Founders at Work.pdf

Mena Trott 415
Trott: People do ask me that all the time, and I have to step back and try to figure
out why it is. I’m at a weird age group where I haven’t been in the industry
for a long time and I haven’t seen it first hand, but then it’s like, “It can’t be a
problem because I’m here.”
If I’m forced to think about women who are in this field, I can’t usually. But
I know there are. Many women are in marketing or design. I think marketing
and design are a lot harder to learn than engineering. That’s my opinion. People
put value judgments on engineering like, “There are more men; therefore, it
must be a smarter field that women should get into.” I don’t think that’s the case
at all. I say, look at women, they’re strong designers and strong at marketing and
communication. That’s a harder skill to acquire in life. Being able to write
and being able to figure out what people want in their product, how to sell it
to them.
There aren’t that many women in technology and maybe it doesn’t really
matter. I mean, why aren’t there more men in design?
Livingston: Looking back in your whole experience, what would you say is the
most surprising thing?
Trott: There’s the whole, “I can’t believe we have a company that has 100 people.”
The surprising thing is that there’s going to be someone here now that I don’t
know personally. It’s not just to a point where I’m not good friends with them,
like other employees; it’s like, “I don’t know this person’s name.” I feel badly,
and I should know everyone’s name, but it’s hard.
The good part of it is that I don’t have to interview everybody. It’s not like a
small company where, if I don’t interview this person, then they can’t get a job.
So I’m very happy. We still have our staff meetings every Friday where everybody
comes in, and we talk and introduce people. So we’re still a small company
in that sense.
It’s surprising that we’re still doing it after 4 years and that I actually like this
job. I never liked any of the jobs that I had (even though I only had two). This
is something that I enjoy doing. I love work. Last night I thought about it
because we just sat around all weekend watching TV, and for a little while I was
like, “I don’t want to go to work tomorrow because I want to finish watching
Lost” but then I thought, “I like work and I like coming in and talking to
people.”
I’ll be sad the day that the company doesn’t exist in some form, but maybe
that will be longer. With Amazon, it’s been 10 years.
Livingston: Is there anything that your colleagues would describe as a
Mena-ism?
Trott: There’s the whole joke about me being self-absorbed. I believe I am, but
in a way that I’m very self-aware about, and it’s one of the ways that I make fun
of myself. So I say, “I can’t be that self-absorbed because I’m most critical of
myself.” The running joke at the company is that I’m self-indulgent, but that’s
me. I’d say that the worst part of me is all out there, so if you see me and I’m
being snappish or egotistical, that’s the worst it gets. It doesn’t get much deeper
in terms of my bad things. I think less people know my good parts than my bad.