Author, public speaker, and coach for managers and leaders across the tech industry.
Blog Posts
Behind every great woman
Behind every great woman is a horde of even greater women who are smart, supportive, honest, and badass. There is at least one really special friend who pushes her to be better, who challenges her, and who screams her name from the bleachers when her team wins. read more
On having a totally reasonable amount of self-confidence
I was at a tech women's meetup organized by a close friend and colleague. She took the podium for a moment to talk about women in tech, to thank sponsors, and to share some encouraging words with the attendees.
She suddenly called out to me from the spotlight. "Lara, do you remember when I said you should give a talk at Velocity?" read more
Working in Tech with a Chronic Illness
According to the CDC, “about half of all adults—117 million people—have one or more chronic health conditions. One of four adults has two or more chronic health conditions.” This means many of our coworkers deal with chronic illness daily, and we’ve gotten really good at hiding it. If I hadn’t told my teammates, I’m not sure that they’d know I’ve got Crohn’s disease and arthritis; I can mask most of the symptoms and have figured out how to get work done around them. read more
On Quitting
Quitting gets a bad rap. When you think about quitting something, you usually think about ending a bad thing. She quit smoking, he quit his terrible job, they quit Facebook. read more
Swanson -> Hogan
tl;dr: My given name is Lara Callender Hogan. A while ago, I got married, and changed my name to Lara Callender Swanson. I was divorced two years ago, and have recently decided to go back to Hogan. I still answer to “SWANSON!” :) read more
Modeling advocacy
Note: this post was written by my father, Bill Hogan. I asked him to share his thoughts on how he approached parenting two daughters, given that we ended up well-equipped to confront sexism and other tough challenges for young women in our respective industries. Dad focused on a particularly great anecdote from our childhood, which I heard about a few years later. For me, hearing how he gracefully challenged sexist attitudes modeled how important it is to stand up for what’s right, regardless of how deaf those ears may be. My parents gave my sister and me the strength and tools we needed to stay strong in our careers, and to support others in doing the same. read more
Quantifying the book writing process: my first draft
The first draft of Designing for Performance is done! There is still a ton left to do: get feedback from reviewers, incorporate the feedback, then go through all of the publishing steps like proofreading, getting the figures redrawn, etc. But in this brief pause in the process as I wait for reviewers to take a look, I decided to analyze the first draft writing process, inspired by Ilya Grigorik’s retrospective on his own writing process. read more
On unsolicited criticism
I had a new experience a few weeks ago when I was speaking at Velocity. I gave a keynote to 2,000 people; throughout the following day, a half-dozen strangers came up to me to supply unsolicited criticism of my presentation tone. read more
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