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We’re back in your ears with a brand new episode this week! Our guest is Cheryl Gledhill, Head of Product at BlueChilli Group.

We discuss her experience working as a product manager, her involvement with multiple start-ups and her opinions on the benefits of working remotely.

I hope you enjoy the episode.

Listen to the Podcast

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Show Notes

Here you can source all the things we have talked about in the podcast whether that be books, events, meet-up groups and what’s new in the newcastle tech scene.

• The Lean Product Playbook: Dan Olsen
• The Pitch- Gimlet Media
• Radio Topia
• John Maeda from Publicis
• John Cutler from Amplitude
• Aubrey Blanche from Atlassian
• Cindy Gallop from Make Love Not Porn

Find all local Newcastle Technology Events

• • • Event’s Page

  Transcription:

  Welcome to another episode of NewyTechPeople today we have Cheryl glad he’ll had a product the blue chilly welcome sure thank you give us a quick overview for the people that don’t know you in new cast a community who are you what have you been doing so I moved to New Castle three years ago I worked for a company called blue chilly some head of product down there and so we were a technical accelerator so our theory was that there’s already a lot of accelerators out there for like young guys that code all night in hoodies our kind of niche was non-technical founders we figured if someone is a subject matter expert and they see a problem that they want to solve but they don’t necessarily have the technical know-how could we come in for six months be their technical co-founder to have access to a product team so product managers UX designers and developers and could we take them to kind of the MVP of their product within a six month period so yeah you did that they obviously based out of Sydney you work down there yeah remotely so they’re actually a really really great company and it was interesting cuz my first interview with Claudia the head of people wasn’t so much about my work history but it was about like my life outside of work and what drove me and how do I like to work and how am i motivated and her theory is that people use work as an excuse to not do what they should be doing and she’s like if you want to write a book works not stopping you you pick your hours you work when you have like the best creative metabolism if that’s from home if that’s a 10 o’clock at night like you just get the best out of you and that’s your responsibility so I was fully remote but I did choose to go down there one day a week just because I love being in the office yes fine that’s a really refreshing way to okay it was amazing like the work from home channel is the most used channel in the whole company and it’s truly amazing because somebody would be like away from keyboard for the next two hours I’m making a cake and it’s like cool okay look I’ve never worked somewhere like that before it’s amazing and you fair not recently I found it really productive for the teams so productive because it’s like when you’re choosing the way that you like to work you’re so much happier you’re not sitting there going I’ve got to be here from 9:00 to 5:00 you know I get my best work done kind of afternoon to evening and it really allowed me to do that so I’d pick up the kids from school and then come back later at night when they’ve gone to bed and kind of get this great work time when there was nobody else on line and I kind of churned out a few hours I think my most productive times between like 8 p.m. and 12 yeah yeah yeah yeah killers track of time and you get to flow which are so important for work and what you can’t do if you’re trying to work kind of in this time that doesn’t see yeah yeah what’s the biggest challenge with working remotely that’s I mean you miss out on the office gossip and like it sounds quite frivolous but particularly kind of in a leadership role you need to know what’s going on and people will only really talk to you and they’re comfortable and that’s really hard to do over slack so you know you’d kind of do these check-ins like hey how’s things but I find I did miss out on a lot of the gossip and the kind of hallway conversations yeah so sometimes like something would have be happening and I’m like what is going on and if one sec oh yeah sorry we all caught up for an hour over there and we’ve brought you in now so you miss out on that side of things a little bit and also you just miss the ability to turn to a developer and ask a really quick question because you can slack but our developers would often turn off slack to concentrate so then you have to set up a time for resume call and it’s like I actually like literally just want to talk to you for 30 seconds yeah so even miss out on that side of things yeah so the majority the team was working remotely though I was probably a third when I started and down to probably a few of us kind of later on like we had a couple of people that moved to New Zealand if you moved to Melbourne where people in Brisbane and dubba and then two of us over here in Newcastle nice plants probably most refreshing is that interviewing you know like the interview questions in the way into the companies of ours where what are your motivations