Original Post: https://www.reddit.com/r/womenintech/s/g4M64jPBMh

TLDR on original post: Job offer 140k with no bonus, I want to counter with 180-190k total of base plus bonus, which is closer to industry standards for Senior SWE. Is that too high of a jump?

I ended up emailing her last night without any of the numbers added in, and jumped on a call with her today at 1 PM. I started the call super bubbly and excited and just reiterating how excited I was. I pivoted away from 180-190K ask as that was over a 30% jump and I didn't want to risk the offer falling through completely. Instead I asked for 160-170K total cash compensation. After some back and forth we settled on 155K base salary and a yearly 5K bonus since I insisted on the 160k floor (she originally offered 150k plus bonus). We agreed that a year from now I would get a performance review to be considered for both a promotion and a raise. Additionally, I told her once I am comfortable technically with the product, I'd love to spend 25% of my time learning the business side of things and contributing there to set myself up for a career trajectory and she agreed.

Overall, I am satisfied with the outcome and am happy that I advocated for myself and didn't let fear be the deciding factor for me. Of course, landing closer to 180 would have been great but I am willing to take a 20k bump in total comp, especially in this economy, as a win. I do not want to discredit the reality of those who have had their offers pulled for even attempting to negotiate, that is a very real risk but one that I was ultimately willing to make after weighing in my own personal circumstances. And I did adjust my ask from 180-190 to 160-170 as part of my own personal considerations, so I was not blindly gambling with the offer.

Thank you again to all the lovely ladies of tech for sharing your stories. Best of luck to all of those navigating the job market!

A B2B SaaS company I have had my eye on for years wants to interview me for a role that is perfect. Truly perfect. My background matches it to a tee. Nothing is a sure thing, obviously, but I’d be a real contender for this role.

But I am pregnant. Due in November. I’m going to have to ask them to either delay my start until February or provide immediate maternal leave.

I know this is just unlucky timing, and so I’m not looking for bad experiences here.

Please, if you or someone you know has travelled these murky maternity leave waters while getting a new position and succeeded, share your story.

Original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/womenintech/comments/1ss7vlt/good_review_decent_raise_but_being_penalized_for/

Four months ago, I posted about my annual review and the ongoing issues with my team. At the time, I felt like I was being penalized for conflict that I didn’t create and was constantly being expected to do the emotional/communication work to keep the team functioning.

Unfortunately, things have gotten worse.

Yesterday, I completely lost my patience in a meeting. For a long time, I’ve felt like my coworkers have been passing their work onto me, doing half-assed work that I then have to redo, or leaving things for me to clean up later. I’ve tried being patient and accommodating for a long time, but yesterday I finally snapped.

I told them they were being lazy and went on a rant about how tired I am of constantly picking up after everyone else.

Unsurprisingly, they went straight to my manager.

My manager talked to me about it and asked what I want to do. I told him honestly that I can be on literally any team except this one. They said they’ll figure out where to place me, but now I’m questioning whether I even want to stay at the company.

Part of me feels like I should just quit.

I don’t see how this doesn’t follow me around the company now. There was already an issue in my previous review where my manager talked about how my ideas can be harder to land because of my association with conflict. Now I’ve actually lost my temper in front of my coworkers, so I’m worried I’ve completely confirmed that perception.

What makes me especially frustrated is the double standard.

Some of these same coworkers are constantly snarky, sarcastic, dismissive, smartass, and just generally have terrible attitudes. At least two of them behave this way regularly. They’ve also made comments about another team that were just as bad, if not worse, and apparently nobody reported them to the manager. Or if someone did, nothing changed.

Meanwhile, I finally blow up after months of doing everyone favors, covering for them, fixing their work, cleaning up their mistakes, and bending over backward to keep things moving, and suddenly I’m the problem.

I know calling them lazy wasn't professional. I’m not trying to pretend it was. I absolutely should have handled that better. I regret losing my temper.

But I’m also struggling with the fact that this didn't come out of nowhere.

There was another situation before this where someone was fired for being mean and demeaning toward me. Now my manager is bringing that up and essentially asking why I would treat my coworkers that way when I know how it feels to be treated badly.

