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[Translated]20160505 A daughter of Silicon Valley shares her 'nerd' story
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A daughter of Silicon Valley shares her 'nerd' story
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Back in 2014, my colleague [Crystal Beasley][1] started a thread of women in tech/hackers posting their "nerd stories" in response to some comments out there on the Internet about the lack of women in tech. This is my nerd story, shared with you because I do believe in role models, and I do believe that there are many paths one can take to a satisfying challenging career and a life that helps one fulfill their goals.
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### Growing up with computers
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I am, among other things, a daughter of Silicon Valley. Mine is not a story of arriving at tech from the sidelines, or of dedication from childhood. It is more a story of how exposure shapes you—of the power of being marinated in a culture, if you will. This is not the story of a straight path or a clear dedication from childhood to one goal. It is a story of intense privilege, I am aware.
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I was born in Manhattan, but we lived in New Jersey while my dad was working on a PhD in computer science at Rutgers on the GI Bill. When I was four, someone at school asked me what my dad did for a living and I said, "He watches TV and hunts for bugs, but I never seen 'em." He had a dumb terminal at home, presumably for his job at Bolt Beranek Newman working on the artificial intelligence aspects of the early Internet. I was watching.
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I did not get to play with dad's bug hunting TV, but I was steeped in tech from an early age, and I value the gift of that early exposure. Early exposure is one of the things we must give to the future nerds—take time to talk to the kids you know about what you do!
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>My dad's terminal was similar, if not identical, to this one. CC BY-SA 4.0
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When I was six, we moved to California. Dad was taking a job at Xerox PARC. I remember thinking that the city would be full of bears, because there was a bear on the flag. In 1979, Palo Alto was a college town and still had orchards and open space.
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After a year of public school in Palo Alto, my sisters and I were sent to Peninsula School, a "democratic model" school that shaped me deeply. Curiosity and creativity were considered central curriculum values, and education was led substantively by group decisions of the students ourselves. We rarely saw anything one would call a computer at school, but home was another story.
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After his days at Xerox PARC, dad went to Apple, where he worked on and brought home the first computers I played with: the Apple II and the LISA. My dad was on the original LISA development team, and I vividly remember that he made us "play" the mousing tutorial over and over because he wanted my 3 year-old sister to be comfortable with it... and she was.
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>Our LISA computer pretty much looked like this. See the mouse? CC BY-SA 4.0
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At the same time in school, while I was great at conceptual math, I floundered in basic computation. One teacher at my first school told my parents, and me, that I was bad at math and "stupid." While I excelled in our "regular" math program, understanding logical puzzles beyond what one expects of a 7 year-old, I could not successfully complete the math "drills" we had to do at the beginning of each day. She called me stupid, and I didn't forget it. I didn't get back to believing in my own logical and algorithmic mental capabilities for more than 10 years after that. Do not underestimate the power of the words you say to children.
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Years of playing with dad's computers followed. He went from Apple to EA to SGI, and I played with all his machines. This led to us having what we thought was the coolest house in town, because we had an SGI machine on which to play Doom in our garage. I didn't code much at all, but what I got from those years, I see now, was a measure of fearlessness about trying out new technologies. At the same time, my mom, whose background was literature and education, became a technical writer and showed me both that careers can change and that it is possible to manage a technical career and motherhood together. I would not say that was easy for her, but she made it look easy to me. You'd think that all of this early exposure might send me straight into a technical degree and career. It did not.
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### Undergrad years
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I thought I wanted to be an elementary school teacher, and I enrolled at Mills College with every intention of doing that. Instead, I moved toward women's studies and later theology, primarily driven by one of my great desires in life: to understand human motivation and work for a better world.
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At the same time, I was for the first time being exposed to the full power of the Internet. In 1991, it was a very heady thing to have your own unix shell account and a world of people to talk to. I learned a lot from just "playing" online, and more from having people around willing to answer my many questions. It turned out that these same explorations led me down my career path at least as much as any formal academic education. All information is useful. I do not think it is any accident that this critical period of learning and exposure happened at a women's college where a brilliant woman ran the CS department. We were not just allowed, but encouraged to explore many paths in that rarified atmosphere of empowerment (we had access to lots and lots of technology and to smart people who wanted to help), and I did. I've always been grateful for it. It was also where I learned about geek culture.
