Small Time

Why Do A Lot of Men Hate Sex and the City?

(This post was prompted by the discussion this morning on FriendFeed about Sarah Jessica Parker looking like a horse.) And caution: SATC movie spoilers.

I’ve never been a girly-girl.

Even though I appreciate the art of fashion and have Rupert Sanderson heels, Theory skirts, and a boatload of Bobbi Brown make-up in my bathroom drawer, dressing up like a girl always feels like I’m wearing a costume: fun in theory, but I can’t wait to take the itchy stuff off and get back to my real (comfortable) clothes (jeans, t-shirt and Converse).

So, not being a girly-girl, I’ve never really identified with any of the women on Sex and the City.

I’ve never cheated on a boyfriend, showed up late for a photoshoot because I was hungover, hooked up with random guys on spring break, or any of the other seemingly de rigueur stuff that the ladies on SATC got themselves into. Maybe I’m boring that way.

I’ve liked watching SATC because it was like eating a fat slice of lemon meringue pie: tasty, but totally devoid of any real nutritional value, and probably not that good for me in the end.

(In terms of fictional women I do relate to, when Diablo Cody’s Juno McGuff first appeared on screen swilling her Sunny-D and barking back at the yippy dog, I thought: finally, a heroine that’s got my number.)

I know, Sex and the City is just a fantasy. And I treat it like that. There’s no way Carrie Bradshaw could possibly afford couture shoes, drinks, and her apartment in New York on her salary.

What concerns me is women who treat the SATC lifestyle as a realistic goal.

I was talking to a business associate this fall in Seattle, and he said a girl he was dating from Barcelona had a closet full of Blahniks and Choos and Louis Vuitton bags, and wanted desperately to move to New York to live like Carrie Bradshaw. And she wanted to know how much he made, exactly, because if it was under $200,000, she wasn’t interested in him.

WTF?

This guy was a perfectly good man: attractive, intelligent, well-educated, funny, well-employed, and kind. And he was being tossed aside because he made less than $200,000 a year.

And he hated Sex and the City.

So does my husband.

Whenever we’re flipping through channels, and SATC is on TBS, he immediately changes it.

Not because he’s a misogynist (he’s the furthest thing from being a woman-hater), but he hates the Carrie Bradshaw character with a passion.

Her lying, cheating, self-serving immature behavior.

I can see what he means.

Watching the Sex and the City movie this last Friday, I’m afraid to say that I identified more with the men in the movie than the women.

Big wanted a small wedding that was just about the two of them, and Carrie got caught up in the fame and fashion.

Smith was molded into a movie star and faithfully loved Samantha, who tossed him aside for a dog and a cheesy Italian weiner.

Steve got no sex for six months and had to swallow Miranda’s constant criticism.

So I’m torn: Is Sex and the City a good thing? Is it harmless, fun entertainment?

Or is it harmful to some women, who look to these over-the-top characters as role models?

Let me know your thoughts.

It is with sadness that I must say that I'm leaving Google. My last day will be May 30, 2008.

It is with sadness that I must say that I’m leaving Google. My last day will be May 30, 2008.

Google changed my life. A lot of people have said that same thing (employees and non-employees), and I believe them when they say it. But for me, every single thing changed in my life when Google hired me in August of 2003. Nothing was left untouched.

Before August 2003, I was an unemployed web geek living in Denver with two degrees in English (from non-Ivy League schools), massive student loans and credit card debt, and no one would hire me at a livable wage.

I didn’t know anyone at Google in 2003. Not a soul.

I submitted my resume to the jobs@google.com alias in March of 2003 during a debilitating Denver blizzard, got an e-mail from a Google recruiter in June 2003, went through 5 rounds of interviews over 3 months (this was hellish – I can only liken it to Dante’s Inferno), and was finally offered a job as a Creative Maximizer, to begin on August 28, 2003, with a base salary of $40,000 and the promise of 1000 shares.

(Please don’t take this salary admission to be bragging – I just think a lot of people are curious about Googlers and money, and there’s a misconception that all Googlers are millionaires: we’re not.)

In a long line of improbable and miraculous things that have happened in my life, getting hired at Google was the most significant one, outside of meeting my husband.

Over the course of my 4+ years at Google, I was able to pay off all my debt with my Google shares. For this, I am the most grateful girl in the world.

I can’t tell you how liberating it felt to send that final student loan payment to Wells Fargo in 2007. I was finally free from worrying about how I was going to pay back the banks and credit card companies.

