that they did UX stuff and human computer interaction stuff. And then I needed to go talk to them and see if there was options open for me. And it just so happened that they did have, um, they were interviewing and they were hiring two positions, and I ended up getting one of them.

The only reason to be perfectly honest, that I was interested in working on the railroad because at the time I was like, Why do they need me? They're [00:17:00] like a trained company was because they were right on the Iowa border and since I'm L G B T at that time, that was the only state in the Midwest where I.

Really good civil rights and the ability to get married. So I was like, Yeah, of course I'll take this job so I can live in a state that doesn't discriminate against me, cuz Missouri really, really did at that time. So when I got this job, I got it straight out of my grad school. I, it was recommended by one of my professors and I applied and I got.

And I essentially worked my way from a junior project consultant to where I am now. And I would say there's a few things that I did along the way that I would recommend people not do, and it's kind of a catch 22, but I did not negotiate [00:18:00] right off the bat. And the reason why I didn't negotiate is I was afraid they would rescind because I've had people that got their offers rescinded for negotiating.

And I was told by one of my, uh, male college advisors, like, You have to negotiate. But there's also a catch 22 for people who aren't men, that if you negotiate, you look entitled, and if you're a man, if you negotiate, you look confident. So there's just like this bias inherently built in. And so I, I, if I would go back, I would probably would negotiate because when I came in there, I found out that I was being dramatically underpaid.

I had a master's degree. I was being paid, uh, less than some people that had bachelor's degrees and the same amount of experience. And obviously that's a, that leads a sour taste in your mouth. I did start advocating for myself, um, and really showing off my skill. . And one of the things that I [00:19:00] also recommend is making sure that you stand up for your achievements and be your own broadcaster.

So one of the things that was happening to me when I first joined was that I was kind of being mentored by a male colleague, and he was great, but he would sometimes accidentally take credit for my work. So my boss would praise him for work that I had done, and he wouldn't actually remember doing that work, but he would be like, Oh yeah, no problem.

Glad that worked out for you. And he was just like, I must have just forgot that, you know, I've done it. And then I. I would witness this and then I would have to step in and say, Actually that was me. I did that work. And they were like, Oh yeah, I forgot it was you. But my achievements were just automatically getting passed on to the person mentoring me.

And so I had to learn pretty quickly like yes, have that mentorship role, but then try to find another woman mentor. And I know what that sounds [00:20:00] kind of sexist, but I have found that when I'm being mentored by women, that just doesn't happen. because we're seen as more equal. Whereas when you're mentoring and partnering with a man, generally the man automatically gets credit even if they're junior to you.

Um, and especially if they're senior to you. That was a lesson I learned very, very quickly. 

[00:20:20] Elsbeth Magilton: There are so many good nuggets and everything that you just laid out throughout all of that. I particularly love the point about state policies and how it affects people joining the workforce. I think that is a.

Largely misunderstood thing by a lot of, uh, state governments. I don't, I don't wanna get into that too deeply on the political side of things. Uh, but you know, they talk about property taxes and housing costs and sometimes they think, I'm not sure that's really what 22 year olds are thinking about primarily.

Um, and I think that's an excellent example of, of how you make a choice for where you wanna live and where you wanna work. And I think it's important for communities to think about that, um, and to think about what their community is [00:21:00] broadcasting by how their lawmakers. Uh, so can you talk a little bit before we get into our next segment about, you know, the different parts of your job and some big successes that you might have had and some big failures.

You might have had a little bit more about what it means to be an associate of ux, right? Like, what did that path in the company look like and what does it look like? Like, you know, what's the day in the life 

[00:21:23] Ash Banaszek: right now? So when you kind of go up the chain, essentially, Your reach of your influence is the thing that's changing the most, right?

So when I was a junior, I was pretty much assigned to a project. I was given pretty strict guardrails of what this project was and what I was supposed to do, and who I was supposed to report to. And as you prove yourself competent and capable to do those, they start expanding your influence and giving you less guidance and less guidelines and trusting your expertise to.[00:22:00] 

Essentially work, right? So as an associate, what I'm doing is I'm essentially running large research projects. I. Going out and finding areas in our company that could use some work. It's not saying, Hey, we wanna do a project on this particular product. It's, Hey, we're, we want you to go ahead and examine this.

Set of users and let us know what we need to do to better support them. So it's those wider path where I get to go in, look at everything from a high level, and then start zooming in and finding those pain points where I can really make big changes. And that's the big difference, is that I get to kind of choose where I make my impact.

Whereas before I was basically told, You're gonna make your impact right here in this little area and just design this screen and then move on. So one of the things we like to ask all of our guests is, [00:23:00] what is the best part of your job? So one of the best things about my job is that at Union, And the user experience side, we're a matrix project management team.

Essentially what that means is we're like the SWAT team for ux. We're the specialists in it. So when we get assigned to an area where the UX expert getting assigned to that area, and we get part of this core product team, we call it the four in the box. So the four big people that are designing what this product is.