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I went to grad school to study feminist theology, but technology was in my blood by then. When I realized I didn't want to be a professor or an academic ethicist, I left academia and came home with a lot of school debt and not a lot of ideas.
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### A new beginning
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I was stunned, in 1995, at the power I saw in the World Wide Web to connect people and share thoughts and information (I still am). I wanted in on it. It occurred to me that I could go into the "family business," but not really how. I started working as a temporary contractor at offices in the valley and tried a few things (writing very basic databases on semiconductor data, pre-press work for technical manuals, filing payroll stubs) before I landed my first "real" tech job at Sun Microsystems. It was a very exciting place to be. (We were, after all, "the dot in dot-com.")
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At Sun, I stuck my neck out, trying as many new things as I could. I worked firsthand at HTMLing (What? It's a word!) white papers, then hacking basic surveying tools (Perl, mostly) for beta programs. Then I became a program manager for Solaris beta programs, and at last got my first whiff of open source in running beta programs for Open Solaris.
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The biggest thing I did was learn. I found it to be an atmosphere where engineering and education were both valued, and where my questions were not "stupid." I was lucky in my choices of mentors and friends. I took every class I could, read every book I could, and tried to give myself the technical, business, and project management skill sets I hadn't obtained in school before deciding to take the oft-discussed "mommy break" to prepare for the birth of my second child.
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### Getting back to work
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When I was ready to go back to work, Sun was no longer a viable place to go. So, I gathered my contacts (networking is your friend) and my consulting skills and ended up with a rather long-term contract release managing a web "portal" (in 2005, everything was a portal) and exposing myself to everything I could about CRMs, release methodology, localization, networking, and more. I explain all of this background mostly because my biggest lesson was that the education I got was in what I tried and in what I failed to do, as much as in what I succeeded at. I think we need role models for that, too.
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In many respects, the entire first part of my career was my technical education. It was a different time and place—I worked on supporting women and other underrepresented minorities in the organization, but it was not as overtly difficult to be a woman in tech then. I was undoubtedly blind to some issues at the time, but there's also a case to be made that our industry has become more misogynistic, not less.
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After all of this, I still did not see myself as a role model, or as highly technical. I was quite shocked when a geek friend I knew from parenting circles encouraged me to apply for a job as product manager at a very obscure seeming and highly technical nonprofit open source infrastructure shop (Internet Systems Consortium, makers of BIND, the widely deployed open source DNS nameserver, and operators of one of the 13 root nameservers). For the longest time, I couldn't figure out why they hired me! I knew very little about DNS, infrastructure, or protocol development, but I found my mentors again and flourished. I spent my time traveling, working on critical processes, figuring out how to work with highly international teams, solving hairy problems, and most of all, embracing open source and the vibrant community that loved and supported our efforts so very much. I learned most of all, again, by making mistakes. I learned what it takes to build a vision for a product, and how building things in the open and in community takes all sorts of specific skills, talent, and patience, but adds so much value.
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### Becoming a mentor
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It was while I was at ISC that, through the amazing [TechWomen program][2] (which brings technical women from the Middle East and North Africa to Silicon Valley for mentoring), I got hooked on mentoring and supporting other women in tech, particularly in open source and open culture. It was when I started mentoring that I started believing in my own abilities, too. That was a long lesson to learn.
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When I first read the advert for TechWomen mentors, I didn't think they would even want to talk to me! My impostor syndrome was so strong. I was so shocked when I was asked to mentor the first cohort (and every one after that for six years), but I am learning to believe that I earned these things. Impostor Syndrome is real, but over time it can be overcome.
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### Today
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In the end, I had to leave my job at ISC. Luckily, my work and my values brought me to Mozilla, where I've been both perseverant and lucky enough to have several meaningful roles. Today, I'm the senior program manager of diversity and inclusion. I work full-time on building a more diverse and inclusive Mozilla, standing on the shoulders of giants who did the same before me and in partnership with many of the smartest and kindest people I know. I've followed my passion for empowering people to find meaningful ways to contribute to the Internet I believe the world needs: an expansion of the one that excited me so long ago. And I get to see a lot of the world while I do it!