as opposed to you know what are you doing are they today bit like you know your work I think you’ve you get those motivations like you’ll find a way to make the job work right if you buy that rock background exactly and that they hired and like a way that I will take with me forever where you know they kind of believe that the hard skills you can learn you know maybe not something like JavaScript but in general if you have the right attitude and the right personality you will be able to do the job that might just take you some ramp up time and particularly true of product management like if you look at what it makes a good product manager it’s empathy and curiosity and if you’ve got those you can learn any of the kind of tools and things that we do but if you don’t have that empathy and curiosity you’re never going to be a good product manager yeah it’s a great way of hiring like based on those personalities yeah and I think you’d be based on personalities as opposed to hard skills to Sally throughout hard to get like those skills can be learned if you get the right person in there and pick them up and they’re going to be the better long-term yeah I’m employee right exactly better to work yeah exactly like our best product manager literally came from owning a bar and wasn’t a product manager and he just had because he owns the bar and he would sit there and talk to people all the time so he really understands what motivates people how to you know how to really get the best out of them because he talked some drunk people all day and that made him the best product manager so I loved that I loved the fact that I got to work with him it was really a really good background as he said like that that core skill is just understanding people yeah and staying people being able to have conversation mmm you know if you can tie on top of that the ability to sort of talk a little bit technical take that back to a technical team you done right exactly well he was that he actually developed don’t hire Hardware process good before that we only really worked with software but his dad kind of taught him Hardware when he was a child and he kind of saw this opportunities like we should be doing hardware and he kind of pulled in the entire process because that’s what he was interested in because he had the right curiosity oh yeah it’s amazing nice that’s what well and you Dan product manager in real um so I started off as a front-end developer or actually I’ll go back a step so I started off in tech support in 95 paws email Australia’s best ISP and I literally got the job because I’d heard of the internet and I was a I knew how to connect I don’t know it’s like you know I’m all for the like the positive discrimination that’s great so I’d heard of the internet and I was female and it was like a tech support full of guys so got the raw did tech support for a little while and then my boss said do you know how to create a web page and that’s like no but I’m sure I can figure it out and like two days later I was like I know HTML and this is like HTML once it was so simple so kind of got into front-end web development did that for maybe five or six years and then kind of reached the point where I was like well this is great just being out a coder what other people want me to do but I wanted to be the person making the decisions about what it was that we were coding yeah so got more into the producing side of things which is kind of what we call product management in the early 2000s and just loved it and have been in there ever since I suppose yeah that’s a it’s a nice background I remember my early days in recruitment and tech recruitment know like I you quite technical I remember from my marketing days having to you know just use a little bit of HTML in you know customizing some email templates and so I’m like oh yeah I can do a little bit of development which is funny so I haven’t developed since the ethos and so it used to be like tables based yeah HTML and like everybody always laughs at me because I’m like I’m so not technical anymore I couldn’t code to save my life but HTML emails still use tables based design and for once I’m actually useless wow that’s something I wasn’t until I had my first conversations and actually develop I’m like c-sharp see I’ve learn a little sensor that’s really interesting so Chile obviously in there obviously working with a number of different companies now would have given you opportunities so you like lots of different ideas especially non tech co-founders being over half of conversation subject matter experts what’s I if you had to say some commonalities between you know the people that were successful is there any commonalities that people have done really good sort of Granderson so I I feel like as product as we could see through boot camp who was gonna accelerate the fastest and it’s not so much any one thing but like we always looked for resilience coachability and just that real need to solve a particular problem so you know kind of part of that comes you know flexibility and the ability to you know roll with the punches so to listen to the data and to sometimes pivot but also know when you need to stand your ground and so the ones that came in that we could see that straightaway they kind of flew up really high straightaway but it was the