Podcaster, streamer, dreamer, meme-er Chloe is a Bay Area based Cloud Advocate for Microsoft. Previously, she worked at Sentry.io where she created the award winning Sentry Scouts program (a camp themed meet-up ft. patches, s’mores, giant squirrel costumes, and hot chocolate), and was featured in the Grace Hopper Conference 2018 gallery featuring 15 influential women in STEM by AnitaB.org. Her projects and work with Azure have ranged from fake boyfriend alerts to Mario Kart 'astrology', and have been featured in VICE, The New York Times, as well as SmashMouth's Twitter account. Chloe holds a BA in Drama from San Francisco State University and is a graduate of Hackbright Academy. She prides herself on being a non-traditional background engineer, and is likely one of the only engineers who has played an ogre, crayon, and the back-end of a cow on a professional stage. She hopes to bring more artists into tech, and more engineers into the arts. In this episode Chloe and i talk her Journey, Spite Driven Theater, Plays, The backstory behind her famous picture and Clippy!?? Microsoft's Incredible Cloud Advocate Chloe Condon starts now!
Podcaster, streamer, dreamer, meme-er Chloe is a Bay Area based Cloud Advocate for Microsoft. Previously, she worked at Sentry.io where she created the award winning Sentry Scouts program (a camp themed meet-up ft. patches, s’mores, giant squirrel costumes, and hot chocolate), and was featured in the Grace Hopper Conference 2018 gallery featuring 15 influential women in STEM by AnitaB.org. Her projects and work with Azure have ranged from fake boyfriend alerts to Mario Kart 'astrology', and have been featured in VICE, The New York Times, as well as SmashMouth's Twitter account. Chloe holds a BA in Drama from San Francisco State University and is a graduate of Hackbright Academy. She prides herself on being a non-traditional background engineer, and is likely one of the only engineers who has played an ogre, crayon, and the back-end of a cow on a professional stage. She hopes to bring more artists into tech, and more engineers into the arts.
In this episode Chloe and i talk her Journey, Spite Driven Theater, Plays, The backstory behind her famous picture and Clippy!?? Microsoft's Incredible Cloud Advocate Chloe Condon starts now!
Timeline Topics
00:00 - Opener/Sponsors
00:14 - Welcome Chloe Condon
00:59 - Chloe's Journey (Plays and Acting)
08:00 - Advocacy as Performance Art
12:16 - Yolo and Spite Driven Theater
16:55 - Props to Microsoft and Boot Camps
23:00 - Office Manager to Advocate and Engineering
35:39 - Insecurity as an Actor.
42:16 - What It’s Like to Be a Woman at a Tech Conference - The Story
51:29 - Being Brave...
57:57 - Advocacy at Microsoft
01:04:44 - Clippy
01:09:35 - Twitter Questions
01:21:48 - What work is Chloe most proud of?
Episode Links
https://linktr.ee/ChloeCondon
https://shift.newco.co/2017/07/25/what-its-like-to-be-a-woman-at-a-tech-conference/
https://mashable.com/article/chloe-condon-tee-medlin-twitter-harassment-tech
https://medium.com/newco/what-its-like-to-be-a-woman-on-the-internet-55f7e6d5044c
https://twitter.com/Microsoft/status/1415370520888061955?s=20
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Speaker 1 (00:00:00):
This episode of the POPCAST is brought to you by these sponsors.
Dan Papandrea (00:00:14):
Hello everyone and welcome to the POPCAST. Today we have someone who needs no introduction. She's a cloud advocate at Microsoft. Wait, I guess that is an introduction, right? This is Chloe Condon.
Chloe Condon (00:00:29):
Hello. I'm so excited to be here.
Dan Papandrea (00:00:33):
I am so excited to have you on the show. We had a couple of [inaudible 00:00:35] . So the day you were going to be on last week was the day that my wife and my family came back from a long trip. Anyway, so long story short I was like, oh, thank you so much for now pushing, so I appreciate that.
Chloe Condon (00:00:48):
Oh my goodness. Of course. My whole life is scheduling mishaps on my end and I have no excuse, because I used to be an executive assistant in a previous life.
Dan Papandrea (00:00:57):
All good. So let's talk about your journey and you did not wake up in the womb, creating bots and doing the awesome that you do now. I want to know... Let's go from early Chloe, lil Chloe.
Chloe Condon (00:01:07):
Lil Chloe. Well, I love this question because usually when I talk about Chloe pre-engineering, I always talk about high school age, but I was thinking about this is wording, I from a young age was very spite driven and I say this because I grew up in a theatrical family. My dad is a playwright director and my mom was a costume designer and a graphic artist. And so I grew up in the arts, my parents-
Dan Papandrea (00:01:38):
Where did you grow up? If you don't mind me asking?
Chloe Condon (00:01:40):
Sacramento, California. Yeah. So not too far away from where I live now in the bay area and I was born in twins and my dad was doing a bunch of theater in the Los Angeles area and then we moved to Sacramento because my dad got a job teaching at a college, being a professor who was also running the theater program at Cosumnes River College over in Elk Grove, which is adjacent to Sacramento.
Dan Papandrea (00:02:07):
Did you have any... Was there any specific plays that he was in charge of that you were like, I love this. Oklahoma, I don't know. Something like that, those ones that you love, right?
Chloe Condon (00:02:17):
Yeah. So this is usually pretty surprising to folks because my path eventually I would go into musicals and musical theater-
Dan Papandrea (00:02:24):
You just jazz hands. I love you.
Chloe Condon (00:02:25):
Right, you got to do it when you say musical is the Broadway and me, but yeah, my dad actually is... He has an appreciation for musicals of course, but he is very much into political theater and did a lot of really amazing work with playwrights festivals and especially giving space and voice to the Latino community, he worked with [inaudible 00:02:49] for a long time. Also had a lot of up and coming playwrights who were either from African American descent or even from disabilities. So working with Mark Madoff and all of those amazing shows that he did with folks for deaf. So I grew up in a very diverse, interesting world. Very early on my dad did a production of mid-summer night stream that I was in as one of the fairies and it all took place, this is in the nineties and it was a hip hop Midsummer Night's Dream. So it not only made Midsummer Night's Dream accessible to people beyond who typically go to Shakespeare and I'm not even really a Shakespeare fan myself. Very controversial, I know, for someone with theater degree.
Dan Papandrea (00:03:32):
All that time, let time out. It seemed like in the nineties we hiphop everything Shakespeare. We [inaudible 00:03:37] in Julia. Right. That was the thing which is awesome. Right. But, yeah. So you were part of... So do you remember any of it? Do you remember, I mean, can we-
Chloe Condon (00:03:48):
I remember all of it.
Dan Papandrea (00:03:50):
Bring them to...
Chloe Condon (00:03:52):
I have super, super vivid memories of just being in the theater with my dad, especially for that show. Because when you think about it. Hamilton is basically that, right? Like putting a cultural, new spin on something that's kind of boring and old at the end of the day, right? Who cares about the founding fathers? But if they're rapping, it's like, oh wow. Here's my $500 to see this show. So, but I would say I had a very unique childhood because my dad was doing Death of a Salesman when I was four or five. And that's a pretty a piece of theater, no spoilers, but, lots of talk of relationships and infidelity and suicide and all these different things.
Dan Papandrea (00:04:36):
Spoiler Willy Loman is a salesman.
Chloe Condon (00:04:39):
He's a salesman. So I grew up making these jokes. You asked what little Chloe was like, I was this very precocious, silly little only child who was around these very adult pieces of art. So jokes that I would make included being four years old, going ice skating and being like, there should be a death of a salesman on ice, things like that. But also-
Dan Papandrea (00:05:03):
You're on to something, let's make it happen. [crosstalk 00:05:06] death of a salesman. You're in?
Chloe Condon (00:05:09):
David Memaid, [inaudible 00:05:11]. These were all actual ideas that I would have as a kid. But in particular, what really I think is summarizes little Chloe was, my dad did this piece called Gun Fighter, which I believe Mark Madoff, who I mentioned earlier was the playwright of, and it was all about world war. Wait, what was it? World war II or no, it was about Vietnam. And because I was... At all the rehearsals, if I wasn't sitting with my dad behind the director's table, I was in the costume shop with my mom during the fittings or at the concession stand, helping sell snacks to people. And I got to this point where I would mostly be hanging around adults. I was not hanging around a lot of other kids unless if I was doing Annie or something.
Chloe Condon (00:05:55):
So I remember someone coming up to me... This happened a couple times, they'd say, oh Chloe, I love your dress or I love your hat. Where did you get that? And I just very stoically look at them and go, I got it in numb. Because these were just lines from the show. And out of context, I just thought I was hilarious. But yeah, my dad loves to point out now. He's not a very technical person. He's an amazing artist. And really he watches all my talks. Doesn't know what the heck I'm saying, but he really appreciate the work I do. And he says, you've really come a long way from the Boomba Club, which the Boomba Club was not every night, but, let's say once a week I begged my parents to buy me this microphones stand.
Chloe Condon (00:06:37):
That was from the Lillian Vernon catalog for anybody younger. Lillian Vernon was basically like target, but in a catalog. And it had all these toys for kids and duffle bags with your name on them and little childhood castle things. And I wanted this microphone stand that had three buttons, only three on it. And it's like a standup microphone that had laughter, applause and maybe booing, I want to say it had three different audience reactions. And I would just put on shows every night and just be like, tip your waitresses. I'd sing a song, I'd do some like standup, I'd have a whole menu. I'd basically be running my own comedy club, but that's really being an only child that was just making content before the internet started really, for myself and for my parents.
Dan Papandrea (00:07:26):
I feel like we have a product we can sell here. We can go get brand new microphones that are USB microphones. For people running live streams that have the applause. But you know what I'm saying? That has a stream deck setting. We could do something with them. I think we're onto something here.
