Gayle Laakmann McDowell | Technology Woman

When I was at Google, I referred a number of candidates, and ran a little (informal) experiment. How well could people judge their performance? After each candidate completed their interview, I’d ask them how they did. Then, I’d look up their actual performance. And guess what? There was no correlation. None. Zip. Zero. Zilch. Why [...]

Forbes recently posted an article by me called “10 Secrets to Getting a Job at Apple, Google, or Microsoft.” Here are three of my favorites: Start Something: Launching a small tech company, or just a project, can demonstrate virtually everything a tech firm wants to see: field expertise, passion for technology, initiative, leadership and creativity. [...]

Every election day, people love to proclaim their frustration with this dirty-awful-horrible two party system, and insist that what we really need is a multi-party system.   And every election day, they’re dead wrong. Let’s take the following hypothetical election with candidates A, B and C.  30% of the population votes for A, 30% for B, and [...]

Michale Arrington unleashed a fury of attacks – pro-women, anti-women, pro-Arrington, anti-Arrington – this week with his post “Too few women in tech? Stop blaming the men. Or at least stop blaming me.”  The assumption, of course, is that you should blame the women. The gist of Arrington’s post is this: Stop blaming us for [...]

Years ago, rumors used to circulate about Microsoft interviews.  They were the hot, new company that everyone wanted to work.  With envy came the urban myths.  These rumors have since been transfered to Google, and will surely be transfered to some new company in due time. Bloggers – always desperate for links and traffic – [...]

Having just finished up my first year in Wharton’s MBA program, I often hear the question, “is an MBA worth it?” It’s a tough choice: $100k or so in tuition and other expenses, plus the lost salary, plus the loss in possible promotions. With TechCrunch having just posted an article on this matter, I thought I’d [...]

My elderly (childhood) nanny just bought a pre-paid cell phone and, naturally, I needed to help her set it up and teach her how to use it.  The phone was a great deal, she told me – just $99 for a year of free US and international calling! Cheapest phone plan ever, right?  This is [...]

What have you learned in the past year?  Jill Foster of WomenGrowBusiness.com asked me this question and posted my response here: 3 Business Ideas: Experiment Often, Carefully, and Singly.  You can read it there or below where I’ve re-posted it. —— I started CareerCup to solve one part of software engineering interviews: preparation. Candidates who [...]

Many services are structured as follows: Person A pays Person B for a task or item, and the “finder” or “connector” service takes a cut. It’s a wonderful business model – someone else is doing all the “real” work, and you get a bit off the top. The problem is that users are wise to [...]

If you haven’t checked out PeopleOfWalmart yet, you’re in for a treat. Pages of entertainment from America’s classiest individuals (yes, mother of mullet-baby, I’m speaking to you). One of my favorite websites just got a little bit better: it just launched EmptySpaceAds! Move your mouse to the margins of the page and you’ll see the [...]