Show notesWatch us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcVy3mXHceQEva was our #WTMVIE keynote speaker in 2019 and one of the 2 co-founders of the Viennese community Women && Code.We talk to Eva about her experiences and her drive for getting more women into Tech.Mentioned resources: Women && Code: https://womenandcode.org/ Her keynote #WTM19: The peculiar life of a polymath by Eva Lettner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdlY8-oOSmk Connect with her on Twitter: https://twitter.com/eva_trostlos Womentor: https://www.womentor.at/Transcript TIMEA: Hey Ramón! RAMÓN: Hey Timea! TIMEA: Let’s talk gender equality. RAMÓN: I love the idea. Gimme a second I just gotta grab my coffee, I hope you’ve got yours, too! TIMEA: Yep, right here. RAMÓN: Welcome to another episode of “Gender Equality over Coffee”! I am so excited to have the two of you here. We are joined today by Eva Lettner. TIMEA: Hi Eva! Hi everybody! RAMÓN: Eva is an incredible person, we are so happy to have you here today. Yeah I figured I won’t do the talking, Eva why don’t you tell us, do you have a fun nickname for us that you’d like to share? EVA: I don’t have a nickname since my name is so short, no, nobody’s ever bothered to make a nickname. When people call me a nickname they usually prolong my name, so yeah I’m just Eva. On the internet I’m @eva_trostlos which is a play on words for my husband’s last name. RAMÓN: Oh! I never knew that. Well, why don’t we start off, letting loose, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself? Maybe some three random things about you? EVA: Some three random things… I make my own clothes! I collect fountain pens, this is my newest addition. I love it very much it’s very pretty. TIMEA: Wow yeah that’s cool. EVA: And I’m teaching myself to play the piano for two years now. RAMÓN: That’s awesome. I love it when people tell us about things that that that are outside of their regular things that you see them in. Timea, do you play any instruments? EVA: No I don’t but I was actually interested in piano a while ago so I got stuck on that point, but I never it never picked up I don’t have a keyboard at home so that kind of a keyboard but I gotta say I was thinking more about the collection like do I collect something. Do you collect something Ramón? RAMÓN: Do I collect something… I collect random things at home probably mostly Nintendo things it’s a bad habit of mine old Gameboys I really like old Gameboys TIMEA: I’ve seen some of you had some with some meetups and I was like wow I’ve never seen some stuff like this earlier and cute. RAMÓN: Yeah that’s a little bit of my background, yeah. So Eva you were keynoting at our Women Techmakers conference a few years ago I think it was 2017… TIMEA: 19! Not that far away EVA: Yeah but then 2020 took 38 years, so… RAMÓN: It just feels like a different amount of time! I’m curious what how did you get connected with Women Techmakers Vienna? EVA: Wow, that’s, actually I went to Women Techmakers conference ages ago, I don’t even remember if I was already working in tech or if I was just starting out but it was the first conference I ever went to. TIMEA: Oh yeah! I feel super, like, wow, okay, we were the first conference, cool! EVA: Yeah so it was either right after I started working in tech or just before. And it was just, it felt so great there were so many cool people there and I met people that I’m still friends with now, like Pilar, who is Ramón’s sister, I met her there and it was just a very nice atmosphere and I felt very empowered from all the speeches and it’s just it gave me the feeling that a woman can actually do things in tech and can be influential in a way and also this was when I saw myself first on stage, I saw those women speak and I was like “Oh I’m gonna do that too”. TIMEA: Wow. EVA: And I was terrified of public speaking all of my life it’s just nothing I ever anticipated doing it was nothing I ever looked forward to but when I went to the conference and I saw those women speak I was like ‘Yeah I’m gonna do that too at some point’. And I don’t remember what year it was, it was either 2016 or 2017. Then I went to the conference and yeah! So things happened and I wanted to volunteer for Women Techmakers at some point but I didn’t get really into it because I ran out and it was just very, I had a lot to do and it was just a little bit too stressful, but then Timea and I stayed in contact and eventually she asked me if I would give give a talk at Women Techmakers and obviously I was like ‘yeah sure’. TIMEA: Wow I have so many actually follow-up questions on these points, and you are by now a public figure for me especially. Since you became a Google Developer Expert and so if one Googles your name you they can find talks with you. You’ve been at meetups, spoke at conferences with over a thousand people, so that’s amazing, and the one point I want to catch on to is, in german there’s a specific word for this I really like. It’s “quereinsteigerin”. EVA: Oh yeah. TIMEA: Right, so you actually changed your profession, yeah, I want you to tell us a little bit about that aspect. EVA: Yeah, so initially I wanted to be a linguist. I started studying historical linguistics at university, and I was close to the end like I was already