Women in Tech: Advice for Crushing Imposter Syndrome

🌟 Live from Meet Magento Florida! 🌟 

Join Nicole Donnelly for a conversation with Laura Falco, a Magento legend and board member of the Magento Association. 

Laura opens up about her journey into tech, offers advice to women battling self-doubt, and shares her insider perspective on how Magento can work for small businesses.

Join the Community

Become a member and to stay up to date on the latest and greatest from Hello Moxie, plus get access to exclusive bonus content from our guests with every episode https://hellomoxie.us/member-registration/

Transcript

Speaker 2 (00:00)
You're listening to the e-commerce edition of Hello Moxie with Nicole Donnelly. In each episode, we speak with leaders in the e-commerce industry on promoting diversity in the tech sector, the latest e-commerce trends, and how B2B brands can innovate through e-commerce. Hello Moxie is sponsored by DMG Digital, a woman-owned marketing consultancy dedicated to helping B2B companies create exceptional customer experiences.

Speaker 1 (00:25)
So I am so excited. This is the amazing Laura Folco. my gosh. Folco. Folco. Oh gosh. Yeah, I already know. People often do that. Sorry. No worries. It's like when I met Ty Gough. Do you know Ty? Yeah. met him? Oh, no one knows how to pronounce that. person with no sustain. swear I thought you were going to jump through the phone and he was just like, he's like, it's Ty. I'm like, I tried. Come on. That's freaking gay. Like nobody knows that. Laura Folco. I'm joined by Laura Folco. Okay.

She is like the goat of Magento. Oh my god. Massive developer. She's like been here for how long have you been using Magento now? 2010. 2010. So she is like an original. She's an original Magento developer and she's also director on the board of the Magento Association. Just elected, right? So tell us a little bit about your role on the board and what you're doing.

just got elected and we've had two meetings over the holidays and such so it really hasn't gotten into its full-throated, you know, everything happening yet. But I'm going to be working on getting communication about what the board is doing out to the community because that was one of the things that I brought up in my interview was that nobody really knows what's going on when it comes to the board. What are they, what is their output, what are they doing, who are they working with? So I'll be...

time to get that information out via stuff like this. Blog posts, website updates, tits at. It's always a fun way of doing it. And my other responsibility will be for getting open source contributions into the code base so that the community members can open PRs and hopefully not have it take.

three generations of grandchildren to get that ER merged into the Co-op issues. Very nice. I love it. And I would love for you to share, what is it you think is the unique value that you bring to this position that's been missing? I think my role in the community is more of an end user. not a CEO of anything. I'm just a developer, freelance that has been working.

But that's she's much more than just a developer. but yeah, but she's a developer. Like, yeah. But I'm not. I think it brings more of just a everyday Magento user perspective to the board, not so much as a how is Magento going to make my agency have better ROI or how am I going to get more hosting customers just more about how is Magento going to make my life easier, my clients and or if I'm a merchant.

how it's gonna make my life easier to get my products out the door kind of thing. I also love that you bring the unique perspective of small business, right? And the challenges that small businesses have in me. I think especially in Magento, they're such a focus on like enterprise level clients and customers. But let's be honest, like over 90 % of the companies in this country are all small businesses. And I think that's such an important voice to have in this space. It is my clients are all.

small. One works out of its living room. They were both on Magento One, the two clients I'm working with now, and that was a much more small business friendly platform. And the enterprise level changes. It occurred in Magento Two, pushed a lot of those types off of Magento and into other platforms like Shopify. But it can still be done. You don't need an entire team of developers.

in order to be on Magenta too. I'm the only one for one of my clients. The only reason there's a team for the other one is because we're doing a migration. it can easily be done and I think more merchants need to know that. Yeah, especially merchants that have such complex workflows, that's the challenge is that a SaaS product like a Shopify or a BigCommerce, I mean, they're getting better, but they're never going to be able to have the same level of

If they're more of a cookie cutter, if your needs are not very custom, then those will work out fine. But the second you want to start doing something a little different, you got to start looking at potential. So I got to ask you, what led you to being a developer? What brought you into that role? Actually, I had a degree in English literature. No kidding. And I always joke after I did my five-year waitressing residency.

