After New York
I want to complain for a second. I specifically bought these really nice walking shoes for New York. They looked great. They were supposed to be comfortable, and I thought I was set. Somewhere in the airport, I realized I had the worst blisters.
So I had to limp my way to a store, buy a pair of sneakers, and hope that they didn't completely destroy my outfit. Everyone was gonna be dressed up to a certain degree — it was a super nice tech conference with a bunch of women. We all wanna look good for women.
And you know what? It was worth it. My feet felt so much better. The whole rest of the trip, my feet were a-okay. So if you're ever at a conference and your shoes are betraying you — just stop by the airport and get airport sneakers. That is my recommendation. You're welcome.
Okay, now that I've gotten the complaint out of my system.
I'm Darian Glausier, and I just got back from New York City. I spoke at the Women Who Code Conference 2026, June 2nd. And this is the episode I feel like I've been building toward since episode one.
The Stage
The last episode ended with me saying I felt content. Like I was where I was supposed to be. And that did not change when I got there. The night before, I went through everything one last time and I just — I felt good. Not in a reckless way, not in a "this is probably fine" way. I felt genuinely confident. It took me a while to figure out that's the word I was feeling. Like I knew I was gonna do a good job and I wasn't particularly scared about it.
I'm learning to recognize that feeling instead of looking for something to be worried about.
The morning of, I got to the speakers' lounge early. Started meeting people, talking. It was already good before I even got to the room. Then it was time.
I walked into the theater, I'm setting up — immediately, technical issues. Of course. Almost every speaker on day one had something, so it wasn't just me. My screen didn't want to show. The microphone wasn't working right. We eventually got the screen up, but the mic was basically off. It had an itty bitty tiny bit of volume, but not enough to where it mattered.
So I did what you do when the mic isn't reliable.
I belted it.
I spoke from my chest, from my diaphragm, and I projected. And honestly, there's something about actually having to use your body to be heard that keeps you from floating away into your head. It made me more present.
And I wasn't going to panic about the tech, because I had already prepared for the tech. My slides were live on my website. If everything on that stage had died, I still had something to say that people could take home. I already built a version of this talk that could survive the worst case.
A backup plan doesn't just save you if something goes wrong. It changes how you feel before it does.
The talk itself felt good. I knew my material. I spoke to the room, not at it — I don't like to speak at people, that's just who I am. I even made people laugh a couple of times because I'm one of the funniest people I know, just like you, probably. And when it was all over, I felt settled. Like something had clicked.
The Room
Here's the thing I wasn't fully expecting: the number of women in that room who were unemployed.
I'm not surprised that women go to conferences like this to find community, to find support, to try to get a leg up. I get it. I've been there in different ways. What hit me was the scale of it. The density of it in that room.
Women in tech fall off after a certain point. The higher you go, the less women you see. I wanted to look up the exact number before I said it out loud, but I think it's around a 35% drop-off the further you go.
Thirty-five percent.
Think about what that means in practice. You start your career surrounded by women to a certain degree. And then over time the rooms get smaller. The tables get smaller. And at some point you look around and you're one of the very few, if not the only.
That's not attrition. That's a pattern.
And I'll be honest — I think the job market right now has made that worse. Layoffs are difficult in any culture at any time. AI is shifting what roles exist and who's being hired and to what degree. It's a mess right now, and most of us are just trying to stay afloat.
These women were there at this conference doing what women do — gathering, supporting each other, trying to figure out what the next thing was together. And it's not sad. I want to be clear about that. The room had so much energy. I met people who blew me away. I'd already reached out to some speakers before I even got there, and actually getting to be in the same space as them — it hit different. These were smart, driven, real women. Connections I genuinely want to keep.
But I didn't want to skip over the harder layer of it. Because even in life, I'm not good at pretending things are fine when they're not. Those women, whether they were speaking or not — they deserve to be acknowledged.
Taking Up Space
Back to my talk for a second. I had specifically asked someone in the audience what was something I could have improved. And they said what I completely believe: I undervalue myself.
I've been sitting with that since I got home. Because they're right. I know they're right. I am a hard worker. I build things that function, that matter, that other engineers want to use. I put myself on that stage in front of a room full of people and I delivered.
And somewhere in all of that, I'm still the person who minimizes herself before someone else has a chance to.
Learning to have ego is very difficult for me. It feels wrong almost. And I think I know why. I am an extremely empathetic person. I grew up as a people pleaser, and I spent years in a domestically abusive relationship. I'm not going deep on that today — that's a whole other conversation. But I want to say it plainly because it is a part of me. It's part of my story. It's part of why I had to turn my life around.
That kind of experience teaches you to make yourself smaller. Quieter. Easier. It becomes a reflex. It becomes a safety. Even after you're out, even after you've done so much work — I still catch myself shrinking before I even register that I'm doing it. All for someone else's feelings.
And then there's being a southern woman on top of that. You're supposed to be pleasant. You're supposed to be light. Not too loud, not too sharp, not too blunt, not too much. The list of supposed-to's is exhausting.
I want to be loud. I want to be direct. I curse like a sailor sometimes. I take up space when I walk into a room. I am speaking with my chest from this point on — especially because I went to that conference and I spoke with it.
I'm still learning, actively, consciously learning, that those are not flaws to sand down. They are the thing. They are part of what got me on that stage. They are what made the people in the back of the room hear me when the mic was giving out.
This isn't me saying I have it figured out. I obviously don't. I am in the work. I'm a process. I'm telling you it out loud because I think there are a lot of people — women especially, but not only women — who are doing the exact same thing. You are brilliant and capable and still somehow reflexively apologizing for taking up the space you've earned.
You don't have to stop being empathetic to start being confident. But you do have to make a decision every single day to stop making yourself smaller on behalf of people who never even asked you to.
What I Came Back With
On the flight home, I was ready to come home. New York is New York — I love the food, I love some of the people I have there. But it's just a city, and I was ready for my own space.
Somewhere on that flight, I kept thinking about the room. The energy. What it felt like to stand up there and know — not just hope, but know — that I was doing something I want to keep doing. Something I'm supposed to be doing.
I, Darian Glausier, am a professional speaker now. Not "I want to be." Not "I'm trying." I am.
The version of me that was trained to be smaller — she did a lot of the work to get me here. I'm proud of her, and I'm proud of who I am today.
I'm Darian Glausier. This is Head First.