Chloe Condon (00:07:40):
I mean, that's why I bought a stream deck that I have yet to completely set up, but it is on my to-do list because I think I saw Cassidy put laughter into one of her talks. And I was like, that's brilliant. Because I miss laughter for my live talks. But yeah, eventually I ended up, getting in the family business so to speak-
Dan Papandrea (00:07:57):
Can you talk about this real quick and I'm sorry about this, but to me, if you're good in this world, this advocacy world, and when we got to the advocacy world, it is performance art to a certain degree. The best talks is telling a story and it's conveying emotion. It's a soliciting the emotion from the crowd, getting that crowd reaction. So let's talk a little bit about that before we get into the things. Do you feel that it is degree of performance art?
Chloe Condon (00:08:26):
Oh my gosh. I used to give a keynote about this called the ROI of LOLs. I can't take credit for that talk name. My boyfriend came up with that, but it was literally about just that, which going into the science of this, but I came into the engineering tech world and I was like, all these talks are so boring. And I used to see really bad theater. I used to see terrible productions of Into The Woods or [inaudible 00:08:52] felt that I'd have to sit through for three hours and want to leave. But it was something that I picked up on very early when I entered this space was I would go to these tech talks or I would go to a meetup or I'd even go to, I won't call out the company, but I went to this really elaborate product announcement. And I want to say, either the head of the team or the CEO or something was announcing it and I didn't even catch what they were announcing, because this person was so nervous and didn't want to be on stage.
Chloe Condon (00:09:21):
So very early on, right after graduating from my bootcamp, I just picked up, oh, this is a really unique skill that not a lot of people have. So that came became very useful. Not only in giving talks also whiteboarding was basically auditioning, but a lot scarier and you have to talk about an algorithm, right?
Chloe Condon (00:09:41):
So I was really used to that, but also scientifically memory hooks, which can either be related to emotional response. That can be laughter, happiness pulling at our heartstrings. You're always going to remember a talk that... Think of Don Draper from Mad Men. When he would give those really elaborate, you're drinking a Coca-Cola kind of talks.
Dan Papandrea (00:10:03):
[inaudible 00:10:03] Tell me, can we sidebar? We're going to have some... All right. The CommScope, that is one of the best soliloquize. That is the one of the best monologues I've ever seen in TV. He's just talking about memories. I mean-
Chloe Condon (00:10:24):
And that's storytelling, right? If you can't tell the story of either the product. That's really why... you watch a TED talk and those have gone through hours, if not days, if not months of work preparing those, but the end of the day, every talk, every show that I've ever remembered and especially any technical talk or event I've ever participated in and been like, wow, I really like that.
Chloe Condon (00:10:48):
I remember something from that. And we have a coworker who recently passed away, Abel. He was amazing cloud advocate that we worked with. Once gave a talk with our coworker, Jessica Dean, where halfway through the talk... And this was a very technical talk that I think they were going into containers or something like that. Azure, DevOps or something of that, which is a very heavy technical topic. But half through they switched, they pulled out wigs. If you don't know Jessica Dean, she has a short blonde haircut at the time. Abel had this long black hair and they switched wigs. And it was like, now I'm going to tell this story from Abel's perspective and vice versa. And you're going to remember that. I will never forget that talk.
Chloe Condon (00:11:32):
So when I gave this keynote, that was all about the importance of comedy, empathy, humor in tech, really it came down to, it wasn't just like, Hey, I'm bored and all your talks suck. It was like, invest time, be a human person. It's so much more relatable. And that's why most of my Twitter is really bad puns and tweeting about some of the hilarity of tech cause that's relatable, right? Who amongst us has not accidentally deleted production or who of us has not accidentally shared their offkey on stream. That's really the stuff that people relate to at the end of the day.
Dan Papandrea (00:12:13):
No doubt. So we went off a little tangent about this, but let's go back to again. So post kind of the theater fun that we had early, we're doing some hiphop theater. As we all did in the nineties [crosstalk 00:12:24].
Chloe Condon (00:12:26):
Yeah. So basically I started attending summer camp in Yellow county, Yolo stage company. This was before the acronym Yellow was a thing. This is an actual county by Sacramento. And every summer I would go and do a theater camp. And the very first year that I did it, I was four years old. I was technically too young to be in the program. This was a 4 through 16, second grade through 12th grade kind of thing. And-
Dan Papandrea (00:12:53):
You were a child theater prodigy. They're like, let's get this kid in. Let's go.
Chloe Condon (00:12:56):
Well, I certainly thought so because we were doing Wizard of Oz and I got cast in the Lullaby League, which is, we represented the... Little pink hats. And I was devastated because I was like, mom, dad, I don't understand. I should be playing Dorothy. And they are like, oh, well, sweetie, you're four. And I'm just like, this just doesn't make any sense. And I say that I'm spite driven because I kept doing theater with that company until middle school when they did Wizard of Oz again and I could finally play Dorothy. So I hold a grudge, I've always about proving the people wrong through a bigger point, which honestly, I've seen that align a lot with my tech career as well. I'm just like, I'll show you guys.
Chloe Condon (00:13:43):
But yeah, I think I was just so engrossed... In theater, I ended up, I was miserable in high school. My mom died when I was around 15 or 16 from cervical cancer. And one of the final things that she did before cancer took her life was she got me into this theater program or sorry, this charter school, which is a Natomas Charter Performing and Fine Arts Academy right over near Sacramento. And I went from being a miserable... I was crying in the bathroom every day. I was a great student. I was in this [inaudible 00:14:15] international studies program, but no one really understood me. I was this theater nerd kid who... I had friends, but I was very shy. And obviously I was dealing with a heavy burden of my mom passing in front of my very eyes.
Chloe Condon (00:14:31):
So once I got to this performing arts high school, like picture fame basically, and it was visual and performing arts. So we had musicians, we had visual artists, we had a theater program. I finally found my people and I was like, okay, this is where I was meant to be. And I really just thrived there and was able to be around other students who had the same interest and appreciated that I was a good singer and actor and not a good dancer. I was a double threat so to speak. But yeah, I just had my blinders on for theater. I had computers in my life, I was good at computers. I was obsessed with computer games and it drove me crazy that my parents had a Mac because my mom was a graphic visual designer.
Chloe Condon (00:15:16):
And I was like, there's no games on this. All I want to do is play Sims. And [inaudible 00:15:20] goes to the circus and it drove me crazy. I'd have to go to fries and like look for the Mac games. And I hacked into the parental controls of AOL, but it was wasn't even a twinkling in my eye at all that. At that point, I didn't know what an engineer was. I think if you had asked me what computer science was, I would've pictured a hammer and a computer and guys and lab coats, this was just not anything in my frame of reference at all. And I got a little taste of programming when I was in high school, we had to do senior projects and we had to make a senior portfolio and we did it all in PowerPoint. So it was basically like a clickable PowerPoint where it would be like, here's all of the things that I accomplished with my senior project and you'd click through and I remember thinking this is cool and I'm really good at it. And then but no one ever saying like, Hey, at this computer science or like, Hey, you should... There's a whole industry. And I had already gotten into San Francisco State to pursue a theater degree. So, I really did not see... If you were to go in a time machine and talk to Chloe 16 years old or not even 17 years old Chloe and say, Hey, in the future, you're going to work in Microsoft. It'd be like, are you high? There's no way. And my relatives say that as well. My aunts and my uncles and my grandma are just like, I can't believe you made this career switch. We would've... your mom would be shocked if she were to, just be alive today and be like, Chloe's doing what?
Dan Papandrea (00:16:49):
But here's the thing. And it's props to Microsoft on this. And if you think about it, if you bring in fresh perspectives to anything, more people are going to listen just the same way. As you said earlier, with some of the talks you... Like the empathy aspect, the human aspect, the comedy aspect. Look, people hear the same things every day. They're getting bombarded from... Especially now during this pandemic time, you're home, it's, we're doing a live stream, we're doing a fireside chat, we're doing a coffee and blah, blah, blah. And it's like, look, no. You need to do something super, super unique and props to Microsoft for saying, look, this person is creative. She's brilliant. Let's give her a place to do this stuff.
Chloe Condon (00:17:30):
well, I will say, it definitely coming from a nontraditional background, especially being so loud and proud about it, which is very intentional. I want to be the person that other people, that I needed to see truly, even with the students that I work with at Microsoft, or most of them all technically pursuing computer science degrees, especially those in the Microsoft student ambassador program or the Imagine Cup. But I think it's really important for people to know second career developers or bootcamp grads, or however you want to say it have a valid space in this industry. Not all of us have the luxury of learning about computer science earlier in life. I certainly didn't. And I will say there's some fun battles that I often face, it can either be internally at Microsoft or externally. Most of it happens out in the community. I get a lot of like, well, she's just an actress pretending to be an engineer. And I'm like, yeah, I just acted my way into Microsoft. I'm a really good actress.
Dan Papandrea (00:18:30):
I don't think you could act on a live stream. I've seen you. I do my research and I've been on your streams. And I look at it you create bots on the fly and I'm like, nobody's doing that. I'm like, yo, she's the real deal.
Chloe Condon (00:18:41):
Thank you. And I think people... I read a book, I want to say, it's in a bunch of airports, you are a badass and something. And there was something in there that said, if you're looking for a role model or someone to that you want to model your career after, look to who you're jealous of. So I try to just put that in my mind when people are just being really crappy to me. And they're just like, Chloe just has a bunch of Twitter followers and she got hired at Microsoft. I've done a lot of stuff you guys, it's not like I'm just some freshman coming in here. I've had an entire...
Chloe Condon (00:19:16):
And this is something we were talking about the other day on a Twitter spaces with Ian Coldwater and Ashley Mcnamara and a bunch of nontraditional background folks is second career developers aren't just this... I was not even... To give a little perspective, when you are a junior developer in your late twenties, applying for jobs alongside, you're applying for junior developer positions, you're applying for internships. I didn't even qualify for most internships, because I didn't have a GPA to send them, but I'm going, people don't realize like, oh, this woman had meetings before and she's had a job.