writing my thesis and I was working in in a project already, and it was all nicely laid out I have my plan, I will get my masters then I would get my PHD and I would become a linguist. And now comes the sad part of the story because then my mother got cancer and I lost steam on uni. It was just, I couldn’t focus on anything anymore, it was just getting through all these hurdles and and making it through to the next day, and so that took two and a half years, then my mother passed away, and I found myself with “Okay what am I doing now?” because I can’t go back to uni, I’m too far away now and I stopped studying so I was there without perspective and without anything so I had some random jobs here and there, I didn’t want to be anything in particular so it just bounced around, and I had different careers until at some point I thought “Hey, there was this one thing that you did as a teenager that you really enjoyed, it was building websites, but then somebody told you that you can’t do that as a career!” And by then people did it as a career so I thought “okay you know what I enjoyed this i’m gonna try this” out and I got myself back into programming and I enjoyed it really much and yeah the rest is history I just got stuck in it. TIMEA: Uou got into programming, at least in one of the talks you mentioned you were basically teaching yourself is so or did you do any course or Google? EVA: I did a course but that didn’t do much for me it. It wasn’t necessarily the fault of the course, it was just, I was used to teaching myself things from uni and afterwards it’s just like teaching myself, so I have prior knowledge so it was a lot easier for me to get into stuff, and the stuff that we learned in the course wasn’t necessarily what I wanted to do. So there was loads of PHP, and that kind of stuff that just didn’t interest me. I wanted to make things shiny and float! TIMEA: Right I remember at the devfest you had the talk about CSS, and that’s how you did things shiny and nice and actually cute and nerdy I was, you know, I was trained in Java most of my professional years and I’ve seen you do these amazing things with CSS I was fascinated. Is that something that also got you excited into coding? EVA: Yeah I always wanted to stretch the boundaries of what is possible with a certain technology and I really got stuck in CSS because I like to be a creative but I can’t draw. It’s just, that’s not in my skill set but for whatever reason maybe block stuff looks… TIMEA: You could draw with pixels actually! It looks so cool, you had this monster, let’s put in the show notes, a link to, I think we still have the Devfest talk. RAMÓN: Yeah should still be around. TIMEA: Right, on the YouTube channel we also make sure to link your keynote talk. RAMÓN: Absolutely, yeah. One thing that I’ve always appreciated about about your talk and your presence in general as a community member is this this desire to help people get inspired and and learn either, you know, by themselves or through whichever methods work for them best. I’m curious, what’s your driving factor for, you know, getting others up and running, for example in this case front-end software developers. EVA: I teach myself through my own excitement. I’m a very excitable person and I get really excited about things very quickly and then I learn all about them. This is how I learn and this is how I also teach, I make people excited about things so that they want to develop themselves further because when I’m giving workshops and when I’m teaching it’s not enough to just be in the workshop and do the things that I tell them to, that doesn’t cut it. You don’t become a developer from just being in a workshop you become a developer because you love it and because you’re excited about it and you want to learn more. If you’re not excited about it, it’s that’s not enough, that will not get you very far is my experience, so what I like to do is build up excitement and emotion about the topic so that you actually want to work on it, and that you want to get better at it, and I always say at the end of my workshops this is not enough this is this was for nothing if you don’t do it now in your free time if you don’t practice and learn more then you could have skipped this workshop, because it’s no use, you have to be into the topic and you have to like it and enjoy it, which is also a bit of a problem in the whole tech industry because we are made to feel that unless we code in our free time, we are not developers, we are not real developers, but you really have to weigh in what your free time looks like and what you actually can do and what your job is and, yeah so that’s the really that. RAMÓN: Absolutely and I definitely want to come back to that, but something you mentioned there about this desire to, you know, getting excited and getting others excited I think is a good opportunity to just briefly touch upon something that you started a handful of years ago with Barbara Ondrisek called Women && Code, so why don’t you tell us a little bit about this this organization? EVA: Yes, we founded a non-profit organization that aims to get more women into tech, and our goal is to teach people: teach themselves and teach each other, so we we structured our courses. They are not really