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Women engineers often face workplace and career challenges that their male colleagues dont because they remain a minority in the profession: Depending on how you count, women make up just 13% to 25% of engineering jobs. That inequity leads to a power imbalance, which can lead to toxic working environments.

One of the more infamous and egregious examples is Susan Fowlers experience at Uber. In a blog post in February 2017, she described her boss coming on to her in a company chat channel on her first day on the job. She later wrote a book, Whistleblower, that described her time at the company in detail.

Fowlers ordeal cast a spotlight on the harassment women engineers have to deal with in the workplace. In a profession that tends to be male-dominated, behavior ranges from blatant examples, like what happened to Fowler, to ongoing daily microaggressions.

Four female engineers spoke with me about their challenges:

Its worth noting that Fowler was also an SRE who worked on the same team as Medina (who was later part of a $10 million discrimination lawsuit against Uber). It shows just how small of a world we are talking about. While not everyone faced that level of harassment, they each described daily challenges, some of which wore them down. But they also showed a strong determination to overcome whatever obstacles came their way.

One of the primary issues these women faced throughout their careers is a feeling of isolation due to their underrepresentation. They say that can sometimes lead to self-doubt and an inkling that you dont belong that can be difficult to overcome. Medina says that there have been times when, intentionally or not, male engineers made her feel unwelcome.

One part that was really hard for me was those microaggressions on a daily basis, and that affects your work ethic, wanting to show up, wanting to try your best. And not only does that damage your own self-esteem, but your esteem [in terms of] growing as an engineer, Medina explained.

Roa says that isolation can lead to impostor syndrome. Thats why its so important to have more women in these roles: to serve as mentors, role models and peers.

One barrier for us related to being the only woman in the room is that [it can lead to] impostor syndrome because it is common when you are the only woman or one of few, it can be really challenging for us. So we need to gain confidence, and in these cases, it is very important to have role models and leadership that includes women, Roa said.

Chong agrees it is essential to know that others have been in the same position and found a way through.

The fact that people talk authentically about their own jobs and challenges and how theyve overcome that, thats been really helpful for me to continue seeing myself in the tech industry, she said. There have been points where Ive questioned whether I should leave, but then having that support around you to have people to talk to you personally and see as examples, I think it has really helped me.

Butow described being interviewed for an article early in her career after she won an award for a mobile application she wrote. When the article was published, she was aghast to discover it had been headlined, Not just another pretty face

I was like, thats the title?! I was so excited to share the article with my mom, and then I wasnt. I spent so much time writing the code and obviously my face had nothing to do with it. So theres just little things like that where people call it a paper cut or something like that, but its just lots of little microaggressions.

In spite of all that, a common thread among these women was a strong desire to show that they have the technical skill to get past these moments of doubt to thrive in their professions.

Butow said she has been battling these kinds of misperceptions since she was a teenager but never let it stop her. I just tried to not let it bother me, but mostly because I also have a background in skateboarding. Its the same thing, right? You go to a skate park and people would say, Oh, can you even do a trick? and I was like, Watch me. You know, I [would] just do it. So a lot of that happens in lots of different types of places in the world and you just have to, I dont know, I just always push through, like Im just going to do it anyway.

Chong says she doesnt give in to discouraging feelings, adding that having other women to talk to helped push her through those times.

As much as I like to persevere and I dont like giving up, actually there have been points where I considered quitting, but having visibility into other peoples experiences, knowing that youre not the only one whos experienced that, and seeing that theyve found better environments for themselves and that they eventually worked through it, and having those people tell you that they believe in you, that probably stopped me from leaving when I [might] have otherwise, she said.

Chongs experience is not unique, but the more diverse your teams are, the more people who come from underrepresented groups can support one another. Butow recruited her at one point, and she says that was a huge moment for her.

I think that there is a network effect where we know other women and we try to bring them in and we expand on that. So we can kind of create the change or we feel the change we want to see, and we get to make our situation more comfortable, Chong said.

Medina says that she is motivated to help bring Latinx and Black people into tech, with a focus on attracting girls and young women. She has worked with a group called Technolachicas, which produced a series of commercials with the Televisa Foundation. They filmed six videos, three in English and three in Spanish, with the goal of showing young girls how to pursue a STEM career.

Each commercial talks about how we got our career started with an audience persona of a girl younger than 18, an adult influencer and a parent people that are really crucial to the development of anyone under 18, she said. How is it that these people can actually empower someone to look at STEM and to pursue a career in STEM?

