To celebrate International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month in March, I’m interviewing 4 exceptional female professionals who I admire to talk about topics on career development, leadership and gender equality in STEM.
My final guest is Dipti Dhawan, VP of Engineering at omni:us with 14 years of international experience in Strategy Consulting, Project Management, and Organizational Change Management in tech. Dipti shared her experience navigating her way from computer science to strategy and management across different countries. We also touched on topics like what makes a leader successful in tech, how to approach technical / management tracks, and the empowerment of motherhood. At the end, Dipti even shared 3 book / newsletter recommendations for professionals in STEM!
Here’s a summary of our conversations. Please enjoy!
Meet Dipti Dhawan
Sinan: Can you tell us your story entering the STEM field?
Dipti: Science has always fascinated me. It seemed like magic to start with and then came the understanding of experiments, assumptions & hypotheses. These positive childhood experiences led to pursuing a study and career in STEM, which is a very straightforward and natural choice in India. The ‘magic’ behind Super Mario Bros and the logic behind Microsoft Windows were the first steps into finding my passion towards Computer Science.
Sinan: What does your normal day at work look like? Can you share with us your favorite productivity tip that keeps your day going?
Dipti: A normal workday is usually quickly dictated by my calendar. In terms of planning and getting work done, I look at goals I set out for the whole week. I don’t work on a day-to-day basis; I work on a weekly basis. This was a habit I got into right out of college and a huge tip shared by one of my first managers. 15 years back it seemed like a chore, but over the years it’s been the most valuable tool. I’m hugely grateful to her for it! I spend 15-30 mins of my Sunday evenings planning for what I want to achieve in my upcoming work week. It helps me to avoid Monday blues. I make a short checklist. The sense of achievement from striking through the items is honestly unmatched.
For tools, it’s blockers in my calendars and Notes on Mac – very straight-forward as I try to keep tooling to a minimum.
Sinan: What’s the biggest challenge that you have encountered in your career, and how did you overcome it?
Dipti: I made a conscious choice switching my career from a Computer Science engineer to an Organizational Behavior & Development specialist after getting my MBA degree. 5 to 6 years into this switch, I moved countries and came to Berlin where strategy and organizational behavior was vastly under-appreciated, which was even more challenging for me as a non-German-speaker. I found myself stuck in an impossible space and had to quickly identify foot-in-the-door opportunities. This is where the world of Agile development really opened up. I was able to use my knowledge as an engineer, a project manager and an Organizational Behavior specialist to map into the role of a Scrum-master. So, from today’s point of view, I think I made some good choices by keeping an open mind for the career that may be formed and yet keeping rooted to my passion of Computer Science, people and behaviors!
Besides, I always find ‘now’ to be the most challenging as the future of most actions is unknown. So truly, this is ongoing. The current challenge for me is to kickstart out of the pandemic lull where community learning and growth got affected. I am figuring out the next thing I want to study and possibly even get a certification for.
Sinan: What has been your proudest accomplishment in your career over the years?
Dipti: I’m a work in progress with all my energies being spent in learning and growing at work and in personal life; so this space where I feel a huge sense of accomplishment is yet to be formulated – I’ll keep you posted ;)
On Leadership
Sinan: What do you think makes a leader successful in the tech world?
Dipti: Authenticity. Being true to who you are and letting your team see that open the space up but also make you very vulnerable. From here it’s on you how you utilize this trust and vulnerability. As a tech leader, the topics on the plate can be very vast in scale, complexity and impact. So having this level of trust helps you seek help, but also lets your team see your direct strengths and weaknesses; you have to be ready to be coached bottom-up. I find this refreshing as it always makes me learn new things. But I also avoid falling into the trap of micro-management and delegation. As a leader, when you see what you can learn from your teams, it’s easier to distribute accountabilities, which in turn helps to identify blockers at a meta or cross-functional level.
In the tech world, of course, having an understanding of the solutions and the product also goes together. Being up to speed on what choices the teams are making and the blockers they are solving is important, so you can course correct as needed. But most importantly, know your own gaps so you can fill in with the technical solutions. Constantly reading about the advancements in the internal tech stack adapted by the teams keeps me relevant.
Sinan: What made you decide to take your current role? How should one decide between the management or technical expert growth track?
Dipti: Strategy and decision making drive my passion to work – this has been a constant. In my current role, I’ve found the space to utilize these skills, but I’ve also had enough room to grow and learn new topics. Previously I had a chance to work with a high-potential team building NLP & ML based features for an established product which gave me a glimpse into the power of AI to solve problems. So when this role at omni:us came along, it seemed like a great learning curve in both technology and management for me. I had some good talks with the teams before joining, so the cultural fit also matched. I felt that this would be the place where I can actively contribute while having fun!
Generally speaking, if one has to decide between the management or technical expert track, I believe you need to understand the intentions behind why you’d choose one over the other; besides, there are always roles which combine both the tracks too, leading into a generalist profile which can be more beneficial if you want to aim at taking up a C-level role.
Technical experts are always going to be in high-demand as legacy systems will require high experience in core problems. You also have to keep in mind that understanding and working with complimentary technologies becomes much more critical in this career track.
If you want to make a choice between the two, definitely ask yourself: a) what is the intention for making a choice; b) which choice has a greater learning curve and do I want to pursue this learning; c) how does this choice affect me in 1 / 2 / 5 years’ time; d) talk to a mentor or some individuals who have had a similar career journey to understand what your options might be; e) make this a well-reflected decision for a longer commitment of time.
