This is just the beginning…

I realized this yesterday when I got stuck at New Delhi airport. Suddenly it dawned on me that if I don’t do something, I’m sure, I’m going to go crazy soon 🙂 So here I am… a middle-aged woman from Europe… let’s spice it up, Eastern Europe, Poland. The life of a woman in IT is not easy and never has been, I will explain later.

Another business trip… after all, the last time I was here was two weeks ago… New Delhi is just a transfer, my destination is Hyderabad, city of technology. All major IT companies have their headquarters here. Mine too, and in the last three months I’ve been here four times for now 🙂 and still counting.

But I wanted to talk about me, my career in IT and how I feel about that…was it easy? HELL NOT! Has anyone made it easy for me? OF COURSE NOT! Did I want to give up? OF COURSE! Sometimes it felt like apparently I love self-torturing myself…

So, when waiting for my connecting flight with a wait time of 6 hours, I realized that if I continue to devote myself to work as I have done so far, it will not bring me anything good…It will bite me, for sure. And something to confess here, I feel like I am already at my full burn out.

This blog will be my remedy and my therapy to tell how it is, how I feel and whether IT is a place for female talents. For now I’m fed of company I work for, am fed up of my new boss, chaos, no one knows who does what and what is right and what’s not, everything as a priority and constant change in our course of direction. Of course, people have good intentions, but many times execution is horribly failing. WELCOME to my world! World of Information Technology.

Don’t take me wrong, I don’t want to moan but I need this blog space to ventilate in an anonymous way…If someone likes to read it, awesome, if someone wants to share his/her experiences, please do, please comment and let me know how you feel. Just please let’s be respectful to each other here.

This is my therapy space, place where I feel safe and where I can say what I truly think about today’s technology world and place of women in it.

Of course, not everyday is shitty and I love my job on one hand, but on another, there are moments when I seriously think about giving up, shutting the doors behind me and probably figuring out what to do next. Or taking a longer break to re-hub my mind and get it back on track.

To set the content here, I work in IT space, used to work in Cyber before for many years. Overall, more than 25 years of experience, always worked in big enterprises all over the world. Most recent place is multi-national British corporation. Never worked in local Polish company so maybe female situation in technology is different, but I doubt. You tell me if someone reading it 🙂

There are good moments at work too, fun times but when you ask me: why you are still there if you complain about how it is? My answer is, because deep inside me, I truly like my job, but what keeps me here are simple people, awesome people around will help you to survive even difficult times. So if you have to choose laugh or cry, try to laugh…been there and tried it all….I cried hundreds of times and I know that laugh is better, trying to stay positive, because that is the key to success. But if you need to self-ventilate, crying is good too, whatever you feel like is better for you.

This is my first post and I don’t want to make it too wordy but what I want to do, is to tell you how my career was since the very beginning and how it took me to the place where I am now.

Is the world of Technology conducive to women, has something changed for the better over the last 25 years, or do I think going forward it will be just fine? Hard questions to answer right away. My goal is to share my views on today’s women in technology and are we truly diverse and inclusive as we claim?

Of course, it is fashionable to be diverse same as claim we support work-life balance and wellbeing is important to us as a company. But do companies truly execute on it or they just educate people they should keep a healthy work-life balance?

In the meantime, your boss is sending you emails on Friday evening, claiming he needs something from you by Monday end of the day. How generous…I guess that is supposed to be a balance… But in reality, it means you need to prep over the weekend as your calendar is full and entire Monday you will be stuck on back-to-back calls?

These are just worthless slogans. In most cases, work life balance does not exist, after pandemic our lives are as crazy as they have never been before, less people to do same work, keep challenging yourself, you can do it, right? No you can’t…you can do it once or twice, but when it becomes a rule that your day is 12-16 hours long…this is not a balance…it is a prison or a golden cage if you get good money. You are able to pay your bills, but is it worth the effort, the sacrifice? Ask yourself.

I’ve already asked myself and this blog is my first step to my freedom…very soon. My biggest dream is to travel around the world and become a motivation speaker, inspirational leader, show people other doors that might have been closed until now, unlock their true potential and remind that once upon a time, they had dreams too…

I know, one day, very soon my biggest dream will become my new reality 🙂 Someone said, follow your dreams because life is too short to get stuck in one place which makes you miserable. Stand up straight and move forward with dignity. See you soon…

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Tiny disclaimer here, I have never had proper English classes, I learnt English myself, when working in the States with Camp America Work & Travel Programs, so please excuse my English if sometimes won’t be too perfect and I might make some grammar mistakes, am trying to do my best here.

Actually, I think it is easier for me to say what I think and how I feel in English, than in my native language. English just helps me to describe my state of mind in much easier way than Polish would ever do.

I’ll be back…

• March 2023
• February 2023