In this episode of The Art of Imperfect Adulting, Amy Stone speaks with Joanne Gates about navigating motherhood, career ambition, and the realities of working in the male-dominated tech industry. Joanne, joining from Scottsdale, Arizona, recounts her move from Boston to Seattle, her nearly 30-year career at Microsoft, and the pivotal choices she made as both a mom and a leader. Listeners will discover how Joanne carved out success in corporate America, confronted workplace bias, and now channels her expertise into coaching women to thrive at work and at home.

About Joanne Gates:

Joanne Gates is a certified executive life coach who helps professional women in tech and male-dominated industries unlock their career potential with clarity, confidence, and purpose. After a 30-year career at Microsoft—rising from entry-level to executive—Joanne now empowers women to overcome imposter syndrome, people-pleasing, and perfectionism while building authentic leadership presence. She’s especially known for helping women get promoted into senior leadership roles and then kick ass once they’re there—navigating high-stakes environments with emotional intelligence, strategic influence, and unapologetic power. Joanne blends deep empathy with sharp business acumen to help her clients lead boldly, drive impact, and rewrite the rules of leadership.

Main Topics Covered:

1. The life-altering impact of motherhood on career paths, especially for women in tech and male-dominated corporate environments.
2. Facing and overcoming gender bias and assumptions about working mothers in the workplace.
3. The challenges and family dynamics of being the primary breadwinner and having a stay-at-home dad partner in the late '90s and early 2000s.
4. Navigating pivotal career decisions, missed opportunities, and the trade-offs of prioritizing family vs. pursuing senior leadership.
5. Advocating for oneself in corporate hierarchies, especially when faced with unfair evaluations or lack of managerial support.
6. The evolution (and limitations) of maternity leave policies and the importance of workplace systems that genuinely support parents.
7. Joanne’s transition from a senior leader at Microsoft to executive and life coaching for women, with a focus on helping others define and achieve their own success.
8. Practical tips for protecting your career trajectory, handling performance reviews, and knowing when (and how) to escalate workplace concerns.

Quote from the Episode:

"I felt like I had to, like, shake him by the shoulders… How many guys have to have this conversation? That just pisses me off. We have to because, obviously, it’s pretty apparent that we’re having a child." — Joanne Gates

Timestamps: [00:00:04] Welcome, Joanne’s location, and adjusting to life in the desert [00:00:46] Childhood winter activities and chasing the sun [00:01:37] Introducing today’s topic: balancing motherhood and career [00:02:29] On generational change—and how much (or little) has shifted for working women [00:03:19] The Covid reset and women leaving corporate roles; Joanne’s new passion for helping women succeed [00:04:24] Joanne’s career start, move to Microsoft in the dot-com era [00:07:21] Early influences, engineering in college, and professional aspirations in a male-driven world [00:11:19] On early career choices, family expectations, and the pressure to decide your future “from a very young age” [00:13:14] Strategic family planning vs. reacting to life—how Joanne and her husband made tough choices [00:17:55] Deciding which parent would stay home, and the financial/logistical realities in a pre-remote work world [00:19:25] The loneliness and community gap for stay-at-home dads [00:22:18] Microsoft’s corporate culture around mothers in the ’90s/early 2000s—assumptions, bias, and policy limitations [00:25:27] The invisible penalty of motherhood: performance reviews, pay, and navigating “fairness” [00:31:10] Maternity leave policies then and now—fears around job security and returning to work [00:36:32] Systemic challenges: why do big companies struggle to change on women and family policy? [00:38:25] Lack of diversity, groupthink, and the value of disruptors in changing corporate culture [00:41:46] How Joanne stayed and thrived at Microsoft, even as most opted out [00:42:03] Major trade-offs: missing opportunities for the sake of family [00:47:06] Facing career setbacks, fighting for promotion, and deciding not to “rage quit” [00:53:12] Tactical advice: documenting your worth, knowing when—and how—to advocate for yourself [00:55:01] Joanne’s mission now: mentoring and coaching women in corporate life [00:56:08] What’s different for working women today, and a special offer for listeners [00:57:27] Lightning round: morning routines, relaxation, and spending on self

ABOUT THE SHOW: The Art of Imperfect Adulting elevates the voices of experience by sharing real stories from real people figuring out adult life. Every episode features honest conversations about life's choices, changes, and challenges—interviews with individuals (not celebrities) who share their personal experiences and insights. Through these authentic stories, listeners find validation, motivation, and inspiration for navigating their own path through modern life. Because there's a big difference between expert advice and shared experience, and hearing another person's lived experience helps us feel less alone in our own situations.

GET JOANNE GATES’ SPECIAL OFFER: 4 Steps to Navigate Your Career Journey workbook

A Free PDF that provides actionable steps to demystify the steps to landing your next job, or that job several years in the future.

Link to download the pdf: https://www.execcoachjoanne.com/4stepsworkbook

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Welcome to the art of imperfect adulting. Joanne Gates, are you ready for

a fun chat today? I am so excited to be here.

Yay. I start all my conversations with the same exact question.

What part of the world are you in today? Today I'm in

Scottsdale, Arizona. I grew up outside of Boston, a

suburb outside of Boston, then spent 30 years outside of Seattle here. So

this girl needed sun. I'm giving the desert a try. Very

good. Boy, you got plenty of sun and heat in Scottsdale, I think.

All right, next warmup question. Share with us. And this is fun because it's

Arizona, so you don't get much cold weather, I don't think. What's your favorite outdoor

winter activity? And in Scottsdale, that can be like a warm weather thing.

Absolutely. I would say growing up outside of Boston

definitely had the experiences of I was

into figure skating. My brothers played hockey, and

I wanted to play hockey, and my dad said, girls don't play hockey. So I

got to figure skate and I did some downhill

skiing and so certainly enjoy

some of those. I will say, as I got older, my winter

vacations ended up being in Seattle. Let's go to

Maui and find sun. So kind of my winter

activity would be find some sun. Yeah, 100%.