Butow says its about lifting people up. What were trying to do is sharing our story and hoping to inspire other women. Its super important to have those role models. Theres a lot of research that shows that thats actually the most important thing is just visibility of role models that you can relate to, she said.

The ultimate goal? Having enough support in the workplace that theyre able to concentrate on being the best engineers they can be without all of the obstruction.

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4 women in engineering discuss harassment, isolation and perseverence - TechCrunch

HUNTSVILLE, Ala.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Today, QuantiTech, with its subsidiaries Millennium Engineering and Integration, Dynamic Concepts, and System Engineering Group, announced a company rebrand as Axient. The new brand reflects the combined capabilities of the four companies and solidifies the work over the past year to integrate their respective domain expertise to form a new entity that brings unique and differentiated capabilities to the marketplace. Axient also announced a reorganization of their operations to better deliver integrated solutions, services, and products to their customers.

Axient advances defense and civilian missions from aerospace to cyberspace with multi-domain test and analysis, mission engineering and operations, digital engineering, and advanced technologies. With the four companies now aligned as Axient, the new brand is uniquely positioned to deliver a broad spectrum of purpose-built solutions that enable defense and civilian agencies to rise to every challenge.

The Axient brand affirms our commitment to accelerate what is possible through innovation that empowers customers to move at the speed their mission requires, said Patrick Murphy, President and CEO, Axient. Each of our acquisitions has expanded and strengthened our capabilities and depth of talent, while unlocking new market opportunities. And most remarkable to me is how aligned the combined global workforce, which now exceeds 2,000 employees, is in culture, priorities, and mission focus.

To better serve its customer markets throughout the U.S. with depth and capability, Axient is structuring its services, solutions, and workforce under five business segments. The segments and leadership are: Integrated Force Systems led by Reese Hauenstein, Senior Vice President; Defense Systems led by Larry Foor, Senior Vice President; National Security Space Systems led by Dan Benjamin, Senior Vice President; and Civil Air and Space Systems led by Jon Sharpe, Senior Vice President. Joe Clayton, Senior Vice President, will continue to lead Axients Dynamic Concepts subsidiary as its Advanced Technology segment.

Axient is backed by Sagewind Capital, a New York-based private equity firm with a strong record of supporting government services companies. With the backing of Sagewind Capital, Axient will continue to add critical capabilities and depth through organic growth and acquisitions in support of customer missions.

ABOUT AXIENT

Axient advances defense and civilian missions from aerospace to cyberspace with multi-domain test and analysis, mission engineering and operations, and advanced technologies. We partner with our customers to identify and analyze their most important challenges and design solutions that turn challenges into breakthroughs to accelerate assured performance. With extensive domain expertise in defense and aerospace, we rapidly develop mission-enabling technologies that allow customers to move at mission speed. To learn more about how Axient can accelerate possible for your organization, visit http://www.axientcorp.com. We can also be found on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram.

Continued here:

QuantiTech, Millennium Engineering Rebrand As Axient; Reorganize To Better Deliver Mission-Advancing Solutions To Customers - Business Wire

YourBase CTO John Ewart (left), and CEO Yves Junquiera. (YourBase Photo)

New funding:Seattle startup YourBase landed a $5 million seed round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. The 3-year-old company sells software that helps developers run tests on their codebase. Making changes to code and then testing to make sure there is no regression can be time-consuming, particularly with various languages, frameworks, and architectures. YourBase aims to shorten test times and release cycles.

How it works: The startup uses its Code Dependency Graph that automates the test selection processes for large, complex databases. Giants such as Facebook and Google build their own internal tools to do this type of testing; YourBase wants to serve everyone else. The 12-person company says it can save developers about 90 hours of testing time per month.

YourBase has more than a dozen customers in its private beta, including some public companies.

Founders: YourBase is led by CEO Yves Junqueira and CTO John Ewart. Junqueira spent nearly a decade at Google as a site reliability engineering leader. Ewart was previously a senior engineer at Amazon.

Other backers: Unusual Ventures and Fathom Capital joined Lightseed for the seed round.

Software testing acceleration is a $12 billion market, yet testing on large codebases remains one of the biggest challenges developers face today, Lightspeed Partner Raviraj Jain said in a statement. If youre not a Google or Microsoft, testing and making changes to software can be a painstakingly slow and inefficient task. Thats what drew us to YourBase.

Developer productivity: Other startups in Seattle aiming to make life easier for software engineers include Uplevel and Temporal.

