Women in Tech Hampshire - November Event

Women driving success in software teams 

Our last Women in Tech Hampshire (WiTH) meet-up of 2024 was another inspiring event, discussing what it takes to build a successful and diverse software team. The conversation explored what it’s like to be a woman heading up a software team and building a team with the right dynamic. We were joined by two amazing women from Netwrix Corporation, a global company making cybersecurity accessible and effective for organisations. 

First, Helen Randall, Director of R&D at Netwrix, who describes herself as a ‘people first’ leader. Helen started out as a Graduate Analyst Programmer in 1996, and has worked her way through the full stack of software engineering roles, from programming to development to heading up software teams based around the world. 

Alongside Helen, was Laura Suter, newly appointed (as of September 2024) Software Development Manager at Netwrix. Laura’s impressive career has taken her from Software Design Engineer in South Africa in the early ‘90s, through senior and management development roles. Before joining the team at Netwrix, Laura spent thirteen years in software development at Informatica Systems. 

Both Helen and Laura have a wealth of experience spanning over 25 years each, have taken career breaks for caregiving when they started families, and hold high-level senior roles in the tech industry. We were excited to find out more about our panellists, the challenges they’ve faced as women in tech, and how to build diverse, inclusive software teams. 

Experience and leadership style 

Any tech manager comes to their role with learned experience, which ultimately influences their management style and the dynamic within their teams. We were keen to find out more about both Helen and Laura’s experiences as women working in tech, and whether that has shaped their approach to leadership. 

Helen graduated in 1996 and has spent almost 30 years working in development roles. This includes 20 years of hands-on experience, getting to know the industry and identifying what needs to change. She describes having worked for bosses who “said they never hired – and, in some cases, said they would never hire – a woman”, and that kind of environment made her feel she needed to work twice as hard as male colleagues to prove herself. She also said that the male-dominated environment, and the attitudes of managers, meant that women in management positions felt that they had to be aggressive and domineering to be a leader in technology and earn respect from their peers. These experiences helped to shape Helen’s management style, and she knew that she didn’t want to be that kind of leader. Instead, she was driven to be an empathetic and considerate manager, and create a different environment in contrast to the tech world she had worked within.  

Laura’s earliest experiences in tech were different. In South Africa, her Computer Science course at school had a 50/50 split between male and female students, and she wasn’t aware that computer science was a male-dominated industry at first. After starting in a demanding IT role at a small start-up business, which was often stressful with tight deadlines, she quickly moved into a leadership position. Prior to moving to the UK, Laura worked for four years in senior roles in high-pressure start-up/scale-up environments, giving her vast experience across the industry and learning to work in a demanding and frantic way. Personal circumstances forced her to take a step back and realise that there’s more to life than work, and this helped her to develop a more empathic style of leadership. She says that the people who have shaped her as a manager are the ones who treated her and her colleagues as people and not as a resource. She says: “Management is all about facilitating growth for others and for myself. Being open-minded and creating a safe space for team to develop has helped me develop myself as a manager.”

Now Helen and Laura work together and share similar approaches to leadership. When Helen was in the process of interviewing Laura, she asked her Lead Architect whether they thought that Laura being too similar to Helen herself would be an issue, but their similarities have proven to be a benefit. They share similar ideas and agree on a lot of things both at work and outside of it. And when they do disagree, they have mutual trust and respect. Both agree that it’s so important that women in leadership positions uplift each other and work together when there aren’t so many of them. Laura already feels a fantastic dynamic between them, explaining that she is sharing things with Helen that she’s never felt able to share with other managers, thanks to the open and honest environment that Helen has cultivated. 

Building and developing teams 

As an experienced leader, Helen knows what she wants in her team to deliver the best results. In 2024, she brought in eight new employees to build out a brand-new team. This is particularly challenging when, as a leader, you’re coming into a company that already has established teams and dynamics, often people who have been around a long time and are comfortable in their roles, with little drive to evolve or change. Helen wanted to shake things up and encourage a greater diversity in the existing teams. In her hires, she was specifically looking for those with a strong development skillset, the potential to grow and develop new skills, curiosity and ambition, and unafraid to challenge the team and share opinions. 

Both Helen and Laura agree that people with overlapping skillsets that complement each other can help to drive innovation within a team. Laura explains that this means they can be more adaptable as a business, using all their team’s different strengths and building each individual’s confidence in their role. Laura says that she has learned to be openminded when it comes to looking at different CVs or initial impressions – rethinking her approach has helped when it comes to hiring and increasing diversity within a team. 