I get it. I do. I don't think you're alone there. This episode will come

out in February, which is I live in Florida, and that's like, peak season

for people who are waking up and they're like, we need some vitamin

D. Absolutely. All right. The

topic today, not winter weather, actually, but we're going to talk about

how your life and your career shifted with motherhood. Are

you ready to talk about that? I am excited to talk about it. Thank you

for inviting me on. No, I love it. I love it. One of the

things that I think is really interesting and one of the goals that I have

with the show is to try and cross over age groups.

So I think this is a really wonderful discussion. You're somebody who

has very extensive career, and you made this decision several

decades ago. These decisions several decades ago. And what

my hope is with conversations like this is that somebody who's in their

20s will get the benefit of hearing about how you made these

decisions and your experience. Yeah, right. Because the.

It's one thing to talk to your same age girlfriends about it, but it's

totally different to be going through the decisions at the

time. And it hasn't changed all that much, which is unfortunate.

We all want to leave a better

reality for the next generation, and certainly that's been

a lot of what I have tried to do. And I look at the state

of things today, and some things have changed and improved, but not

dramatically. Not dramatically. And really,

for some, it can be tricky because you can feel like things are changing within

your own house or your living room or your community of friends.

But the data on women in the workplace

and other things like that and the pressures that

young women are under are very, very similar. And that's a little

upsetting, actually. So, like, there's a book, I think it's Backlash, but I could be

wrong, where they reissued it after 20 years with a new updated thing, and

the date is almost exactly the same 20 years later, which is terrifying. Well, and

since COVID and the return to office, so many women

are leaving the workforce, or at least corporate. That's what

my background has been. And I just see it so often.

And so we'll get into it later, but that has become my kind of

passion project is helping women succeed

in their work and personal lives and realize that you can

be successful on both aspects. Yeah. And

yes, exactly. All right, so the impact which we were just talking

about of motherhood on a professional career, a corporate career

is a common topic of conversation. I think people have been talking about it

for decades. I'm 52. My mom felt like the only

options she had when she had a family were, you know, teacher, because of

the schedule, you know, nowadays, Like, I was told that I could

be anything. It was a massive shock to me to have kids and be like,

oh, you know what? Preschool doesn't line up with the

work day. But anyway, I talk about that all the time. I was like, now

I. All right, very good. So it really did surprise

me. But share a little bit with us about your career

before you were a mom, like, what was your job? Who was your

employer? What were your, if you remember at the

time, what were your career? Sort of dreams.

So we're going back into the mid-90s. So I'm a

few years older than you, Amy. And.

My husband and I was, before we were even married, had

decided that we were going to take a move

from the Boston area to Seattle. He

had a job transfer available. And I had been laid off

from my first job out of college, and so I was

unemployed. And it is funny, his last name is

Gates, and I would joke, oh, I'm just gonna get married,

send in my resume to Microsoft, and they'll assume that

I'm somehow related. Spoiler. I am in no way related

to Bill. But as it turned

out the manager who had let me go from that first job out of

college, had left that company, went to Microsoft, knew I

was in the area, invited me to interview, and within about six

months of getting to Seattle, I started at Microsoft.

And this was mid-90s. This is the dot com boom.

That's when. So, yeah, this is when I graduated. And

it was. I feel like we're coming up into probably what will be

another version of time like this because we're seeing the layoffs, and that is

usually followed by innovation and stuff. But it was a crazy time to

be in the job market. It really was, because in the tech sector,

it was almost like. They were

hiring so fast you couldn't even keep up. Absolutely.

And it was mostly people

my age. I think I was 23, 24. You know,

I had only worked for a couple of years for a pretty stodgy

company on outside of Boston. And

there at that first job, you could tell who was the most senior by

the oldest, grayest man in the room. Right. And so to go

from that to tech, where people are wearing

shorts, not wearing shoes, and, you know, you've got

the Bill Gates of the day with messy

hair and still, like, I don't know, 20s, and he's the brilliant

guy in the room. And so it was so in

energetic and I loved it. And I felt like I was

going to be there forever. And turns out I stayed almost 30 years.

And so, you know, but it was the kind of place where they

rewarded incredibly hard work and lots of hours.

And a lot of folks started when they were either

single or married but without kids. Yeah.

What did you. Can I ask what you studied in school? Were you like a

technology major? Yes. I have an industrial engineering

and operations research degree from the University of Massachusetts at

Amherst. Very nice, Very nice. Okay,

so you were interested in being in a

company that had systems in it and you were ready to dive into

technology and so on when you were a kid, if you

remember, and this is not a great question, so we'll see if it

lands. But was your concept of like, your work future,

did you have any idea of, like, get a job and stay there forever?

Like, was that what you thought you would do? Is that you thought what the

work world looked like? Not necessarily.

My dad had a couple of different jobs, always

in a professional environment. As I was growing up, I

have two older brothers who at the time that I was going

into even high school, they had chosen not to go to

college. So my dad had always done the,

you know, the professional path. Is what's right for you. And

I actually distinctly remember him telling me at a very young

age, successful people know what they want to do from a

very young age. Which told me if I didn't decide

when I was young, there was no way I was going to be able to

be successful. So I was like, well, I guess I have to pick something.

I'm probably like 10 or 12 at the time. Right. I had

an older cousin that had gone. Had started in college.

I remember asking her what she did and she's like, I'm studying

chemical engineering. I'm like, all right, that sounds cool. Like, she told me a little

bit about it and glommed onto it. And I think my dad had told me,

like, hey, you're good at math and science. You're probably going to be an

engineer. I don't know how much of that I questioned, but

so had decided pretty early that a professional environment

was definitely what I wanted to do. I did want to go to college and

get a degree. Started off in chemical engineering. Didn't finish there

because I was like, this is way over my head. I don't care about some

of these things. And so combining business and

engineering is what industrial engineering does. And it was a

much, much better fit for me. That's spectacular. That's really good. So your

dad was a professional, but you do also have. Did your brother stay in trades?

Like, did they stay. Is that where they stayed or did they change correction course?