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Taking a new approach to changing culture through organizational and behavioral interventions is such an incredible way to connect my entire trajectory—from my early academics through my career to now. It's a new challenge every day, and I guess that's what I love most about working in tech and in particular on the open web. The very pluralistic nature of the web that first drew me in is the same possibility I still seek—a world where there is opportunity for all and where there are resources for people no matter their backgrounds. Role models, mentors, resources, and, above all, respect are essential components of evolving tech and open source culture to be all that I believe it can be—including access and opportunity for all of us.
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via: https://opensource.com/life/16/5/my-open-source-story-larissa-shapiro
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作者：[Larissa Shapiro][a]
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译者：[译者ID](https://github.com/译者ID)
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校对：[校对者ID](https://github.com/校对者ID)
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本文由 [LCTT](https://github.com/LCTT/TranslateProject) 原创翻译，[Linux中国](https://linux.cn/) 荣誉推出
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[a]: https://opensource.com/users/larissa-shapiro
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[1]: http://skinnywhitegirl.com/blog/my-nerd-story/1101/
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[2]: https://www.techwomen.org/mentorship/why-i-keep-coming-back-to-mentor-with-techwomen
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A daughter of Silicon Valley shares her 'nerd' story
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在 2014 年，为了对网上一些关于女性在科技行业的缺失的评论作出回应，我的同事 [Crystal Beasley][1] 建立了一个能让在科技/信息安全方面工作的女性在网络上分享自己的“天才之路”。这篇文章就是我的故事。我把我的故事与你们分享是因为我相信榜样的力量，我也相信有一个人有很多的方式进入一个让自己满意的有挑战性的工作和一个实现了所有目标的人生。
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### 和电脑相伴的童年
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我，在其他的光环之下，是硅谷的女儿。我的故事不是一个观众变成舞台的主角的故事。也不是从小就为这份事业做贡献的故事。这个故事更多的是关于环境如何塑造你 — 通过它的那种已然存在的文化来改变你，如果你想要被改变的话。这不是从小就看是努力并为一个明确的目标而奋斗的故事，我知道这是关于特权的故事。
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我出生在曼哈顿，但是我在新泽西州长大，因为我的爸爸作为一个退伍军人在那里的罗格斯大学攻读计算机科学的博士学位。当我四岁时，学校里有人问我我的爸爸干什么谋生时，我说，“他就是看电视和捕捉小虫子，但是我从没有见过那些小虫子”（译者注：小虫子，bug）。他在家里有一台哑终端，这大概与他在博尔特-贝拉尼克-纽曼公司的工作有关，他会通过早期的互联网来进行它在人工智能方面的工作。我就在旁边看着。
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我没能玩上父亲的会抓小虫子的电视，但是我很早就接触到了技术领域，我很珍惜这个礼物。提早的熏陶对于一个未来的天才是十分必要的 — 所以，请花时间和你的小孩谈谈他以后要做什么！
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>我父亲的终端和这个很类似——如果不是这个的话 CC BY-SA 4.0
