Mums in Tech – feat. Atty Cronin, front-end developer and founder of She Techs

We got the chance to speak with Atty Cronin, a front-end developer and founder of She Techs, a clothing brand for women in tech.

The purpose of our 'MotherBoard’ content series is to highlight incredible working mums within tech & data, as well as individuals and businesses that are supportive and progressive within their approach to creating more inclusive tech & data teams for women.

Amber @ MotherBoard: Can you please introduce yourself, your role and why you feel supporting mums working within tech & data is so important?

Atty: I’m Atty. I’ve worked as a frontend developer for 5 years and have been in web development for nearly 20 years. My experience of working in tech has been extremely varied. I’ve worked on large corporate projects, as well as smaller boutique businesses within the UK. I also founded She Techs, a clothing brand for women in tech. The products are made sustainably and are a mixture of humour, tech stuff and female empowerment. We also do bags, joggers, and hoodies! I started out in travel reservations and then moved into IT and web development. I was employed as a web developer for a year until I became pregnant for the first time.

Supporting mums is so important and needs more attention. When I left to have my daughter, my then-boss told me during my appraisal that he wouldn’t have hired me for the job I was doing because I didn’t know JavaScript.  I’d been hired with HTML, CSS and to act as a communications bridge between the developers and magazine publishing department. I got the job because of my interest in tech and ability to code web pages but the key decider was my ability to communicate and understand the relationship between the departments.

So, I was 6 months pregnant, and I cried in the appraisal. My confidence was so knocked that for 6 years I thought I wasn’t good enough and should stop being a developer. Imposter syndrome doesn’t even begin to describe it - I was so uncertain of my skills and was frightened of learning JavaScript - it felt like a massive hurdle and my heart wasn’t in it. It wasn’t just that appraisal, I had postpartum depression, although I didn’t realise, so I didn’t feel strong enough and rejected what I’d already done.

It’s such a shame because I loved and still love coding. I’m so lucky that I told my husband how my confidence was so low. He supported me and said he knew I was a great developer, because I talked about how much I liked coding and, making websites, but I was just having a hard time. I love JavaScript, now!

Amber @ MotherBoard: What support do you think would be beneficial for mums and women working in tech?

Atty: I started web development because I saw my future self with a laptop and children running around. I knew I wanted flexibility because I’d seen my mum do the same. I never would have said I was the ‘type’ that would naturally take up a career in web development, but I loved computers, coding and it’s been an amazing skill to learn.

Tech is often billed as for boys and men. But is surprising to me when the role is essentially problem-solving and making things. Definitely not gender-specific! So where has this story come from?

Women and girls receive messages throughout their lives that tech is not for them, or if it is, you must be cool and funky and work alone in a team of men. It’s hard to walk into a room and say with confidence - I belong.

Leaving work and having children (or becoming a carer by another path) means that your priorities shift. Coming back into a workplace or environment that feels so far away from the recent experience of having children, looking after a baby or child, requires a lot of strength. I felt like I was two people - ‘before' me and ‘after’ me. And the two have taken a very long time to reconcile with each other.

Women and girls often struggle with confidence and would benefit from workplaces which provide understanding and support. Many do, of course, but it’s even now an uphill struggle to ask for part-time work or very flexible hours.

We need more women, girls, mothers, and carers in tech and data for the same reason that we need more of everyone. We need people to solve the problems that affect every aspect of our lives. Not a subset represented by a narrowly selected slice of society.

Amber @ MotherBoard: How have you managed to build a successful career, whilst also embarking on motherhood and what challenges have you faced in finding a balance?

Atty: My career is like a rocky shore. Ups, downs, ins, outs. I am very proud of my career in web development and as a business owner. I have built a great network and I am very resilient! But there have been a million job interviews and challenges along the way.

The main challenges I have had are: not wanting to leave the children, having to prove that I am a good developer, to belong, and making the decision to leave jobs when the stress was too much to take.

But another massive part that comes with this is the shame of not being able to cope. Finding it hard to keep on always asking for part-time and flexible hours while dealing with PPD, possible neurodiversity, and feeling like I would mess something up at least once a day. Which resulted in me being WAY too hard on myself.

Amber @ MotherBoard: What do you think businesses need to do to support mums working in tech & data better?

Atty: Make a culture of flexible and part-time working the norm and have more returner programs. I think companies need to understand that women (and everyone) returning to work after a break will be coming from a huge variety of experiences and back-to-work programmes should be flexible and supportive.

Understand the benefits of inclusive hiring across the board. And if businesses are looking to hire more mums, perhaps they could consider term-time only roles.

Amber @ MotherBoard: What do you think the government needs to do to make it easier for mums to balance a career and parenting?

Atty: Affordable, top-quality childcare. We shouldn’t have to compromise on the level of care available for our children and we should be paying childcare providers properly. On the education front, we as a country should promote and run more women-led computing sessions in schools.

Amber @ MotherBoard: Do you have any final words of advice to our readers about balancing being a mum and having a successful career?

Atty: Please just give yourself a massive break. You are only one person, and you are allowed to be human!