ones that were almost there that we spent the most amount of time because you’re like oh I can see that this if we could just get it to this point they’ll do really well but it was always kind of a struggle so yeah I have kind of think that resilience and just that need to solve a problem you know that’s what makes a really really truly great founder yeah that’s I guess it’s probably the same for internal teams right like the ability to solve the problem or the ability to sort of see a problem have a conversation when there are people understand what are we actually building yeah the technology could be anything but yeah it really is that need of like well who are we solving the problem for and you know having that empathy to want to solve it in the first place and then from a technical perspective you obviously like a lot of people that didn’t have that technical skills these are any key successes that people that you found that you know adding their technical capabilities there any key successes in building other technical team um I mean the biggest thrill for me was always watching a founder not be scared of technology so you know we dropped with a lot of female founders a lot of women and there was always kind of this attitude you know especially growing up in the 80s and going through the 90s that tech was a thing that boys did and it wasn’t what girls – it ghosted marketing and recruitment and so there’s always been this fear of technology that oh I don’t know how to do it or I’m gonna break it and like the thing that got me most on board with tech is like it’s actually really hard to break things like you well so saying I’ve broken many things but just taking away that fear of experimentation so allowing women to say hey I belong here – and I’m not going to be scared of this thing I’m just gonna ask questions about it and like knowledge is power and I feel like a lot of our founders were always a little bit like they’ve been like a little bit embarrassed or ashamed they’d be like I’m not technical I’m not technical and it took us six months to be like you need to be technical and you need to be asking these kind of questions and just watching their empowerment grow from talking to developers and getting answers and suddenly kind of understanding how the bits fit together like that was just such a thrill sounds like you’ve had a lot of success and in taking I guess non-technical female founders and educating them and becoming technical hmm if we started to try to continue how do we how to encourage more females into technology it’s a it’s a very real problem hmm how’d it happen me in your opinion and your experiences how do you think we could help so there’s there’s so many pieces to this there’s one piece in particular that I have specifically been looking up with one of my startups and that’s at the job ad stage yeah so language is really really important and a lot of ads written for technical roles the people who are writing the ads don’t realize there’s a lot of bias in the way they write things and actually I’m you know the Guitar Center down the road yeah like two years ago they put out an ad for a social media marketing person and it was amazing I was in this group of Newcastle women and it was amazing watching their reaction to the app because they had a list of like 12 mandatory things that you needed to be the social media marketing manager and at the end they’d put like art also would be good the ability to sit read a sick guitar and I kind of read that and I was like yeah whatever but women who were reading it going oh they’ve asked for like these 12 mandatory things and I’ve got them but I can’t play guitar like I shouldn’t apply or good be like I’ve only got 11 of the 12 so women read job ads really literally and so you’ve got to really think about the things that you think of mandatory for the role are they actually mandatory or are they nice to have like it would be great if you have three things that are mandatory right like it language is so important or even like the the way they talk about perks like it’s like we do Friday afternoon ping-pong and then beers and that straightaway says to me you’re probably a competitive environment where you got a bunch of dudes playing ping-pong the fact that you know you do after work drinks on a Friday as a mother I can’t participate in that so I’m already knowing that I’ll probably be alienated a little bit if I can’t join in that so it’s about thinking about how is this job ad gonna read for somebody who reads things really literally and you know is probably not so confident like a guy will read a job ad and it’ll have like 12 mandatory things and I’ll have one and they’re like yeah I’m awesome for this job I’m going to apply this is not the first time third this yeah and it says language as well like ninja never asked for a ninja never asked for a rock star never asked for like a gun like just just ask for what you need you know it’s like it’s people think it’s giving personality to the job ad but it’s actually repelling a huge part of the population I couldn’t agree more and I couldn’t agree more they at twelve star point science I had terrible stop points I think that’s that’s what are the core skill that’s that you need for this role let’s pick two or three of them and then most other