Excerpt from:

Ex-Google and Amazon engineers raise $5M to help developers test and fix software bugs - GeekWire

TimberQuest employs cross-laminated timber to create prefabricated wall and roof panels offsite that are erected and installed at school construction sites, enabling buildings to be constructed in significantly shorter timeframes. The structures are pre-checked and approved by California's Division of the State Architect (DSA), so they can be used for any public school or community college project in California, reducing permitting time from six months to a single day. Most buildings can be constructed in 10 weeks over a summer break.

Here is a link to a "flythrough" video rendering of a TimberQuest classroom.

In addition to expedited project completion, TimberQuest buildings offer a healthy and eco-friendly environment. Their beautiful interiors feature the warmth and airiness of a tall wood ceiling, extensive natural lighting and an openness that contrasts with the sterile, box-like modular buildings often seen on many school campuses. TimberQuest structures are high-quality and permanentwith life expectancies of 50 years or morewith more usable floor space than traditional modular buildings. Yet, they can be delivered quickly, thanks to the pre-approved design as well as rapid factory fabrication and onsite erection, offering public and private schools the best of all worlds.

"The partnership between XL Construction, Aedis and Daedalus enables us to think holistically to solve design, permitting, procurement, prefabrication and installation issues," said Steve Winslow, SVP, XL Construction. "TimberQuest provides a superior environment for students to learn and teachers to teach."

"There are three ancient Roman principles expressed in a true piece of architecture: strength, practicality and beauty. This collaboration epitomizes the integration of these precepts into a flexible, durable, economical and environmentally responsible solution that addresses most schools' needs," said John Diffenderfer, president, Aedis Architects.

"Daedalus is excited to be a part of this collaboration which advances mass timber construction by developing a school buildings "kit-of-parts" for over-the-counter permitting," said Doug Robertson, president, Daedalus Structural Engineering. "By integrating cross-laminated timber panels with insulation, architectural finishes and other buildings systems in shop fabrication, we are able to deliver preassembled wall and roof panels to any school site for immediate erection and completion of sustainable, attractive and durable public school classroom buildings in record time."

TimberQuest Chosen by Sacred Heart Schools, Atherton for Building for Fall 2021 Session

Sacred Heart Schools, Atherton (SHS) in Atherton, Calif. is part of the Network of Sacred Heart Schools, a worldwide operation with schools in over 44 countries and a tradition of excellence dating back to its founding in Paris in the 1800s. Situated on a 63-acre campus, the institution provides preschool grade 12 programs that serve more than 800 families. With increased demand for space and calls for less capacity in lower grade classrooms due to social distancing requirements; the school saw an urgent need to expand its classroom space for its youngest students.

The project was awarded April 1, with completion projected by August 31 to be ready for the fall term. After reviewing TimberQuest's many benefits, SHS agreed to move forward on the new building which will serve its kindergarten students who previously shared a building with preschoolers.

"In line with the strategic growth of our campus, we were ready to expand our kindergarten space; we needed to both break ground and have construction complete during summer break," said Richard Dioli, SHS director of schools. "Another must was choosing a company that shared our commitment to sustainability. We worked with XL Construction previously, so it was natural for us to reach out to them for ideasand the TimberQuest concept had immediate appeal."

"Two of the things we liked most about the TimberQuest classroom design is the 'daylighting' created by the structure's large windows combined with the exposed wood interior that makes the classroom very pleasant and appealing," said Michael Dwyer, SHS director of operations. "The building's overall energy efficiency supports our sustainability philosophy and stands as a shining example of these values we teach to our students."

Building a Better School Environment Panel-by-Panel

The basic building block of TimberQuest construction is precision-machined, cross-laminated timber (CLT) that is available in large format structural slabs. It is strong, yet lightweight, fire resistant and leaves these structures with rich exposed wood finishes.

"Where one may think building with wood is bad for the environment, the opposite is true," said Matt Larson, preconstruction director, XL Construction. "Mass Timber construction, including the TimberQuest approach, supports responsible forest management, including the reduction of wildfires and protection of biodiversity. It also promotes rural economic development by expanding the market for sustainable forest products."

The carbon benefit of timber construction is well documented and has a two-fold benefit. First, utilization of a wood structure in lieu of steel or concrete has a significantly lower embodied carbon footprint, reducing the carbon footprint due to construction by 40-60%. Second, wood effectively sequesters carbon within the timber structure, storing it for the life of the structure and any subsequent reuse.

