Introducing
JULIA SANG
Senior Project Manager at Studio 24
I am a Senior Project Manager and deliver projects for clients including W3C, Parliament and Heathrow. I do capacity planning with the management team so we can better manage the flow of projects through the studio. I also work on improving project and studio processes with the other PMs.
How did you end up doing the job you're doing now?
I’ve had two careers – working for both small charities and big digital advertising agencies.
Working for London agencies, it is very easy to get caught up in the work-hard play-hard lifestyle. But my charity career also included living in Sri Lanka for three years working with an environmental charity, which gave me a very different perspective on putting people and the environment first.
When I had my first child, both my husband and I knew we didn’t want to stay in London. We wanted to live somewhere smaller, easier to get around, with more green spaces. We moved to Cambridge and never looked back.
When my maternity leave ended I started looking for jobs and found Studio 24. I really liked the vibe I got from their blog posts and the projects they worked on, so I kept checking their site to see if they had any vacancies. Alas, there were none, and eventually I took another job with an organisation I wasn’t very keen to work with. About 6 weeks into the job I broke my foot cycling in the rain. Sitting in A&E I thought “I’ll just have one more check on their site”. Sure enough there was a job opening and I took it as a sign that this was the agency for me. I started working for them the week my cast came off. 4 years and 1 more baby later, I’m still here, still learning new things, and still pleased I broke my foot that day!
If you could say something to yourself before you started a career in tech what would it be?
When my first child was learning to walk I was blown away. Every single day she’d try to stand up and then she’d fall over. She’d fall and fall again. But she never got cross or frustrated. She just kept trying. Her legs got stronger. Her balance got better. And then one day she did it! She wasn’t worried about what other people thought of her. She didn’t see herself as a failure the 99 times she fell over. She just learnt from every single time. What would I say to myself? Believe in yourself – you’re really good at this. If you don’t get it right the first time, try again. Ask for help if you need to – but you can do this.
What's the most challenging thing you've found about being a woman in tech?
For a few years I worked for an agency which was one big boys club. There was literally a wooden dick on someone’s desk. When you work somewhere like that, there isn’t much room to be different. Anything that was offensive was considered ‘ironic’ and if you called it out, it meant you didn’t get the joke. I was passed over for a promotion once because one man on the pay-review board was friends with another man on the pay review board who didn’t like me, because I wanted to do things differently on his project. What did I learn? That you can fight decisions like that (I did, and got my promotion and an apology). But to change the culture is almost impossible as an individual. So I left, and found an agency to work with that really put it’s people at the heart of what it does.
Lockdown bonus questions:
How has lockdown affected your life and your job? Are you working from home? Furloughed?
Are you enjoying the downtime or can you not wait for things to go back to normal(ish)?
I’m working from home with two small kids. My husband is a freelancer and doesn’t have much work, so he’s doing all of the childcare during the day. It’s harder to work from home, you don’t get to share a cuppa with a colleague or enjoy a walk at lunch. On the plus side, we’re closer as a family. Although I don’t deny I am really looking forward to a few hours to myself when all this is over.