Chloe Condon (00:19:54):
Like it's not like you're bringing... yes, you will have to mentor me and onboard me from a technical side of things. However, I'm not some green, fresh faced, new grad walking in here. I know a lot of people it's totally by choice, they don't really like to talk about their bootcamp background. I think even I heard back in the day at Hack Reactor they discouraged folks from saying that they went to a bootcamp, but I am so loud about it because, oh my goodness, if I hadn't talked to other people, taken other people out to coffee and certainly had my boyfriend not pushed me in this direction, but mentioned like, Hey, you can still learn the code. I wouldn't be here. And honestly the fact that I'm sitting here today talking to you on this podcast because I matched with the right person on Hinge and OkCupid is wild, right? It's all happenstance. And I'm so lucky that, I mean, it changed my life. Like being in this industry has completely changed my life.
Dan Papandrea (00:20:54):
And, it's amazing. There's other stories of folks, your success story. Think about Kay Cosgrove's a friend of mine and [inaudible 00:21:03] bootcamp camp folks. And what I love about them probably very similar to you. It's like, man, get shit done because you have to kind of acclimate yourself to these things quickly. And I think they make you... Because you're more hungry. You're more hungry. You're in a bootcamp, you have to figure this stuff out quickly. You acclimate yourself to a job and all that. That's fantastic. So-
Chloe Condon (00:21:28):
And I think a lot of people view bootcamps who don't have the knowledge or don't have a friend or a partner or have gone through them themselves. There's this tendency to be like, oh, they're pyramid schemes. You can't just go to bootcamp for 12 weeks and learn to be a developer. And they're right. The bootcamp just teaches you how to learn a language, essentially. And for me personally, I've mentored folks PJ Metz, who's a high school teacher turned developer advocate who did it all through the pandemic. I don't think he even paid for maybe one or two courses, but did it all on his own, but I didn't have the structure in my life. I was undiagnosed with ADHD at the time. I needed accountability and I needed a group.
Chloe Condon (00:22:07):
So I alway tell folks, research your bootcamps, make sure that you're going to a reputable bootcamp but I always tell people it doesn't end your last day of the bootcamp. There's usually a three to six month timeline of just learning how to interview as an engineer because oh my goodness, every interview I had as a non-engineer was just like, I'm a nice person. Here's my resume. And I'm like, wait, I have to what I have to whiteboard, what are you talking about? So I always say that people who've gone through boot camps and are out there hustling, they all deserve a badge of honor, because you don't just wake up one day and go, I'm going to become an engineer and go to a boot camp. This is a huge financial burden on people. A lot of people work full time and quit their jobs. I certainly did. So it's a huge career changes. Career changers are some of the strongest people out there as far as I'm concerned.
Dan Papandrea (00:23:00):
And your career change was from an office manager to that's all that meaning.
Dan Papandrea (00:23:00):
Your career change was from an office manager to... Again, it's incredible. Can you tell us a little bit about transitioning to that?
Chloe Condon (00:23:10):
Yeah. So, I did a million jobs before I got into engineering because... I was actually talking to my boyfriend about this the other day, I had never had a career. I had never thought of my day job, I'll say, as a career, because I went to San Francisco State, I got a theater performance degree. I have a degree in drama as my boyfriend loves to remind me all the time when I'm being over dramatic. And I basically...
Dan Papandrea (00:23:34):
Let me ask you some... Sorry to sidebar. I'm going to sidebar all day. That's what we're doing.
Chloe Condon (00:23:39):
Please.
Dan Papandrea (00:23:42):
So, is there some plays in college that you would like, this is me. I embody this part. I want to know the ones you remember that you're, oh, this is awesome.
Chloe Condon (00:23:51):
Yes. So, my program was really interesting because our professor who was a big reason why I decided to go to San Francisco State, other than it being close to my dad, is the professor there, Barbara Damashek, who is a Tony Award winning playwright director. I think she directed and wrote Quilters, which is this really awesome feminist piece about quilters. And she had worked with my dad, I think, in the seventies. And I was like, this lady is really cool. And her whole school of acting was... There's a lot of... For people who don't like musicals, first of all, no shame in that, not all musicals are great and one musical could make everything a bad experience for you.
Chloe Condon (00:24:36):
But, if you're not familiar with the musical theater world, there's the concept of a jukebox musical and things that fall into that category are things like All Shook Up, the Elvis Presley musical, or Mama Mia is a jukebox musical. Even though I love Mama Mia, it's a guilty pleasure of mine. Let's see, what else is a jukebox musical?
Dan Papandrea (00:24:55):
Grease?
Chloe Condon (00:24:55):
Like Bat Out of Hell. Grease, I think has a bunch of original songs, but the movie has some jukebox stuff in it.
Dan Papandrea (00:25:02):
Got it.
Chloe Condon (00:25:03):
But essentially, or Anything Goes even an oldie but a goodie is all Cole Porter. And growing up my dad gave me this appreciation for very dark comedy musicals. Specifically, Urinetown, spelled U-R-I-N-E, which is basically a dark parody Broadway musical making fun of musicals. Very meta. But, as I grew older, especially my college years, I grew this disdain for jukebox musicals where, to give an example, in a good musical ideally someone starts singing, and this is something Barbara Damashek taught us, when words can no longer express how they're feeling.
Chloe Condon (00:25:40):
So, they have to express it in song. Versus, and I love All Shook Up, I love a jukebox musical, so fun. But, it's you know what you are? You ain't nothing but a hound dog.
Dan Papandrea (00:25:50):
Yeah.
Chloe Condon (00:25:51):
It's just, oh my God, hey let's misbehave, it's getting late. And it's, oh my God. So, I developed this appreciation during my college years, mostly because of what we were studying and we would have these really interesting classes where you'd come with your favorite song and then have to do a scene around them. And they would get very dark. And I won't tell the full story here, but for example, someone came in with a song, No Diggity. And how do you make a dramatic scene out of this? And they did. Just really interesting groundbreaking work happening in these very small theater classes at San Francisco State.
Chloe Condon (00:26:29):
So, we did very obscure musicals, much to my appreciation and dismay I would say because, I love an Oklahoma. I love Gypsy. I love all the classics that I grew up with. I should also say, to talk about young little Chloe. I watched every single musical VHS at Blockbuster in alphabetical order. It was one bay at Blockbuster. And I watched every single one from A to Z. Didn't get through Rocky Horror because as a kid, this is too much sexually for me. Oh my gosh. But, I think I tapped out at Xanadu, which is ironic because, I ended up doing Xanadu.
Dan Papandrea (00:27:08):
Whoa, whoa. You tapped out at Xanadu?
Chloe Condon (00:27:10):
It's a bad movie.
Dan Papandrea (00:27:11):
Yes it is.
Chloe Condon (00:27:12):
It's a great musical. It's a terrible movie.
Dan Papandrea (00:27:14):
Yeah. It's pretty terrible.
Chloe Condon (00:27:15):
That's what makes the musical amazing. Because, it makes fun of how bad the movie is. But in college...
Dan Papandrea (00:27:20):
It's Olivia Newton-John, I mean.
Chloe Condon (00:27:21):
Yes. And Jean Kelly and directed by Kenny Ortega, one of the greatest choreographers and directors of our time.
Dan Papandrea (00:27:28):
I am so ashamed. I have to tell you this. I lived in New York for almost 23 years. Guess how many musicals I've been to?
Chloe Condon (00:27:36):
Zero?
Dan Papandrea (00:27:36):
One.
Chloe Condon (00:27:38):
One, which one?
Dan Papandrea (00:27:39):
Avenue Q.
Chloe Condon (00:27:39):
You know, that's a good one though. I would say out of all the musicals on Broadway, Avenue Q is a stellar choice. So, I applaud you for that.
Dan Papandrea (00:27:47):
All good.
Chloe Condon (00:27:48):
So, I went to college thinking we're going to do Spring Awakening. These were very hit musicals coming out. Of course, they did Spring Awakening the year after I graduated. But, in the time that I was there, we did City of Angels, which was an song before, but I did Chess, the musical, which is an obscure, if you know the song, One Night in Bangkok.
Dan Papandrea (00:28:12):
Yeah.
Chloe Condon (00:28:13):
That is from the musical Chess, which is, please stay awake while I tell you what the plot of the show is. It is a musical about competitive chess players during the cold war. Stay with me now. And I played the lead of that, and it was my big musical lead in the, I was probably a junior at the time and it's a 70 or sorry, an '80s musical. The music is by Tim Rice. Who's a collaborator with Elton John on The Lion King and Aida and all those things. And one of the members of ABBA, I want to say, yes one of the guys from ABBA. And the music is great. The soundtrack is amazing. The script is difficult to follow especially if you don't know the cold war, or chess very well. But, I totally got into that character.
Chloe Condon (00:29:08):
I mean, maybe it was the '80s shoulder pads. Maybe it was the music. I don't know what it was. Maybe it was the relationship with the father in the beginning because, she didn't have a mom, but truly I would say the highlight of my college theater career, I also did Tick, Tick... Boom! Which is coming out soon.
Chloe Condon (00:29:25):
Lin-Manuel is directing a film version of it, which I'm really excited about, that my friend Laura directed in our little brown bag theater that we did. So, that was another really cool thing about my degree is, even though I didn't have computer science classes, I had a BA, so I still had communications classes and stuff like that. So, I got a pretty well rounded education. But looking back, there were these really cool collaborative classes in which I recently was talking about to one of our interns at Microsoft, that he was lamenting in his computer science program, or his business class program, that there were no really how to give a talk classes. And I feel the same way about a theater degree. I didn't get any business classes about how to do my taxes as an independent contractor.
