Ep 26 | What I Heard: The State of Work for Women in Tech with Roberta Dombrowski

Over the last two months, I've been doing research with women in tech — and what I found is bigger than my own work with Learn Mindfully. It's a reflection of the moment we're all living in right now.

In this solo episode, I'm sharing the themes that surfaced most consistently across my conversations: compounding trauma from repeated layoffs, burnout that gets blamed on the individual, a job market that's quietly eroding confidence, and a grief that most of us haven't had space to name. This isn't a personal failing. It's a systemic one.

Topics Discussed in the Episode

• Layoffs are causing compounding, recurring trauma in tech
• Burnout is systemic — but we're internalizing it personally
• The job market is actively eroding confidence and identity
• Manager relationships are the single biggest factor at work
• Grief beneath the burnout — mourning a version of work that's gone
• Why most support out there is actually gaslighting

Learn more about Get Your Story Straight

About Roberta Dombrowski

Roberta Dombrowski is Founder of Learn Mindfully and host of In Her Words. She has over a decade of experience spanning tech, non-profits, and academia. Her work has been featured by the Association of Talent Development, Learning Guild, and Product School.

She holds PCC accreditation through the International Coaching Federation, CPCC through Co-Active Training Institute. Her unique approach blends the wisdom of the head, heart, and body - guiding clients to rediscover joy, resilience, and connection in their work and lives.  By fostering deeper self-awareness and authentic leadership, Roberta helps individuals reshape how they relate to their careers, themselves, and their teams. Her personal experience as a transracial adoptee and overfunctioning tech executive heavily influences her approach to business.

