Women in Tech Talk - Alexandra Bendicakova
This year for International's Women's day, we decided to take action and celebrate with an exciting event at our office - the "Women in Tech Talk".
It was the perfect occasion to celebrate International Women's Rights Day and promote gender diversity in the male-dominated IT sector.
We aimed to raise awareness of the challenges women face and provide a safe environment for them to share their inspiring stories, insights, doubts, questions, and experiences.
We were honoured to host three excellent speakers - Alexandra Bendicakova, Catarina Keereman, and Myriam Broeders - each bringing their unique professional perspectives and lessons they learned in their careers.
The event covered a range of fascinating topics, from effective leadership strategies to the importance of social impact in business, and highlighted the urgent need for more gender diversity in the tech industry.
The speakers provided valuable lessons that attendees could take away and learn from, making the Women in Tech Talk a resounding success in promoting gender diversity in the technology sector.
Alexandra Bendicakova is a successful and entrepreneurial consultant who has made a significant impact in the technology industry.
She is part of the dualoop team as a consultant and has a rich background that includes creating a successful startup and managing developers' teams as a CPO and co-founder.
Alexandra is now a product consultant at dualoop, currently helping Oper to scale and deliver the best possible value to their customers.
Alexandra highlighted the overestimation of one's ability to complete a task, with a well-known graph.
We only realize our lack of knowledge about a task when we start working on it, and then we learn and learn until we understand it completely.
A thing that many did not know though is how this graph applies more to men than women:
“Actually, for women, it’s the opposite. We don’t overestimate our abilities and in a lot of cases, we underestimate them with a bit of an imposter syndrome hidden in there. We question whether we are right for the role, right for the task, and the challenge ahead of us. This is something that I’ve been struggling with quite a lot in my life, ever since I can remember, and based on stats and research, I guess that it’s highly likely that there are a lot of people in this room who feel the same way.”
Alexandra then shared her first steps in this field, starting from her playing with Excel as a kid. Since then, she has come a long way and learned the importance of finding a problem worth solving and ensuring that the solution is relevant to oneself and others.
Once introduced to design thinking and creating her own product, Alexandra took the opportunity to learn and grow constantly. With time she gained confidence in her abilities and became more comfortable with taking on new challenges in her career.
Alexandra also shared some valuable pieces of advice that helped her gain more confidence in one of the hardest challenges she encountered: communication with others.
Over-communicate while keeping it short and to the point.
When working remotely, it's easy for messages to get lost, so it's essential to communicate frequently and explicitly. This means communicating even more than what might seem necessary to ensure that everyone is on the same page. However, it's also important to keep communication concise to avoid overwhelming team members with too much information.
Sett realistic expectations and communicate them accordingly
This is crucial for maintaining a healthy work-life balance, avoiding self-sabotage, and preventing burnout. It's essential to establish reasonable deadlines, priorities, and goals to avoid overloading team members with an unrealistic workload.
Maintain a positive environment
This is essential for effective communication conflict resolution, and overall progress. It means creating a culture of open communication, mutual respect, and teamwork.
When team members feel comfortable sharing their thoughts and ideas, it can lead to more innovative and creative solutions. Positive reinforcement and recognition of achievements can also help boost morale and foster a positive work environment.
Alexandra believes that staying passionate and doing what one loves, using that passion for building a product, and training in communication skills are also essential for success.
At dualoop, she found a chance to do just that. Women and men's ratio os close to 50%, and there are ample opportunities to learn, get challenged, and grow!
At the Women in Tech Talk event, Alexandra Bendicakova provided inspiring advice on staying true to one's passion, effective communication, and achieving career goals while also overcoming imposter syndrome.
Her perspectives will serve as an inspiration for women in tech and highlight the urgent need for more gender diversity in the industry: these barriers are being broken in many professional fields and in product management too, as an instance, she brought her happy experience at dualoop.