Correct. One of my brothers ended up having

a serious leg break and having to go through all this physical

therapy. And that started his journey. I think he was going to be a physical

therapist. Then he got a. By all he went back to. Well, he went to

college, got a biology degree, and it turned into

his future more professional career path. But my other brother has

done super successful in. In the trades most

of his career was he was a realtor. Super success. Nice.

Yeah. So I think that's really interesting because it highlights one of the things that

I think people have talked about was not alive for a lot of these

conversations. But I don't think it's a new conversation. I think it just

feels like a new conversation, which is where we put all this pressure

on people at a very young age to decide what

they want to do. And sometimes it works out.

Notably, engineers sometimes know. Right on that they like puzzles

and math and although I don't know if they know what engineering is until they're

older. But then people who are doctors and, you know,

nurses, they often know at a Very early age

that they want to be a doctor. And that's one of the examples that I

was at some school thing when one of my kids was little, and this expert

on children in education, they pointed out they were like, the,

the norm here is that you don't know and the

doctors are the exception. So, like, the, you know, five people in the room here

who want to be surgeons, they're the exception, not the norm.

And I was like, that's helpful. That's helpful because I know

so many people who, you know, followed a

path, push to make a decision, followed a path for education,

and then they're like, oh, wow. No, I kind of like this in the classroom,

but I don't like doing this at all. Absolute. Absolutely. I, I,

maybe we'll get to it. I have two daughters, and as they were coming

up and trying to decide what they wanted to do, I was like, you gotta

find internships. You've gotta test things out. If you're in high

school and you want to do volunteer stuff, try to see what

the job really is. Because like you, I knew so

many people, especially in engineering, that probably were told that

they're supposed to be good at it and ended up maybe succeeding in school,

but got into the workforce and like, I hate this. Yeah.

So, you know, that's such a huge waste of time, money, you know,

attention, all of, all of that aspect. So totally.

Yeah. No, I had, one of my kids is an, is an engineer and they

love physics. And when they were starting this study path, I was like, so do

you want to be a physics teacher? And they're like, no.

And I was like, okay, so then let's do some thinking about what the job

is at the end of this that you might get. Because it's a different conversation.

Because, like, universities, part of what they do is train teachers or professors,

we would call them professors. Right. So, all right, so that's my rant on school.

So you're working at Microsoft, which I've got to say, having been

to, it was, I think the early 2000s when I was on that campus,

just as a visitor, like, just to see. But such a cool place.

So it's like, yes, yes. Right. It's so

cool. I'm going to ask you a super invasive question,

then you can tell me to buzz off if it's too personal. So you're there.

This is hustle time. This is expansion for Microsoft. This is, I mean,

it's huge already at this point, but it's really a startup environment, really

favoring working really hard. I would say. Were you in a

situation where you were family planning and making these

decisions in a strategic way, which as an engineer, I'm tempted to think that you're

fairly strategic, but I don't know you. Or was it something

that occurred and you had to, like, respond to?

Yeah. We both knew that we wanted to have a

family. And at the same time, our careers

were just starting and taking off and I was working

like crazy. And our weekends were like, oh, we

finally have a few hours we're gonna sleep in. We have to do the groceries

and the, you know, all the chores. So there wasn't really a lot of, like,

free and downtime. And I thought, how the hell am I supposed to be a

successful employee? And mom, like, how.

Where. Where does this fit in? And

I was lucky enough that my mom was home

for all of the years until I went to school. And

I think. And I know my husband had the same environment.

And so we had this belief, like, all right, if. If we're going to have

a family, don't really want to go the daycare route. No shade.

But that was what we wanted for our family, was to have someone home.

And so we waited five years between

getting married. I got married just a few months before landing that

job and starting a family. And a lot of it was

the not ready, don't know how to navigate this, don't know

what it's going to do to the career and how we're going to

make this a success as a family. So

I think that puts you in a small group of people in a lot of

ways, because I think that you're good at future planning and

future decision making, which not all of us are. And you had some

awareness of what you wanted to do. And you mentioned

something that. Is

definitely. It's a topic. Right. You said, no shade

on people make a different decision. This is a weird

place in society where women sometimes,

and maybe men. But let's talk about women. There's judgment,

implied judgment and value statements that we make

about the battle between staying home, working

daycare, you know, all of those things. I

try my very, very hardest to stay out of it because

I don't have an opinion on either side. And I've been. But I've been.

It's like politics and religion. It's one of those areas

that there's a lot of emotion, a lot of emotion. And when my kids were

little, I was doing, like, freelance work for a portion and, like, from home. And

it was so funny because people in the Schools, they like assumed that I was

at home like cooking, you know, they were like, hey, can you come do this

at like, you know, 11:30 at the elementary school? And I was like, what do

you, what you think that I'm available for this? But I do understand why they

thought that actually. So walk me through what

you guys perceived at the time. So you waited five years.

Walk me through what you guys thought the challenges were going to be before it

actually occurred. Like what were you aware of? Daycare you mentioned

and wanting to be able to be accessible while

the kids were. Before they went to probably kindergarten,

first grade was the idea. Well, I

just knew that my habits at work were,

you know, getting up at say 6am

and being in the office from call it

7 to maybe 7. Right. And many of

the nights my husband would be the one to make dinner or order the

pizza, you know, whatever it was. And I

just logistically did not know how I

was going to. Okay, what does this mean? I'm going to need to not

go until 8 or 9 in the morning and then leave at 3:30 or

4. And in the. Call it mid-90s,

late-90s, we're just starting to get laptops. So the whole

idea of working outside of an office didn't really exist.

Yeah, like it was. Sorry that, you know, I'm definitely on the

older side. So this is before so much of the technology that we just take

for granted these days. I think my first laptop was like

4 inches thick and about 20 pounds. This is

still the mid-90s, is still dial up home Internet. Yes.

And mid-90s, I mean it was the beginning of

small personal phones. But we're talking like the Nokia phones with the

keypad, like texting was ridiculous. Even when

I had my daughter and she was born in 2000,

we still. My husband had a pager. Yes. Like so it. I

may have had a cell phone. But you didn't turn it. It wasn't on all

the time and. Right. All those kinds of things. So it just to set the

stage, you didn't have the ability to work

anywhere at the speed that you needed to, like you do today.

