Ami Vora: preference

Transcript context

…Something that you were talking about subtly is the being a woman in tech and being a female leader. I imagine you've gone through some stuff that isn't what something men would've gone through. Is there anything there that you want to share or anything you've learned about just being really successful as a woman in tech? I think we've talked through some of them. I think one, you get a different style of feedback and a lot of the ways to interpret that feedback. I think to this day, I get feedback that is about walking a very narrow tightrope where not only do you have to change a bunch of things and do a bunch of things that are important, you have to make people feel a certain way about how you do them and the ways that they want you to make you feel are diametrically opposite. Some people are going to be like, be more directive so that way everyone knows your thing. Some people are going to say be less directive so people can come to their own conclusions. Some people are going to say move faster because there's always more you can do. Some people are going to say move less fast because otherwise you're going to end up steamrolling people. And a lot of it is personal, there's a bunch research about how women get a lot more personal feedback that is less about the content of their role and more about their style, I think that is still true and there's often a kernel of truth in it. For me, this is forever work. I do have biases toward execution and being directive and things like that, but I think learning how to interpret and respond to feedback has been a really important point for me and making my choices of, just because I'm getting feedback doesn't mean I immediately need to respond to all of it. There's a step in between where I can choose, is this feedback I want to take action on in this exact way? Am I going to look for more themes, take action in a different way, or am I going to say this is who I am and I understand the trade-offs, I'm going to do a better job of giving people context on the decisions I'm making and why I'm choosing these trade-offs. But actually this is part of how I want to operate and I'm going to keep on operating. And then I think we just give women weird advice. Here's a hot take. I think we tell women things like, you need to find a mentor and you need to find a sponsor, and that's just another set of hoops that we have that we tell women to jump through that I don't think we tell other parts of the population to jump through. I think we tell women to unlock your future success, you've got to find somebody who has made all the same life decisions you have and who you look up to and relate to, but who also had an hour every month to be an oracle to tell you all the things you do in your life. And it feels like yet another burden where you're like, I don't know how to do that. I had the extreme generosity of so many wonderful leaders who helped me on my way, but I didn't feel like I had this mentor and for a while it was just like, oh man, if I only had a mentor, I would know how to do all of this stuff and it felt like another weight that I needed to carry, which I didn't. I had everything I needed, people were so kind and generous, but I didn't recognize it that way because we talk about it differently. Thank you for sharing all that. I wasn't planning on going in this direction, but this is such important advice for say, young women that are just getting started in the same product. Is there any advice you'd want to share to help them get to be the next Ami?…

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