courses, they they are a communal workshop where everyone teaches each other and themselves. So our courses are structured like this: you show up, if you’re there for the first time you you get a little sticker that has a 1 on it, and so you can flock to all the people that also have a 1 on it and you do a specific exercise. If you get stuck you look around the room and you find someone with a higher number than what is on your sticker and that person will be able to help you, because they have done that specific problem before, and that is the whole concept of it, so that we don’t have to teach because teaching is very tiresome and if you do it for free, in your free time, it becomes even more tiresome because you’re spending your free time on something that is fun, but also you need to make a living too, and yeah, so this becomes very very difficult with time and we did this once once or twice per week. Also, it wasn’t sustainable to teach all the time and so we we came up with this concept of people teaching each other and that has worked out great! It’s really fun and people have actually formed communities around this, and have made WhatsApp groups where they program together and learn together, people have become friends over this community, it’s just really nice to see, and we wanted to have a hands-off approach as much as possible as the founders of this movement, because we want to enable women to take care of their own path and their own learning, just because that is something that you need to learn as a developer in the future too. And yeah, it’s loads of fun. We are on an extended break now, though, because, first we took a break for mental health reasons, because it was a lot of work, and now we’re taking a COVID break, because we we did these things in person, and the concept was always to have it in person so you can walk around the room and yeah. RAMÓN: That’s awesome, I’m gonna put a link. TIMEA: Yeah, the link is a good point you have to, of course. I wanted to say that I was once at an event, participated as a tutor, and I liked the atmosphere and people were very open and there was no shyness of asking questions. That’s something that is not a given in some events and I was actually fascinated of what intriguing projects some of the participants had they were more advanced than what I ever did in some regards and I was there as a tutor and I was like “okay maybe next time” I should just come as a participant, you know. [Laughter] TIMEA: And what I also liked is I’ve noticed that at these events, people are “quereinsteigerin”, a lot of them so they are coming from different backgrounds and they want to use I.T or programming for their domains to empower them in their work, become more efficient or create something that is online available and that was, that would, I think this is what is definitely missing in a lot of tech, this multi-disciplinary aspect. EVA: Yeah, completely, and it was just very nice to see all those different perspectives, because we have loads of participants who come from a marketing background, because they want to learn what costs so much when they give this little task to a developer and why this is now 500 euros if it’s just a button, and that is super interesting because they want to gain knowledge in order to be more powerful and to be more assertive in their jobs. They don’t necessarily want to program themselves but they want to gain the knowledge so that they can be more assertive and that is super cool! That is just that, that keeps us going in this because we actually help them in their current situation, we don’t need to change jobs but they will become better in in their current situation and that is just really awesome. TIMEA: So I find this to be a direct parallel of your experience and you wanting to give back so that other people can have this experience. Is this the spark that ignited the collaboration with Barbara on Women && Code? EVA: Yes I think that’s exactly it, because getting into tech changed my life so much for the better, it gave me so much independence also on a monetary basis because obviously in tech we earn quite a lot more than in other professions which is sometimes very unfair, but it just gave me so much more power over my own life and I want to share this with other women. TIMEA: That’s so beautiful and thank you for the work you do for our community. EVA: It’s fun! [Laughter] RAMÓN: Well, going going back to what we’re just touching up on briefly before I think something that comes with a lot of, you know, a lot with volunteering and, you know, getting your work out there, and trying to do work outside of work is a danger of what is, especially I found this year, to be a bit of an issue and this sort of hustle sort of culture that’s come out, you know, people trying to to over extend their capabilities and, you know, come up with more ideas and projects and products and try to, you know, level up in whichever field, be it STEM or other, that they’re in, and this leads to burnout a lot, and something that I’ve always admired and actually been inspired by you Eva is that is that you are very clear in this separation. So I’ve wanted to ask, especially for our listeners who are probably starting out and thinking, you know, “I can do