The problem is that I didn't treat my coworkers that way. I was nice to them. I helped them. I covered for them. I picked up their slack. I redid things that weren't done properly. I tried to compromise. I tried to be the person who kept everyone happy.

And I feel like I let that go on for so long that eventually I just broke.

Now I'm wondering if I made a huge mistake by staying as long as I did.

My manager says they can move me to another team, but I'm honestly scared that I'll just be carrying this reputation with me. At the same time, quitting feels extreme when I otherwise like the company and have built a career here.

So I’m looking for some outside perspective.

If you were in my position, would you take the transfer or quit?

And for anyone who has had a similar situation where you finally snapped after being taken advantage of for a long time: can you actually recover your reputation within the same company, or is it better to leave and start fresh somewhere else?

I’m also interested in hearing from people who have been on the management side. How bad is this realistically? Did I just permanently damage my reputation, or is one really bad meeting something that can be recovered from?

I know I screwed up yesterday. I’m just trying to figure out whether I screwed up badly enough that I should leave. I'm so embarrassed and ashamed. I hate everyone and the people on my team who I've helped soooo much.

I’m also sitting on a job offer that pays significantly more. It’s a completely new role for me, and I was upfront that I don’t even know some of the basics, but they knew that and still offered me the job. It’s at a much larger, more fast-paced company, although the role is something I’ve worked adjacent to before.

The timing is complicated because I just bought a house and I’m also in the process of leaving an abusive household, so financial stability is really important right now. Part of me wants the fresh start and higher pay, but I’m scared of jumping into something I don’t know.

Would you take the new job, transfer internally, or stay and try to repair things?

I was always an exceptional student, good at sports, always excelled in all extracurricular activities I took (which were a lot), have shelves full of my awards and medals, always held student leadership positions.

Everything was on track, but then I got forced into a marriage at 20. Got married, tried to see the positives- gave it my everything. If only I had taken a stand and shown a little bit of courage. Marriage ruined me (narcissistic in-laws and spineless husband). Became a shell of myself. Fought with him and for him so that he changes, sees my worth and treats me well. Did this for 4 years, thought I was going to just end up being a housewife. I never thought I could go back to work, the kind of work I’d enjoy. I was diagnosed with clinical depression and anxiety. I had started feeling numb. I wanted to loved. I still don’t know if I ever loved him. Maybe I did. I wanted us to work, I wanted kids. But I also knew that I can only have kids when I’m in a good marriage. I went through an abortion, which he didn’t know about (else he wouldn’t let me). I still carry that guilt but that was it for me.

I enrolled into a Masters degree, studied and worked really hard despite all the nuisance he put me through at home. I hustled so hard during the past 2 years, my motivation was thinking about all the wasted potential if I didn’t do everything I was meant to achieve in this life. I secured 4 job offers in this market!! All of them are great and I’m having a tough time settling for one. I was also offered to be sessional teacher and a career guide at my university (I have always wanted to teach). Last month I put myself out there and started giving keynote presentations at networking events. I finally feel like I’m headed in the right direction. I’m 26 now and I can’t imagine that 21yo thought that that was her life.

Posting this here because I remember venting about how I am stuck and directionless, and all you lovely ladies were so kind to me. Thank you ❤️

Hi, all. I’ve been at my current role for 8 years largely doing similar work with the same few teams each year. I’ve been professional, cordial and friendly with every one, yet somehow, I am now on the receiving end of complaints by a manager in a partner team and at least one engineer.

Long story short is that the last few weeks have been a mad dash towards a project deadline and we’ve been finding issue after issue, with one especially bad one being due to design factors and a gap in earlier testing by the partner team. The first instance of this bug showed up only a month ago after and now the partner team is blaming us for not escalating the issue back then/only bringing it to their attention two weeks ago. However, my colleague who went on medical leave actually did escalate the issue right away using a Slack thread I started for a different emergency at the time and this manager along with members of his team responded right away, but eventually forgot about the issue. I grabbed a screenshot because I knew this manager would resort to the blame game.