Season 2 reflection exercises https://www.learnmindfully.co/store

Grab Consciously Crafting Your Career Path: https://www.learnmindfully.co/store

Connect with Roberta on LinkedIn 

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Transcript

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The impact that these layoffs had had on everybody was palpable in every single conversation. It isn't just one bad thing that happened to all of us. It's a pattern of instability that has fundamentally shifted how people are relating to work. The system as we know it isn't working. The veil's been lifted, and we're seeing it for what it really is. Welcome to In Her Words. This podcast is for women navigating through change, career, identity, motherhood, and just figuring out what's next. I'm Roberta Dembrowski, host of In Her Words and founder of Learn Mindfully. Each episode, I sit down with women who are asking big questions, navigating transitions, and trying to make sense of life as it shifts. You don't have to have it all figured out. You just need space to be real. Let's get into it. Hey friends, so I have another solo episode for you today. I spend the last two months doing some research with women in tech, and I wanted to share what I found because I think it matters beyond just my own work with Learn Mindfully, but it actually reflects the moment of time that we're in and the systemic forces that are showing up for many of us. So I want to start today's conversation just by setting the stage. It goes without saying that tech has been undergoing a state of change over the last four years, from layoffs, market shifts, AI, shrinking teams, and shifting org structures. Every single person that I spoke with had experience with at least one layoff over the last four years. That's huge. And I get it. I've been through three layoffs in the last four years myself. The impact that these layoffs had had on everybody was palpable in every single conversation. It isn't just one bad thing that happened to all of us. It's a pattern of instability that has fundamentally shifted how people are relating to work. The system as we know it isn't working. The veil's been lifted, and we're seeing it for what it really is. One participant really stood out to me. She believed that there's part of her that thinks every environment is gonna be shitty, and it's blocking her from being able to imagine what a healthy environment looks like. The negative experiences that she had was not isolated to one employer. It's not just her personal problem that she's dealing with. And at a high level, that's what repeated systemic trauma does to people. It makes them lose hope in a different kind of way. It makes them think that it's them when it's not, it's the system. So I'm gonna walk you through some of the themes that came up most consistently to give you a picture of what this moment really feels like for a lot of women in tech right now. First, the world of work and layoffs are causing compounding, recurring trauma. I'll repeat that again. The world of work and layoffs are causing compounding, recurring trauma. And it's not just impacting the people who are directly laid off, but also the people who survive multiple layoffs as well. It's been causing things like PTSD symptoms, hypervigilance, or ruminating about what's next, survival skill, and even difficulty trusting team dynamics. I mean, yeah, when your manager lays off your coworker, it's kind of hard to trust them the next day and show up like everything's normal. Once people land into their new roles, they also describe this emotional residue that follows them, like an impending feeling of doom and waiting for the next shoe to drop. The second theme that showed up focused on burnout. Burnout is systemic, but we're internalizing it as a personal failing. Almost every single woman I spoke to was experiencing a state of burnout. They understood that their exhaustion was a result of their workplaces. They've had to deal with shrinking teams, shifting org structures, unclear office mandates, and unsupportive managers. Many were asked to justify their worth and strive to continue doing their best through persistence and just enduring through. They worked late nights and on the weekends, but they're still experiencing this cognitive dissonance, and they're questioning whether or not they could just push through a little bit more or endure a little bit longer. There's true cruelty in this dynamic. The system is creating these horrible conditions, and then it blames us for not doing our best. That's corporate gaslighting. One person I spoke to actually said like they felt like they were in sold it. So she actually decided to take a self-imposed sabbatical so that she could process everything that had happened on her team over the years. And in this job market, you know things had to be bad if she voluntarily left her role so that she could process what was going on. The third theme is about the job market. And the job market is really doing some real damage. The job market isn't just hard right now. It's actively eroding people's confidence and sense of self. The women I spoke with described being in a demoralizing loop. They would make it to final round interviews, only to lose to a runner-up. They were told they were overqualified, they were sending applications into the void and never hearing back. It stopped feeling like a job search and started feeling like evidence of something. Maybe when even they knew it's not true. And as much as I hate it, LinkedIn really deserves its own mention because it came up constantly in conversations, not just as a point of frustration, but as a genuine values conflict. People are feeling performative, uncomfortable, and at odds with how they want to show up professionally. They're being asked to market themselves like a personal brand. When they've actually spent a ton of years doing serious work in their own particular field. It's exhausting. And what I want to name here is that the damage isn't just practical, it's personal. And for women who are already depleted before the search even started, the impact is really huge. The next theme is around managers. Managers are everything. Managers came up in almost every single conversation that I had. And what became really clear is that the quality of the relationship between the manager and their direct report is the single biggest factor in whether someone feels okay at work. More than the company's mission, more than compensation, more than the work itself. Bad managers were everywhere in these conversations. They took credit for work that wasn't theirs. They went cold without explanation. They were performative in public while giving critical feedback in private. They often delivered feedback in ways that felt more like punishment, treating you like a child than guidance. And because there were no safe channels to address any of it, no HR that felt trustworthy, no skip level that felt safe. Most people just started masking how they felt. They kept their heads down, they performed okayness. While carrying something so much heavier, one participant said it directly. If I aired my feelings, it would be used against me. That kind of sustained masking doesn't just add to the exhaustion. It becomes its own form of harm. The next theme focused on identity and role shifts. Folks in tech are experiencing identity and role shifts. Most of us have been sold a story of meritocracy. If you work hard, results will follow. And that's not true anymore. And it's causing grief for many of us. Grief around the version of work that we used to know, for a professional identity that no longer fits, for an industry that has shifted around us. We're feeling like our work is undervalued, being replaced by AI, or absorbed by other functions. One person said, I don't know how much more I can fight for this job. This is unwinnable. When we start to get questions where you're asked to justify your value, you've already lost. It became really clear underneath every single conversation was a woman who was questioning what they should even do next. And so what does this all mean? I was expecting to go into these conversations and hear things like burnout, job market issues, and career uncertainty. I expected to hear those topics pop up, but what I didn't expect was the level of grief that I was I encountered. We are experiencing a mourning for the version of work that used to feel meaningful, for a work identity that no longer fits, for an industry that shifted around people, all while they were just trying to keep up, pay the bills, feed their kids. I left these conversations aware of my own grief that I hadn't truly honored over the years. And I also recognize that grief asks for something different than burnout. It asks for a witnessing. I always say that we heal in community, and this is true now more than ever. You need someone to sit with you through the loss before you're able to move forward. And we're missing the mark when it comes to supporting women right now. We don't need more wellness apps or daily doses of inspiration. We need practical tools, honest conversations, community, and being witnessed for all that we are. Most support that is out there is asking people to fix themselves in response to a broken system. This isn't ineffective, but it's actually gaslighting. I'll repeat that again. Most support that is out there is asking people to fix themselves in response to a broken system. And this isn't just ineffective, it's actually gaslighting. I went into this research wanting to understand what support needs to look like. What I came out with was something more than that. A clearer picture of work this moment is actually costing people and a deeper belief that the work I'm doing matters. And so with Learn Mindfully, I'm working on building something different. If anything you've heard today sounds like your life, I want you to know that you're not alone and I'm building something for you in mind. The first of which is a workshop that'll be running in April called Get Your Story Straight. It's for all of you who have ever stumbled through explaining a layoff, career pivot, or left an interview wishing you said something differently. So if you're ready to pivot from over-explaining to owning the full picture of what you bring to the table, this workshop is for you. You can learn more in the show notes, and I hope to see you there. Thanks for listening. Thanks for being here. If something in this episode landed with you, feel free to pass it along to someone who might need it too. You can leave a review, subscribe, or just keep tuning in. We're figuring it out together. And remember, your story, your voice, your becoming. It all matters.