And what I really like about it is I represent the end user. I represent the people that are gonna be using the product. So whether that be internal or external, you know whenever you pull up an app on your phone and you're like cursing the app because it's not quite working the way you like, I own that.

My job is to make sure that doesn't happen. And if I've done my job correctly, I will be [00:24:00] completely invisible. , but you will notice the difference because it's just going to be a tool that works with you instead of against you. And that's what I love about my job, is just I can make people's jobs less stressful, easier, more efficient, more effective, and I can make people's jobs better because they don't wanna like chuck their laptop out a window.

Right. 

[00:24:23] Elsbeth Magilton: So what is the hardest part of your. 

[00:24:28] Ash Banaszek: The hardest part about my job is US is often seen as the optional thing. So when people are designing software, some people see UX as the frosting on the cake rather than a core component of the cake. and what that leads to is, you know, they've got a cake that they've made the entire structure, they use salt instead instead of sugar.

Oh, well right now I gotta [00:25:00] figure out how to make it taste good. And with user experience, it's not an add-on at at that point. If you're just trying to make like the window dressing or the frosting. I can't be successful at my job because, Flavor elements are already there. Um, so that's probably the most frustrating is when teams see us as, Okay, we'll, we'll call them in at the very end of the project.

And at that point, I generally say, I, I'm out . I don't, I don't wanna, I don't wanna frost cake because I don't wanna be responsible for how it tastes. Right. So, yeah, that is the most frustrating part. We have since gotten away from that where UX is at the start, like the inception of the project, but there's still some teams out there that say, Hey, can you just take a look at this?

We, we pushed a pro next week. And you're like, Uh, not a lot you could do there. I love that cake [00:26:00] analogy. I think that's such a great way to talk about UX and the development process. 

[00:26:04] Elsbeth Magilton: What is the scariest 

[00:26:05] Ash Banaszek: part of your. The scariest part of my job. I try not to, to think really anything's that scary. As an L G B T individual, my life is a lot scarier than my job , so I don't really find anything scary anymore.

I used to find public speaking really scary, but then I started really pushing myself to do it more. I started reading more about it. The book slide Allergy by Nancy Duarte amazing, completely changed how. Presented. I started going to Toastmasters meetings and practicing there. I then started doing tech talks and presenting at conferences and getting really comfortable with my expertise.

Really comfortable with dealing with Heckler is really comfortable with. The way my voice sounds and my sense of humor. [00:27:00] And I think that just helped me be more confident and well, very charming. So . So it's worth 

[00:27:05] Elsbeth Magilton: noting here that that is actually how I found you and invited you to be on the show was because of the talk you gave at Nebraska Code.

Uh, and I will say that is definitely, um, I think something difficult to begin to master. I do lots of lectures on, also highly, very technical things, and I, I think we get heckled in a different way than some male counterparts get heckled. Um, and occasionally I'm getting questions and I realize this person is trying to figure out.

If I actually know anything about what I'm talking about, instead of actually listening to what I have to say, they're here to quiz me instead of actually engage. Um, and learning how to navigate that as a speaker is, is really intimidating and really scary, but also just so rewarding when you kind of learn.

How to do it. So I love that answer. And so the, so this question is, what is the most rewarding part? And I know maybe you touched on that a little bit when you answered the best part. So I would [00:28:00] challenge you, Is there something else, , that you think is the most rewarding, 

[00:28:03] Ash Banaszek: uh, about your career? Well, I would say another rewarding part would be that, I get to do a lot of different things and that's not necessarily ux, that's because I picked an organization where we're matrixed.

So one year I might be working on engineering projects and I'm going up and, and inspecting bridges with bridge inspection crews. And then another year I'm sitting in yard master towers with people that are running our rail yards. And another year I'm doing. Like stuff in the legal department, so I'm constantly changing what I'm doing and that way just doesn't get old.

You know, one of the things that I have to deal with is the fact that I have adhd, and when you have ADHD sometimes doing the same thing over and over again. Can get really disengaging and it makes it really, really hard [00:29:00] to get work done. And that's why I picked UX as a career because I can change what I do and that's what I'm working at as a matrix person.

It never gets too old. I can count on, okay, if I just hang onto this project, get through a year of it, I can switch to something else that maybe I love. And that's what's kept me at my company for so long is because. I don't let it get stale. I don't really have that impact from my ADHD that I probably would at other organizations.

So Ash, you're very inspiring, but I think a lot of us fear 

[00:29:36] Elsbeth Magilton: failure, 

[00:29:37] Ash Banaszek: and so we would love for you to share 

[00:29:39] Elsbeth Magilton: a time when you failed. 

[00:29:40] Ash Banaszek: Well, one of my weaknesses is dealing with inner office politics, , and I will tell you that my biggest failure had to do with the failure to properly manage a product manager and a product champion.