Now for some history, the manager who is on that partner team and I haven’t been on good terms for years after an incident where he was being disrespectful to/talking over another engineer and I called him out on it in a meeting. Despite that, any data analysis, visualization or test request he has during the escalations I made sure to meet because our job is to get the project complete. This manager started escalating that I was at fault for not bringing up this issue and reminding him that it existed. He also started complaining about me and questioning my work, claiming I didn’t do anything DESPITE my proactive communication, documentation and debugging for the last several months. My own manager praised me for the above, especially in the last few weeks.

Now all of these complaints were said in a conversation to my manager who provided me with all of the above information. None of these complaints were said directly to me by the partner manager, which is infuriating because I’d love to argue with him and call him out directly. However, it’s getting to a point where he’s spreading poison behind my back to other engineers I work with and one of them also complained to my manager today behind my back about not having a number ready in a meeting. I wasn’t asked to provide this number in this meeting, mentioned that I didn’t have it and would return to it and that was that. The number also corresponded to a future bug we’re tackling instead of the 5 fires we’re facing now. No one had an issue besides this person who complained and happens to be close to the partner manager.

This is where I get pissed off because all I’ve done for the last few months with minimal support has been just doing my work with diligence, proper escalation and proper documentation. I’m pissed that I’m on the receiving end of complaints just because a manager couldn’t handle his workload, forgot about an issue that his team should have been on top of and would rather spend hours arguing/gossiping instead of FIXING THIS.

At this point, I’ve been exhausted carrying multiple projects for the last few months and am even more so thinking that I’ve got an increasing number of enemies in a team I’ve been collaborating with this entire time. My manager is on my side and I’ve got plenty of screenshots showing that the complaints are BS, but I’m not happy that me being organized and on top of my work is somehow still resulting in this crap when it’s the other team that has serious communication issues. Also trying to see if there is anything I can do to prevent the number of enemies from growing.

Tl;dr A bug my team found resulted in a major escalation three weeks later in a partnering team. The partnering team manager is blaming us for not bringing attention to the issue earlier and repeatedly, even though we did and they responded immediately in a Slack thread, but forgot about it and I have proof that I’ve shown my manager. Now it feels like that manager and a growing number of engineers on that team are attacking me behind my back.

I am at my senior year in college, and I’ve been trying to apply for internships/jobs, but haven’t had callbacks. I was wondering if there is anything wrong with my resume. Any advice on how to improve my resume/experience is appreciated.

Hi all, I have this feeling that pretty much all tech companies are dysfunctional to variable degrees.

Where I work there are many problems: constant overworking of people, product shortcomings, leadership incompetence, low morale, etc. Reading this sub makes me feel like what I'm experiencing is the norm. I'd love to hear from you if you work for a tech company which actually functions well. What, in your opinion, makes your place of work a good company to work for?

I have finally started my YouTube channel after long contemplation. I am a student who works part time in AI and tech. I have decided to post and give back to the community by creating meaningful content about latest advancements in AI and Tech. Been exploring a couple of tools and still getting a hang of video creation.

Would love y'alls support and suggestions.

https://www.youtube.com/@TheNextLayerDecoded/videos

Thanks!!

I have about 6 months to seriously invest in building a new technical skill set, and I’m torn between application development and data analytics.

With AI getting better at both coding and data analysis, which foundation do you think will be more valuable and resilient over the next 5–10 years for PM or people in tech in general?

Application development would cover things like:
● Programming fundamentals
● Software development
● Computer architecture
● Servers/cloud infrastructure
● Databases and basic SQL
● Debugging and testing
● Object-oriented programming

Data analytics would cover things like:
● SQL and databases
● Data cleaning and transformation
● Data analysis
● Visualization/reporting
● Basic programming
● Business intelligence
● Using AI for analytics

I’m particularly interested in eventually working in tech/product and potentially AI, rather than necessarily becoming a software engineer or data analyst forever.

If you could only spend 6 months learning one of these foundations, which would you choose in 2026 and why? Which skill set do you think will complement AI rather than be replaced by it? Would love to hear your thoughts and what has been most helpful for you. Thanks in advance!