things can be learned right if you get those core skills find the right person back to you point earlier about your experience of blue chilli what are you motivators if you get those motivators right and there’s two three core skills the rest can be learned and you’ll find the right person I think those other eight dot points they just repel people right yeah and you’re selling too early in their in the actual job process and so they’re not even getting into the funnel right no not applying it’s only like the really kind of resilient women who are applying and then you’ve got you know two applications from women and 500 from men yeah as opposed to three dot points Casas why it’s gonna take a little bit more work yes from the recruiters or the a child’s perspective to go hey we’re going to casting them a little bit wider by anchoring two or three dot points and then actually have some conversations and people with human beings funny enough yeah and once you have those conversations you can see how somebody will fit in yeah and whether it be for that role or another or you have conversation with the hiring managers see when you’re hiring a person companies looking for likes or like replacements as you know it’s never a great thing because then you trying to look for that exact person whereas if you if you treat the role what are we trying to achieve out of this role you know what the core schools they are still achieve that and then look at it from that perspective it’s a completely different ballgame mmm and it’s like where do we want them to be six months from not where do we want them to come in at that in six because six months is a really long time yeah yeah and you know the right person can upskill themselves so quickly she had that said second most important thing if we look past the job ad and encouraging more more females in technology it’s just that you mentioned mentioned at the boys club part before yeah is that changing at all do you think or not it’s less obvious so you know I’ve worked in all-male teams for most of my career and literally if I wanted to be part of the group I would sometimes have to go to the strip club and it’s like but I have to do it because I wanted to be one of the boys and fit in and that it’s less obvious now you know it’s still there and I think as guys you know I went to one of the the newer JavaScript meetups a little while ago and it was funny I was kind of one of the few females they had dude came up to me in he’s like oh you’re a cruder but it’s like why would I be a recruiter just like what if I was a Java I’m not a JavaScript developer but what if I was you know what I mean it’s like that right there that’s alienating so I think you know not requiring women to have a really thick skin that would be like the perfect world right oh and then also looking at moms as well looking like having some flexibility or homework out some people have to pick up kids and some people do work best at night right mm-hmm having more flexible work arrangements obviously helps attract a wider audience and a better market potentially yeah yeah exactly um I think you know once you once you have some media requirements around being in the office from its 9:00 to 5:00 and you know your potential is I’m your best your best are you definitely at a lot of those times mom’s kind of can’t do that either we’ve got children in in school carry other responsibilities and yeah more flexible work arrangements I think yeah that’s a huge one yeah yeah do you think overall we’re heading in a better direction it’s funny it’s it swings and roundabouts I feel like work wise yes absolutely like you know I know lots of people hate the idea of quotas you know I don’t work for somewhere where we have a quota but we definitely have positive discrimination when it comes to recruitment because we will try and give every chance to the women who were applying and you know really go through the resume and and we would generally interview most of them that came through the process so work wise yes and then you jump on Twitter and it’s like oh god we’re going back with ya you know I don’t know if you saw this one like last week where one of our some like startup founder in America was saying that he would had gone through seven interviews and then he was told as a white male he’ll never get the role because you know women and people of color are will get the role over him and it was just this absolute like eye opening thing of like he actually genuinely believes that by giving other people in equal chance and maybe someone who might be more qualified than him will get the role he sees that as discrimination so it’s like I feel like we’re going forward and then we’re also going backwards yeah those people out there you saw the commentary on the back alone and snowballs and yeah it’s not an enjoyable conversation yeah well it’s funny how for the people who have been you know the top of the pyramid for so long like quality feels like discrimination to them but that’s like that’s funny because you’ve been up there the whole time term yeah yes it’s yeah it’s not great but I think it’s the more more conversations that I had around that topic more about people become aware you can help educate and then as you said there’s a couple of tips you put there about even just