Ultimately what we decided was he was going to be our stay at home parent.

Okay. So you guys made a decision which is that you

were going to have one person at home when the kids were there. And so

you were making, you were having the conversation. Like the conversation that people

have is who's going to sacrifice so many years

of their life and how does it fit into the family

budget and the career Trajectory.

What, so you're working for Microsoft. Did you have. And

are you in the like sort of operations department or what department were you in?

That's right, in operations, entry level. These

are somewhere around, you know, stock was not going

crazy. I was very much in the how are

we going to make our life work? We had a mortgage

at that point on one income.

So it was, you know, the ramen. I felt like we were still in

college in terms of the scrapping

to get by, to be able to live on one income.

Microsoft had so much career opportunity. The benefits were

absolutely the best. And I just had the work ethic and work

drive far greater than my

husband at the time. He was kind of like, yeah, work is what allows you

to pay the bills and have fun. And I was like, no, I love what

I'm doing. And so that was, you know, that was the

combination that made it the right decision for us. Very not

traditional. He was definitely the. On

an island in terms of there were rarely any other stay at home

dad. So very lonely for him. In the

journey of, you know, trying to have the, the network that stay at

home moms have is very wonderful. Yeah,

you know, it can be. He had his own challenges. Do you remember the movie

from the 80s, Mr. Mom? Oh, definitely. Yeah. Yeah, that's so they.

I mean that it's a comedy and it's not at all realistic. It has the

famous scene for anybody who wants to watch it on YouTube. It has

amazing carpool scene, like school drop off scene that is

still accurate today where, oh, who's the actor? Kevin

Michael Keaton drives the wrong way into the school carpool

lane and gets yelled at by the other drivers. And it's still very

funny. And so, and like we were talking about early on, it's like

that conversation, which is fiction from the 80s, you know, is one

person making a concession so that the American family can thrive.

And it is. Would you say, and this. Would you categorize it as.

Most of the conversation and most of what was driving this was financial

decisions for how you guys could financially continue. As a

unit with kids, predominantly because

I would have, you know, you idealize what

a stay at home mom may be able to do. And I'm very

social and I knew that I would, you know, find my network

and all of those kinds of things. So that was not

something that I was opposed to. But it really just came

down to, look, we're now in a city that we don't have any

family and I've got this great job,

great Benefits, it definitely has the income potential over time.

And if you're willing to give this a shot, we can

always change it. Right. If we're a year in and this isn't working,

daycare is definitely an option. But we were,

you know, we're bold enough to give it a shot and it ended up working

out for us, so. Very cool. All right, very good. Now, so you

shared in your pitch that you, that this could have been an exit for you.

You guys did consider it. You did consider it. What was the corporate

culture, if I can ask, regarding

parents and moms at Microsoft at this time?

So. I, I certainly don't know what the

stats were, but it was not very common. Women were

still, you know, substantially underrepresented in terms of population

in all of the different technical parts of the company.

And part of the reason where it could have been an

exit was I get pregnant,

I don't know what you do. And don't tell your boss, right? My boss is

also a, you know, call it mid-20s

guy. He's not used to managing women.

He, I do recall he was married and had several kids of

his own. And I'm now thinking, okay,

100 of the finances are on me. I am the sole breadwinner.

I need to make sure I keep showing up, keep doing a good job. And

as it's getting closer, my manager says to me, oh,

well, you know, when you come back from maternity leave, if you

come back, we'll put you on easier projects. And I was

like, f, no, buddy. Like, I

am coming back. He fully expected that I was going to resign after

my maternity leave. What's interesting, and people can call me out on this if they

listen to this and they think that I'm wrong. I actually think that that conversation

that he had with you is probably illegal under the, under the, like, labor laws.

Right. And yet. Even

in my experience, also, like, completely inappropriate assumptions made by

all of my co workers. You can't hide. Most of us can't hide that they're

pregnant. Like, so it's like you show up and it's like, hey, did you gain

25 pounds just around your belly button? And so people

know. And then, and then it's like a weird,

it's a weird situation. And I'm not an expert on

labor laws and things like that, but it is supposed to be a

protected class. Like, your job is supposed to be protected. And yet

most people I know who work in companies, big companies,

I have never had the. This. I wonder if it'd be totally

Different. If you worked at like a company that was like women, top down,

you know, like, they would probably like, it might be completely different. But

there is this season of people like having awkward

conversations and making assumptions about what you're

gonna do. So even at a, in a, you know,

you know, a culture forward spot like Seattle and

Google, you ran in to this assumption that you

were probably not going to come back and that if you did, you would need

concessions. So that was the culture battle that you first ended up with.

That's right. And. I,

I had to ask. There's some statistic about when men

have their first child, their salaries go up. Their salaries go up. Women

have their first child, their salaries either stagnate or go down.

And I had to, actually, I didn't feel like I should

have had to tell my boss, but I said to him, hey, listen,

he's already resigned, he is staying home.

I need this job. I love this job. I am absolutely

coming back and I don't want to be sidelined and,

you know, put on some, I don't know, back,

back burner kind of projects. The way you made money

and got promoted at Microsoft was if you were on big time

projects and you showed up really well, that

was, all of the money was in your bonuses because that's where stock

options came into play. And then that turned into eventual

promotions. And I mean, I felt like I had to like shake

him by the shoulders, I think. And this is again, it was, you know,

late 90s now. I had my daughter in 2000, so I don't know what the

laws were back then, but I think he was trying to be very

compassionate. Yeah, yeah, it's all with the best of intentions. Yeah,

right. So again, like at the time it wasn't

like I was yelling at him, but it was the, hey, I,

I am here. This is my career. And

please do not sideline me because we've made this decision at

a fam as a family. How many guys have to have this conversation? That

just pisses me off. Off. Yeah, yeah, we

have to because obviously it's pretty apparent that we're having a

child. And the question of, are you really gonna stay? Are you

going to be calling in sick all the time? Are you, you know,

gonna have to leave because daycare calls? I'm

like, all right, I guess I'll lay it out. He's staying at home.