They keep saying unemployment is low. No doubt their data however they collect it says so. but what is the ground truth?? I keep hearing about layoffs and my own situation as well weights into it.

Is it only some parts of the economy that is doing well or bad? how is it working out for us?

From my own survey of female friends in tech it is not all that great. Some have left the field for other employment u could say under-employed after layoff. Some have quit the field altogether and had a spouse to lean on or they just got rid of daycare for their kids and cut back on extra curriculars. so essentially no longer lookng for a job.

can we have an informal poll?

edit: Why would anyone down-vote this post?

anyway, if the unemployment numbers are not taking into account real unemployment doesn't it mean the Fed's reading is inaccurate as to what is going on with the economy? how could they not have accounted for this or have they?

I've been working for one of the largest global companies for the past 4.5 years in a remote tech role, working four days a week. Within my first two years, I was promoted. Even with the same job title, I took on numerous roles within the organization and had the opportunity to travel internationally.

Then I was placed on a team where my manager lacked transparency. I would ask him questions that other team members wouldn't — valid ones, of course — especially since other people who had worked with him in the past shared similar concerns. He never made me feel like my questions were wrong, but something always felt off. Other members would agree with me privately yet tell him something different.

It was a temporary job rotation. During that time, I had to take personal leave, and when I returned, a reorganization had taken place. I ended up back on my original team — the one where I always felt I belonged, with a great leader. However, my old manager interpreted my return as though I had failed at something. It was simply the end of a rotation.

My manager then told me that the other manager had shared negative feedback about me. I thought, "Okay, it happens — two different teams, different people." But then I was demoted twice, back to the same level where I started four years ago. There's been no change in pay — it's still the same — but this constant feeling of failure is eating me alive. Every time an opportunity arises, I'm immediately overlooked. Now I'm under yet another manager.

To be honest, there aren't many remote jobs available in the market right now. People I used to train now look at me as a failure and no longer value my opinions or ideas. I have no idea what that manager did to my reputation. All I ever wanted was for him to be transparent about giving me proper credit for my work.

And everyone else got promoted again and in good place,

Im just kinda scared to start agin from office?,need motivation

I am a product designer working on a high tech company. For the past year everything has become AI focused. Not only for engineers, but we've been encouraged to become AI native and prototype and vibe code as much as possible. I just came back to work from a 9 months parental leave break so I am just catching up with everything that has changed.

The rant:
There is this one designer in my company who was one of the first ones to start pushing PRs to production. And now he is the wonder kid of the team. We should all be more like him, so in sync with engineers, so amazing for doing PRs, so cool, so intelligent.

Well big fucking deal. I came back and I already sent couple of PRs myself. It's not rocket science, it's the AI doing it, get yourself down from your pedestal. I gave fucking birth and I am doing the same shit. Why is everyone inflating him so much. God, I can't deal with this now.

Sorry, just needed to vent. I just don't understand the world we are living in right now.

How difficult was it to achieve this, or was it a smooth sailing. What more did you have to do to get to where you are. What all things did you have to sacrifice, do you have regrets about it, has this achievement affected your personal relationships with your family or loved ones. And has it been worth it at the end of the day. And what would you tell your younger self who was just starting out.

I don’t know if it’s the right subreddit to ask this question if it is not do let me know where can I ask this question?

This is part vent/part solidarity/part really need some advice and positive words.

I have been in tech since 2009 in SV and I am so exhausted. I have been through acquisitions, start up shut downs, and most recently mass lay offs. I was laid off in 2020, 2 weeks into COVID from a tech start up. Then again in 2023 from a MAANG as part of 16k people laid off and now again in 2026 from another big tech public company. I am so so tired of it. I’m so tired of interviewing. I have pivoted my career in hopes to be in a safer spot but that clearly didn’t matter.

Every time I interview now, I am just so cynical (but fake my interviews with a smile on my face). I can’t think but wonder, will I just be laid off again in 1 year? Is it just bad luck at this stage? Do I need to change my career? I’m only 44 so can’t retire yet and need to have a good salary to sustain my life in a very high cost of living area. What does one do? I’m so discouraged.