Sinan: Do you have advice for early-career individuals who are considering the management track?
Dipti: I made a choice for the management track very early into my career. In retrospect, I do wish I would have still continued keeping a part of my role to be hands-on coding, however this choice helped me make stronger career path choices along the way. When it’s early in your career, I would advise that you get a mentor who you trust to advise you on the choices you have, the consequences that may come and the risk you take. These conversations not only bring in a diverse opinion but also helps you keep the focus on yourself – which can be lost rather easily as we get through the grind.
Sinan: Do you think leadership skills are innate or can be learned?
Dipti: To me, leadership is an innate mindset. You have to feel responsible for making a change and then you drive it forward. Taking accountability is also a very strong leadership trait. So in general you can coach yourself into taking up challenges and driving them to results. There are skills that can be trained for, and you can learn good project delivery and communication with such experiences. However, leadership is not a list of items or a checklist – you have to be intrinsically motivated to be a leader. There is certainty of failure that comes with leadership and having the right reasons helps me come out of such humps.
However, if it is more about management, these skills can be trained for in a more straight-forward way.
Women in STEM
Sinan: We’re all aware that there’s a much lower ratio of women in management roles compared to men. Although based on my experience working with various managers, I have to admit that in general I have had a better experience with female managers. I do believe that women can make great leaders in the workplace. What kind of advantages do you think women possess to become a great manager?
Dipti: I hope none of my male managers read this, but I agree :D The empathy and open-mindedness that I have experienced with female leaders are unlike what I have experienced with male leaders. In general, I believe women have the desire to learn from their life experiences – even more so if you want to be in a leadership role. I also constantly battle the line between being considered as a counselor – which I certainly do not aim at being and coaching someone by sharing my experiences. However, this is the space of vulnerability that also works in our favor to be better managers. The female managers I’ve had across my career have time and again shared the failures they experienced and how I could avoid the same for myself – such discussions do not come up as easily otherwise. The idea of coaching and the sense of responsibility to support the female community is also strong for me personally.
Sinan: Some research shows that women are paid consistently less than men for the same work, especially when negotiation is involved to determine the pay. What are your thoughts on this? What advice would you give to fellow female professionals who don’t feel the most comfortable vouching for themselves and negotiating for a higher salary?
Dipti: I’ve been very aware of this and have consistently spoken to my managers about it where I feel there is a discrepancy. I’ve also made allies in the company who will speak about the pay gap without thinking of it as a taboo. This is important as it gives confidence and helps navigate the discussions when sensitivity might be needed. If I personally don’t feel comfortable discussing the pay gap, I will address it from an administrative point-of-view. This helps me detach myself from the situation and brings in objectivity. Another trick which doesn’t fail is benchmarking using simple searches – so mapping yourself with some facts and figures also boosts the reasoning. On top of it all is to appreciate what you bring to the table – you have to be your biggest champion. Anytime you feel you aren’t paid fairly, you should also address your HR with neutral questions like, how often they benchmark salary grades; what tools they have in place to address gender pay gap and how salary decisions are made within the company. I find that keeping objectivity generally takes away my emotions of fear and shyness.
Sinan: I hate to ask this stereotypical question, but as a female professional, I inevitably find myself thinking about this a lot. What’s your take on the topic of work / family balance? Is it possible to actually achieve it?
Dipti: I will give you an honest answer. You would not believe how much a child will empower you. Your personality becomes a lot more stronger and you suddenly get the clarity of what is important for you. You put yourself over everything else on why you make certain life decisions, especially because you’re now accountable to a very young human being. I have never experienced anything more empowering than becoming a mother.
Maybe you would have lost this one or one and a half years of the “career ladder” time. But honestly, what you bring back on the table in your personality, in your clarity of thought of what you want to achieve will be incredibly different.
Sinan: The Pandemic has changed how we work for good. In what ways do you think this has impacted working women, and what advice do you have for people who are struggling with the situation?
Dipti: Post-pandemic I feel that we have much longer days with extremely fine lines between personal and professional life. This takes a toll on everyone and maybe even more on women who play a bigger role in the household systems.
Some tricks that have worked for me – I keep the core working hours as with my teams but then use the flexibility of remote work to manage the rest of my time at odd hours (late nights or early mornings); I use blockers like focus-time or specific appointments in my calendar and make it visible for transparency; I prioritize 1:1s over info meetings so we can identify more often the meetings which could have been emails; I have seen many of my colleagues utilize lunch breaks as mental breaks and I’m keen to give this a shot!
Other takeaways
Sinan: Do you have 1-2 book / podcast / course / other resource recommendations for professionals or aspiring managers in STEM?
Dipti:
- Deep Work for when you need a nudge on why focused work is so critical.
- Never Split the Difference for upping your confidence and negotiation game.
- Patrik Kua’s Level-Up weekly newsletter for staying on top of tech & leadership topics.
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The WomenInSTEM March 2022 Interview Series has officially come to an end 👏 I hope that, like me, you find these conversations inspiring as well as useful.
Here’s the full list of 4 interviews for your reference:
- Dr. Yan – AI and Biotech, finding your niche, work/life balance, transfer learning, and more
- Pooja Salpekar – leading distributed teams, moving up, finding mentors, and more
- Dr. Daphne Tsatsoulis – finding passion through trial and error, keeping women in STEM, and connecting with work spouses
- Dipti Dhawan – beating Monday blues with weekly planning, tips for aspiring managers, and the empowerment of motherhood