this all day, every day!” Why is it so important to you to have this this separation? EVA: This is my private space. This is where I am creative. This is where I do my own things and I don’t want to let work creep into this because I need to regain my strength, because in my job I use a lot of of my energy to be a professional… professional! And I lead a team at work, I need to have the energy to help people and to empower them so I need to regain my energy, and as an introvert I gain my energy from being alone, and just doing stuff with myself, so it’s very important to me to have that distinction and especially also with volunteering and doing extra stuff outside of work, I need to have a certain amount of free evenings to me and also have time for my relationship and have time for friends, because most of my friends are outside of tech which is very healthy, put things into perspective, because we can get in a rut of going to this meetup, if it’s not the pandemic obviously, but there was a time when every evening I was in a meetup and that was fun for a while but it was so draining, because there are so many people and so many conversations and you feel like you hustle all the time, because maybe this person will at some point give you a job and then, you know, this person and that person can mentor you and, whoa, but you also need the mind space to keep all of that in your head like who is who, and who do I ask for what, so this is just a lot of stuff that’s in your brain and it’s constantly in there, and so if you have trouble sleeping because you’re constantly worrying about things and “have I said the correct thing to that person” and “I need to go to this meet up” and “I need to give a talk there” this will cost you a lot of energy, or at least that’s what happened to me, and so at some point I decided “Okay I will say no and I will learn to say no”, and this is very difficult. I think saying no is a very important skill and also realizing that when you say no, you’re not mean, you’re not hurting anyone, you’re just saying “No, I can’t do this at the moment, maybe I will do it later, maybe I won’t do it at all.” It’s just super important to be able to say “This is not in my capabilities now, I don’t have time for this, don’t have the energy for this”. There’s also the analogy with the spoons. You have a certain amount of spoons every day, ah, I don’t have enough spoons for all of the things that I want to do and that people want me to do. TIMEA: This brings me to the title of your keynote which was, it had this word ‘polymath’ that I didn’t even know before and the fact that ‘the life of a polymath’, that’s the title which you described to be as a person that has eight arms involved in like an octopus, involved with in a lot of projects, a lot of things at the same time, I found it very genuine and a very good insight into your personality and how do you deal with things in general, so I think it really fits. It’s the word that sums up this tremendous energy that you put in the community and in the work and I identify myself with it and to be honest, this break because of the pandemic actually, was good for me because I could finally stand still and not go to a ton of meetups. EVA: Yeah. TIMEA: Right so I think for us this was not a bad break in that sense. EVA: Oddly enough I planned for 2020 to be my year of not speaking, so I had planned before we knew about the virus in anything I had planned to not give a single talk for the whole year I could I didn’t travel, I didn’t want to go anywhere, I didn’t want to do meetups, I didn’t want to do anything, I wanted to be quiet for a whole year. I didn’t know that my wish would extend to the whole world I’m very sorry for that, but yeah it was taken care of. RAMÓN: I hope that being here with us doesn’t count as one of those activities! EVA: Oh no not at all! TIMEA: Hey, we’re drinking coffee here, come on, yeah enjoy a friendly chat! Yeah and by the way, friendly chat, thinking about your polymath story and you also mentioned something like that basically translates in the fact that you sometimes get very easily bored of projects, ideas, tasks, you like to switch which also would potentially mean that you switch jobs and I also have quite some switches in my past 10 years of experience on my CV but in summer when I was trying to land the job someone asked from an HR department, you know, “why do you switch jobs so often?” because it was in my CV do you did you ever get this question? EVA: Yes. TIMEA: How do you deal with it, give me a hint, here give me a help! EVA: I didn’t know what to say. I was speechless. That question I didn’t expect, there are always different reasons of why you switch jobs, I mean sometimes you switch a job or at least I switch jobs when I can’t learn anything anymore at this specific company, specific position, because either I don’t get promoted or I just I reached the point in this company where where I can go and that is it, and I can’t learn anything anymore, so what am I still doing there. Then there is also the case of, as women and we know this, there is data on this, you get promoted less often than men, so if I want a promotion and a raise I need to switch jobs most of the time, and that has happened for me in in a couple