How Experiences with Tech May Influence Future Career Choices
Exploring the challenges and opportunities of generational shifts in tech.
Smashed between the heels of Women’s Month and a critical milestone birthday (no need to name which one), I’m reflecting, practicing gratitude, and engaging in a little generational comparison. At the potential risk of igniting the 2.0 version of walking uphill barefoot in the snow to school, the wealth of data now at our fingertips makes it almost impossible not to zoom out and take stock of life pre- and post-smartphone, especially as a woman, and consider how emerging trends may impact future generations’ interest in tech careers.
Professionally I’m on a team thinking critically and creatively about all the ways we can support women technologists to create an experience that provides them the latitude to innovate, opportunity to work on really cool problems, ability to drive our organization forward, and to thrive in technical roles. We all know the sobering stats on the number of women who sustain a successful career in technology. In case you’re rusty, here’s a quick view of the gender gap in tech from Girls Who Code.
As I played with my 10-year old niece this past weekend I couldn’t help but reflect on Jonathan Haidt’s recent Atlantic article, “End The Phone-Based Childhood Now.” It made me wonder how the impact of technology, namely social media, on younger generations will influence women’s full-time interest in tech. For example, say a Gen Z woman lives through adverse mental health effects from her experience on social media as a teenager. How might that color her perspective on diving into a technological vocation?
How do our early experiences with technology shape our view of it later in life?
There is evidence to show that members of Generation Z (born in and after 1996) are suffering from anxiety, depression, self-harm, and related disorders at levels higher than any other generation for which we have data. Zeroing in on women, the picture is even more dire.
Gen Z writer Freya India describes the algorithm conveyor belt phenomenon in one blog post. It highlights how easy it is to fall down the online rabbit hole and how doing so with every topic imaginable can impact things like resilience and critical thinking. It also illustrates the seamless journey of algorithmic movement from innocent “What I Eat In A Day!” videos to pro-anorexia content in one sitting.
But as social media reaches its teen years, there are plenty of hard-won lessons learned from its rearing that shouldn’t be repeated. Enter: Gen Alpha. They will have witnessed the world’s crises closeup enough to know some type of redefinition is in order; but, man, what a small price to pay for the opportunity to potentially work full-time in space, transcend physical into virtual, and literally build new worlds with technology! That’s not even mentioning that over half will work in jobs not yet invented . A small price indeed.
How might we generationally respond to the role of technology in our lives, and how might that impact the makeup of our tech talent workforce? Do women shun it and hide away to avoid past pain? Or do women embrace it and build from the ground up a new set of rules from which to play?
Maybe it’s birthday sentiment, but I look around and see a lot of reasons to be optimistic. The amazing women technology leaders I work with daily who forged a path for others, all the purposeful work we are doing to advance women in emerging tech domains, and the measured care we take with our market research and eminence to understand how we got to this place and where to focus next for a more equitable and inclusive future.
Is it all birthday cake and confetti from here? Yes, for me it is in a few weeks. For society? The jury is still out, but there’s plenty to go around (especially in the metaverse).
Rachael Nosin | Tech Leadership Development, Deloitte