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Encourage Female Developers’ Confidence

Edmond Lau

Founder, CTO-as-a-Service at Mossa Labs Inc.

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Problem

At one of my previous startups where I was working as their CTO, I was interviewing with a software engineer; from a computer science and a coding standpoint, she was solid. However, when I met with her it became apparent that where she was before had strongly favored males in her team over females.

Actions taken

Up until that point, she had only worked for companies that were 95 percent male and her ideas, from a technical standpoint, weren't taken as seriously as those of her male colleagues. While she was great technically, she had been working for a company that wasn't great, so she lacked the confidence to speak up. When she had in the past, she had been shot down by her colleagues.

I decided to make her an offer, and when she joined her team I gave her a senior developer position. I gave her the opportunity to explore and gave her the opportunity to step up and speak out more. She was then able to use her soft skills and technical leadership skills to become more of a senior developer.

Lessons learned

More managers and leaders in tech should take a more diverse approach in terms of how they hire and manage a team. Giving this engineer some training and showing her how to express herself helped her to gain confidence to step up to the plate, and she turned out to be an excellent senior developer.


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Edmond Lau

Founder, CTO-as-a-Service at Mossa Labs Inc.


Leadership DevelopmentCommunicationOrganizational StrategyTechnical ExpertiseTechnical SkillsCareer GrowthCareer ProgressionIndividual Contributor RolesStaff EngineerDiversity & Inclusion

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