of situations where I wanted to to get a raise or get a promotion and I couldn’t but if I switched jobs I would suddenly earn a lot more money, so that is also a reason to go. There are also multiple reasons, sometimes maybe in a job you get harassed, or you get discriminated against, or your male colleague will be promoted even though he has less experience, these are all things that happen all the time and these are all reasons to go, because why should I stick around if I have the possibility to go somewhere else, where somebody made me a great offer. But yeah especially in Austria we have this thing where you need to start at the company and you need to be there until you retire but that is still… TIMEA: Do you think it’s fair that they ask you this? EVA: No I think it’s horrible, because there are situations of why I needed to switch, and I have no problem explaining that to an HR person of why I went from that job and why I quit that job and where why I left there I will explain all of that to them but they are not interested, they don’t care. TIMEA: I don’t know, they see you like a fluctuation cost or they see was “Ah, this person, you know, is not loyal.” Yeah, but I think the underlying point there would have been “Can I as a company offer this person that obviously is striving for more and learning? Can I offer that environment?” EVA: Yeah sure. That’s what I just wanted to say if I’m willing to stay forever if you offer me an environment where I can grow, where I… TIMEA: Don’t get bored… EVA: My skill set, and where I can grow and do all the things that I want to do and learn more things do more things get promoted when it’s feasible, and when it makes sense, and be treated fairly, then I have no problem staying forever. I have not found the company. TIMEA: Yeah me neither so I was looking into founding my own actually but basically the question basically you would go into explaining the HR person for each job the reason? EVA: I have done that before but they don’t care. TIMEA: Okay, so that doesn’t it’s not necessarily helpful, but that’s the truth in the end of the day, yeah. RAMÓN: So I can’t freely, no, I can’t speak from experience because I’ve never actually worked full time before but I get the feeling from conversations with other people that this is kind of a vestige from an older generation, an older world, where where benefits and incentives could keep people in a company for their entire career, and I find that especially in in a software development, and I’m sorry to call it this, but a bubble I feel like this is kind of a norm now, and expected of people to be able to jump between companies once every one to two years, and that it’s healthy and encouraged, you know. STEM is a completely different case for for people working in something other than software engineering. TIMEA: Oh, I’ve researched this topic and I think I can do a whole podcast just on that. RAMÓN: I think we found our topic for another episode. TIMEA: Yeah! But let’s let’s leave it to another time, because I’m of a different opinion about that. I just wanted, from another woman in I.T to see how she deals with this bias of HR people, which I found out to be something quite extensive happening in between millennials, that they switch jobs often and I’m hoping that somehow the next generation is more loyal if the company also you know invests in them to be loyal. EVA: I wish companies would learn that they can keep even millennials, if they provide a nurturing environment, but they are many companies that are still stuck in the old ways. My dad started his job when he was 17. He’s still in this company and he will retire there. TIMEA: And that’s not bad but we just want a little bit more like maybe a learning budget, yeah that’s something that I always appreciate in job offers. RAMÓN: Yeah it sounds like we’re going to have to really research and go into it, I definitely got to read up on this and get ready for a big throw down we have one to talk about. Well let’s not not keep you forever Eva I know you’re busy and got stuff to do. One question that we always ask our guests here is, this is a big purpose of this podcast is to for people to be able to find where they can do their volunteering, how they can find mentors, and get started in doing their part to improve the intersectionality and inclusivity of organizations and and activities and so I’m wondering, do you have any advice that you would like to pass on to people that are interested in starting out here? TIMEA: Or quereinstegerinnen? RAMÓN: Them, yeah, I’m not going to try and pronounce that. TIMEA: It’s a mouthful for me too but I like the word. EVA: There are actually programs where you can sign up if you’re starting out and you want a mentor, one of these programs actually was developed and was the idea was born in a hackathon that Barbara and I organized and it’s called Womentor so it’s mentors for women and it’s, there’s those women that actually founded the organization, I think they got to know each other through Women && Code, or at least they were part of the Women && Code community and that is super awesome. TIMEA: Cool, right, because this is what happens at Women Techmakers too and I’m always so proud of that sparking and empowering other