TimberQuest buildings are available in three- to nine-classroom sizes, between 3,000 and 9,000 square feet. A total of nine interior layouts are included in the precheck design, including standard classroom, large classroom, breakout space, office / conference, science, kindergarten and three restroom configurations. The all-electric design is also very efficient, utilizing heat pump technology to exceed California's Title 24 energy usage standards by between 35% and 60%. In addition to not relying on gas availability, TimberQuest buildings take full advantage of renewable energy resources.

For more information about TimberQuest, visit http://www.timber-quest.com or contact Matt Larson, XL Construction, (408) 240-6483, [emailprotected].

About XL Construction

XL Construction is a leading general contractor whose mission is to "build to improve lives." XL partners with today's leaders in life sciences, advanced technology, corporate office, civic, healthcare and education to create places that make its communities better. The company's focus and passion for team success has earned it a network of great partners and a reputation for putting people first. XL Construction is consistently ranked among the top general contractors in Northern California. In 2020, the company was named ENR California's Top General Contractor of 2020 and the #1 Best Place to Work in the Bay Area.

About Daedalus Structural Engineering

Daedalus is a structural engineering firm located in the heart of Silicon Valley with over 38 years of experience. We provide a full range of structural engineering services including seismic evaluation and retrofit design, civic, K-12 and higher education, corporate and custom residential projects with growing expertise in mass timber construction. At Daedalus, we believe that the structure provides an opportunity to expand and help shape the finished architecture and building envelope. Dedicated to the collaborative design process, we consistently strive to deliver engineering excellence, ingenuity, the best possible design aesthetics, cost control and the highest level of service on every project.

About Aedis Architects

Aedis is a Northern California based, full service architectural firm, whose mission is to create highly effective learning environments for California students and teachers. For more than six decades, the firm has helped public and private educational clients transform their schools into flexible, collaborative, healthy and sustainable environments that optimize learning and teaching. The use of Mass Timber is featured prominently in the firm's portfolio. From beautiful, natural and biophilic educational spaces that enrich student and faculty lives, to 'tall timber,' multi-family residential structures that help solve the housing crisis, each Mass Timber project addresses climate change and provides healthy environments for the occupants.

TimberQuest is a trademark of XL Construction. All other trade names are the property of their respective owners.

SOURCE XL Construction Corporation

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XL Construction, Aedis Architects and Daedalus Structural Engineering Partner to Develop New TimberQuest School Construction Product - PRNewswire

Students and teachers with interests in robotics and mechanical engineering from over 20 area middle and high schools enjoyed a first-hand look at displays containing some impressive hardware and projects at last weeks Dearborn Heights/Lawrence Technological University Robotics & Mechanical Engineering Fest. The Citys first-ever event of this type was held recently on the grounds of the Dearborn Heights HYPE Athletics Center.

A Lawrence Tech University professor poses with Nadia Fadel Bazzi.

Joining the students and teachers were LTU students and faculty, who were on-hand to meet with the students and answer questions about the numerous displays, which included robots in use by the University, as well as several motorsport vehicles that have been designed, built and raced by its engineering students.

The event was the brainchild of Dearborn Heights Mayor Bill Bazzi and Dr. Badih Jawad, Lawrence Technological Universitys Mechanical, Robotics, and Industrial Engineering Department Chair & Professor and supported by several LTU College of Engineering Faculty Members. It was spectacular to host the first Dearborn Heights Robotics & Mechanical Engineering Fest, Bazzi said. I was delighted to see LTU bring its resources to Dearborn Heights and put them on display for our areas students. We are grateful for the partnership with Dr. Jawad and his colleagues at LTUs College of Engineering who played such an instrumental role in its success. Coming from the engineering profession myself, it gave me great pleasure to help promote all the exciting possibilities this profession offers with our young students. LTU is one of the nations premier engineering schools, so the students who attended this event got a first-hand look at projects that are being designed and built by the best of the best. I am also grateful to Hype Athletics for sharing its facilities with us, for the Crestwood High School Robotics Team for bringing their robots to display, and once again, to the students who represent Crestwoods National Honors Society for their help. I am also grateful to our friends at the Dearborn Heights Target store their display, which included custom baskets with mini drones, gift cards, and other summer gifts that were raffled off. It was also great to see some friends from the U.S. Navy and the Army National Guard who brought a hummer to display and engage the students. All-in-all, it was a great event!

Lawrence Tech students work on their car.

Source: City of Dearborn Heights

Target employees were on hand at Hype Athletics during the event.

Originally posted here:

Lawrence Technological University Robotics and Mechanical Engineering Fest draws large crowd - Dearborn Press and Guide