This post about exorcising the spectre of the fake geek girl really hit close to home.  The post is a discussion about a panel at a recent science fiction convention.  With only a scant handful of changes, this phenomenon is one that women with tech careers recognize as well.  As a senior technical woman, I often find myself getting challenged about whether I’m really a geek.  Do I know the right languages?  Have I been a Mac user long enough?  Do I use the approved applications?  Do I read the right blogs and sites?  Do I have an approved opinion about [whatever the controversy du jour is]?

There’s always another test.  If I pass the first one, then there’s another one lurking.   Eventually, I will fail a test.  I don’t know everything about computer science, I don’t know every programming language, I don’t read every blog, my opinion doesn’t match up with your opinion on every single topic.  Failing one of those tests means that I have proven that I’m a fake geek.

I honestly can’t fathom the person who quizzes me about my geekiness.  You would think that my education (three degrees: MS and BS in computer science, BS in math) would speak for itself.  Or maybe my job at VMware, where I’ve reached one of the seniormost levels available to technical contributors¹, would be sufficient.  Or maybe my time on the committee for OOPSLA, or as an advisory board member of MacIT, would be enough.  Maybe speaking at Google DevFest would prove it.  But it’s not enough.  It’s never enough.  For those who want to believe that there is no such thing as a geek woman, nothing is ever sufficient.

I’m glad to see others taking on the imagined problem of the fake geek girl.  I think if you call yourself a geek, you’re most likely a geek.  You might be a geek in a different way than I am, and each type of geekdom is just as valid as the next.  There’s no ranking of geeks².  If you tell me you’re a geek, I’m going to take your word for it, and I’m not going to quiz you to find out where you just aren’t geek enough for me.

During my talk at WiAC a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that the two-body problem is one of the challenges that face mid-career women.  The two-body problem is about couples who both have careers.  Throughout your career, you have different opportunities that present themselves to you.  These opportunities have to be evaluated as to how they impact your career and the rest of your life.  This evaluation becomes more difficult when you are in a relationship, because “the rest of your life” is more complex.  There are more tradeoffs to consider, and sometimes furthering one party’s goals comes at the expense of the other’s goals.  Further, given that there are two people with two careers, this problem presents itself more frequently.

My husband and I are both software engineers, and the two-body problem is one that we face constantly.  For example, we have both passed on job opportunities that would require relocation or too much travel.  While the opportunity might have been great for our careers, it would have had too much of a negative impact on our personal lives.

In our culture, it had long been expected that a woman’s career would take the back seat to that of her husband.  Consider rocket scientist Yvonne Brill, winner of a NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal, whose New York Times obituary notes that she followed her husband’s career.  This expectation is changing, slowly, but it still impacts many women.  I’m lucky in that my husband doesn’t believe that my career is of lesser importance than his, and our families also feel this way.

For us, we handle the two-body problem by having an ongoing conversation about what we want, both personally and professionally.  We try to make sure that we’re equally balancing each of our career growth, as well as considering the impact of our professional decisions on our personal lives.  These are not easy conversations to have.  It can be hard to talk about what we want to accomplish in our careers, and it can be even harder to talk about places where we feel like we aren’t making as much headway as we want.  They’re hard conversations, but important ones.