I ended up working as a tech writer. So I kind of parlayed the English into, and I've been learning about tech little by little on my own. And the tech writing job led to being a webmaster back in the 90s. I just told everybody I was working as a webmaster in the 90s, so I can no longer pretend I'm 30. Well, you still look 30. So, yes. So anyway. Yeah, so that's where that started.

to to tech writing, to webmaster, and then you just learn coding on your own, just self-taught. That is so awesome. Well, what advice would you give to other women who may be considering a career in tech space and e-commerce? Like, looking back over your career, if you were to give someone just fresh out of college who maybe has an English Lit degree and thinking, huh, maybe I should try, you know, what you, what advice would you give them? Especially in light of AI.

happening now. I would say fight imposter syndrome as much as you possibly can. It's still relevant, know, after 30 years of working in tech. I still have it. It's definitely... you feel like it's worse when you're in a male-dominated space? Yeah, it can be. Speak up for yourself. Definitely speak up and know that...

Half the time they don't know what they're talking about either. So they just do a lot better job pretending that they do. So when you say fight imposterism, when you say what exactly would you say to a woman who may be struggling with self-doubt or just not being... What do you do to fight imposterism? Just what I just said is remembering that not everyone is as confident as they sound. There's a lot of people that will talk...

very confidently about things that they know nothing about. And I think it's just a matter of seeing it year after year after year to the point where I realize now that actually is the case. At first you believe them, they know everything. They sound so confident, of course they know everything. And then you realize they don't. you And you realize then as a woman that you can speak more confidently. Yes, absolutely. Because in many cases we're all figuring it out as we go, right? Yeah. And also don't be afraid to

say that you don't know how to do something because that is something it took me a long time to be able to do in a male-dominated world was to say I know nothing about this so I need help with that. I love that advice. So fight the imposter syndrome and don't be afraid to ask for help. Yeah. Let's mention one more thing. Speak up. up. Yes. Yeah, that's what we're worried about.

Have you had any experiences in your career where you've had men that you've worked with that have really been allies that you feel like really supported you? Absolutely. Tell us about that. What was that experience? Tell a story about when you had an open man view. Well, know, my first boss, the one that I went from tech writer to webmaster, was working for the Japanese company NEC. It was one of their communications divisions. And he was...

a huge ally and mentor and he guided me through a lot of corporate politics, especially in the 90s whenever there was lot of entrenched chauvinism in technology, a lot more than there is now. It was definitely an old boys network and whenever I would request things from certain divisions and get pushback, he would tell me how to handle, I know this guy, this is what you need to do with him. And he would not jump in unless I asked him.

That's amazing. So he would let you go on your own. And he would just give you taught me how to handle these types of people that you would encounter. That's amazing. Very cool. And he wasn't even actually a developer or anything. He was the marketing head. So he wasn't in tech. Yeah. That's very cool. Well, tell us who is a woman in history that immediately comes to your mind? Chop your head. That you really admire. Who has inspired you? man, this is a hard one.

And it can be more than one. And it can be someone not famous.

Sounds cheesy, but my mom... She manages to have a sunny outlook in spite of anything and everything going on and it's something that I strive to achieve. To look on the bright side of things. We all need more of that, right? Yeah, absolutely. That's amazing. Okay, I have another question.

I lost it. Moxie moment. got it. Tell us about a moment in your life. It doesn't have to be anything. Were you just like really went for something with Moxie? boy.

Ah, let me think about this. Well, you know, it's, I started freelancing because I got fired from my job. And the reason I got fired from my job was I was very outspoken. It was an attitude thing. It was about projects that were going on and I felt like we were being railroaded. you know, one of my colleagues was like, you're pulling a normal ray. I'm like, but it sucks.

And I'm getting fired. looking back, it's the best thing that ever happened because that was about three years before I started with Magento. I started freelancing. I was able to kick off this life to the curb and work at home for my dream. So yeah. Look at you now. Is that incredible? Like sometimes though, and probably in the moment when you got fired, you were like, what the hell am going to do? It was devastating at the time. And you probably were like rock bottom, like, I can't like, what do I do next? It was really hard.

It was really, really hard. All my friends were there. It was sort of my whole world to a large degree. What did you to pick yourself up? You know, I actually, it happened in May and I had a beach share for the summer. And so I ended up going to the beach a lot. I mean, that's how I picked myself up. went to the beach a lot and I started freelancing in August. They gave me a severance package, so I able to be like, right.

It's May, I'm going to the beach next weekend. My friend who invited me was like, you can come more if you want. So I did that. I love it. So if you get fired, go to the beach. Great last words. Laura, thank you so much for coming on. Thank you for having This is so awesome. I gotta give you a hug.

Speaker 2 (12:03)
That's a wrap for today's episode of Hello Moxie E-commerce Edition. Thanks for joining us as we bring you the latest news in the e-commerce industry and celebrate diversity and innovation in the tech sector.