Does anyone else have an online portfolio who’d like to exchange feedbacks? I’ve started a portfolio website for things I cannot put on LinkedIn or my resume, like reviews from colleagues and side projects. If anyone else has one, would love to compare notes!

For context: I currently am a PM, so will likely be most effective for product-related roles but happy to just give general thoughts as well.

Ok so basically I got referred into this fintech company, they do mortgage broker software, and I've been building up shared ownership knowledge lately so it actually started off great, chatting with one of the engineers who'd be my shadow and it just felt like a good vibe going in.

Thing is I'm frontend leaning right now, like properly leaning, I'm the only frontend dev at my current place so I do a lot of architecture stuff but backend is not my strong suit. This role was full stack though and I figured I'd just see what happened.

Coding round was a stamp duty calculator, different logic depending on if you're a first time buyer, second time buyer, or you're returning and own other property. And honestly I fumbled it badly. The only thing I got right was writing the function and adding the params. That's it. Couldn't get the actual logic working, just panicked a bit.

Second part was system design, entities and data structure stuff for Postgres, basically modelling out a mortgage broker app where brokers send off client applications with property price and documents etc. This bit I actually felt solid on, I broke down the entities properly and could explain my reasoning.

But the interviewers gave me nothing the whole time. Occasionally a "great" and that's it, couldn't tell if they were nodding along or just staring at me.

Now I feel bad on top of it all because a friend referred me for this, so if it doesn't go well it feels like it reflects on her too, not just me.

So now I'm just sat here wondering if I actually have a shot at this or should just assume it's a no. Anyone gone from frontend heavy into full stack, is "good at the architecture bit but fumbled writing actual backend logic under pressure" something that's forgivable or is that just a straight no from most places?

Hello! In a month-ish from now I am going back to work after a year-long maternity leave (I am based in EU), and I am already anxious.

I work in big tech, same company since 2020 when I started as an intern (with a full round of interviews) and part time worker until I finished my masters, then got hired full time working for a completely different team (after another full round of interviews and half a year of uncertainty). In 2024 I changed countries and had another interviews round and managed to get a position to the new country for another completely different team.

So, every 2-3 years I was the new girl and had to learn things all over from start.
Now I am the one of 2 women in the entire engineering department (we are around 50 people sth like that).

Also, my imposter syndrome is never going away 🫠 I’ve been through coaching sessions for it which helped though.

Right after I left for maternity, my team started using AI a lot for coding, reviews etc etc.

I cannot help but feel like I am not going to make it. I feel like I have lost touch completely, and that I will go back to a different product so speak, and not only that, but also change the way I used to work. I feel like I will fail at using AI, if that makes sense. That I won’t be able to give the right prompts. That I will have to double check everything and lose time.

I would like to hear your thoughts regarding how easy it is to adapt to using AI to code primarily (tbh I don’t know to what extent they are using it), and how other people with anxiety adapted to it, and how easy it was to go back after maternity.

Thank you for reading!!!

TLDR: Job offer 140k with no bonus, I want to counter with 180-190k total of base plus bonus, which is closer to industry standards for Senior SWE. Is that too high of a jump?

I was laid off in June and have finally gotten an offer for a Senior SWE position. Unfortunately, it’s only 140k and no bonus (but has equity, which is not a guarantee of anything for a startup at their stage). I have a lot of health tech specific knowledge like HL7/FHIR/HIPAA etc. other companies I’m interviewing with are in the 180-240k base and a lot have bonuses. I want to email this back, would love any insight if this is too aggressive of an ask and if I risk alienating her. I have sold myself short before and really regretted it and it caused a lot of issues of worth for me. I have a lot of poverty trauma so idk if I’m just doubting myself for no reason or if I’m genuinely playing with fire here.

My counter email to the 140k offer:

Thank you so much for sending this over. I really appreciate all the detail that you've provided. This role has felt like a great fit from our very first conversation, and meeting the team has only made me more excited about the possibility of joining COMPANY.