Chloe Condon (00:30:12):
I feel that, but there was this class called, brown bag, where you would audition to get in. Usually everybody got in. And it was all student run. We had this professor who oversaw the whole thing, but essentially the point of the class was, we had this little black box theater, very very tiny, maybe less than a hundred seats. Definitely less than a hundred seats, maybe 50 or 60 if that, depending on the show. And the professor just would... Students would apply as directors, choose a show that they wanted to direct, two shows. And then in repertory, which if you're not familiar with repertory theater, essentially it's like you have a theater company that has a bolt cast and they put on a bunch of different shows. And every week there would be a new show with a different student director and a different cast.
Chloe Condon (00:30:57):
And it not only gave actors the experience of, how to work in repertory and how to do shows back to back week by week. But it gave a lot of folks their first time directing experience. And at the end of the day, we were all project managing an entire show that we had to put up. So, we did things like Tick, Tick... Boom! I saw a bunch of Shakespeare stuff. Some of the most incredible pieces I saw were student produced and run pieces in this class that... And the tickets were free because it was for a class. And so, it was when I went into tech, and especially when I did my bootcamp, I would always think... I took a trip with my boyfriend to Japan right before I started my bootcamp.
Chloe Condon (00:31:37):
And I remember just thinking, wow, I got into Hackbright, This is such a big deal. And sitting there and thinking, wow, my theater degree was such a waste of time. Why did I spend so much... Like a four year degree on this and all this time and money, but I use things from my background and my degree in theater every single day in this job. And I would say it's my superpower in a lot of ways in this job. So, to answer your question that you originally asked, I worked so many crazy jobs during college and after college, because really at the end of the day, I needed a nine to five Monday through Friday that I could work. So, I could do theater, nights and weekends because rehearsals would be at night and shows would be on the weekend.
Chloe Condon (00:32:18):
So, my first job ever, is going to surprise no one, was at the Disney store. I literally walked in, hadn't even babysat before, I was 17. And they're like, you look like you should work here. So, they gave me my first job. I worked in retail for a while. I did J.Crew. I did Sephora, and then once I graduated, I should also say I worked as a summer camp counselor for a while because really the only jobs as an actress that you can get are an actress surprise surprise. Or a teacher, like a professor teaching acting, teaching singing, voice lessons, whatever that may be, private lessons or at a school or an afterschool program. So, I did summer camps for a while. I did the Chinatown YMCA. I was an afterschool program director. Oh my gosh, I was a children's birthday party entertainer in college for a while where I would go to birthdays dressed up as princesses.
Dan Papandrea (00:33:12):
What was the last job before you became an advocate? Was it the office manager thing?
Chloe Condon (00:33:16):
Yeah. So, I was working as an executive assistant. I was the very first virtual assistant ever for Zirtual, a startup way back in the day. I worked at Yelp as a salesperson. I was a recruiter for a little bit and I basically stumbled into office management because, I guess I have some of these skills. I know how to put meetings on a calendar. I didn't see myself as someone who could ever have a career. I was just, okay cool. I can do these things. And I worked at Packs Labs, which is a vape company. If you're not familiar with the JUULpods and things like that, Packs and JUUL used to be together. We shared a building with Burning Man in the mission, very San Francisco. And my day to day was just loading snacks and La Croix into the fridge. I cleaned a lot of...
Dan Papandrea (00:34:10):
Oh, you mentioned La Croix. Favorite flavor? I need to know.
Chloe Condon (00:34:13):
This is controversial. I like coconut. I know.
Dan Papandrea (00:34:16):
I like it too.
Chloe Condon (00:34:18):
Okay, good. People are very polarized by coconut La Croix. I very much come full circle on La Croix though. I used to despise La Croix because I'd stare at it all day. I love La Croix now, I drink it all the time. But, I was changing cold brew kegs. If you ever do a startup in San Francisco, cleaning conference rooms with old sushi in them, clean up dog pee, cutting so many boxes, cutting so many boxes. And I really wasn't using my brain. I had a podcast on for the majority of my day. I think the most responsibility I was ever given was being put in charge of decorating and designing a mandatory mother's nursing room that we had to build.
Chloe Condon (00:34:58):
But, there wasn't a lot of opportunity for me. And I remember at the time my boyfriend, we were at an event and he said, oh, that's so and so over there, she used to work at Evernote with me and she was our office manager and they invested a bunch of time in her. And now she's a PM and I started crying. And he was, what's wrong? I have just never thought of the idea of anybody investing time in me or someone that's so amazing. And that is how... I was this little hurt animal, really. I didn't feel like I was being treated with respect. I didn't really have people who were invested in me or my career. And so...
Dan Papandrea (00:35:38):
You think about the plight of actors and actresses, an actor excuse me. Because, I think the term is for both. It breeds insecurity. You know what I mean? You're going to get this role. You're not right for this role. You are right for this role, but you're not right for this thing or whatever. It breeds this thing, well you're not going to be in this play or, you're going to be the Dorothy six years later or whatever it is.
Chloe Condon (00:36:00):
Yeah.
Dan Papandrea (00:36:01):
And so, you probably had that built in and look, we're not going to do a shrink session here, but I'm just saying in general, that's probably what it was. It was, look I don't think, I'm in my mind, I'm not worthy for this. You seeing that was probably this eye opening thing for you, right?
Chloe Condon (00:36:13):
And being an actor, everything is super out of your control. I think people don't really realize, even with folks like Angelina Jolie, or Broadway actors are a great example of this, so much of when you audition is not in your control. Maybe I've not gotten parts because I haven't fit the costumes because they're rented. Or my male counterpart, that would be my co-star is shorter than me. With tech, a hundred percent that you put in, a hundred percent you get back. But with acting, it's so much you better hope that they need a five foot two blonde girl. And you better hope that the other 20 five foot two blonde girls at this audition don't do as well as you. I've come to that conclusion a lot.
Chloe Condon (00:36:56):
Especially when I think about how much stake I would put into these auditions, but at the end of the day, I was auditioning to play pretend with a group of people. And, I also didn't get to... There's so much as engineers and I have to explain this a lot to folks that I mentor, who come from especially theater or non-traditional backgrounds, you are interviewing the company as well. When you are an in demand person in a technical role, you can vet for, am I going to like this manager? Am I going to like my co-workers? Whereas in theater, it's hey you got the part. And now spend hours of your life with these people that you don't know and don't get to choose who you work with and share very close quarters in this dressing room half naked with them.
Chloe Condon (00:37:39):
It's weird to think back on. Or, hey, you're going to kiss this guy every night for three months that you hate, good luck. Just really very, very different atmosphere and vibe. So, once I started dating my boyfriend and I, by happenstance saw this talk, I was working as an executive assistant for NewCo, which was this company, really cool company run by John Batel, that instead of the conference being at a venue, the conference was the city. So, they would have one in Silicon Valley or Boston or New York. And instead of going from room to room for the talks, you'd go from company startup to hear the talk at the company, which was really, really a cool experience. So, I got to go to any of the talks that I wanted, and the Silicon Valley one, I went to the Google one because I was like, the Google campus.
Chloe Condon (00:38:29):
I want to see what the Google campus is like. Of course, the talk was in the most boring part of the Google campus, but the talk happened to be about, and I don't even think that I looked at the topic when I chose this, about getting young women specifically K through 12, young girls interested in programming by adding characters to pop culture, to cartoons and doing collaborations and stuff. And I was, wow, this is so cool. I went on my phone immediately, looked up girls Google code, saw it was for little girls. Well, my ship have sailed. What could have been. And my boyfriend was, what are you talking about? You can still do this. And literally that is all it took. It just took someone saying, actually you can do this.
Chloe Condon (00:39:13):
And that is why I'm so loud about this to everyone. Because, not all of us have a Thai Smith in our life to say, hey... And I recognize my privilege here as well. My boyfriend is a very, very senior staff engineer at Uber. And I had someone living with me and in my life the whole time to help me and mentor me through this, but not everybody has that.
Dan Papandrea (00:39:33):
Right.
Chloe Condon (00:39:34):
I totally think that there is a huge barrier to entry. If you just wake up one day and you're like, what's this computer science thing? There's not a lot of resources out there and all the nuances of how do you negotiate for your salary? How do you... I talked to so many students and non-traditional developers at the bootcamp office hours that I used to host in San Francisco.
Chloe Condon (00:39:55):
And a lot of people would be, I'm really discouraged. I did my first interview and it didn't go well. Are you kidding me? I had to do 20 white boarding interviews until I even felt comfortable doing them. Just being a voice in the room to share, this is hard and what you're doing is hard. I think is important. So, I think about that a lot. I think a lot about how did a girl from a upper middle class family in Sacramento, who was around computers, who had a computer lab, I didn't see anybody who looked like me and I certainly didn't see myself in this industry. And had I not matched as the right person on a dating app. I would not be here. And that drives me bananas, which is why I'm so passionate about educating kids, putting people like LGBT, diversity not only in gender and in race, but in background in front of even our college students that we work with because, not everybody has to look and act and sound the same way. It's important to show people.
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Dan Papandrea (00:42:15):
And so, there's this famous picture of you. And by the way, literally a couple weeks ago, that's a little segue there kids. I know you for a while. And I saw this picture years back and I didn't put two and two together.
Chloe Condon (00:42:32):
Yeah.
Dan Papandrea (00:42:32):
And there's this picture by the way, it'll be right here. Okay. I'm going to do this post. And this is from a blog post that you did I think, and we'll have the link to all this everybody. What's it like to be a woman at a tech conference? Most people assume I'm not a developer, and it's this great picture of you with this bewildered look, and then there's a bunch of foods behind you. And this is the greatest picture I have ever seen. So, give me the story behind the picture.