But now that Google is a global company, and now that I’ve realized that I’m not cut out to work in large organizations over 150 people, I’m stepping aside.

The way I see it, I’m graduating. Graduating with my MBA and Ph.D rolled together, from one of the greatest companies in the world.

Google’s not perfect. No company is. But I believe that Google, above all, tries to do the right thing.

So thank you, Google.

Thank you to Celeste Thompson, the recruiter that read through my cover letter and resume and saw something that no one else saw.

Thank you to Eric Schmidt, Omid Kordestani, Tim Armstrong and Sheryl Sandberg – you probably don’t know who I am, but you inspired me throughout the years with your speeches and pep-talks at sales conferences.

Thank you to Larry and Sergey, who again, probably have no idea who I am, but who created something that has benefitted millions of people.

Thank you to all the Google users who clicked on the AdWords ads I wrote.

And thank you to Elizabeth Kelleher, Eric Johnson, Kelsey LeBeau, Joyce Goh, Maegen Fisher, Tim Kelly, Tim Moynihan, Dan Daugherty, Angie Wredberg, Michelle Rotter, Will Elmore, Patrick Dominowski, Brendon Kraham, Kelly Cronin, & Chris McCarley – the old-school Denver crew that played hacky-sack in our cramped little office in the DTC, breaking ceiling tiles like it was going out of style.

Thank you, and godspeed.

Save Britney Spears: May 30 is "Ditch Gossip Blogs" Day

I feel personally responsible for making Britney Spears “crazy.”

Here’s why.

Back in 2005, I started getting bored at my job.

Sitting in front of a monitor day after day, building keyword lists for Google AdWords advertisers, my mind started to wander.

This was the first time in my life (I was 29) that I’d had a job at a large company sitting at a desk week after week, and it was slowly starting to kill the creative energy that I used to have in abundance.

I started to gain weight. The stomach issues that I had as a kid started to resurface. My shoulders and hands started to ache. And I began to spend my lunch hours going to the mall across the highway to buy clothes. Lots and lots of clothes — most of which I couldn’t fit into two months down the line.

Most significantly, I started going to online gossip sites frequently. It started out innocent enough with Popsugar. But then it turned dark: Perez Hilton, x17online, etc. The snarkier the better.

Why did I go to gossip sites frequently during the work day? For a mental break. To see pictures from a life that seemed more glamorous and interesting than mine (J.Lo and Ben Affleck). And to watch a life that was swinging compulsively out of control (Britney Spears).

Watching Britney Spears self destruct was entertainment. Kind of like a real-life soap opera.

Clucking my tongue over her marrying a seeming total loser (Kevin Federline) gave me something to talk about with the girlfriends in my office. It made me laugh. And when I saw the pics of her getting out of the car sans undies, it strangely comforted me. I thought, “Well, at least Britney Spears has cellulite too.”

Unfortunately by doing this, I was turning into the bullies I hated in high school, who picked on me, started rumors, and generally made me miserable.

But I don’t think I was alone in going to gossip sites frequently throughout the day. In fact, I know I wasn’t alone.

At the time, I was helping advertisers buy ads on these gossip sites. I saw the back-end numbers and pageview trends. And I can assure you: it was up, up, up and to the right for all gossip sites.

Britney Spears is a huge money-maker for these sites. And therefore, she’s a huge money-maker for the paparazzi. And because women like me, bored at work or in need of a break from kids at home, keep going to these gossip sites several times a day, the need for new and more scandalous pics is accelerated, and the photogs can’t leave Britney alone.

But they need to leave her alone. Or she’s going to go crazy.

Living life in fishbowl (a panopticon) with no privacy will drive you crazy. This isn’t a new idea at all. In fact, it’s been documented in art for a long time now, most poignantly in George Orwell’s novel, 1984.

I don’t think Britney Spears was born with mental health issues. I think we’ve made her nuts by watching (and criticizing) her every move.

I haven’t been to a gossip blog for six months now. I quit, cold turkey, and started paying attention to other things around me. Real news. Local news. Local politics. National politics. And guess what: it’s not as boring as you may think it is.

I’ve lost weight, and my brain now actually feels like it’s coming out of a long slumber.

And that’s what I’m asking all of you women out there to do:

Stop paying attention to Britney Spears.

Stop going to gossip sites for at least one day: May 30, 2008.

