An article by Amanda Blum portrays Adria Richards, who has been subjected to the wrath of the internet, in a pretty damning light. Amanda describes Adria as "a bully who uses these instances to her personal gain, driving traffic to her blog." She cites two interactions with Adria which, admittedly, look pretty bad. Adria comes off as someone with a pattern of exposing falsely perceived sexism in the worst possibly way. When you dig beneath the surface, you find that Amanda's stories aren't nearly so bad as they seem. In fact, Adria comes off as, on the whole, quite reasonable -- despite the initial bully depiction.

No one should have been fired. Now can we all just calm down? 

Okay, look, some guys made some immature jokes. They were not harassing her or other women directly, but the comments did bother Adria for whatever reason.

Marissa Mayer's decision to terminate telecommuting arrangements for Yahoo! employees has ignited a frenzy of negative press. Articles cite how studies have shown that telecommuting arrangements lead to more happier and productive employees. How could Mayer have been so stupid and shortsighted? Surely, this signals the downfall of Yahoo. Interestingly, when I hear reports from people who work at Yahoo!, they're almost invariably positive about this change.

You certainly don’t have to inform your manager. Most people don’t, so you wouldn’t be doing anything unethical or even out of the ordinary. In fact, most people inform their manager only after they’ve received and accepted another offer. In some cases, there could be advantages to telling your manage

We may not like to admit it, but recruiters and resume screeners see “tiers” in candidates. When they review a resume, it’s not just about matching a Java programmer to a Java role; it’s also about questions like, “Is this candidate good enough? Is he or she likely to pass our interviews? Would he or she be a strong performer if hired?”

Most educated people in the US know that writing with good grammar, spelling, and punctuation -- particularly in professional contexts -- is obviously important. We know that we need to be mostly flawless here and, in fact, most of us are. (Of course, everyone is prone to some typos, myself included!)

For many people, it's taken as a given that we need more women in technology. Diversity is an inherently valuable thing for these people, and they don't feel the need to justify why it's good. It just is. For others (including myself, at one point), this is slightly less clear. Why all the focus on women in tech? Sure, if women were actively discriminated against, that would be unfair. But barring that, why do we put so much effort into getting more women interested in tech?

I can't tell you how many times I've heard that in my life. You only got that job because you're a girl. Sometimes it'll be more subtle -- worded in the form of a question, or possibly directed at another woman -- but the implication is the same: that women get jobs easier than men and, therefore, women are less qualified on average than their male counterparts. I've heard this ever since I was a freshman in college, and got my first job at Microsoft.

With the summer wrapping up (no! say it ain't so!), I'm starting to put together my Fall speaking schedule. And I've got a few last summer talks coming up too. Don't see your university or city here? Sign up here to be notified when I'm coming to your city.

Being career-focused and a woman (and a woman who comes from a line of female engineering entrepreneurs who obviously had children too), naturally everyone wants to know my thoughts on that infamous "Why Women Still Can't Have It All" article. As though people are daring me to say that the author of said article is totally wrong and of course women can have it all.

Bad resumes are something of a pet peeve of mine. They make or break your chances of getting an interview with a company. They're not even that hard to do well. And yet, on a nearly daily basis, I see terrible resumes. 17 page resumes (seriously!). Resumes where it's not until the second or third page that you discover that they're working for Microsoft (Come on, people! That's a selling point!). Resumes where people fail to mention that they, say, founded a company (again -- seriously?!?). Grr. In thinking about your resume, it’s important to remember how resumes are reviewed. Resumes are not read; they are skimmed for about 15 seconds. Let me say it again: resume screeners do not read your entire resume.

Every few weeks, a new article comes out basically saying "ZOMG! Self-publishing is so much greater than anything else!" The author of said article almost always makes some valid points, and yet almost always misses a whole bunch of other issues.

tl;dr -- Self-publishing is only cheap and easy when you do it poorly. To be successful at it is time-consuming, confusing, and expensive. Many authors are better off with a traditional publisher.

I spent about the past year using Android, but I just couldn't take it anymore. Being back on an iPhone feels like a huge relief. Why I Chose Android Last Year:

To back up a bit, I switched from an iPhone to Android last year for a few reasons:

After using Google Voice as my exclusive phone number for about a year, I finally gave it up and went back to a regular ol' number on Verizon. There were a lot of things I loved about Google Voice -- being able to send online, having a history of all my texts, being able to send/receive SMS while traveling internationally (without crazy fees) -- but ultimately, the fact that messages would disappear was unacceptable.

This week, I delivered two keynotes, both to middle school and high school girls interested in technology careers. The first one was for the Philadelphia area awards dinner for the Aspirations in Computing Award, and the second was for a wonderful event called Girls Exploring Tomorrow's Technology. I've printed my message below which addresses why everyone -- both boys and girls -- should consider a technology career.

This week, a start-up called Sqoot got their brush with "fame" when they offered women as a perk for hackathon attendees. No, really, that's actually exactly what they did. Under "Great Perks", they listed this gem: "Women: Need another beer? Let one of our friendly (female) event staff get that for you."

As arguably the most desirable tech company to work for, Google is surrounded by myths about the "impossible Google puzzles." But most of these are just that: myths. As any Google insider will tell you, Google has no interest in discovering what you would do if you were nickle-sized and stuck in a blender. Seriously. None. Zippo. Zilch. Those are just myths perpetuated by people who have neither worked for nor interviewed at Google but who really, really want you to share their article. It's link bait, essentially. What does Google ask Software Engineers?

Most people think through if they want to live in the city, but what people forget to think about is the long term impact of living in a particular city.

Suppose you’re graduating college and you get an offer from Google’s Irvine CA office. That’s fantastic. You must be really excited. Great company + great weather. What’s not to love?

I've been asked to give the keynote address for ITAG's Girls Exploring Tomorrow's Technology event. It's made me think about what I want to tell these these kids - what skills I wish they would all acquire. I've come up with these five skills that, I believe, virtually guarantee success in life.