improving the hiring process if we’re gonna do that at least helps more people get into that fun I have that conversation and more people are in roles that can encourage others into the role as well because I know there are a lot of people for meetups for example a lot of females won’t go to meet up if there’s no other females but I’m gonna tendance listen it’s all males you know there’s a barrier to entry there whereas if there’s at least some other people there you know it becomes other females there becomes you know more inviting and it’s the same with doing your work team exactly if you’re going to if you have a look at the rest of the team you’re being introduced the rest of the team they’re all pale white now mm-hmm what does that tell you about you know versity or how they how they employ in general yeah and it’s interesting I’ve been kind of looking at other roles recently and pretty much all of them when I asked about like well who’s on the c-suite it’s you know if there’s seven people at least six of them men in their 30s and 40s right and it’s like why it’s not like there’s not more qualified women it’s just that’s just the way it is yeah so I think you know and I am the kind of the agitator where I’m like ah what does that say to you and everyone’s like yes we know we need to do more about diversity and then people do but yeah it’s kind of slow going right they’ve been new housing Mitch mentioned for three years and half what brought you to New Castle uh I was living in the u.s. so I went over there to start a startup with one of the guys I knew in the industry so it’s there for kind of eight years Trump got voted in I had a very neat jerk reaction because I was there the entire time Obama was in and I was hopeful kind of beautiful optimistic time and then Trump got voted in like a week later racist graffiti appeared in our neighborhood like it got ugly really really quickly within a week at a very neat jerk reaction and I was like okay we’ve got to go back to Australia and I looked up it I looked up a four-bedroom place in Bondi where you could walk to the beach and I was like oh that’s really not bad like it’s only thirty two hundred a month two for this place like we should prove and then I realized okay that’s the weekly price I’m not going to get a poor bedroom place in Bondi any time soon and we had some friends that lived in Newcastle and yeah it just seemed like a great lifestyle for kids and I actually had a role at Newcastle permanent and that I got before I moved back but I didn’t last very long way yeah so uh yeah kind of came back and then found my feet and kind of found my tribe yes what about finding your tribe right yeah what’s your extreme obviously you’ve been working for blue chilly they’re based in Sydney or being working remotely but what’s your experience or experience like with the Newcastle Tech’s and you have any sort of indication on whether you think I’ve got a strong or a growing tech scene here you do it’s definitely growing I mean I think what Siobhan is doing down it like I to end a that’s really amazing like I got so many meetups that she puts on you know Newcastle Council like in Sydney everybody talks about Newcastle council being so like forward-thinking and you know you got New Avengers who I’ve introduced to people in Sydney because I think they’re doing more amazing work for them a lot of people in Sydney alright yeah you know we’ve just got the new melt workspace so it’s really small you know I’ll go to a meet-up in Sydney and there’s 300 people and they come here and there’s like seven yeah but at least like the same people are going so I think it really is like a really great community up here I would just love to see a couple more big companies from Sydney actually move out here and kind of force everybody’s hand yes you know I think there’s two ways right I think it’s that the easiest way in the best way I think is quite a large company or two to move here and bring and build a team here the other way unfortunately not unfortunately but the slow grind is a company locally built build up and grow here and you know hit some real success may be one of the scallops you know taking off to that next level I’m building a team here I mean what the quick winning would be to try to encourage a bigger company to move here build their teams if I helped because since I’d sort of chicken with the egg scenario where I think two years ago there might not have been the jobs here so people yeah tech community moved away and those jobs are now here and they’re growing and growing and yeah we don’t have that talent pool here because a lot of people have moved away but it’s done no attract people back because there are more opportunity around and you don’t have to go to Sydney yeah and it’s funny everybody I know in Sydney wants to get out of Sydney as well it’s like I kind of look at him like you’ve got this amazing tech scene there you’ve got you know so many jobs but everyone’s like everyone I know is trying to get out of Sydney so I think if there were to be some big companies that moved up here I think could also be really easy to convince a lot of people in Sydney to move up here today and what do you think we could do to help build a community up here in Newcastle like obviously you’ve seen no those successes in Sydney three hundred people going to meet have subs they’re part of our these population but is there anything do you think we could be doing better in Newcastle to help build the tech community

