Would you like the chance to have a mentoring session with a VP, Director or other influential leader from Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Rent The Runway, Zynga, Textio and many others? ? I did! So I scheduled time with these awesome people: ) Guess what? They did not tell me to write cleaner code or design more elegant architecture! Instead they shared with me their "career acumen" secrets, things they wished they had learned at school, but instead have had to learn the hard way. In this book, you will hear these leaders' secrets around: - Finding and using your superpowers , the qualities that make you completely unique and memorable - A script for how to negotiate your salary (in a non-aggressive way) and influence your managers and peers from day one - How to do that infamous "networking" thing everyone talks about, especially if you're not a networking event kind of person - How to have professional presence that sets you apart from everyone else - How to hit the ground running in the first 100 days and be the "rockstar" employee everyone talks about and wishes they could hire more of I've had all kinds of adventures during my 10 years of engineering at Microsoft but my absolute favorite thing has been building relationships, speaking to, and mentoring people (both in and out of the tech industry) on how to achieve their career goals while still being themselves. When I interviewed 25 tech leaders for advice on the questions I get over and over, I wanted to share it with more than just my mentees. This book is full of practical, do-today things as well as "scripts" and email templates that we have all actually used. Read the book and let's talk. I love reaching and meeting new people and you can now consider me "in your network" and I hope I can do the same for you. My best always, Dona
About the Author: Dona lives on the cutting edge of technology, societal movement and pictures of cats. She is an engineering manager at Microsoft, author of 4 books, fashion blogger at FibSeq.Style, an aspiring fashion designer and an advocate for diversifying talent in the tech industry. Her 13 years of software development experience has centered around building products that are used by more than a billion people, starting from Oracle databases to multiple versions of Windows and currently, holograms for Microsoft HoloLens. For reals. Her leadership for diversity in hiring and retention is having worldwide impact. She spends several months every year leading technical roadshows, hackathons, and advising universities and students in U.S., Canada, Mexico, Spain, France, U.K., Australia and Argentina. She has interviewed over 700 people, hired over 200 and mentors around 50 at any given time. She has been requested by Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Oxford, Cambridge, and many more engineering and business schools and large organizations such as Grace Hopper, WISE and Tapia to keynote and speak at various conferences and events. YOU HAD ME AT 'HELLO, WORLD' is a culmination of the stories she, her mentors and role models share with the students and new hires who approach them for career advice. Preciously, Dona was the published author of three novels HOW TO SALSA IN A SARI, SHRINK TO FIT and HAUTE DATE all from Harper Collins' Kimani Tru line. She lives in Seattle with her *really* patient husband and a very bossy grey tabby named Ash.