Get outside and walk around the building at lunch. Go see a movie (Sex and the City) with your office girlfriends. Read your local paper from start to finish. Take yourself out for a nice nutritious lunch without your cell phone. Get out from behind the monitor.

Because by saving Britney Spears, you may be saving yourself.

Forget an MBA. Here's Why You Should Get an English Degree

For the past decade, I’ve regretted getting two degrees in English for a couple reasons:

1) the massive student debt I racked up, and

2) the jobs available to English majors usually consisted of editorial assistant jobs paying $24K per year, teaching jobs paying $24K per year, or writer jobs paying $24K per year.

Depressing, right? Especially when my student loan payments were exactly half of my take-home pay.

But times are changing though (duh).

What was true in 1998 is no longer true for 2008. And I’m now super grateful that I spent six years studying the literary stuff that I did.

What happened to make things change so radically?

The freaking web happened. And Google happened.

It’s like someone (I like to imagine Atlas) came and shook the world like a snow globe, and all the old rules of information distribution and creation are up in the air. Which means that business rules are now up in the air.

(It may sound insignificant and cliched by now, but as a person who’s intently studied the history of publishing and communication technology, Google is our postmodern-day Gutenberg.

I truly believe that, and have since the first time I used Google, back in 1998 as a graduate research assistant: the top of my head felt like it was lifting off, and the words, “HOLY FUCKING SHIT” came involuntarily out of my mouth.)

With all this crazy-uncertainty and fast change, if you’re an undergraduate, you’re probably scared about declaring your major. If you’re a young person wondering what degree you should pursue, and the sciences don’t suit you, I’d like to offer something for your consideration: get an undergraduate degree in English.

(By an “English” degree, I’m talking about a degree that focuses on language nuances, symbolism, story-telling, abstract theory, history, culture, and effective communication practices. This could mean getting a degree in “Japanese” or “Spanish” or “Chinese”, etc.)

Here are 5 reasons you should get an “English” degree:

1) Studying difficult pieces of classic literature and literary theory trains you to think “big picture” and find important patterns and themes that help you uncover meaning. Learning to “uncover meaning” by identifying patterns is the most important thing I’ve learned, by far, in business and in life, especially with all the fragmentation and media overload happening now. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sat in a business meeting thinking, “This is just like when Odysseus…”

2) Reading books strengthens your attention span. And people with long attention spans are going to be rare in the coming years. People with long attention spans tend to be really good listeners, and the best sales people, the best marketing folks, the best CEOs out there are the ones who know how to listen and ask questions before coming up with solutions, and have conversations rather than monologues. (You’ll also be a sought-after dinner party guest!)

3) Knowing how to write, knowing how to effectively present and communicate your ideas through written language (and increasingly video and audio, so get a “theater” degree, too), is very, very valuable. This doesn’t mean having perfect grammar or spelling, it means conveying ideas, tone, and humor well — really, being a storyteller. With so much corporate communication happening via email and intranet, knowing how to package information so others can easily find and understand it will make you a total hero.

4) When you study literature, you end up learning about history, law, culture, science and technology. It makes you a well-rounded researcher. For example, when I was in grad school, I studied the history of the novel and women’s literary culture in the 18th century, and ended up learning about copyright law, paper-making techniques, and women’s socio-economic strictures. Fun stuff. And completely applicable to all the debates going on right now about authorship, intellectual property, and recycling!

5) Progressive companies like Google need well-rounded employees; people who are passionate and interested in the interconnectedness of life. I think business degrees and MBAs are valuable, but if you have a wide liberal-arts base, and can put P&L into a larger context than what it means just for the company at this very moment, you’re a much more valuable employee and citizen, because you understand what you do impacts much more than what’s immediately in front of you.

So, please consider your languishing English department. It may be more valuable than you think.

Google ended up changing my life in more ways than that HOLY SHIT moment in ‘98.

Back in 2003 when I got the call for my first interview at Google I was doing odd jobs — writing, doing keyword SEO for small businesses, working part-time in a backpack factory cutting nylon piping — anything to pay the bills and pay my student loans. No “traditional” companies in Denver that I sent my resume to would even call me back.

But Google did. And I now don’t regret getting two degrees in English.

(I work for Google, but don’t speak for “Google” [hi legal! you guys rock!])

Can Google Sales People Dress Like Engineers?

Last week I was in New York to meet my new manager face-to-face for the first time.

