97: Stop Hiring More of the Same — Michelle McDaid, The Leading Place

Women weren't pushed out of tech once. There were multiple waves, and the patterns are still showing up in how teams get built today.

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Most engineering leaders think their hiring process is neutral. Changing the job spec brought my guest three women applicants the following week, and her team hired two of them. Michelle McDaid spent two decades leading globally distributed engineering teams, became the first female director of engineering at her last company, and left it with 50% women in that role.

She then went back to university to put the evidence behind what she'd already seen on the ground. We sat with some of these ideas together at CTO Craft Con in London a couple of weeks ago, and the conversation was good enough that I wanted to bring it here. She's unusually calm about uncomfortable truths, and that's exactly why this matters. If you believe in diverse teams but keep ending up with more of the same, the gap isn't your intent. It's what you don't even know to look for. This one challenges the default assumptions most technical leaders never examine, and gives you something practical to do about it.

You'll Learn:

[00:00] Introduction

[02:29] What trust actually has to do with uncovering the real problem in any organization

[06:50] What Michelle's career across banking and tech revealed about leadership and self-worth

[15:56] Why the gender gap in tech is neither natural nor inevitable

[24:36] How the language in your job spec is quietly filtering out the people you want to hire

[28:36] The smallest changes that move teams from fearful to collaborative and how AI fits in

[33:47] A 10-point framework for intentionally broadening your talent pool

[44:20] What women lose in meetings every day and how anyone can change it 

Resources Mentioned:

The Authority Gap by Mary Ann Sieghart | Book

Where Did the Women Go? by Michelle McDaid | Article

Textio | Website

Gender Decoder by Kat Matfield | Website

Learn more from Michelle on her LinkedIn and The Leading Place website.

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