-I generally prefer to reach out to people who I've had a working relationship with but am not super close with, since mixing my personal life and professional life makes me a little uncomfortable. I have a lot of close friends in tech, but I'd rather reach out to old coworkers or friends of friends.
One person I could potentiall reach out to is someone who used to be a Turing student who worked at Kapost with me. One of my specific questions is about being a woman in tech, and I know she was one of the women who left in kind of a mass-lady-exodus from my company's engineering team. I want to know what about that company was a bad fit for women, and how to evaluate whether or not a company is a good fit for women.
-I plan to reach out after the end of Mod 2
-I will meet up with them however works best for them, either by slack call or buying them coffee
-I will probably reach out on Turing slack, something like,
"Hey Name!
I hope the post-Turing life is treating you well. I'm not sure if you remember me, but we worked together at Kapost and you mentored my good friend Mat while he was in training. I'm getting reading to move out of Support into Front-end development, the attraction being that I can continue solving problems but at a more interesting level, and am wondering about how to evaluate which tech companies have good environments for women.
I'm wondering if you can talk to me about what makes a good engineering team, especially if you're a woman, and how to evaluate whether a company would be a good fit.
Thanks in advance, and let me know if you have any questions for me!
Best,
Allie"
-Building a stronger network: Join Tech Friends in Slack, see if anyone I used to work with has contacts, go to the Women in Tech meetup during intermission, go to the Queer Tech meetup my friend Angie invited me to.