The last time I was in NY was three years ago, before Google moved to its new office in Chelsea.

Three years ago when I first walked into the old Google Times Square office, I realized that I was underdressed in my old J. Crew jeans and Gap corduroy blazer.

All the other sales folk were in suits, sleek black slacks and heels, and I felt like a total noob — a rube from Denver. A country mouse. An alien from another planet.

After work that day I immediately walked down to Banana Republic, bought a pair of black slacks, heels, and a surplice top, and finally felt relieved that I wouldn’t stick out again tomorrow.

This behavior of mine (wanting to fit in) has deep roots. When my family moved from Minnesota’s Iron Range (hick country) to the Twin Cities, I was seven years old.

We moved in the middle of the school year, in February, and when I joined my 1st grade class that first day, I was wearing an eye patch (the day prior my brother had accidentally pegged me in the eye with a snowball and scratched my cornea), and carrying my beloved Dark Crystal lunch box.

Because of the eye patch, no one wanted to talk to me. Jenny Bell, the girl in my class that my teacher assigned to show me around, was teased because she was tasked with me.

At lunch, as I took out my peanut butter sandwich from my lunch box, I was snidely informed by one of boys at the table that the Dark Crystal was stupid and hadn’t I seen Return of the Jedi? No, I hadn’t. I looked around the table, and just about everyone had a Return of the Jedi lunchbox.

The next day, I tearfully refused to take my Dark Crystal lunchbox, and my mom gave me her brown Tupperware one. But that didn’t make things better. No one would risk talking to me, and I spent the rest of the school year isolated from my peers, taking comfort only in the company of adults.

Being the noob is a terrible feeling. Not because it’s inherently shameful or wrong, it’s because there are experienced bullies out there that have no patience for noobs, for people who don’t know as much as they do, and they use their insider status to make you feel shitty about yourself because it makes them feel powerful.

I hate bullies. I think bullies should be public enemy number one because they kill (or repress) what is good and creative and thoughtful and earnest and lovely in people and make them scared to be themselves.

This is not to say that the Googlers in the NY office have ever bullied me, but once you’ve been the target of bullies consistently, throughout grade school, junior high and high school, it’s too late to think of new people as anyone but potential bullies.

I nervously enter new situations inconspicuously, absorb all the details I can about the environment, and assimilate as quickly as possible so I’m not a target. So, just about all my life, I’ve been Zelig.

But I’m tired of being Zelig. Especially in a place like New York, where the number of details to take in is infinite and overwhelming.

As usual, prior to this most recent NY trip, I shopped for new clothes, trying to quell the anxiety I have about fitting in and not looking stupid, while maintaining a personal sense of style, and ensuring that everything that I wore would be comfortable and unfussy.

(The next time your wife/girlfriend/fiance/sister is frantically trying on outfits in the morning before work, don’t think her vain. There’s just a lot of variables she needs to think about to make a decision.)

I wanted to make sure I didn’t underdress my first day, so I chose a skirt and heels, but I also didn’t want to overdress, so I wore a short-sleeve blouse. I curled my hair, put on eyeliner.

Unfortunately, it rained that day in New York, which a noob doesn’t realize throws a major monkeywrench into city life.

When it rains, it’s really hard to hail a cab. They’re all filled. So I stood out on 8th avenue for about 20 minutes in the wind and rain until a cab finally stopped, and by the time I got to the Google office, I looked like a drowned cat.

My new manager, Lexi (who’s very kind and honest and not at all a bully), took one look at me at said, “Don’t you know when it rains in NY you wear your jeans?”

She was wearing jeans and a pair of worn Merrells. I was immediately envious.

“No,” I said, “I’m a little bit out of the loop.”

I guess the moral of this story is: be yourself. Wear what you like. Fly your freak flag no matter what the naysayers say.

But that’s harder said than done. Image matters in business, and especially sales. What you wear is highly symbolic. If you underdress for a meeting, you lack credibility and seriousness, but if you overdress you look like a stuffy fucktard.

I’ve always envied the engineers at Google. They seem to have license to wear whatever they want, whenever they want.

We Google sales folk who meet with customers every day have to be conscious of the image we give of the company. We have to walk the fine line between fitting in with the rest of the corporate world and being ourselves.

Why Gender & Technology is a Hard Thing to Talk About

I’ve been reading Corvida, Louis Gray, Steve Hodson, Stephanie Booth, Stephanie Quilao and a ton of other bloggers and commentors trying to make sense of this tech & gender debate that’s going on.

