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Okay bear with me whilst I have some Feels about Lists.
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Lists are a conscious raising PR exercise. Nothing more. It's not news that women are fully 50% of the population.
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The only list that my name was on that impacted my life in a meaningful way was a list of 👾🐊 harassment targets. Note: not a good way.
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The danger of a list that endeavours to be "comprehensive" is of course, it can't be. The more people you include, the more you leave out.
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We think in tech attention is a valuable metric. It's not. But hard not to feel that it is. Only *some* attention is *a little* valuable.
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"Diversity" attention is at best worthless and at worst harmful. The only valuable attention is the attention paid to work/impact.
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It's easy to conflate the two. I write about inclusivity and attention to that has (some) value. Lower than the value of me being "diverse".
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But the thing that has the best career impact for me is attention on my actual technical work. Sometimes I feel diversity stuff hides that.
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Like I'm a "woman in tech" and no mention of what I actually do all day every day (I wonder how many of you know what that is?)
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Anyway if I'm on some list by virtue of being a woman in a field with few women, and a few people have heard of me. Doesn't mean shit.
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& if you're not, it doesn't say anything about you either. I'm sure what you do is valuable, I'm sure you have interesting things to say.
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The amount of attention we receive does not define us. What is more important is who we are and what we do.