Chloe Condon (00:43:02):
Yeah. So, that was my very first, I want to say my first or second conference that I'd ever been to, it was this conference in Napa and I was working at this company called Code Fresh with these really, really lovely hilarious coworkers. They were all dads. I was the young... And shout out to Code Fresh. They really took a gamble on hiring this non-traditional background bootcamp grad junior developer evangelist at the time.
Dan Papandrea (00:43:34):
Shout out to Code Fresh, they're [crosstalk 00:43:35].
Chloe Condon (00:43:35):
Shout out to Code Fresh.
Dan Papandrea (00:43:35):
The sponsor of the podcast, popcast actually in the past.
Chloe Condon (00:43:39):
I Just love them so much. And we were at this event and the after party for the first day was in a wine cave. And I don't think a lot of other people realize this, especially when you're at a very homogenous event with a lot of people who look like you, but I was truly one of five women that I saw, not at this overall conference, but in this wine cave. And I've had many moments like this in my life. When I went to DockerCon for the first time. And I had this strange feeling that everyone was looking at me and they were, because I was wearing a very feminine girly dress and I stick out like a sore thumb. It's like having a room full of flamingos and an elephant. My hair was not orange at the time, but I have gigantic eyes. I usually have a quirky dress on or something. And I just remember asking my co-worker, Iran, hey can you take a picture of me? And I'm a little comedian, so I was just... And that photo has lived in infamy, not only from that blog post, but from all the BS that I went through with the stocker at T Medlin, which I could also provide a link for. We don't have enough time probably to talk about that.
Dan Papandrea (00:44:51):
I want to talk about, no, no. Because it's so ridiculous. I mean, he got to the point like Seth Rogan is commenting about.
Chloe Condon (00:44:58):
Yeah.
Dan Papandrea (00:44:59):
We went mainstream Chloe. We went mainstream on this. I don't want to give this dirt bag any type of exposure because he's a scumbag. Anyway. But that must have been so tax... Let's talk about the emotions, we'll give a little snippet of what happened. So, this picture's out there, you get some notoriety, in general because of how awesome you are. And then what happens with this dude?
Chloe Condon (00:45:22):
Well, that original article was just a huge moment in my... So, to give some context, people assume that I've been on Twitter forever. I've only been on Twitter for maybe four or five years. I only started using Twitter when I started doing tech because in the theater world, we only really used Instagram and Facebook. I'm not on Facebook anymore. So, that what it's like to be women at a tech conference article went super viral unbeknownst to me because, I think I was working in my first job, but I wasn't in any slack channels or communities at the time. And it was getting, people telling me in a state, oh my God, this got put in our women in tech channel. And I actually even think I ended up getting a job eventually because of that article. Because, this is the girl from the...
Chloe Condon (00:46:00):
...getting a job eventually because of that article. Because they're like, this is the girl from the... It became a very, I think it was A, the first time that someone, it certainly wasn't the first time that someone had talked about being a woman at a tech con or being a woman in tech. But it certainly was maybe one of the earlier or first articles, someone having kind of a comedic sense of humor about it. Because that's the only way that deal with this really shitty traumatic stuff that I deal with as a woman very present on the internet. So I was minding my own business, had just gotten coffee with a friend, and I got this DM on it's either Instagram or Twitter that was like, Hey, is this you? And I was assumed, it was just like some viral picture thing that had come out.
Chloe Condon (00:46:43):
But it was a link to an Instagram post from a person, I didn't know, named T Madelin. And it had this caption that was like, and keep in mind that like this original photo from the article became super viral. And like people had put me, it became a meme and it gets referenced a lot and even just college, academic papers and stuff.
Dan Papandrea (00:47:05):
It's got to a point where it it was such and I could not. And like I said, I interact with you on Twitter for literally like two years or whatever it's been.
Chloe Condon (00:47:15):
Yeah.
Dan Papandrea (00:47:15):
And it was like, I had no idea. Because I've seen that picture a thousand times. I didn't put two and two together until like two months ago. So it's crazy.
Chloe Condon (00:47:22):
It became a meme. My hair changes all the time. So my hair was very different and I was five years younger. But it's hilarious because it would've been one thing if this guy just grabbed any photo, but this was like a very well known photo, right?
Dan Papandrea (00:47:36):
Yeah.
Chloe Condon (00:47:36):
And the caption on this photo essentially said, and we can link to the Mashable article that has like all the screenshots in it. It said, open up a bottle of wine or some LaCroix and sit down for an hour or two and go through the thread because it's truly a wild, wild, wild ride. Seth Rogan gets involved. But essentially what had happened was he posted that photo of me on his Instagram and he didn't have that many followers. He had like a couple hundred maybe, and mostly, I think he lived in North Carolina, so was mostly his friends there. And the caption was, this woman has been follow me around at this tech conference. If I get murdered tonight, it's her because she's just been stalking me. She won't stop creepily smiling, and won't leave me alone. And I was like, what the? Okay.
Dan Papandrea (00:48:16):
No, you totally fit the profile. Totally.
Chloe Condon (00:48:17):
Right.
Dan Papandrea (00:48:19):
Theater, duke, office managers slash. Yeah, you fit the profile of the murderer. Yeah.
Chloe Condon (00:48:23):
But was a beautiful moment of the internet for me. Because I deal with my crappy stuff on the internet, but I tweeted this and I was like, what the heck? First of all, this is a photo taken years ago. And secondly, this is a very well known photo. And thirdly, I have never spoken to this man in my life. And then the internet and shout out to folks like Kylie and and a bunch of folks out there who really did a deep dive on the sky's profile. Started to notice that, wait a second, this is an influencer that I know from a makeup account and stuff. And it turned out that all of the photos on this person's Instagram, all of his LinkedIn, credits, everything was fake, right? And this wasn't a fake person.
Chloe Condon (00:49:05):
This is a very real person. I'll tell you why in a second. But everything down to, wow, I just gave this talk about UX design, and it was a Photoshop. People were doing reverse image search on all those stuff, and it was like a Calvin Kline presentation that he'd just change the thing on. To this day, I'm not kidding you, people from his life, DM me, people like his landlord or someone even messaged me and said, this guy interviewed for a position at our company and used my portfolio for his work. He had found something online and used it. So this guy's been drifting folks and still continues to do so to this day. And yeah, like it was just such a very wholesome, but hilarious moment. And then the Seth Rogan part essentially was someone saying, wait a second, he had this photo of Seth Rogan that was like, at this charity event with my pal, Seth, like blah, blah, blah, it's a golf tournament.
Chloe Condon (00:49:56):
And someone was like, no, that's Seth Rogan's whack statue. I've been to that room at the Hollywood mack wax or whatever. And even said, Rogan chimed in was like, this guy's nuts. So it was very much like the internet sleuthing and coming together, people were so sweet. They were sending me Venmo money to go get a cocktail. Because this consumed my life for three days. I ended up going to the police station. They looked at me like I was crazy because they're like, I'm sorry, what happened? There's a guy who's like. So it really was a eye opening experience and a lesson in A, no action was taken against this person. Except I will say there's some hilarious, wonderful people on the internet who, I don't know if it's still active, but tmedlin.com used to link to the article harassing me. People have found ways. And if you search his name, all this stuff about this comes out.
Chloe Condon (00:50:50):
But I started to realize, wow, there is no accountability at all for online harassment. If you're being harassed by someone in another state it's out of your, jurisdiction. So that is something I'm very loud and passionate about. And my boyfriend has seen this first hand behind the scenes and I think it originally started from me sharing this stuff with my boyfriend and being like, yo, this is really scary and awful in this app to then being like, wait a second. I have this platform that I can share with people, how to fix these things and how to make things better in this regard. But we definitely have a long way to go.
Dan Papandrea (00:51:26):
One of the things that happened recently, and I'm jumping around a little bit, but in terms of, this broke my heart because it was like, Hey, some of you have never had the schedule dedicated time each month in your calendar to remove all the, nice boobs, she's cute, can she actually code? Get back in the kitchen comments from your technical videos on YouTube. And honestly it shows. And I'm like, that is so terrible. But I see that constantly. I have friends. One of my friends, Gab Smash, on LinkedIn, somebody's like, I want to marry you. Literally on LinkedIn?
Chloe Condon (00:51:58):
Yeah.
Dan Papandrea (00:51:58):
And it's terrible. And you're right, that doesn't happen a lot to dudes or whatever. But I got, for instance, here's when somebody DMs me and was like, Hey pop. I think that's an ego maniac thing. I go, people have been calling me pop because my last name is pop and Dre you all since I'm five, right?
Chloe Condon (00:52:22):
Right.
Dan Papandrea (00:52:22):
So it's crazy but again, that's a small piece of like what you all have to deal with. And it's insane, but how do you deal with this stuff? I mean, it's just insane.
Chloe Condon (00:52:34):
Well, I'd be lying if I said I didn't have my night or day or hour or time where I totally cry it out. But I would say a lot of it has come just resilience from having to deal with it a lot. I don't think people totally understand the volume of it that I get. And I think a lot of it is just, it's something that I can just kind of put out of sight, out of mind. I have this enamel pin that says, stop reading the comments. And it's like a little badge of honor award thing. But I would say, I get this question a lot, especially when I talk to women in tech, panels and stuff. And they're like, how are you so brave to be a woman on the internet?
Chloe Condon (00:53:14):
Which shouldn't be a question that I'm being asked, right? People should just treat people with respect. And I think a lot of it is not, I don't respond to everyone first of all. If I did, I wouldn't have any time to do my job. I try to do what I can to filter it out and to make it, and even build tools for myself to prevent harassment. But a lot of it is just, I try to educate versus get mad at people. Back in the day, when we used to go to conferences in person, I can't tell you how many freaking times someone has come up to me and been like, oh, so marketing or recruiting. It's like, no, I'm a freaking engineer dude. So I try my best to educate. Even this is kind of a flu, but like I said, the only way I can deal with it and handle it is humor. I'm going to be creating this series soon called master creep theater, where I'm going to do dramatic readings of the weird, you would not even begin to imagine the stuff that I get.