We won't have a daycare situation. I won't have my time split.

He will be taking care of all those things. But when you think

if you zoom way out and you think about, like, what

the implication and the judgment that's in those, like,

having to defend that you're going to actually stick to it is really,

really. And I mean, so not everybody's going to feel this way when they hear

it, but it's really intrusive and invasive. It's like, no, I've got the

job and I'm doing the job, so who are you to assume that

I'm not going to be able to continue to do it? And like you

said, it doesn't change. There is a. I don't know if this is still true,

but there are some stories and statistics about how once

men become fathers, they're more

likely to get promoted because they're like, oh, well, they have a family. And the

mom in the room is the opposite. She is, you

know, set to administrative duty and asked to bring cupcakes because

she's no longer available. I don't know. I have. I have. I have thoughts and

opinions. I'll try and stay neutral and stick that.

Stick to your story. All right, so you. You educate

your boss and you work through this. How did it

feel for you? Sort of trying to navigate that. What was the. Like, were you.

Was it stressful? Was it scary? Was it annoying? Like, as you're

navigating this in the young 20s, going into something that is

a big change for you, how did you feel trying to make sure that this

was happening for you and having these discussions in the workplace? Well, because

it was already something that I was worried about. It

certainly was that trigger of, oh, my God, it's already happening. I'm getting

somehow sidelined. And again, he's

just put in his resignation. I have all of the financial

responsibilities. Fairness is one

of those is a very, very strong principle of mine.

So, you know, the Boston in me was getting pissed off. Came

out. Yeah. And the, like, what the

hell? Like, why? Again, I was around

a lot of folks that now, after five years at the company, I was seeing

a lot of my co workers whose wives were having kids.

Right. And they're obviously getting promoted and getting the cigars

and the pat on the back. And I'm having to

just kind of fight to be able to keep the seat that I had already

successfully landed was how it felt

to me. And it certainly. I think I

shortened my maternity leave. I was going to ask you about that. That is how

that people are afraid to take the full. Which is very

short anyway. Right. Yeah.

By my second, I was. I was smarter, wiser,

more Confident. I not only took my maternity leave, but

I added some FMLA to it. But the

first one I was like, I gotta jump back in. And, you

know, you might not see me all that much because I have

to dou. Doubly prove myself. And

I think when I went back to the office, my daughter was waking up

maybe twice in the middle of. The night, and I thought, you must have been

exhausted. Absolutely. But, yeah, you slap on as much

makeup as you can, put on the lipstick so it looks like you're

alive, and you push on through and,

you know, go sit in the car and cry a couple of times a day

if you need to because you're physically exhausted, you're

mentally exhausted because the work is still pretty intense

and you're working with all men. So they

don't understand the working mom reality.

Again, they may have had their wives and understand the mom

challenges, but, you know, and then all the hormones, that was, I'm sure,

just loveliness. Right. That is a wild ride.

That is a wild ride. The whole maternal cycle is a wild

hormonal ride, I will admit. So you felt a lot of

pressure to shorten the guaranteed. So there's two types of leave

that exist still today, as far as I know, when it comes to maternity leave,

and this is only for companies that have a certain number of employees. Like, if

you work for a mom and pop, you're totally unprotected, but you get, I think,

six weeks of federally

provided paid leave, and then

you can do like disability after that. Like short term disability.

I thought it was MLA, which is federal. Is that 12? Is that federal?

12. So I'm just wrong about that. 12 weeks. My youngest kid is

disabled. That's what it was in 2004. No, I think that's right.

And again, to tout how awesome Microsoft's

benefits were, we got 12 weeks paid. So. 12 weeks

paid and then the second time you had some disability that you could tag

on. That's right. Right. Yeah. And so, and that's another look when we

think about the wording for that we're considering raising

a child to be a disability inside the workforce. It's just kind

of a crazy. It's like when you think it's like it's one of those things,

like, am I disabled? Right. Well, I remember

when I had to sign the, the

maternity leave paperwork. It does have

phrase in there that says like, you know, your

exact job is not secure, but

you will come back to like an equivalent position.

Right. And so you were probably scared,

am. I going to have the same manager. Microsoft is well known for

reorganizations all of the time.

And you know, so much of your work experience can

be great or awful based on who you work

for and with. So yeah, it's definitely a.

Feels a little bit Russian roulette ish of okay,

everyone tells me this is not a problem and it's just the normal

legal paperwork, but you are signing something that says, I realize

this exact job might not exist when I come back. And

from like, from a business owner perspective, you

can see how that makes sense. Because if you've got somebody who's gone for any

reason, you know, personal sabbatical,

anything for two months as a company, you might have to

finish that project and then move on. But as an

employee, as a disruption, it is scary. It is

scary to think about will my job be here and within software?

My. I don't know if this is still the way it is. But during the

deck there's a, there's like expansion and contraction within all these businesses. Like, hey,

we're releasing these products and now we're not. Like, so like there's like, we

hire a bunch of people, they work for a while and then we like downsize

and let go. And as you're aging into this

and job security is your concern, you're also becoming more and more senior, which makes

you more of a target to be let go if you can't justify your worth

within the organization. Yeah. So that the

stress, the stress was high. How far apart are your two kids?

Four years. Four years. So you completed this cycle,

started sleeping through the night, enjoying your job, and then you

started over? Yes. Yeah.

Crazy. That's the way we do it. And, and I think the

second time.

I had had a tendency of staying in the same organization

and until I really had kind of mastered something and

had built up a lot of credibility and,

you know, brand if you will. And so by the

second one, I had been at the company now eight or nine years.

I was much more established of, I know

I can do this. The stay at home thing is working for the family.

Yes, it'll be more difficult with two than one, but

we're gonna make this one work. And I don't

remember as much drama with the second, except

many companies still don't know what to do with a woman who's been

gone for 12 weeks. Like I remember both times

I came back and my computer just would not accept any

passwords. And it was as if I was a brand new employee.