Of course, the real challenge lies in incorporating new and diverse hires into the current team structure. For Helen, this starts with maintaining balance across the teams, shifting people around and giving them the chance to bed in on lower-priority projects. She also introduced informal, weekly ‘coffee calls’ to bring the team together and get to know each other in a more personal way – something that Laura, as a new hire, found a great way to settle into the company. This is especially important in a fully remote team, with employees in both the UK and the USA, helping to foster better relationships despite the geographical distance. When put to the room, others identified that they also had similar ‘coffee call’ style team meet-ups. 

Helen does admit that it was a challenge at first for the existing team, but this is where her strong leadership style helped. She implemented the changes slowly with minimal disruption, was open and honest about why and how changes were being made, and created a better working environment. Laura experienced this from the other side, and credits the creation of sub-teams to support both new and existing team members as being key. She says that it helped create “a flatter management structure and allowed the teams to have a more available point of contact if needed”.

Remote working and team dynamics 

Remote working can present different challenges for teams when it comes to building a strong dynamic and relationships; with a simple show of hands it was clear that many attendees at this event were remote working or at least hybrid working. According to the Office for National Statistics, 28% of working adults in the UK were hybrid working in autumn 2024 overall, but it also found that hybrid working is more common in the information and communication industry (49%) and the professional, scientific and technical activities industry (42%). 

Helen says that it made sense for her team to be fully remote, as there isn’t a UK office at present and the team is spread across the UK and USA, but she does miss having a ‘hub’ where colleagues can get together. Despite working together for six weeks at the time of the event, this was the first time Helen and Laura had met in person. However, both our panellists agreed that remote working plays a huge role in increasing diversity within tech teams, as it gives more flexibility – something that we’ve discussed before at WiTH meetings. For those who do work remotely, events like WiTH can serve an important purpose, providing a sense of community and support that can be lacking within fully remote teams.  

Diversity, inclusion and effectiveness 

With Helen and Laura both passionate about diversity within their teams, we wanted to find out more about how this impacts on effectiveness and innovation. They both agree that having a diverse team means that everyone can learn from each other’s unique experiences, strengths and weaknesses – which in turn breeds innovation. The tech industry is fast-moving, so it helps to have that diversity to be able to cover all client bases as needed, and having a diverse mindset when it comes to tackling different problems. 

Diversity covers sex and gender, race, background, experience and culture, but Helen points out that sometimes neurodiversity can be overlooked when it comes to thinking about diversity. It’s important that interviews accommodate for all diversity to ensure that great talent isn’t being overlooked. Neurodivergent individuals often have strengths like finding creative solutions to problems and exceptional attention to detail that can be of huge benefit within a team, as long as it’s a neuroinclusive workplace. 

This led to an engaging discussion between our panellists and attendees around the right language and wording for advertising roles to attract a diverse pool of applicants. According to the World Economic Forum, in an article exploring ‘Why clear job descriptions matter for gender equality’: “Talented women are more likely to shy away from applying for job opportunities, particularly more advanced, higher-paying positions, because they’re concerned they aren’t qualified enough, whereas men don’t seem to worry about their skills matching the specific job requirements as much.”

Women also need to gain confidence in interviews and not shy away from their success. One audience member gave a personal reflection on their use of ‘we’ in interviews, for example when talking about projects that ‘we’ had created, rather than talking about what ‘I’ had created. A great takeaway from this event was the importance of women establishing their own involvement in projects and technologies, and their responsibilities, and not being afraid to put this experience across when going for more senior roles. 

Getting more women into tech, and in particular in leadership roles, is the biggest change needed to support more women and underrepresented groups from entering the tech industry. Helen said that we need more role models, especially those at the forefront, to encourage girls to show an interest in tech-based careers. When asked, most of the audience indicated that they had ‘fallen’ into the tech industry from other backgrounds, rather than actively perused it. A lively discussion followed, sharing ideas on how to encourage and inspire the next generation, from mentoring to school visits, proving that the issue must be tackled at both school age, as well as at company level. 

Both male and female allies are needed to support women in tech roles, contributing to a change in culture, undoing negative stereotypes and fostering more inclusive environments. This event had several men in attendance, and their stories around the women in their lives and the challenges they’ve faced highlighted the important role that male allies can play. 

Everyone left the event feeling energised and inspired, a great way to bring to close a fantastic year of WiTH events.

Our next event will be in January, so do check out our Women in Tech Hampshire LinkedIn page to find out more and book your space.