To me, it’s an interesting and important topic, but when I tried to write out my thoughts and add my own comments, I was totally tongue-tied. I think this is because it’s such a complicated issue.

On one hand, I don’t want women bloggers to be included just because they’re women: “Crap, I need to include some women on this top-blogger list or people are going to complain, and I don’t want to look sexist.”

I want women to be included on top-blogger lists because they provide smart, insightful commentary about technology.

On the other hand, gender matters. Physicality matters. Hormones matter. Women are fundamentally different from men, and that difference matters.

To what degree that difference matters varies greatly.

For instance: keyboards. I’m a very small elf-like woman barely over 5 feet tall.

My fingers are short, and so I get frustrated by the one-size-fits all design of keyboards because sometimes reaching certain keys is harder and creates inefficiencies.

I’ve learned how to customize my keyboard, but that takes time, and I enjoy doing stuff like that.

Not all short-fingered people enjoy the process of figuring techie stuff out, so they just make due, until someone designs a keyboard that’s specifically for smaller people — kids, short women, smaller men — and brings it to this niche’s attention.

That’s why it’s important to include people different from you when you’re coming up with a solution — they’ll bring to light things that you would never think about because it’s not a problem for you, but it is for them.

But when it comes to other techie things, I don’t think gender difference matters much, if at all.

For instance: how long Google takes to process your query.

I don’t think women experience load time different from men. But maybe what does come into play is economic position: load time matters a lot to people using dial-up, maybe someone who can’t afford a broadband connection.

The unfortunate thing that happens when people start acknowledging that difference matters is that we start lumping people together and assuming that all women or all poor people or all white chicks are all the same.

News flash: we’re all different. We have some things in common, but many factors give us completely different experiences and perspectives.

(This is what I hate about traditional marketing. I have advertising clients who say: “I want to reach women 18-24.” And I say: “Wow, that’s a diverse group of people, can you narrow that down so we can more accurately target the ads so we don’t waste your money and people’s attention?”)

Because of issues of gender and class, I’m having a really hard time during this election season. I rarely talk about politics, because like gender, it’s complicated and creates a lot of conflict, but I’m slowly becoming less scared of conflict and speaking up more.

On one hand, I like Hillary Clinton. I think she’s a smart, powerful, sassy woman who isn’t afraid to be called a bitch, and I think the world needs more women like that.

On the other hand, I feel like I identify more with Barack Obama. I came from a working-class family. My grandfather emigrated from Finland to Minnesota when he was five and spent his entire life struggling to make something from nothing.

When was young, I grew up with very few ecomonic privileges even though my parents worked very hard.

My dad was a carpenter, and my mom worked her way up from secretary to director by going to night school, getting her bachelor’s degree, then her master’s degree while raising a family and working full time.

So I have a special place in my heart for people who come from nothing, have no connections, and bust ass to become successful. I think we need more people who have done this in positions of power in our country.

Even though Hillary Clinton busted her ass to become successful, I still see her as an upper-class Wellesley girl who benefitted greatly from her connections (even though as I read her bio in wikipedia, she worked her way across Alaska in 1969 by washing dishes and sliming salmon in a cannery).

So to this day, I’m still split between the candidates, but I’m leaning toward Obama.

Though I’m loath to admit it because it sounds sexist and racist and ageist, I think Obama stands a better chance of changing the world’s perception of America because 1) he’s a man, and 2) he’s not perceived as an old white rich person out of touch with what’s really going on in the world.

I still see the tech world (and the world at large) as essentially a boy’s club run mostly by boys.

Even though there are many women out there totally kicking ass, there still aren’t enough (or enough being recognized and appreciated).

The number of women getting computer science degrees is still falling, and I think that’s probably a problem of perception: many girls still see engineering as uncool, unfun, and run by boys who will make fun of them if they don’t know how many HDMI outputs their LCD has, or some other arcane piece of tech knowledge.

Another problem is that for many women, unless we’re invited, we think we’re not wanted (thanks to Sharon Perl at Google for pointing this out to me).

So my solution is this: women, we need to stop waiting for an invitation.

Just show up, and start talking.

FRONTLINE: growing up online | PBS

OK — this is a much-watch Frontline.

I watched it today while I was compiling keyword lists, and I gasped at parts of it.

I don’t know who’s more scary: the clueless parents, the paranoid parents, or the kids who are bullies.