And like this happens quite a bit in A company this size, like,

why are we all acting like this? Some

unicorn situation and I'm the only one that has left on maternity

leave. Why do you make it so damn tough on us to come back

and not be able to just, just plug right back in, you know, what

are, what are the meetings I need to attend, what are the projects

I need to be updated on? Who was covering this work and how are

we going to transition it. Again at

Microsoft is the only thing I can really speak to. We have an annual

performance evaluation and the HR definition

is we're evaluated on the time that we are working. So

if you were on leave for three months, that is put aside. And

if you kicked ass for the other nine months, then you kicked ass in

your performance evaluation. But so many times I would be

in a room with other managers and they would be evaluating

women and be like, well, she did pretty good for nine months, but she wasn't

here for those three. So I'm giving her average. I'm like, you

are, buddy. That is not the definition

of how you're supposed to evaluate her. And so

as being a manager and seeing what was happening to others that were

in these situations, I was better able to protect myself,

have more conversations beforehand of,

okay, this is, these are the tasks I'm supposed to be doing.

This is, you know, what's included, this is what's excluded.

And going back to that fairness, each one of those

micro or macro aggressions were just those things

that would tick me off to the place of like, need to

educate other women on. Yeah, if you're getting ready to

go on mat leave, how do you close your stuff up and put a bow

on it so that you're ready to pick it up when you come back? What

conversations with your boss or co workers? What feedback

do you want to get documented? Like what is the body

of, of work? And again, agreements

that you need to solidify so that you don't have

to wonder and worry that you're going to be getting sidelined

when you come back. And then of course, how do you start ramp

up back again? And so there's two sides, two

versions in my experience, like as a, just as a woman, there's two

versions of these conversations. Sometimes there's the corporate

HR version of here are the rules and here's your paperwork. And

sometimes there's a back channel conversation between women in

an office that are like, here's the actual stuff you need to know and here's

the stuff not to tell your boss and here's how you protect your actual

decisions because, you know, you knew what you. You. You

knew what you wanted to do, and it didn't change. But they do ask you

to make all of these decisions and commit to them before you've actually

had the child. And so there are tons of times where

things. We'll pick one that's not very controversial. If you have a kid that has

a medical challenge. Right. Then your facts change, your

situation changes during that window. In a position where you're. So. It

is. I think it's very interesting. Let's talk about this. You're in a big company,

you're an operational engineer. So systems and processes, that's

your wheelhouse. You find yourself sitting in their meetings evaluating.

This is not something that only happens every once in a while. And yet the

culture wasn't changing. I have, like, this theory in

my mind about why it doesn't shift, but why. What is it that

keeps the bigger corporate, in your opinion, like, and just

your opinion. Not like, I'm not going to hold you to it, but what is

the thing that keeps these things from shifting in these big offices?

Well, I think one is that there's not enough women around the

table. Yeah. Challenge. The other kind of. This is

the way we've always done it, thinking. And.

I've always been someone who's been vocal or curious

and asked some of those questions of like, but it says this over

here. It doesn't sound like that you're applying that

philosophy in your justification

what's going on here. So I do think

that that's one because someone would say, oh, yeah, Steve

did 12 months of work and sue only did nine. So of

course Steve is going to get a better, you know, evaluation

than Sue. And it's like, sorry, so one

is having more women or more diversity,

whether it's economic, you know, age,

gender, all of the different aspects of our real

population in a room, because when it's too homogeneous,

it is that group think aspect.

And you can have managers or, you know,

vice presidents, presidents that have a point of view and

no one wants to question it because you go along to

get along. And so sometimes you definitely need those

disruptors who are going to say, this is, we ain't

doing that anymore. Yeah. And the other thing that I find with parenting

situations, I see it show up every once in a while. This is, you know,

that very specific situation of bringing a new life into the world. But I see

it in other places once you're no longer dealing with something.

So, like, once you're no Longer dealing with elementary school

pickup and like, you know, cupcakes in the classroom, you stop

thinking about it and it's like not front of mind.

And then even if you have a person who's been through

that situation, sometimes they're not thinking of it and sometimes their opinions

shift. So like, I think about this a lot on like airplanes. Like, so when

you're traveling with kids, you're very sensitive, very sensitive to other people

traveling with small kids. And then most of the time people who've

had kids, they're like, generally most of the community

is pretty aware and sensitive. Every once in a while you run into people

who will tell you, you know, that they have kids because they tell you

they're like, well, I've got four kids and 24 grandkids and your kids

shouldn't be screaming on the airplane. And it's like, I think to myself, I'm like,

you know what? I think you've just forgotten. I think you've forgotten.

So. And I find that so it is. And that's where

policies should work and should kick in if

they hold. But it's kind of like a version of like a not in my

backyard thing. Like, it's not my problem, I don't care, I'm moving on. And I

think that that's when systems in big companies.

Maybe don't work as well as they maybe could. Okay, so

the majority of the times I talk to people about the decisions that they make

when parenting hits their is that they don't

fit in the corporate workspace anymore in the opt out. Like, how do I make

it work by opting out. Your story is different because you did stay

at Microsoft for 30 years and you made it work for

you, which I think is really, really there.

And so being a new mom is not the only

exit challenge you had in these 30 years.

You shared that you were able to overcome many of these.

What were some of the other challenges that you overcame to make to be able

to hold on to your career goals at Microsoft? One

that still gives me some.

Pause is some of the trade offs that I made

to be able to continue my

definition of being successful, both an employee and a mom.

So being in the operations world and I had worked in

our PC accessories. So think of like my mice and keyboards and things like

that that were, you know, vital for Windows 95 and

all the operating systems to work Windows 95. I'm having

bad memories. I came of age, I got to launch that thing. I was,

I was like a baby at the time. And so it was super fun and

exciting. But when Xbox was starting up,

okay. They pulled people that knew something about physical.

Like the peripherals. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Right. To say we need folks that

know operations and supply chain and all of these things. And

someone that I had worked with went over to that team and this team was

completely secret. Right. We do

things in private buildings and.

Right. And they said, you would be amazing

in this team. And I

think I. That may have been when I was pregnant with my second child.

And I said, there's no way.

There is no way I can work this.

