Stop Trying to “Fit In”

I was fifteen, and while other kids my age had been studying for their driver’s ed exams, I had just gotten my Associate’s Degree in mathematics. It took a lot of work, but I loved to learn and had a natural knack for math, probably passed down from both my parents who were also math majors. My father was a cybersecurity professional with the government, and my mother taught math at the community college when she wasn’t homeschooling my sisters and me.

A week after I got my degree, I was talking with an older women who worked with global information system technologies about future career prospects. “You will have no trouble getting a job in a technical field…” she said to encourage me. However, what came next was bothersome, “…because you are a woman and organizations want to hire for diversity.”

Up until that point, I’d been evaluated based on the quality of my work, not my gender. Her comment was disheartening because I had expected that treatment to continue — and wondered why she thought my gender, rather than my skills, had to come first.

I’d succeeded by focusing on doing my best in the field, not on thinking about whether I was in the majority or minority. Although the majority of STEM professionals are male and the majority of college students are at least 17 years old, I wasn’t going to let those statistics hold me back from taking college classes when I was 12 or pursuing a technical career. I wasn’t concerned with trying to fit in because I never thought of myself as an outsider, and no one treated me like one. In fact, I’ve found that when trying to “fit in”–whatever that means–is not a focus, it can, in fact, happen naturally.

Those who are lumped into a majority category can also bring their own unique perspectives to the field, and in my experience, respect between minorities and majorities can be mutual. Take, for instance, my team at my first job after getting my Bachelor’s in mathematics at an engineering firm. As a software analyst, I was also the only woman in the computer lab and the youngest employee by far at 18 years old. But everyone on the team had unique experiences that set them apart from others. The oldest team member always had a story to share about some ancient technology — like punch cards — from prior decades, another colleague came from a very rural area and would regale the rest of us with tales of cow-tipping when he wasn’t configuring the network. A third came from overseas, bringing a global perspective to the team. I didn’t see myself as standing out; I made friends easily with my coworkers and focused on doing my job as well as I could. In other words, I saw that diversity widely defined begets inclusivity, and ultimately, a better work product from all of us.

I saw this again at my next job. In the early days of social networking sites, I was hired on as an emerging technology analyst with the government and tasked to analyze how social media would transform the future. I worked closely with a psychologist, an avid video gamer, and a former social media company employee — people from different parts of the government who would not normally work on the same projects. However, bringing the variety of our backgrounds together, we were better able to predict how social media would affect the personal and professional lives of many employees and help government policy makers adapt.

As I moved to focus on different analytic accounts throughout my almost 10-year career in government and now as a senior cyber analyst at FireEye, the issue of technical trends kept coming up. I’ve gravitated toward the excitement, novelty, and diversity of cyber topics from Internet of Things to encryption to virtual currencies to adversaries changing their hacking tactics.

My advice to anyone considering a cyber career: If your passion and skills align on cyber issues, go after it to the best of your ability, regardless of your background. Learn from what others have to offer and add your own experiences and perspectives to the field.