Things Jen Says Frequently
(Reading this is exactly like having coffee with me)
Whether I'm teaching math or giving negotiation advice to Millennials in the workplace, I find that people who think their problem is "confidence" are usually mistaken. Generally, the problem is a lack of actionable information, and not enough grinding away at the problem. The answer is more drills, more practice, more experimentation, more learning from failure. More grit. Confidence doesn't come first. Confidence comes from results.
Don't take business advice from someone whose only business is giving business advice – that, my friend, is a pyramid scheme.
Your reputation should precede you before you walk into a room. Before you negotiate. Before anyone sees your resumé, and certainly before a computer has a chance to weed out your resumé. Establish expertise and demand credit where credit is due.
Networking is meaningless without an intellectual practice behind it. Knowing five thousand people is nice, but what do those people think of you besides the fact that you know 4,999 other people? Intellectual work is solitary and often slow. But without it, what do you bring to your relationships? Better to have the professional respect of ten of the right people than a database of thousands.
A lot of people like the idea of "leaning in," but the book itself was problematic. You fight systemic sexism by changing the system, not by putting the onus on individual women to constantly buck themselves up within a corrupt system. The book also represented only a very small subset of professional women. Non-intersectional feminism is no feminism at all.