That job would probably been nights and weekends because it was

so aggressive and so amazing. And one

of the folks who reported to me at the time in

that role took that job and got

to general manager, which was the level that I finally

achieved after 25 years, about eight years before me.

So watching somebody have the benefit of not taking

the opportunity. Yep. So that's just timing. It's

just timing. It's like the Olympics are only every four years. It's like if you're

not available at the time. Yep, that one. That

one hurt. I still feel like I made the right decision. I

was always able to, you know, make it to my kids, did school plays,

never missed a birthday. I wasn't traveling crazy.

And so I was very present. And I. I'm

still okay with it. But there is that, like, exactly what

you said, the timing aspect of, damn

it, give me another year kind of thing. But the.

The last example that I will give you, that

really could have been that final exit. It. I was

going from a. At Microsoft term senior director,

looking for a role that would get me into the executive ranks, which is

partner at Microsoft. I had been in a role for a number of years.

I knew that role was not ever going to have the scope for me to

get that next promotion. I'm looking around, looking around, not sure

what to do. Someone that I had worked with previously

had reached out and said, hey, this team is looking for

this particular role. It is scoped at a

partner. They've been looking for like six months. Can't find

the right person. You should try. You have a lot of the skills. I know

you're not at that level, but you should go give it a try. I was

like, oh, all right. I don't know if I can, but all right, let me

jump in. In the interview, said

to the hiring manager, listen, I'm going from leading a team

of 12 or 15 people in one function, doing quite well with it.

This is like 75 people, five layers of management.

You know, this is leading an entire organization I am in.

This is obviously scoped for the promotion that I'm. That I'd like to

achieve, but I'm going to need some help because I've never done

anything of this magnitude. And the way it works at

Microsoft is almost 100% of the time, it's a

lateral move, and then you have to prove your worth, and then you

get the promotion. So you take on this huge,

big job, hope that you're successful,

and then you get the reward. Okay? So I. He says,

absolutely. I'll be right here with you. You've got a good team. I move

over. He gave me one massive goal. He's like,

the last two people that were in this role could not figure this thing out.

There are some other business goals, and then there's some team goals of

reduce the attrition, have a, you know, better harmonized team.

I jump in, I start nailing that big, huge goal that

the other two general managers who were getting paid at the

executive level had not been able to do was

achieving a bunch of other things. And on the people side,

it takes a long time to understand what's really going on in a culture

and what's. What's driving people to be

motivated, demotivated, you know, stay or leave.

And so I did not put enough weight on that and

was focused on the business things because I was like, these are metrics. I can

show my worth. As we're going through the

year, I'm checking in with my boss and I'm like, hey, listen, I think

I'm kind of kicking ass because, like, I'm doing the job of

someone a major level ahead of me, and

I'm doing it at my level, and we're having all these wins.

And he's like, yeah, I think so. You know, like, you're. You're doing okay. I'm

like, what the hell do you mean? So at the end of

that first year, it's time for my evaluation. And

he says to me, yeah, I rated you

missing expectations. So you're basically

that five. Like, exceeding, meeting and missing.

Right? Basically. Okay. All right. And if I ever wanted that big

promotion, I had to show that I was exceeding or else

it could have been three years. Like, it takes a long time

to get to partner, and you have to have a lot of

foundational. Like, you're. You have a consistent success

story. I was like, what the hell are you talking about?

Like, Like, I'm doing the job that two other folks

that were at that level were not even as successful at.

And he's like, yeah, I had to give you too much help when

it came to managing some of the team dynamics.

Like this is the exact thing that I had told you I

didn't know how to do and that I was going to have to learn. So

you're telling me that when I asked for your help, I'm now being penalized for

it and you're disregarding all of the wins

that I had. And oh, by the way, I went above and beyond and led

a women's group to, for our diversity and

equity program and like did these kind of pro bono

things. I was like, oh my God, like yeah, this

was. If you even said I was ex, I was meeting expectations, I

would have been disappointed because I really believe that I'm exceeding

thing and now I'm working like

crazy and if I had stayed in my old job I would have been seriously

paid a substantial bit more. So I'm doing all this

at a lower net income.

This is some serious bs.

So I was beyond mad. So this sounds

to me like from a culture perspective, this is a place where there's a policy

that is promoted like hey, you can ask for help and not not have a

penalty which does not match the actual experience where there's an invisible

penalty. And so

that's the way it sounds as you're telling the story. I just want to confirm

that that's the understanding. Did you find that within the culture you were

able then to there were ways for you to navigate that?

I ended up having to really dig deep and decide

if I was going to leave that job and go

find another one at my level that was going to be more like my old

job job and just kind of within Microsoft, but within the okay,

Microsoft has a meaningful benefit that if you hit

55 years old and 15 years of service, there's a retirement

benefit. And I was a couple of years away from that and so I was

not. I was very motivated to stay in the company. So like, do I

quietly just tuck my tail say I guess this didn't work,

I'm gonna go have some more normal work

life balance. It was causing a lot of stress in my family at the

time. My youngest was in middle school, high school, really

struggling with a number of things and I wasn't able to be as present

for her. And I was making a lot of trade offs for this job

that was now not even, you know, fulfilling in any of

the aspects that I wanted it to. I was like Do I

really just rage quit? My husband would ask me on a regular basis, Let me

know if you're rage quitting today. I actually. My dad did that. My dad

rage quitted. He. I called him one day and he's like, two years after retirement,

he went in and somebody was like, good morning. And he's like, I quit. Like,

that was the exact. I was like, this is the conversation. Like,

just watch right out. Or the last route I could take

would be to really advocate for myself and go above him.

And that was what I chose. That's what you did. Okay. And it worked out.

I had all my ducks in a row and had to really say,

look, this is. This is the facts of the matter. And

that, that manager, that executive vice

president, was like, what do you want? Like, how do I keep you? What are

you looking for? I'm like, you gotta pay me. And I don't think I can

work for that guy again because I have zero respect for him because

he told me a line of crap all during the year that I was more

or less on track and now tells me that I'm

missing by that much. And within about four months,

both of those things were able to be resolved.

