Gayle Laakmann McDowell | Technology Woman

Since discovering the wonder of outsourcing nine months ago, in October 2008, I’ve outsourced approximately 300 hours. That’s 300 hours that I got to spend reading or playing (or working…) while various assistants re-formatted an e-book, researched traffic stats for competing sites, scheduled apartment visits, got price quotes for vacation rentals, designed posters for an [...]

The Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that schools cannot strip search students, with Clarence Thomas as the lone dissenter. In the case, a 13 year old was accused of having ibuprofen by an ex-friend. Though the school never searched her locker or desk, they strip searched the girl. For ibuprofen. Redding says she was then asked [...]

In an upsetting – but expected ruling – the CA Supreme Court voted to uphold Proposition 8, which reads: Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California. Wording like this would have been torn to shreds by my high school debate team (which once, rather infamously, defined Huckleberry Finn, in [...]

A guest blog post I wrote for Women Grow Business: Working for Microsoft, Google and Apple, I not only became a better engineer – I became a better entrepreneur. Their successes and failures, encapsulated in these five lessons, provided me with invaluable instruction in how to build a company and effectively compete. #1. Build a [...]

Good news bloggers and website owners!  CareerCup has just launched its new affiliate program.  CareerCup’s affiliate programs allows website owners to post a link / ad for CareerCup’s interview guide and, in return, collect some of the revenue from any sale.  Best of all, it’s super-easy to use! We offer two designs: Horizontal (example) and Vertical [...]

Mike Galanos wrote an opinion piece for the CNN asserting that Plan B is risky for 17 year olds. His argument, however, doesn’t hold water. Let’s take a look at it, bit by bit: Think of a 17-year-old girl. Most of the time she’s a high school senior, still living at home with Mom and [...]

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve started outsourcing. A lot. Most of the outsourcing goes to an (awesome) assistant in the Philippines, who does everything from online research to document editing. She’s great, and she’s quite literally changed my approach to working. Although most people are merely intrigued by my hiring a remote assistant, a surprising [...]

I often debate as to whether this blog should be strictly tech-based, but then I read these articles that, well, get to me. To change the statistic that 25% of women are sexually assaulted, people need to start talking about it. Yesterday, the Supreme Court heard argument on a case where a 13 year old [...]

Last weekend marked my one year anniversary of leaving Google. So, with that said, here’s my one year re-cap! What have I been doing? EmptySpaceAds: I joined EmptySpaceAds as its VP of Engineering, where I helped to relaunch our product. We’ve created a brand new (and pretty fantastic, if you ask me) way of showing [...]

While I can’t exactly call myself an avid photographer – as I have zero skill in this art form – I do have a lot of photo albums. I call it the “quantity over quality approach.” Unfortunately, when I want to look up, say, pictures from my Microsoft internship in 2003, it’s a mess. Picasa [...]