communities to show up. Yeah I know we meant that I’m hoping we can get somebody on our podcast. EVA: Yeah! They had this great idea and it’s just, it became a whole movement and yeah. I enjoyed it a lot. I know people who are mentored there I mentor somebody as well through Womentor. That’s a structured approach to finding a mentor, because it can be super scary to just write to somebody if you want a mentor, that feels kind of weird. TIMEA: For introverts difficult to do, I myself like that. EVA: Yeah, so especially in a digital age in 2020 where we don’t go anywhere, you can’t meet potential mentors, so there are a couple of networks also internationally where you can actually find a mentor, some of them are paid but it gives you a good network of people that you can reach out to when you can go outside again, and when there are meetups again, obviously going to meetups and meeting people is super fun, going to conferences and then talking to the speakers is also really great ideam because you might think that’s super scary but you can talk to one of the speakers because I enjoy talking to people and so does everybody else of the speakers that I know and we’re just normal people that hang out at a conference, and it’s completely normal to go up to us and ask us questions and chat with us, and have lunch with us, because there have been conferences where I had lunch alone, because nobody dared approach me. Yeah, so we are normal people! Please talk to us, it’s fine we might be a little bit shy. RAMÓN: Yeah, can relate. EVA: That’s also a way to get to know people that are in the industry and that have their foot in the door already. TIMEA: Thank you for telling that aspect of how it is to be a speaker and eating lunch alone because people think you’re, I don’t know, unapproachable. Not true, people, not true. EVA: But I know from going to conferences before I was actually speaking there, I was like “Oh I can’t talk to the speaker they are super famous”, but that is not true, this is not a rock star thing, they are normal people, yes on stage and that talk about stuff that they’re proud of. TIMEA: Most importantly everybody can be a public speaker and at Women Techmakers we try to make space also for newcomers, that speak the first time and are just passionate about their domain or their project. EVA: And you mentor them too, in making their talk professional, and losing stage fright, if they have it, and that is super cool! That’s a great first time speaking experience because it’s a very positive environment and yeah, speaking is super fun and it was very scary for me for the first time, but practicing in front of a small crowd first, and then giving the talk at a conference really helps, being prepared really helps, and yeah it’s a lot of fun. You get so much energy from the people that listen to your talk. RAMÓN: That’s amazing, thank you. Yeah I think to add on to that, if I may, one thing that I’ve experienced a lot with public speaking is that some folks that I think to myself these people could be amazing public speakers and I try to gently, very friendly, nudge them in that direction sometimes some folks really are just not interested in becoming public speakers, or the concept of being on a stage in front of dozens, hundreds, thousands of people is just not something they jibe with. And I think it’s important to remember, I guess I’m saying this more to 24 year old me if you feel like you should be on stage but don’t want to, don’t force yourself either. EVA: No of course not, it’s not a career driver, I mean it is a little bit, but it doesn’t give you more than than if you would just do your job that’s it’s completely fine to not do it. It’s a great experience, especially when you can travel, you see different cities, you meet a lot of people, it’s a cool experience, but if it’s not something that you feel will benefit you then don’t do it. Try it out and see if you like it but if you don’t like it, it’s fine it’s fine to just listen it’s fine to just go to conferences it’s fine to watch them on YouTube, it’s completely fine. You don’t have to be a conference speaker to be a developer, there is no such thing. RAMÓN: That’s awesome, thanks a lot Eva. I think with that, we’ve taken enough of your time. We’re so grateful that you could come on today, Eva. One last tiny thing, is there anywhere that people can get in touch with you if they’d like to, or maybe a shout out you’d like to give to some organization that we can put in our show notes? EVA: I am reachable on Twitter it’s the easiest that’s @eva_trostlos and with the organization you just caught me off guard. TIMEA: women and code! EVA: Yeah but we are on break so I don’t want to really advertise that until we are back. TIMEA: Okay, let’s talk about it in the next episode. RAMÓN: All good! Well, thanks a lot see you next time have a good day. EVA: Bye! TIMEA: Bye bye to everybody! TIMEA: Are you on the forefront of gender equality? You are invited on our podcast. RAMÓN: That’s right! Or maybe you know somebody that we could have a chat with on gender equality? You should totally get in touch with us! We’re on twitter @GenderCoffee or any of the other contact methods on our show notes. We would love to you to get in touch and for us to have a chat.