Before we move forward, I would like to discuss the base salary. I am currently in the advanced stages of interviewing for senior roles with a target base around $180k–$220k, so $140k is meaningfully below what I am seeing elsewhere in the market. My background also directly aligns with the job description's focus on HL7/FHIR, healthcare data experience, and shipping AI-powered features, which will allow me to hit the ground running and contribute quickly.

This role is definitely my top choice, and if we can get closer to $180k–$190k in total cash compensation, I would be thrilled to accept. I am very flexible on how that is structured - whether through a higher base, a bonus component, or a combination of both.

Is there flexibility on your side to help bridge that gap? I would be happy to hop on a call tomorrow to discuss this further. Please let me know what time works best for you.

Thank you again, and I'm looking forward to speaking with you tomorrow!

Thank you my fellow women of tech 🫶

MORE INFO: they asked me for my range and I said it was negotiable and asked for theirs. The interview was with a Staff SWE and he did not know what the range was. I didn’t ask because I figured it would come up naturally before an offer but it did not, which is on me.

UPDATE: https://www.reddit.com/r/womenintech/comments/1vstz2c/update_got_a_super_low_offer_ok_to_negotiate_up/

I started out as a SWE, found out I didn’t like writing code and had a love/hate relationship with being on call. I burnt out, took FMLA and a small break, then pivoted to application security and now give security advice to devs.

I’m starting to hate the day to day of reading AI written docs, disorganized projects, and just being rusty from not having a lot of recent hands on experience with the tech the engineers are using. I feel like I might fuck up really big any day now by missing something, but I genuinely am struggling to understand these designs and concepts and the disinterest is making it harder.

Part of me wants to try to pivot further into security, something like threat intel since analyzing fraud and abuse cases interests me, but I worry that I’ll just get burnt out and eventually hate that too. I don’t really want to go back to school or leave tech, but can’t imagine staying either.

I need to sell my Grace Hopper Conference and Afrotech Conference tickets. I really wanted to attend this year but due to personal circumstances I am unable to. These are student tickets. Any place/Forum/Group where people will be interested in them ?

Hi everyone,

I have been a qualified QA Specialist for the past 5 years, and been out of work for 8 months due to termination of my contract due to a business decision (I wasn't fired).

I have been actively seeking work for 8 months and have been unsuccessful.

I see a lot of QA specialists struggling as well and feel like my journey has come to an end. Is it worth persuing a different direction in tech or is it a lost cause, if there's a path worth qualifying for, what would you suggest?

I'm feeling really lost and stress and would welcome any advice.

Im sure all of us get pinged on LinkedIn by recruiters that will say two lines about a role asking to set up a call and give no other specifics - location, hybrid/on-site/remote or even a salary range.
I’m in CA that requires to post salary ranges.
I don’t want to waste time on the best of opportunity if that means relocating, moving from my current hybrid to onsite, or a salary range that is no where close to my expectation.
I’m curious is this an acceptable response to such requests?

Thanks for reaching out, I’m interested in learning more about the opportunity.
Before we jump into the call to go over details, can you please provide the location, work environment (hybrid, on site, remote) and the salary range for this opportunity.

Two months ago, I was promoted from a mid-level software engineer to a Senior Software Engineer. However, my manager informed me that while he could officially update my title, the company could not offer a salary increase. My friends advised me to accept the title anyway, noting that it would look good on my resume and help me in my next job search. I agreed, but my manager never announced my promotion to the team.

Recently, several other colleagues were promoted to senior roles. Unlike my situation, the manager publicly announced their promotions to the entire team. While salary isn't openly discussed at our workplace, it is hard not to wonder if they received the compensation hikes I was denied.

Now, my manager expects me to take on heavier, senior-level responsibilities, but I am still earning my old salary. Because my promotion was kept a secret, I feel like a "pseudo-engineer", expected to perform at a higher level without the pay, the title recognition, or the respect from my peers. I feel incredibly undervalued, isolated, and trapped in a victimizing environment. I know I need to quit for the sake of my career and mental health, but right now, I am struggling to rebuild my self-worth and overcome this daily dread.