  I mean I think the meetups you guys do a great it’d probably be good to get more like bigger speakers coming up here like I feel like to go to a good conference or to listen to somebody kind of talk through something I don’t know even then it sounds really arrogant you probably need to bring different speakers up here because I feel like we get a lot of Newcastle speakers which is great to understand what they’re doing but it’d be good to kind of get other perspectives as well like someone were you like oh my god I’ve followed this person for you know years I have wait to hear them speak yeah but then I guess that’s a budget thing as well yeah this and it’s but it’s it’s also enough habit has an objective as well to say hey you know that is what the next stage of growth looks like rady’s bring up like the jarred spools of the world or like you know even people from overseas yeah and Sydney’s not too far to go hard you know to pull their you know reasonable size speakers up here as well yeah like I think you know if you get like Cameron from canva up here you’d get a lot of people coming to here and oh yeah you know yeah start start asking for those speakers – coming up two hours on the train no that’s exactly right I’m sure necessary mmm look or it could this one is the biggest challenge for us just in Newcastle being the size do you think I think it’s the size yeah yeah okay as that continues to grow it does have a bit of a snowball effect I think as you said there is a core group that goes to a lot of the meetups and yeah if we start to add more and more onto that yeah can I have a little bit of a snowball effect hopefully yeah yeah definitely and stuff like the trivia night I mean it’s awesome right you get everybody in the room and it’s like everyone has a great time and that kind of really builds a whole community as well yeah I completely agree let’s spin it a little bit more about yourself previous discussions we’ve had you partway through an MBA mm-hmm what what made the decision to go down that route um so I went straight from high school into working for as email I deferred to uni for a year which I’m really glad I did because I was gonna study theater so a bit like a taxi driver after that so I had kind of deferred for a year I worked I found I loved working so I did I was email for like three years and then I went to Europe and worked in London and I found having three years experience in HTML by that point I was really really employable like people were like throwing jobs and money at me and then I kind of reached a point when I turned 28 or so where I had you know ten years experience in the industry and you know I got the great jobs because I had so much more experience than everyone else but then people who had gone to uni started to catch up because ten years to seven years as much for muchness and then as I starting to look at roles in my 30s everybody was like you don’t have a degree off like like Google yeah like I had an interview with Google and I mentioned I Saigon I didn’t get a degree but you know I’ve got like 15 years experience at this point and he goes by your age I’d expect you have a PhD Wow it’s like all right I think we’re done here but I did start to really feel that gap of you know once I had a certain level of experience people were looking for certain things for certain roles and I thought if I needed if I wanted to get into leadership I really needed something behind me I didn’t want to go back and get an undergrad and an MBA sings like a really good path and so far it’s been really interesting it’s the NBN digital transformation yeah yep so that’s been really fascinating it’s been a little bit frustrating as well because like I’m such a nerd that I’m sitting there like doing all of my assignments early and like really putting a lot of effort into it and the particular degree I’m doing has a lot of international students and I swear half of them don’t even read the question and then it is kind of typing away these essays and we have to do peer marking and that’s frustrating but you know it is what it is that’s a challenge hmm and the biggest benefit of it so far has just been that it’s the piece of paper honestly it’s like the learning is good and just kind of the structured learning has been interesting I mean I’m gonna be really arrogant for a second and just say I don’t think I’ve learned anything I didn’t necessarily know already but hopefully we will get to that point where you know maybe it’s all around like budgeting and financing laughs but I don’t do at the moment Shh is that other forms of education you found along your career that you found really beneficial um I love conferences and it’s not necessarily so much for the hands-on this is how you do this but like really surfacing new concepts for me so I just went to the web directions conference I was actually speaking at it in November and you know the keynote is a woman that works in wearables and it’s just this she gave this really fascinating take about wearables and all of the things you need to think about as far as like future of human interaction with our