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当我六岁时，我们搬到了加州。父亲在施乐的研究中心找到了一个工作。我记得那时我认为这个城市一定有很多熊，因为在它的旗帜上都有一个熊。在1979年，帕洛阿尔托还是一个大学城，还有果园和开阔地带。
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在帕洛阿尔托的公立学校待了一年之后，我的姐姐和我被送到了“半岛学校”，这个“模范学校”对我造成了深刻的影响。在那里，好奇心和创新意识是被推崇的，教育也是有学生自己决定的。我们很少在学校看到能叫做电脑的东西，但是在家就不同了。
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在父亲从施乐辞职之后，他就去了苹果，在那里他帮助研发——以及带回家让我玩的第一批电脑就是：Apple II 和 LISA。我的父亲在原先的 LISA 的研发团队。我直到现在还深刻的记得他让我们一次又一次的“玩鼠标”场景，因为他想让我的 3 岁大的妹妹对这个东西感到舒服——她也确实那样。
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>我们的 LISA 看起来就像这样，看到鼠标了吗？CC BY-SA 4.0
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在学校，我的数学的概念学得不错，但是基本计算却惨不忍睹。我的第一个学校的老师告诉我的家长，还有我，说我的数学很差以及我很“笨”。虽然我在“常规的”数学项目中表现出色，能理解一个 7 岁的孩子能理解的逻辑谜题，但是我不能完成我们每天早上都要做的“练习”。她说我傻，这事我不会忘记。在那之后的十年我都没能相信自己的逻辑能力和算法的水平。不要 低估你给孩子的说的话的力量。
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在我玩了几年爸爸的电脑之后，他从苹果跳到了 EA 又跳到了 SGI，我又体验了他带回来的新玩意。这让我们认为我们家的房子是镇里最酷的，因为我们在车库里有一个能玩 Doom 的 SGI 的机器。我不会太多的编程，但是现在我发现，在那些年里我对尝试新的科技不再恐惧。同时，我的学文学和教育的母亲，成为了一个科技行业的作家，她向我证实了一个人的职业可以改变以及科技行业的人也可以做母亲。我不是说这对她来说很简单，但是她让我认为这件是看起来很简单。你可能回想这些早期的熏陶能把我带到科技行业，但是它没有。
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### 本科时光
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我想我要成为一个小学教师，我就读米尔斯学院就是想要做这个。但是后来我开始研究女性，后来有研究神学，我这样做仅仅是由于我自己的一个渴求：我希望能理解人类的意志以及为更好的世界而努力。
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同时，我也感受到了互联网的巨大力量。在 1991 年，拥有你自己的 UNIX 的账户是很令人高兴的事，这件事值得你向全世界的人吹嘘。我仅仅从在互联网中“玩”就学到了不少，从那些愿意回答我提出的问题的人那里学到的就更多了。这些学习对我的职业生涯的影响不亚于我在学校教育部之中学到的知识。没有没有用的信息。我在一个女子学院度过了影响我一生的关键时期，然后那个女子学院的一个辉煌的女人跑进了计算机院，我不忍为这是一个事故。在那个老师的权力不算太大的学院，我们不止是被允许，甚至是被鼓励去尝试很多的道路（我们能接触到很多很多的科技，还能有聪明人来供我们求助），我也确实那样做了。我十分感激当年的教育。在那个学院，我也了解了什么是极客文化。
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之后我去了研究生院去学习 女权主义神学，但是技术行业的气息已经渗入我的灵魂。当我知道我不能成为一个教授或者一个专家时，我离开了学术圈，带着债务和很多点子回到了家。
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### 新的开端
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在 1995 年，我被我看见的万维网连接 人们以及分享想法和信息的能力所震惊（直到现在仍是如此）。我想要进入这个行业。看起来我好像要“女承父业”，但是我不知道我会用什么方式来这样做。我开始在硅谷做临时工，在我在太阳微系统公司得到我的第一个“技术”职位前做一些事情（为数据写最基础的数据库，技术手册印发钱的事务，备份工资单的存跟）。这些事很让人激动。（毕竟，我们是“点 com”的那个”点“）。
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在 Sun ，我努力学习，尽可能多的尝试我新事物。我的第一个工作是网页化（啥？这是一个单独的词汇）论文以及为测试中的 Solaris 修改一些基础的服务工具（大多数是Perl写的）。在那里最终在 Open Solaris 的测试版运行时我感受到了开源的力量。
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在那里我学到了一个很重要的事情。我发现在同样重视工程和教育的地方有一种气氛，在那里我的问题不再显得“傻”。我很庆幸我选对了导师和朋友。在决定为第二个孩子的出生产假之前，我上每一堂我能上的课程，读每一本我能读的书，尝试自学我在学校没有学习过的技术，商业以及项目管理方面的技能。
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### 重回工作
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当我准备重新工作时，Sun 已经不是一个值得回去的地方。所以，我收集了很多人的信息（网络是你的朋友），利用我的沟通技能最终建立了一个互联网门户（2005 年时，一切皆门户），并且开始了解 CRM，发布产品的方式，本地化，网络等知识。我这么做是基于我过去的尝试以及失败的经历所得出的教训，也是这个教训让我成功。我也认为我们需要这个方面的榜样。