So essentially what a product manager does is they're supposed to manage the product. They, [00:30:00] they prioritize things and they make sure the developers know what they're working on and ux, et cetera. And when I was pitched this project, I was pitched as a co-lead, so I was partnering with the project manager to lead the product.

and what ended up happening was that memo was not shared with the product manager who then saw me as kind of someone who is infringing on his project, and he got very territorial and very upset about that to a certain point where he started leaving me out of meetings. He started undermining me in front of stakeholders.

He started, uh, bringing things up to chain to my boss and eventually got me removed from the product. Because I thought I had partial ownership of it and he was like, Absolutely not. So instead of I guess figuring this out and realizing that I was mis so on this project and, and kind of getting with the new [00:31:00] reality, I kind of stuck to my guns and kinda got bounced off the project.

And so that was. A pretty stinging failure that it still kind of, still kind of hits me to this day because politically this person is still involved around my career and you know, does not have anything nice to say about me and I don't have anything nice to say about them. That is a challenge, but, I did learn a lot about how to manage stakeholders and I've not let that happen again.

I am very much more aware of talking to mentors, talking to coaches, talking to other people, and just kind of verifying more and less trusting. And cuz someone can be saying something to you and seeming very open and, and like they're on board and behind the scenes completely working against you. And if you don't have those feelers out, you'll never know.

And that. . That was a pretty stinging failure for me. One of 

[00:31:58] Elsbeth Magilton: the things that I, [00:32:00] I think is undersold in high school and in college is, is the real practicality of the workplace, right? And the interpersonal skills matter. So it's not just about constantly learning substance. That, of course, is. Fundamental to whatever your career choice is gonna be, but it's also about learning how to manage people, work collaboratively, you know, manage up, manage down all those pieces of it.

So, no, I think it's actually a great example, even if it's not necessarily something that I know a lot of our listeners might relate to personally if they're still in school, but I think hearing those stories is important. How about a big 

[00:32:37] Ash Banaszek: success? Well, I've had fortunately a lot more of those , which is nice.

But as I, you know, in ux, one of the things that we learn is that it's okay to fail. We try to fail early, we fail often. We fail small so we can win big. So if you don't find out that something isn't gonna work until [00:33:00] the very. Last minute when you're launching it, that's gonna be a big failure. So we are constantly testing and working on things so that we can succeed.

Most recently, I think my biggest success is I was assigned a project that was pretty, I would say it was pretty much junior level work, and I very much questioned why am I being assigned this project. And so I dug deeper. I did the seven Y methodology, which is basically you ask why, and then you figure out why that, and then you figure out why that, and you keep going back until you finally find the root problem.

So I did the seven whys on this request and realized that the thing that they were asking me to fix was simply a symptom of a much larger problem. And by asking those whys and getting to that root problem, I completely restated the project and said, Why don't we focus on this instead? And that [00:34:00] is what I've been working on for the last few months, is solving that problem.

And I can't be any more specific than that , but uh, that is probably one of my biggest success recently, is making sure that you're knowing the why behind the ask, and making sure that you're attacking the root of the problem and really going for the goals that matter the most. 

[00:34:21] Elsbeth Magilton: It has been so wonderful chatting with you and hearing your story and about all of your educational experiences and your position.

Do you have any other closing comments that you want to provide or, or share with our 

[00:34:34] Ash Banaszek: listeners? Um, One of my favorite quotes is from Frank Lloyd Wright, which is you can use an eraser on the drafting table or a sledgehammer on the construction site, and that is huge in technology development. A lot of people say, Well, it's just about, you know, deleting lines of code.

What does that really cost you? Well, it costs you a lot of time, and if you get the core structural foundations wrong, then that causes a [00:35:00] cascading effect just like it would with the house. If you pour the wrong foundation, you're gonna get the wrong result. So for any technologist, I would highly recommend thinking things through, going through the logic before you even put down a line of code.

Looking at the user experience, who's at who you're actually making this for, so that when they walk in that house, they see something fantastic and not that you put the toilet next to. The kitchen sink because the plumbing line's laid it out better, you know, So that's, that's my best line of advice for new technologists.

Don't put your toilet in your kitchen. I love it. That's great advice. 

[00:35:42] Elsbeth Magilton: Thank you so much for being with us 

[00:35:43] Ash Banaszek: today, Ash. That was great talking to you and learning from you. Um, and there were so many great nuggets of information and. Plastic quotes in there.[00:36:00] 

[00:36:00] Elsbeth Magilton: We've been your host, Elsbeth Magilton and Aakriti Agrawal. Girls Code Lincoln is a 501C3 nonprofit organization in Lincoln, Nebraska where we strive to ignite passion for technology and leadership in young girls with the long term goal of closing the gender gap in stem. Learn more@girlscodelincoln.org.

Thank you to lro. A girls 

[00:36:19] Ash Banaszek: Code Lincoln volunteer and the technical producer of this podcast want to hear 

[00:36:24] Elsbeth Magilton: more from women in coding? Tell your friends about this podcast and share on social media. Word of mouth is our best advertising research on Heather Lamar was adapted from the biography section of the National Women's History Museum website.

[00:36:38] Ash Banaszek: Hi. Hi.