"ThePLUG was birthed out of the idea that creativity and the world of tech are nuanced industries with diverse people that are too often left out of mainstream media."

The overwhelming focus on imposter syndrome doesn’t provide a space to process the power dynamics affecting you; you get gaslighted into thinking it’s *you* causing all the problems.

While side projects can be a great indicator of personality, ability, and work-ethic, they should not have as much ability to make or break someone’s career.

If we reach our numerical goals only to look in the mirror and see all the corruption that already existed, we will have failed.

In the current discussion on diversity and STEM, as with so many diversity initiatives, disability is usually excluded or thought of purely in terms of accessibility or accommodations.

The system won’t work if there are no developers. It also won’t work if we fire the sales team or get rid of the marketing staff or can the designers. Tech is an ecosystem, and it’s much healthier when we are working cohesively within that system.

Ignoring the jobs and the places where a lot of older women IT workers are employed helps to keep us invisible.

Tech culture doles out imposter syndrome on one side, hubris on the other.

At the end of the day, there’s no way to sugarcoat this: you will encounter difficulty, you will experience discrimination and harassment both in the workplace and in the larger community. Leaning in doesn’t solve everything, and leaving isn’t always the right choice for you.

What message are we sending about the tech industry to people who don’t want to be developers, after all?