clothing goes and so that stuff is really fascinating because it gives me this area that I want to dive down deeper on you know he had mark Pesce talking about the future of money and talking about like the digital one coming in in China and how that’s going to change like the future of economics so I love stuff like that because it’s not necessarily like hands-on learning but just these big concepts that have never occurred to me where it’s like oh wow like I had never thought in that direction and now I want to learn more oh yeah I love conferences for that math and then taken away and you can deep dive into the suffixes oh yeah is there any other forms of education you found along your path any some a big book reader yeah so yeah so many of the business books I read I’m quite lucky that I retain books really easily so like that’s my form of learning I find recommended tables do you know what the best one ever lately is one called creative selection by Kim consider who used to be a developer for Apple so he was one of the developers that worked on Safari so he’s kind of talking through how you actually make a browser and it’s kind of going through the DOM and like really fascinating and then he ended up being the engineer on the iOS keyboard you know and he’s kind of talking through all of the different interaction patterns that he tried on the way to get in keyboard as we know it so that was like the best book because that sounds like it should be really boring but it’s actually really fascinating nice yeah is there any other books you’d recommend you’ve read it along I mean there’s a lot of the so like the lean product playbook all of the kind of early startup books all of the product management kind of side of things yeah yeah yeah yeah is there any other forms of Education is outside of books do you listen to podcasts or listen to a lot of podcasts my drives to Sydney they’re not necessarily education but my favorite one is called the pitch from gimlet media yeah so basically got a start-up founder pitching real investors and that has been really eye-opening in terms of like I’m a product person so I always thought that it was like the product should stand alone and that’s what people should be believing in yeah but actually there’s this whole other piece to it where it’s actually it’s all about sales and marketing it’s about like what the investors are looking for in a start-up so I think I’ve listened to every single episode of that and really great education for looking at what investors they’re actually gonna do a deep dive on and like how important it is that they really like you as a founder as well yeah learning for other people’s stories as opposed to being you know told here’s a theory yes yeah it’s I find that an easier way to learn as well right yeah that’s not be like biographies but gimlet of just now the podcast but are they doing amazing oh my lord like they have not had a dad yet no no no he’s just keeping tally and they’ve jumped on early as well yeah well now Spotify run them for what like yeah to their credit they yeah yet either like hasn’t changed – you have a negative effect or anything no I mean I think just the money is gonna be better for them lemon radio topia so Roman Meyers is my other favorite guy is there any other people you follow on Twitter you mentioned Twitter before or P blogs that you follow that you’ve people that you think hey if I wanted to get into product management oh why did it yeah there’s quite a few in product management so there’s John Maeda and John Cutler they’re both pretty amazing to follow like my twitter is basically like diversity and inclusion people feminists and product managers very funny attack but they’re actually funnily enough they’re all really related yeah yeah I mean or berry plant Blanche is really amazing to follow on Twitter Cindy Gallup is like you know she’s my absolute Idol I think she’s an incredible woman so she’s worth following – yeah well then call them up in their show nuts as well Oh awesome people can follow them yup for sure yes um last question I’ve got if you had to whine it back and give yourself some advice and a younger version that’s Cheryl what would you what advice would you give so this is probably gonna come off as negative advice but I was really shocked that when I had kids what an impact it had on my career like I always thought like you know kind of growing up with like in the 90s girl power right girls like we can do anything and then you have kids and then you’ve realized that even though I think I can do everything other people don’t and so my career took a massive backwards step when I had kids not through kind of a choice of mine and a second you know a number of years to build back up to the level I was before I had kids and even now I guess you have to make choices based on having kids rather than what you want to do and like that should be really obvious to everybody before we have kids but I never really occurred to me that like I’m like I’ll you know like a year or two you take time out and then you come back and you kind of do what you were doing but I was really surprised how that wasn’t the case and all of my friends I can equally surprise positions where we’re all like didn’t nobody tell us that this would be the way and people do tell you