Dan Papandrea (00:54:16):
I want in. I want to help with this. Well, I'll help you sell ads. Let's figure it out. Yeah.
Chloe Condon (00:54:23):
You can help me with the sponsorship. But yeah, I try to use my platform to not only educate people on this, but also just educate people on how freaking ridiculous it is and the amount. And there's a wonderful thread, I think her account's private right now, but this woman, Heidi, did this threat about, oftentimes the response that I'll hear from men or just from folks, women, they, them, anybody who says, well, I'm not getting harassed maybe you're asking for it. And I'm like, well, it's kind of a numbers game, right? I have what? 52,000 followers and something that my boyfriend loves to remind me is, it's only going to get worse, right? The more I get followers, increases the percentage of people disliking me. And trust me, a lot of people dislike me.
Chloe Condon (00:55:11):
I have found over the last five years. So a lot of it is just resilience. And if people are getting upset about the stuff you're doing, I guess you're doing something right. All press is good press, I guess. But at the end of the day, I think what keeps me going is A, those people are stupid and have nothing better to do with their lives. So many people have written like five paragraphs essays about me on 4Chan and Reddit at about how I'm not qualified to work in tech. And I'm like, jokes on you. You just wrote about me for what was probably 20 minutes of your life, right? Why are you obsessed with m?e as to quote Mariah Carey, right? But yeah, I think a lot of it is just, I have a thick skin from auditioning and constantly being told I'm too skinny or too fat or too ugly or whatever it may be. But it does hit harder when it's something you've worked really freaking hard at, and people discredit you and say, oh, you're just an actress or, oh whatever it may be.
Chloe Condon (00:56:06):
I get a lot of like, she's not qualified to be here, blah, blah, blah. And at the end of the day, I just try to keep my head up high and spite driven development, right? Just prove them all wrong. Who's going to be laughing when I'm running the Clippy division at Microsoft. I don't know
Dan Papandrea (00:56:25):
You're somebody that I admire. But also it's like a lot of people when I posted that question earlier, which we're going to get to the Twitter question show. I mean, it was so resounding the amount of response we got from that. Literally within an hour before an hour half before we did this. So, keep doing what you're doing, I'll beat the crap at anybody who gets crazy. You don't need me, but if you ever did, I'll be there for you. I'm this guy from New York who could beat the people up. All right.
Speaker 4 (00:56:46):
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Speaker 5 (00:56:58):
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Dan Papandrea (00:57:57):
All right, so let's shift gears. We're going to go back. I want to talk about the advocacy and game that we do at Microsoft. They're awesome stuff that we do. Again, you're super creative again with that background that you have. And I want to talk about, look, we got the bots, we got the YouTube channel, and what we're doing with Microsoft reactor, we'll talk about that. But let's talk about the Britney bot. Let's talk about Nia. Let's talk about Vijo. It's so awesome, I just love it. Talk to me about the origins of this.
Chloe Condon (00:58:24):
Oh my gosh. So one of my biggest inspirations in the tech community is Danielle Baskins. If you're not following her on Twitter, check her out. She's the amazing person who made all those face masks that have actual faces on them. She's done some hilarious. So I met Danielle because she was on a panel that I ran when I worked at century, which is the startup I worked at right before Microsoft. I used to run this meetup called Century Scouts, which was a camp themed meetup. We had s'mores and hot chocolate. And we did a monthly meetup. And the one that she spoke on the panel for was a arts in tech panel. And she had been suggested to me through someone on Twitter. And honestly, everyone that was on that panel was amazing, but I could have just sat there and talked to her the whole time. Because she would do these hilarious things that just cracked me up, like going to Oracle and running a whole separate Oracle comp, where they were looking for wizards and Oracles and dressed up and all got tickets.
Chloe Condon (00:59:21):
And like just trolled the crap out of like, if you've never been to Dreamforce in San Francisco, it's the Salesforce event that's super annoying, happens every year. It just totally clogs up the city and camping out, because it's camp themed and pitching a tent. Just hilarious stuff, but also really cool, amazing things like creating VR experiences for historic buildings that are going to get torn down, just really cool creative things. So I take a lot of inspiration from her because I'm like, oh my gosh, someone who is doing hilarious, funny stuff, but also making it deeply technical and interesting. So I started making bots because I discovered through Susan Hinton, a lovely coworker and mentor that I had here at Microsoft. I believe I saw her retweet this account called, oh my gosh, I want to make sure that I put it right. But we can put in the show notes, but it's called either, Ladies and Gentlemen, the weekend, or something like that. But it's Daniel Craig on SNL introducing the weekend, going, ladies and gentlemen the weekend.
Dan Papandrea (01:00:24):
It's the greatest thing ever. And now everybody, every single Friday throughs DUNS like ladies, gentlemen, the weekend. It's crazy.
Chloe Condon (01:00:30):
Yeah. And it's this viral bot account that literally got written up in the LA times, just super freaking hilarious. And I was like, oh my gosh, I have to build something like this. And I've built stuff like this before. My fake boyfriend app got super popular and got a bunch of write-ups and vice. I think Azure is a cool tool, right? Azure's interesting. So Power Platform, Microsoft 365, all that is really cool, but how do you make that interesting? Especially for students. And I only recently started working with students in the last year or two, but even when it doesn't come to students, when it comes to human adults, it's like what we were talking about earlier, right? About making of interesting and relatable. And I think that's why things like the fake boyfriend app popped off because it's like, oh, this is something I would actually use. Or I remember, I had like an ADHD medication reminder that I built with Azure functions. Azure functions are cool, but how do you show a use case that actually gets people wanting to build this.
Dan Papandrea (01:01:30):
Every Needs this ad, I mean, that's just brilliant.
Chloe Condon (01:01:30):
And you open source it and then people create hilarious things. This girl came to one of my workshops for the fake boyfriend app, repurposed it into Smash Mouth Allstar app that would either text or use Twilio API to play Smash Mouths Allstar, and then Smash Mouth retweeted it. And I think people are like, how do you do this Chloe? How do you get these crazy Twitter accounts? And I'm just like, honestly, I'm building funny, hilarious stuff that would make me want to use this product, right? Yeah. And, and that doesn't always work, right? Docker can be kind of hard or there's things that are hard to put a spin on. But making it fun and funny. You'll rarely see me building a product that doesn't have at least a little bit of camp in it like Mario card astrology. Yeah, you can use the Microsoft face API to identify emotions, but what if we use that to create astrology to figure out who your Mario card player says about you, right? Getting people's brains.
Chloe Condon (01:02:30):
And I think with students, especially, this is for important to share the ways that, Hey, here's some ways that like you can use these tools, but also like here's ways to get your brain thinking about how to use them. Versus just how to make sure no one is shoplifting at Target, to use facial recognition. Let's think of like non problematic, fun, interesting things. And these are the things that inspire our students to create really cool things for the Imagine Cup. One of my favorite Imagine Cup participants from this recent year was Team Data Masker that I helped mentor.
Chloe Condon (01:03:05):
They were amazing. And they were based in China, I believe, and they had this mask that was a smart mask that helped with two things, people with auditory issues who need to read lips, but also it's this really fun, quirky thing where you could say things like, Hey, I work in the cloud and a cloud would pop up or like I would like the soup and the soup would pop up. So anytime that I see the creative arts in tech have that intersection or comedy in tech or whatever it may be. It's why I adore Corey Quinn. I think I love to see it in this industry because it humanizes the product and gets people's brains working more.
Dan Papandrea (01:03:45):
Yeah. I think that's why I think my show's been fairly successful is because of, we're putting the humans behind what's happening from a technical perspective. So comedy and all that is fantastic.
Speaker 6 (01:03:58):
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Speaker 7 (01:04:20):
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Dan Papandrea (01:04:46):
Before we get to the Twitter questions, let's talk about Clippy, okay? That's yet another one that's like everybody has that real deep love for Clippy, and you're just real vocal about it. Let's talk about that, man.
Chloe Condon (01:05:00):
Yeah. I mean, I've loved Clippy forever. Like I said, even though I wasn't coding when I was younger, we had Microsoft word. In fact, I think I was talking to Steve Synsky recently, one of the grandfather of Clippy, if you will, about this. I think they need-
Dan Papandrea (01:05:17):
I like that name drop
Chloe Condon (01:05:20):
I mean, what's also funny is in the same way, this is something that has happened to me a lot in tech is, I would go to events with my boyfriend and stuff, he'll be like, do you know who that is? And I'm like, I don't know, some dude. But in the same way that if I were to go to some event with my boyfriend and Patty Laton was there, I'd be like, do you know who that was? I'm just like, if people are nice and cool, I'm like, great, awesome. But I mentioned to him that in my elementary school classrooms, we had a disabled Clippy because we were playing with it too much. But I think Clippy is such a great example. So I didn't realize when I joined Microsoft that Clippy was not beloved.
Chloe Condon (01:05:55):
Because everyone in my age group loves Clippy. I'm 31, 32, I don't know how old I am, around that age. And he's such a beloved character and is now popping up in all these memes, right? And meme culture is so big. And I joked when I left my previous company to come to Microsoft, I was like, I'm really just joining Microsoft to start a whisper campaign for Clippy. At the end of the day, that's all I want to do. And I love that it's becomes synonymous with my brand because A, I love Clippy, but B when you think about it, Clippy really is sort of such a way for folks who didn't know how to use a product. First of all, he's great documentation. I'm all for great documentation. And that is my soapbox I'll be on forever, but also, it was so interesting to talk to these kind of folks who are 20 plus years at Microsoft are like, we really don't try to talk about Clippy here. And I'm like, really?
Dan Papandrea (01:06:49):
Why the hell not?
