Susan van de Ven is an Engineering Manager at Miro - the online collaborative whiteboard platform that enables distributed teams to work effectively together, from running brainstorming sessions and workshops to planning projects, from designing new products and services to facilitating agile ceremonies. She is part of Miro’s growth engineering team in Amsterdam, and is leading the Monetization teams supporting the self-service payments and billing for customers
using Miro.
Originally from Scotland, she has lived in The Netherlands for the last 10 years with her family. She studied Computing Science and moved to Brussels for her first Java programming job in 1999 and has worked for Telecoms, eCommerce and public sector government programmes like the NHS in Scotland.
As a QA, she created iOS and Android mobile app test automation and CI pipelines - and was a speaker on mobile testing at various conferences in Europe. Subsequently leading the mobile team as people manager and chapter lead, she realised that she could make an impact as a leader in advocating for fairness and transparency across all the engineering teams.
How did you become passionate about the topic of empowering and supporting women in tech?
When I started I was always in teams with both male and female engineers, it only happened later when I started leading teams I found myself very often the only woman in the meeting.
A turning point for me was when I saw an engineering leader I worked with answer that there was no problem with diversity but then added that he encouraged women to move into project management as they are naturally better at multitasking. The developers in his organisation were all men. I had seen in other places women encouraged out of the purely tech roles, then not seen as technical anymore, and more vulnerable in organisation changes while engineers were safe. From that moment on I was more vocal in calling out any assumptions about men vs women in technology and focused a lot more on hiring and helping women where I could.
What is the best part of being a woman in the tech industry?
In general the tech industry is a fantastic place to be - there are opportunities to travel, gain new skills and be curious. I’ve been a developer, tester, mobile app chapter lead, program manager and covered product roles too. As an engineering manager I want the teams to work on the most impactful work they can and all these different roles along the way have helped me to have a broad view and champion for all voices in the team to be heard.
Technology is so important to everything now. The users of the technology will be diverse and to understand and solve user problems there has to be representation in the product development teams to match. It's so rewarding to be able to contribute your ideas and skills to something you care about - everyone brings a different perspective and can help design the
best possible solutions. This is what has made me excited to go to work every day.
What advice would you give to your younger self when you started your career?
You are better than you think and you don't need to know everything! Ask questions when you don't understand something. Find someone a few years more experienced and talk to them, ask for help and learn from them. You are not wasting their time, helping people is something most people like to do.
This isn't just a good idea for at the start of your career. I need to remind myself to follow this advice even in a leadership role. Whenever I am facing a new challenge I try to be open to
asking for help and learning from others.
