I have a lot of career news to share over the past year, but one of the things I am most proud of is getting into the nonprofit space. As some of you may know, making the internet a better place is one of my oldest passions. Which is why I'm thrilled to say that
I'm serving as the President of End Networked Harassment. It is a privilege and an honour to have a tangible way to turn my experience in how systems of harassment work into action to help build a better internet for everyone.
For those who don't know about this part of me, who know me as a software engineer first, giving back to this specific cause is personal to me. In university, I became the target of networked harassment that has followed me all the way through my 20s, including in my career. My experience as an engineer, as a woman engineer in tech, is something I refuse to let be defined by anything but my achievements. But at the same time, it is inextricable shaping to have the experience of your first year in your field be marked by occasional security escorts from your workplace, to the public transportation you take home. And while I was able to navigate through that to a career as a software engineer, that's unfortunately not everyone's story. Harassment costs us, technically, it costs us good engineers. It makes people leave the field. That's a known known.
And that's hard to square for some people, because the internet can be an incredible place. It's how I keep in touch with my family and friends, where I met my beloved partner
Liz Fong-Jones, and a source of the endless memes and video essays that get me through the day. But the same scaling effect that allows it to be such a source of good can be and has been taken advantage of by bad actors, and as horrifying as living through this myself during the start of my career has been, it has been even more horrifying to see that crowdsourced harassment directed at someone I love and look up to as a mentor. Who has inspired countless women to start careers in or stay in this field, myself included.
I could end this by talking more about that, but I don't think I need to explain to anyone why enabling talented, intelligent, and principled engineers to enter and grow in this field is a net benefit, nor do I feel the need to talk at length about the exhausting trauma of Violence and its disproportionate effects on members of marginalized groups. At the end of day, I'd rather focus on the technical project that this fundamentally is. As an engineer, when I see code that needs to be refactored, systems that need to be rearchitected, problems that need to be fixed, I do it. And I view this as no different, it's a vital act of refactoring that is necessary in order to keep the free and open internet that we all love. Which is why, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to get back to that work, and I am going to continue at that work, until the work is done. I look forward to sharing with you all what I learn along the way~
https://endharassment.net/