Chloe Condon (01:06:51):
I obviously did not take that advice because I mean, as we've seen there, I don't know if folks have seen it. We can link it in the show notes, but the official Microsoft account tweeted, like if this tweet gets 20K likes, we'll add the Clippy emoji to windows or whatever. And I haven't checked it recently, but it had last time I checked like 75,000, way beyond what they needed. And I think a lot of that is, so people, adults found it super annoying at the time and it was like, oh, this is huge failure, they even had a retirement party for Clippy and Bill Godfrey had voiced all these flash animation videos to retire him. But it's so interesting to see it to make a comeback because it's such a different tool for kids.
Chloe Condon (01:07:31):
And I think that's why it's so important that we build early childhood education software and things that help educate kids in, in a way to do that. Because Clippy is such an accessible way. Also think about PR association, right? Why was a kid caring about Microsoft? Of course, I didn't associate it with Microsoft at the time, but I've always associated Clippy with Microsoft. And when I joined Microsoft, I was like, oh my God. It was like, when you work for Disney, it's like I'm going to work for the mouse. I was like, I'm going to work for Clippy. And I think that really says something about brand recognition and making things fun, right?
Chloe Condon (01:08:12):
And we should also mention, Clippy has a bunch of friends like Karu the dolphin, there's the dog, there's all sorts of different characters that you could sub in for Clippy, the wizard, for example. And at the end of the day, it was viewed as such a failure at the time. And now it is probably, I would say, one of like Microsoft's crowning achievements at the end of the day. So I just love Clippy. I adore Clippy. I get tagged in probably like 20 Clippy things a day and I will never get tired of it.
Dan Papandrea (01:08:42):
Shout out Clippy.
Speaker 4 (01:08:43):
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Dan Papandrea (01:09:00):
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Dan Papandrea (01:09:33):
All right. So I got a couple more questions for you. We're going to do Twitter questions and then we're going to do work you're most proud of, okay?
Chloe Condon (01:09:39):
Okay.
Dan Papandrea (01:09:40):
Here we go.
Chloe Condon (01:09:40):
Perfect.
Dan Papandrea (01:09:41):
All right. So here's a question. These two questions, I think we can try to can them into one is ... Actually, no. This is from Mark Boorstein. What questions should hiring managers ask candidates that don't come through CS degrees that would help shine a light on the candidate's skills and talents?
Chloe Condon (01:09:58):
Yeah. I would say so often times when I would go to interviews, and this is advice that I give to a lot of folks that I mentor, people think, "Oh, my experience in my previous life isn't applicable at all to engineering." And a lot of the mentorship work that I do with folks, like shout out to PJ Mets, high school teacher in Florida turned developer advocate over at GitLab, is I was like, "Look, dude, what you do now is harder than what you're going to do as a developer advocate."
Chloe Condon (01:10:32):
You have to keep the attention of high school students. And you're working in person versus remotely. There are so many levels to being a high school teacher, but I was like, "You develop curriculum. You have to come in prepared every single day." He was teaching during the pandemic, so he was making these really silly viral videos to get the kids' attention. I was like, "All of this is applicable." And I think a lot of times, folks don't see that. So I would say as an interviewer, is that right?
Chloe Condon (01:11:00):
Interviewer? Yes. Instead of asking a question like, tell me about a time that you something, something in production, make those questions a little bit more open to other experiences. I always recommend to my stage manager friends from my theater, I'm like, "You're a PM. All the work that you do as a stage manager is essentially product management. It's the same thing. It's just a different world."
Chloe Condon (01:11:25):
So I've mentored folks who've come from military backgrounds and I'm like, "Talk about your experience managing your troops, or whatever that may be." I think there was a woman who went through Hackbright, the all-female software engineering bootcamp that I went to, who was like a fighter. I can't think of the word. Not Krav Maga, but something-
Dan Papandrea (01:11:49):
Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, maybe?
Chloe Condon (01:11:50):
Something like that. And I was like, "Yo, that's awesome. First of all, lead with that. That's an amazing thing. But talk about your time as a ..." We have professional soccer players who've gone through Hackbright, who have talked about like, I had this injury and I started learning the code during the pandemic, and my experience having to manage blah, blah, blah. There are so many ways.
Chloe Condon (01:12:10):
I think opening those questions up to not only have them be technically related is one way to do it. And I think also, who amongst us has not written a tweet about whiteboarding that's just like, oh my God, whiteboarding is the worst? But I really appreciated when I was a junior developer, coming out of a bootcamp. First of all, let's set the expectation.
Chloe Condon (01:12:32):
If you're going to a bootcamp, likely you have maybe one or two projects in your portfolio, which is usually your final that you built for the bootcamp. And then maybe something, some open source contributions, or something that you built post bootcamp or before, whatever that may be. Going into that interview, understanding that and thinking like, okay, instead of asking them, "Tell me about a time that you shipped to production," they're not going to have that experience. I've super appreciated all the companies, shout out to Codefresh once again, who instead of making me whiteboard, which trust me, built many a fake solitaire app and design of Facebook in my day, but instead, walking through the final project with them. I recall several different interviews that I had. I think one was at Envoy, one was at maybe a Mapbox maybe, where instead of going up to a whiteboard and having to think through a random problem that's not related, instead saying, "Hey, let's walk this."
Chloe Condon (01:13:35):
So I built this final project for Hackrate, which was called [Later Gator 01:13:38], which solved a problem for myself, which surprise, surprise, it was about posting social media at future times that I specified. So essentially building Hootsuite. And I remember a couple companies versus whiteboarding, walked through my code with me, even found some bugs that we worked on together and paired on, which is such a more realistic experience to what it's actually like to work at a company.
Chloe Condon (01:14:04):
And allowing you to be like, "Oh, I think in Python, there's a way to do this." And it's like, "Okay, let's Google that together." And I found that the companies that I interviewed with thought, A, understood where I was coming from and not being like ... I remember interviewing at this place that was like, "Hey, your coding challenge is in Ruby." And I was like, "Great. My bootcamp was Python and JavaScript. So let me just learn Ruby over the weekend."
Chloe Condon (01:14:29):
Doing that take-home challenge, expressing that, saying, "Hey, I've never worked with Ruby, FYI, blah, blah, blah," and then them having the audacity to be like, "Your whiteboarding interview questions will all be in Ruby." I was just like, "What? What the?" Empathize. And in that scenario, I had my lovely boyfriend at the time to ask advice from, and he was like, "Tell them you only know Python and JavaScript. That's true." And I did. And they were like, "Oh, great. We'll interview in that."
Chloe Condon (01:14:53):
So sometimes you have to as a bootcamp grad, educate and communicate folks on that, because I think a lot of folks don't really understand that, especially startups. A lot of startups want to take on a junior non-traditional bootcamp engineer, but they don't have the bandwidth or the mentorship to do that. So I always advise to folks that I mentor, great question to ask your interviewer is, "Hey, what kind of mentorship do you have for me? What is onboarding for someone? Have you done this before?"
Chloe Condon (01:15:18):
But yeah, opening the questions up to be, I wouldn't say I'm not going in there talking about retail experience as related to engineering, but just making that a little bit more open-ended to allow for ... Because I've never managed a team, but I certainly have directed and written and produced and starred in my own cabaret. And there's things that I encountered in managing that. But I haven't had direct reports. But there's ways that you can open it up a lot more.
Dan Papandrea (01:15:49):
[foreign language 01:15:49]. All right. All right. So last Twitter question then. Here it is. It's, how can I write job descriptions to get more applications from diverse backgrounds? This is from Carlos Aria Navarro.
Chloe Condon (01:16:00):
Yes. Ooh. Well, first, I will mention, and I literally sent this to a woman who reached out to me the other day in my DMS, I first want to just shout out there's this really interesting ... I think it's a Harvard Business Review article about how women do not apply to jobs unless they meet something like 80 or 90% of the qualifications.
Chloe Condon (01:16:21):
So first of all, I just want to say if you're a woman out there who feels unqualified, apply anyway. It never hurts to apply. The worst thing you can have is you get a rejection. But yeah, actually I'm so happy to report. So I was interviewing. I graduated from Hackbright in 2016, or end of 2016, I should say. And every single job that I applied for at the time was just almost like they didn't want me to apply. It was like we require a CS degree. We require X amount of user experience.
Chloe Condon (01:16:53):
Like I mentioned earlier, internships weren't even an option for me. So just finding a job that allowed me to apply. I remember, this is a long shot, but there was a NASA internship, and I have since worked with NASA, I should say. I have gone to a launch in Florida. I have worked closely with NASA in the past. But at the time, I couldn't even fill out yet the job application, because they were required a GPA thing. That's an internship, so it's a little different.
Chloe Condon (01:17:22):
But the example that I love to give is I was working at a company as a developer evangelist, it wasn't Codefresh, don't worry, where I was trying to refer a friend for a role at a company that I already worked at. And the job dropdown menu when I sent my referral thing for them to apply, it was like please list your ... You know those awful recruiting applications where they make you upload your resume, but you also have to fill out all the jobs that you had?
Dan Papandrea (01:17:52):
Yeah. Yeah.
Chloe Condon (01:17:52):
And the dropdown for previous job, it only had engineering roles. It didn't have any non-engineering roles. And so I had to tell the company that I worked at, I was like, "Hey, FYI, I cannot apply for a job at our company right now, were I to apply because ..." Oh no, it was for the degree. All of the degrees were technical degrees. And this was a friend that I knew from Hackbright, who had a similar background. And I was like, "You're literally not letting them through the front door."
Chloe Condon (01:18:18):
So my advice is two parts. First of all, I used to have people come up to me all the time at conferences and conference booths and be like, "Hey, come and work at our company." And I would literally say, "Funny story. I really wanted to work at your company and I applied for your company, but your recruiting software immediately filtered me out." Famously, the first job I ever applied for was Fitbit, because I was this green, new engineer out of my bootcamp. And I was like, all right.
