Kristen M Thayer

I forgot to say, she’s in mechanical engineering!
#WomenInSTEM

EM skills irl:

Me, negotiating with my 7yo about how many of pages she has to complete tonight:

"Why don't you finish one page and see how long it takes, and we'll circle back on our total estimate at that time"

My archived tabs are still there, and I have a workaround with creating custom filters anyway... I can live with it :-)

I mean, it SUCKS that this is the user experience, and I have strong feelings about it, but I can live with it

Brb gotta go click some buttons

This feels a lot like the emails I get from my local Parks and Rec about billing that look like phishing attempts... emails don't match, domains are super weird, like at least 5 things they covered in my work training, thank you very much

This is now my most popular post... fourteen-year-old me would feel so proud

I had an English teacher who insisted that there should be a comma after every use of the word "and," no exceptions (super bad explanation of the Oxford comma)

I proceeded to write an essay full of phrases like "my friend and, I had to go to the store," to prove how wrong she was.

I was fourteen.

Hugs to everyone working too hard, on too much, with too little kindness and understanding around you. We all deserve better.

I have been describing my current company as a place where we work reasonable hours, the product is profitable, and people are kind to work with, and people keep responding variations of awe and disbelief.

Which says a lot about where the tech industry is right now, I guess :-(

My kids did this during the pandemic! For a while!!!

The post brought to you by my late-night search for "bunk bed curtains" hoping that this is a real thing that exists, that will resolve the question of how much light should be in the room

The pottery barn fantasy of what your kids' room will look like, compared to the fever-dream reality of what you *actually* negotiate with your kids to make them happy inhabitants of their room...

This is my constant refrain as an eng manager!!

I'm not sure which of these I would pick tbh

What if the real vulnerability all along was NPM? 😜

Love this thread. I spend a lot of time thinking about all the tiny unseen things in systems that we take for granted, and that make them better. When I am sitting in a manager role, I try to notice and reward them; when I'm in a professor role, I try to help students think more deeply about them.

This is the way!!

These are so cool!

Observation while working from coffee shops this week: Ballard seems to be very invested in making it difficult to access bathrooms.

Right?!?!

I just saw "AI-infused" as a descriptor and was like... sir, AI is not essential oils, this is a very goofy marketing term, 2/10

My spouse thinks we could have pulled off "Cam's Camshafts"

In our quest to be The World's Nerdiest Family (TM), we just sang "Cookie Cat" at our neighborhood's Block Party karaoke (at the request of my older kid).

I'm happy to report that the 3 people who recognized it were delighted.

Finally a challenge I KNOW I can succeed at!!!

Clever

See also "passion"

I could live with never seeing words like "unrelenting," "daring," "fearless" in job descriptions ever again.

Just let work be work, and let people go home and unplug!

AI shifting the future of work 🙃

Please note: *noticing* this isn't the same as *endorsing* it, nor does it mean it will age well (hi trendy fashion decisions from 10+ years ago!)

But in terms of power, investment, and how the needle is moving, this is how I feel atm.

two women standing next to each other with one saying " but what you don t know is that that sweater is not just blue Alt: The Devil Wears Prada clip where Miranda Priestly explains how the fashion industry starts with a cerulean trend that eventually trickles down to Andy's pedestrian blue sweater. This is the gif for the line "but what you don t know is that that sweater is not just blue, it's not turquoise, it's not lapis, it's actually cerulean"

Watching the tech industry's AI push (and surrounding debates) feels a lot like watching the cerulean sweater moment in The Devil Wears Prada:

A small group of people at the top decide this *is* happening, the question is how it will trickle down to the "regular sweater" version for others.