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从很多方面来看，我的职业生涯的第一部分是 我的技术上的自我教育。这事发生的时间和地点都和现在不一样——我在帮助女性和其他弱势群体的组织工作，但是我之后成为一个技术行业的女性。当时我无疑，没有看到这个行业的缺陷，现在这个行业更加的厌恶女性，而不是更加喜欢她们。
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在这些事情之后，我还没有把自己当作一个榜样，或者一个高级技术人员。当我的一个在父母的圈子里认识极客朋友鼓励我申请一个看起来定位十分模糊且技术性很强的开源的非盈利基础设施商店（互联网系统协会，BIND，一个广泛部署的开源服务器的开发商，13 台 DNS 根域名服务器之一的运营商）的项目经理时，我很震惊。有很长一段时间，我都不知道他们为什么要雇佣我！我对 DNS ，基础设备，以及协议的开发知之甚少，但是我再次遇到了老师，并再度开始飞速发展。我花时间旅行，在关键流程攻关，搞清楚如何与高度国际化的团队合作，解决麻烦的问题，最重要的是，拥抱支持我们的开源和充满活力的社区。我几乎重新学了一切，通过试错的方式。我学习如何构思一个产品。如何通过建设开源社区，领导那些有这特定才能，技能和耐心的人，是他们给了产品价值。
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### 成为别人的导师
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当我在 ISC 工作时，我通过 [TechWomen 项目][2] （一个让来自中东和北非的技术行业的女性带到硅谷来接受教育的计划），我开始喜欢教学生以及支持那些女性，特别是在开源行业中奋斗的。这也就是我开始相信自己的能力的开端。我还需要学很多。
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当我第一次读 TechWomen 的广告时，我认为那些导师甚至都不会想要和我说话！我有冒名顶替综合征。当他们邀请我成为第一批导师（以及以后 6 年的导师）时，我很震惊，但是现在我学会了相信这些都是我努力得到的待遇。冒名顶替综合征是真实的，但是它能被时间冲淡。
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### 现在
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最后，我不得不离开我在 ISC 的工作。幸运的是，我的工作以及我的价值让我进入了 Mozilla ，在这里我的努力和我的幸运让我在这里有着重要的作用。现在，我是一名支持多样性的包容的高级项目经理。我致力于构建一个更多样化，更有包容性的 Mozilla ，站在之前的做同样事情的巨人的肩膀上，与最聪明友善的人们一起工作。我用我的激情来让人们找到贡献一个世界需要的互联网的有意义的方式：这让我兴奋了很久。我能看见，我做到了！
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通过对组织和个人行为的干预来用一种新的方法来改变一种文化这件事情和我的人生有着十分奇怪的联系 —— 从我的早期的学术生涯，到职业生涯再到现在。每天都是一个新的挑战，我想我最喜欢的就是在科技行业的工作，尤其是在开放互联网的工作。互联网天然的多元性是它最开始吸引我的原因，也是我还在寻求的——一个所有人都有获取的资源可能性，无论背景如何。榜样，导师，资源，以及最重要的，对不断发展的技术和开源文化的尊重能实现我相信它能实现的事 —— 包括给任何的平等的接入权和机会。
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--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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via: https://opensource.com/life/16/5/my-open-source-story-larissa-shapiro
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作者：[Larissa Shapiro][a]
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译者：[name1e5s](https://github.com/name1e5s)
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校对：[校对者ID](https://github.com/校对者ID)
|
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|
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本文由 [LCTT](https://github.com/LCTT/TranslateProject) 原创翻译，[Linux中国](https://linux.cn/) 荣誉推出
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[a]: https://opensource.com/users/larissa-shapiro
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[1]: http://skinnywhitegirl.com/blog/my-nerd-story/1101/
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[2]: https://www.techwomen.org/mentorship/why-i-keep-coming-back-to-mentor-with-techwomen
|
||||
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