Chloe Condon (01:18:45):
I would apply to my first technical job. And I applied to Fitbit and I was rejected, I am not joking, like 10 to 15 minutes after I submitted the application. It was so clear that it was like auto-recruiting software that was like, thank you very much, but your skills don't match what we're looking for. And that's important. People ask me, "Why are we not getting these interesting, unique, creative people like you?" And I'm like, "You're literally not opening the door for them." So first of all, go through your recruiting process.
Chloe Condon (01:19:12):
And sometimes that means talking to recruiters. I used to be a recruiter. No shame to recruiters, I love recruiters. Sometimes they don't understand that. They'll hear a hiring manager, for example, say, "We're looking for someone who's experienced in Docker." A recruiter will hear that, who I've been a non-technical recruiter in a previous life who had no engineering knowledge, and I'm just going to go off what the manager says.
Chloe Condon (01:19:34):
So I'll be like, "Okay, cool. 10 years of Docker?" Docker's probably not been around that long at that point. So I think A, try to go through the application process yourself. Make sure that it is accessible. Maybe even have a non-traditional background person try to apply for your company and see what happens, and get that feedback. But also, I am so happy to report that even in the last five years, I have already seen a positive change in job descriptions. In that it will say, must have blah, blah, blah degree, or equivalent experience in something relatable.
Chloe Condon (01:20:09):
So if you really, really want to open that net wide enough to get ... Because there's plenty of folks that I know who don't even have ... I don't have a computer science degree, but a lot of very, very technical folks are self-taught, even pre bootcamp age. So yeah, just make sure that you're not excluding anyone, or even just in the language that you're putting. I think it was Asana I saw recently, who shout out to Asana because when I applied, I want to say to their apprentice program five years ago, they were not into bootcamp grads.
Chloe Condon (01:20:42):
They were like, "We interviewed a bootcamp grad once and it didn't go well." And I was like, "That's literally like saying you interviewed a white woman once and it didn't go well." Not all bootcamp people are created equally, right?
Dan Papandrea (01:20:53):
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Chloe Condon (01:20:55):
But now, their job description, I was so, so happy and very thrilled to see that it said, or equivalent experience or a bootcamp grad. They're being very inclusive of that now. And I see that change happening a lot, but not everywhere. And we definitely have a lot of work to do. But if you notice that most of the people coming through your door for the interview are white dudes or Indian dudes, or whatever it may be, maybe think about, here are you posting this job?
Chloe Condon (01:21:20):
Are you posting it to communities? People reach out to me all the time to share things with the Hackbright community. There are so many, like Black Girls in Tech, so many amazing areas to share them with beyond LinkedIn. Because you all, I love LinkedIn. It is a Microsoft product. I use it. I certainly use it as a second resume, but I'm not on there scrolling it every day. So make sure that you're getting your application in other communities and places where these people are. For sure.
Dan Papandrea (01:21:49):
No doubt. So last question for you, okay?
Chloe Condon (01:21:50):
Yes.
Dan Papandrea (01:21:52):
And thank you so much for being on the show. It's, what work are you most proud of in your carer?
Chloe Condon (01:21:58):
Yeah. Okay. So to answer this question, I'll start with a story. And I promise it'll make sense. So right before I started my bootcamp, so I should say my dream role as an actress was Elle Woods, surprise, surprise, in Legally Blonde: The Musical.
Chloe Condon (01:22:12):
Because Elle Woods is this super fem, fun, funny person who doesn't look or act or sound like anybody in the legal world. And she goes in there and she kicks butt, and she's spite-driven, and she proves her point. And I never got to play Elle Woods. I always wanted to play her. If anybody out there is casting a production of Legally Blonde in the area, call me.
Dan Papandrea (01:22:35):
Casting agents everywhere, listen in.
Chloe Condon (01:22:39):
I think it's such a great musical. There's dogs, it's amazing. But I remember seeing a production of Legally Blonde: The Musical at Music Circus, with my dad. This was a couple weeks before I started my bootcamp. I'm not a religious person. I've never even been to a church service, but it's what I can only imagine would be a religious experience where I was just like, cried. And it was very therapeutic.
Chloe Condon (01:22:59):
And I was like, "Oh my gosh, this is such a life-changing production," because for two reasons. One, it was the mourning of, well, I'm not going to do theater anymore and I'm never going to be able to play this role again. But another part of it was like, oh my God, I'm about to embark on my Elle Woods journey. And I listened to this Broadway cast recording throughout all of my bootcamp, and I was crying on the treadmill. Just like, "I'm not going to graduate." I should also mention, I had severe imposter syndrome during my bootcamp.
Chloe Condon (01:23:26):
I'd talk a lot about the iceberg of success. You don't see what goes into it. I had a really tough time. Terrible imposter syndrome the whole time. But Elle Woods is this icon. Put aside the fact that the movie is a comedy, and silly and whatever, but she's really the only woman that I can think of off the top of my head in pop culture, who goes against those stereotypes, is so authentically herself in an industry where no one else is acting like her, or looking like her. And she's successful.
Chloe Condon (01:23:59):
And I think I've held that very closely in all the work that I do. I'm very fem-presenting. I've got orange hair. I'm obnoxious. I'm not everybody's cup of tea, that's for sure. But really, when I set out, especially being a developer advocate, and especially with the mentorship that I do, I really want to be who I needed to see in this industry to get into it. So not to be corny and say, be the Elle Woods you wish to see in this world, but I hold that very close to me. And I think about that a lot with all the content I create, all the stuff that I do.
Chloe Condon (01:24:35):
And I would say my proudest moment is when I see that realized. In that, I really, never in a million years, would ever ... If you talked to Chloe as an opt-in manager, loading [Loot Cate 01:24:48] in the fridge, listening to podcasts the whole time, I didn't feel like I was an important person. I never thought I could help anybody or mentor anybody. And I've had the privilege of being able to mentor some amazing folks, like bakers turned engineers, and so many amazing career changes.
Chloe Condon (01:25:06):
But honestly, at the end of the day, why I do this and why I'm here, is because I want to be someone that someone can look to and draw inspiration from. And when I get messages and DMs, or people come up to me at conferences and they say, "Hey, I decided to pursue my computer science degree because of you, or I was an office manager, I was a recruiter who made a career change, and I saw your video or your interview or your podcast with so-and-so, and it showed me ..."
Chloe Condon (01:25:38):
Honestly, some of the best messages I've ever received in my life are Twitter DMs of people saying, "I just want you to know that I felt really ashamed of my manicures, my sparkly pink, obnoxious manicures that I did, because I work on this team of guys. And your whole brand and aesthetic has inspired me to be more authentically like myself." That really, at the end of the day, is what I'm most proud of. Because I really want and I really believe that tech should be representative of the world.
Chloe Condon (01:26:09):
We are creating applications that change people's lives, be it at Google or Amazon or Microsoft, wherever it may be, or even a startup. If the people building our products don't have the experiences, and this comes down to harassment as well. If you go to a team and you say you need to build anti harassment tools, and they come back and they're like, "Well, it doesn't happen to me," of course it doesn't. You've not been in the position of these people.
Chloe Condon (01:26:32):
And so I talk a lot about, with my friend, Becca, also a Hackbright grad who I've mentored, who had a Palestinian relations background and used to work in Jewish education, and now is a amazing senior engineer working on safety tools at Reddit, it's so important, to quote Hamilton, "That the people in the room where it happens, are the people who are representative of the people who will be using this product." The example I love to give is, love Twitter, but Fleets? Come on. Fleets?
Chloe Condon (01:27:06):
If you talk to one gay person, Fleets is literally the name slang of a douching enema in the gay community. If you had one gay guy in the room, that name would've been shut down. You know what I mean? If you Google diversity, right now, you do a Google Image search, or Bing Image search I should say, the first three pages are just pictures of hands, multicolored hands, things that you would see at the doctor's office, that are just like, together we learn. But diversity is not ClipArt of hands.
Chloe Condon (01:27:42):
Diversity, at the end of the day, doesn't just mean oh, we have to fill a quota and hire this many women or whatever. You literally benefit so much in so many ways by hiring be it a non-traditional background person, be it a woman, being a LGBTQ person, whatever it may be, because those perspectives are so insightful. People like you and me who work in tech, we have one job. But what about these applications where people have multiple jobs that they're working and they need to have multiple work locations?
Chloe Condon (01:28:13):
All these edge cases of real human people who aren't engineers, who are the people who are using your products at the end of the day? So my proudest moments are the ones where people reach out to me in some aspect or element and say, "Hey, the visibility that you have as a fem-presenting person who is authentically themself, who tweets about Nickelodeon constantly," because it's pretty much all I tweet about, "that inspired me to also bring my authentic self to work." I think that really is what when I am in my grave, on my death bed, I'll be like, "That one person painted their nails because of me."
Chloe Condon (01:28:50):
But it manifests in other ways as well, like folks who either, maybe it's not about even just presenting themselves and being authentic, but even seeing themselves in this industry, and thinking that this is a path for them. Hopefully, I'll write a book soon or something, and get that story out to more people. But it's important that we tell these stories, and it's important that people are able to see themselves in their industry so they can come and join us, because we so desperately need them.
Chloe Condon (01:29:17):
I don't think people understand how desperately we need folks in this industry who have a wealth of experience in other fields joining us. So yeah, that'd probably be it for me.
Dan Papandrea (01:29:29):
Well, again, I thank you so much. One of the things you said earlier, you tweeted this, it's like hey, it's just having a moment of gratitude. And it's like, at the end of the day, I'm so grateful for you to be on the show.
Dan Papandrea (01:29:40):
It's an honor for you to be on it. I appreciate you a lot. And you are unique. You are just a funny, amazing, dynamic person. And I really appreciate you being on the POPCAST. Thank you so much.
Chloe Condon (01:29:53):
Of course, it's been an absolute treat.