“You have to be technical” and its relevance

Since a large number of people in my network are either looking for new opportunities or hiring today, I think it’s time for me to share this for you to internalize^[1]. I’ve held off this post for a few years as I was still in the process of making sense of it. Hope this is useful for you who are in the job market.

The phrase “You have to be technical” was directed at me during an interview a few years ago while I already had a decade of consulting projects in Data and implemented one of the largest Business Analytics solutions on the planet. This is not an imposter syndrome blog post. Here’s why … 

How it all started

The Hiring Manager started warm and said that I would be perfect for the role, given my knowledge/experience and my network. I thought we were off to a really great start. I was super excited to learn more about the team – I knew they were very technical.

Let’s pause for a second. The ability to learn and apply technical concepts in the tech industry is valuable – however, some have abused the phrase “be technical” as a tool for gatekeeping. 

At the end of a few rounds of informational, the Hiring Manager asked me “Are you sure you want to join this team? You have to be technical”. It’s not just the phrase, it’s the tone and the delivery. 

Here are the three possible ways I immediately thought of:

1. Is he saying that I’m not technical enough and therefore need to speed up, vs he’s looking for evidence that my resume didn’t cover?
2. Is “being technical” a state or condition that someone had the privilege of vs something that one can learn before or on the job? 
3. Do I – as a non-shouty / loud person with some accent – give the impression that I will not survive in this technical world? 

I paused. 

I did follow with a question “Can you please give me an example of what you typically expect for someone in the role to deliver?” 

He explained more – a little vague.  He then continued “You have to figure it out yourself”. There wasn’t any room for collaboration or engagement, right?

Thinking deeply

Days gone by. I turned to my husband and asked. “Has at any time in your past interviews they ever said to you ‘You have to be technical‘?”

The answer was no. 

I turned to a couple of people in the network, they said “That’s BS. Challenge that. Prove that. You got it, girl” – or some combination of these. Let’s say, I received great pep talks after 🙂 

Back to the story, we didn’t go beyond informational after that. Especially not after “you’ll be a diversity hire, so it should be easy for you to get in”. 

It got me thinking … Would hiring managers in music industry say to a pianist “you have to be musical”? Or could it be more specific like “you have to be able to also play saxophone”?  If someone had said this, one could start saying “why saxophone? or what is the vision you have in mind? who is the audience?” – see, a conversation and being engaged. You can then ask, “what’s after saxophone?” or “do I need to also learn how to play drums and a violin next? And to what level?”.

Tip: To cut to the chase, you can be direct and ask “What does success look like to you for this role?” or “How do you measure success for this role?”. Sometimes it’s knowing how to play 5 different music instruments at expertise level; sometimes it’s knowing how to play 1 music instrument well but having empathy and respect of how the other four work. I’d also suggest asking “Why?”. Note: Everyone has different comfort levels on receiving vague-to-clear spectrum of answers. It’s good to know so you can both establish expectations.

My take away from this experience

This is not a blog post looking for validation on my skill. I am comfortable to say that I am not a hardware person (yet^[2]) and I occasionally dabble in some cloud infrastructure – if that’s the definition of the ultimate prize of being technical, so be it. Note: the role I was interested earlier, was neither on hardware or infrastructure! When the time comes, I’ll learn it but it’s not my focus right now – selective participation 🙂

This is also not a blog post to “boo” hiring managers. They are human just like the rest of us. Being a hiring manager is not easy. That’s why in some companies, they make interview preparation courses available which also encompass understanding bias training and Diversity & Inclusion topics. So with that, let me end with the following.

The hiring goal, or my imposed goal, should not be “be technical”. If this is the start of the debate / the hiring game, we as two tech people in a room having an informational, have both lost^[3].

The goal should be how can we use tech or invent the next tech to better the world – society, community, humanity; and it’s not about me or you, but the collective us – and even better, our customers. That’s it. 

Tip: The next time you want to use the word “technical”, think about how it applies to the context. Can you provide more context or expectations? Or, are you gatekeeping?

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Footnotes

[1] This blog post is very personal. Being vulnerable is hard. Quite often, I asked “Would it add value to readers?”. I didn’t feel it was quite there until today. I reached out to a few amazing friends to help review this (Thank you!).

[2] There have been plenty of times in my life, I get to learn and do something I never plan or dream of. Although so far, with hardware stuff, I tend to find either colleagues or friends who love doing this stuff (would do much a better job than I do), so I delegate 😀 They’re happy, I’m happy.

[3] This reminds me of a behavioral economics lesson. In basic game theory with two players, generally, cooperative moves from both players in a non-repeatable game, either at initial or in turns, usually lead to utilization maximation from an economics point of view; aka. win-win. A non-cooperative move from one player, means that both players have lost any opportunity to maximize benefits for both players.