but you don’t realize until you’re in it and I would love to see that change I would love to see women be able to have kids you know 20 years from now and come back in at the level they left at and it not be a thing and they can just do different hours or they can have more flexible working because our brains don’t change just the way we like to work changes so I would love to see that not an issue but I was really surprised that it was so I would just warn myself hey this is gonna happen just kind of be prepared for it yeah after the warning do you think that so to help other people in that same scenario at the moment obviously you can warn them that this is going to happen there any advice you give them I mean I would say if you could stay in part time in the role you’re in even though it would be really hard kind of over that first year I would definitely do that I mean it should be everybody agitating for this like agitating for different ways of working and everything else you had another done necessarily have advised because you know I was probably given the same advice which I ignored because I thought it didn’t apply to me yeah so yeah I guess yeah either just kind of be ready for it to happen and be ready for a slow ramp-up when you come back or you know kind of try and stay in a role at that level for a while and doing it part-time yeah that’s very real it’s a very very real hmm problem and issue still it’s a lack of flexibility on the hiring part into the types of people you hire into your team yeah well I was literally just asked like two years ago when I was going for the role of three years ago because in America and I’d mentioned the kids in my interview and I know you’re not supposed to but my theory is I shouldn’t have to hide the fact that I have kids like it shouldn’t be something that I’m penalized on but I had the the interview ago well what’s gonna happen to the kids if you get this job and I’m like nobody has ever asked my husband that in an interview so why are you asking me like we’ll sort it and why is it my responsibility and that still happens which you know that was what I was really surprised by that that still happens I kind of thought that was back you know 5-10 years ago but it’s it still happens sometimes in a roundabout you know as directors that was oh the conversations happened behind closed doors of like we could give her this role but is she just gonna leave on maternity leave or you know is she gonna have to leave early to pick up the kids and all of that and it’s seen as a negative thing yeah as opposed to the positivity the different experiences that someone like yourself could bring your team or the fact that I get so much work done between in 10:00 at night thank you so much more than I would between you know 8:00 and 10:00 in the morning yeah could not agree more and I think yeah I think as much as people talk about things have changed things are still very slow to change and it hasn’t changed as a whole yeah I think that’s across many different factors but my mom’s included first no first second and experience a house I’ve gone through in the scenario and it’s just it’s a different experience going back in a slow quiet vacuuming hmm very very real problem still yeah and I think you know guys have to be part of the solution here too because women can kick and scream and yell and rant and rave but it does kind of take men who see it like you’ve seen it now and now you can kind of start calling it out when you see it which you know it kind of takes being really aware of it yeah awareness is I guess the first the first stage of journey right I can be honest before people can take action it’s got to become aware of it mm-hmm still slice yeah I’m glad you brought that up it’s a topic that hasn’t been brought up on this podcast yet but it’s a very very very real problems um a very real problem for a reasonable percentage of you know half the population right yeah and this is the problem is like you know so many of the like the top 500 companies have this 40-40-20 diversity targets where they went 40 percent men forty percent women and kind of 20 percent other but at the upper management level they’re not finding the 40 percent women because they’re leaving the workforce because they can’t find you know flexible work or they’re having to go back to square one so you know if companies are serious about these targets to like things need to change I couldn’t agree more I really appreciate you bringing that up it’s great a nice good topic to have on the podcast it’s a good topic to start but actually you know share out there and hopefully more people have become aware of it the more people can actually start for these actions in place to help change things right yeah and you’re a recruiter right so you can be educating companies who think that they need 40 hours bums and seeds actually you don’t yes that’s definitely part of my role right and part of the responsibility I have in the community in trying to educating players in all all employees are at different stages some are great and some are whatever the opposite of great-looking oh they think so yeah I think education is a very real part there and I’ll definitely take that up on this yeah I responsibilities after the birth greater within the magnet mm-hmm thank you.