That's a pretty good story. That is a pretty good story. What piece of advice

given that? I've seen that play out in places where I've worked in positive and

negative ways because there's a lot of human elements in the actual people

that are doing it. And Microsoft is an established company with a lot of people

whose job is to manage the culture, which if you're in a

much smaller company, you don't have those tools. But what

piece of advice given that situation where you had a manager who

was not advocating for you and was not protecting you

within this culture, what piece of advice. Advice would you give somebody who's in a

corporate environment now to intentionally

prepare and protect themselves in situations like that?

Well, you know, we always talk about, know your worth. But it is a

matter of if you've got the facts and figures of these were the

agreements and these were the results. You know, you end up

having the receipts, as they say. Right.

Of this is. Is, you know, there's something missing. Help

me understand how this is happening now. Because

I had been so close to rage quitting, I felt like I didn't

have a lot to lose. And so this wasn't a matter of, like, I

was bluffing. And if they said sorry,

I was not willing to handle the consequences of that,

I'm not a very risk Tolerant person. So

I had to be very comfortable with, with. I'm gonna go shoot my shot.

And if that doesn't work, I'm definitely finding a different job or

leaving the company if that doesn't work. Because they have now just,

you know, created enough scars. So I think

knowing that what your exit plan is

kind of the. Don't, don't throw out

the threat of leaving if you're not willing to back that up. Right?

Don't. Yeah, they don't care. They're gonna be like, like, have a nice day.

Right? And right now, the current work environment is,

you know, a bit different than where I was in. I guess this was like

2018. And so in.

In literally today's world, I think most companies would be like, yeah, there's the door.

See ya. Yeah, no, absolutely. It's a very much a. A right to. Right to

work kind of environment, I think. I mean, we're talking multiple six figures of

specifically software engineers have been unjobbed

in the last 12 months. Funny, hilarious story that I lived through in my

20s. I had a boss that I was really struggling with, and so I was

applying for jobs and I went for an interview. The HR director

of the same company that I worked for was in the lobby with me,

also applying for a job in the same thing. So she went back. So it's

all top secret. Nobody knows that I'm looking for a job. It's all secret, secret.

And she asks me in the elevator. She's like, so what's going on? I was

like, I'm really unhappy with this boss, so on and so forth. So she went

back and had like, I don't even know what the conversation was. Fly on the

wall. Like, it was like, hey, just so you know, Amy's really

unhappy. How do you know? I can't tell you. You know, I have no idea

how that conversation went, but I think that's very good

advice about receipts. It's like, you know, constantly be ready

to defend yourself and know what the objectives are. Cause it's real easy in those

performance reviews when people are like, here are your four metrics

for the next quarter. Just be like, okay, whatever, and walk out. But. But they

can come back to bite you in the butt in these places. All right,

so in a minute, we're going to do the final questions. I want to give

you a chance to tell everybody what you do now. So you worked for

Microsoft for 30 years. You did all these things. What do you do today?

So today I am semi retired. And

when I was leaving Microsoft, I just realized that I

felt like I had developed a master's degree in

women, incorporated it, and saw so many

gals who were trying to get that next promotion

or wonder why they were getting the

average or below average performance evaluations,

and they felt like they had deserved so much more. And so throughout

those 30 years, I had coached and mentored so many women. So

now I do that as an executive business coach, and I call myself

a business and life coach for corporate women

because it isn't just about how you operate in your

kind of 9 to 5. Really, all of us that are in

corporate are dealing with the mom guilt and the time

management and the I'm having a family. How do I

negotiate or, you know, navigate that? And

so I work one on one with clients, and I also run

a monthly women's mentoring circle group.

Very nice. I would say that that is something that has shifted from the

90s to 2025. So in the 90s, the messaging

we gave young working women was lean in. It was like, to

compartmentalize your life. And you were two different people, a work person and

a family person. I do think that in 2025, we have

realized the common sense of, like, no, no, no. I'm the same person 24 hours

a day, and I can't just shut off these

other things. And I think that that's more practical because what you, you know, that

was a little bit of garbage there for a while. Like, it didn't work. It

was like, oh, yeah, today I'm at work. Oh, sorry, little Johnny broke his leg.

I can't deal with that right now. I'm only in my work. That was never

a real thing. That was never a real thing. All right. You have a special

offer for the audience which is four steps to navigate your career

journey. It's a workbook, and there's a link for this PDF that

provides actionable steps to demystify the steps landing your next job

or a job several years in the future. There's a link for everybody who's watching

and listening, wherever that is. There's a link in the show notes or the description.

The easiest way to get these links is often to become a member of the

imperfect adulting email community, because then that link shows up in your email

box and it's great, and so on and so forth. I do want to thank

you, Joanne, for that very generous offer and for sharing your story. Are

you ready for the final three questions? I hope so. Let's do it.

Do you have a set morning routine and if so, what is

it? Most mornings I get

up, definitely have to have my first cup of coffee. And then

a little bit after that, I love to go out for a walk. Something that

I had started during COVID and so listen to a great

podcast. I try to do anywhere from two to three miles. I

probably five or six days a week. That is

very nice. Do you do that even in the summer in Arizona? I

have been trying to do that. I have to get up even earlier

before the sun is up because it's so damn warm.

It is. When I see the. I see the temperatures in the

southwest in the desert, I just am like, wow, those numbers are nuts. But

all right, so if you want to relax, what are you most likely

to do? Go out and get in nature, do a workout, meditation, watch

tv, listen to music. What feels relaxing to you?

Definitely. I've always been a TV gal. If I

I. My most favorite thing is to go out out for a

meal with girlfriends and shoot the shit and

just have the time slips by so fast. Very good

community and, and friends and social. I love it. Okay,

if somebody gave you a 100 gift card, but you the rule is

you have to spend it on yourself. Okay, so just a hundred dollars. What is

the first thing that comes to mind that you would buy for yourself?

I would probably go get a massage. Much love it.

I love it. That's it. Joanne Gates, thank you so much for being a

wonderful guest today on the show. I am so appreciative of you

asking awesome questions, having me here and getting to share a

little bit. So thank you so much, Amy. Yay.