To Be Taken Seriously, She Introduced Herself as Stephen

“Who would have guessed,” asked trailblazing entrepreneur Stephanie Shirley, that programming for the Concorde’s flight recorder “was done by a team of 30 women working in their homes?”

Good Morning!

Here are today’s highlights:

• Lou Mosca warns that some businesses are falling in love with AI without really understanding how to use it.

• TikTok is automating its ad process, which is annoying big advertisers but pleasing smaller ones.

• The owner of T.J. Maxx is thriving, in part, by buying up imported inventory that smaller importers ordered before the tariffs hit.

• For the first time in decades, more immigrants are leaving the United States than arriving.

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OBITUARY

Stephanie Shirley started a software company in 1962: “When she started her software business, Freelance Programmers, in 1962, British women could not work on the stock exchange floor or even drive a bus. Her initial financing was six pounds (roughly $16.85 then and about $220 today), but she needed her husband’s signature to open the company’s bank account and deposit her own money. In a 2015 TED Talk, Ms. Shirley said, ‘You can always tell ambitious women by the shape of our heads — they’re flat on top from being patted patronizingly.’”

• “At the time, many educated women left the computer industry after marrying or having a child. Ms. Shirley provided them an opportunity to re-enter the work force while remaining at home, writing code part-time with flexible hours. When the company’s name was changed to F International — and then F1, and eventually Xansa — the F stood not only for freelance but also for flexible and free. In job interviews, she asked applicants one simple question: ‘Do you have access to a telephone?’”

• “But there were early frustrations. When she sent business letters signed Stephanie Shirley, they often went unanswered. At the suggestion of her husband, Derek Shirley, a physicist she married in 1959, she began introducing herself in correspondence as Steve. Increasingly, prospective clients granted her interviews, although she could see when she walked through the door, she later told the British newspaper The Telegraph, ‘that they were almost annoyed at themselves at having been conned.’”

• “Still, work orders picked up, and she began hiring more programmers. Of her first 300 employees, 297 were women. The company designed software for the black box flight recorder on the Concorde supersonic jet, and for scheduling buses and freight trains. It also developed software protocols that were eventually adopted by NATO.”

• “Ms. Shirley disguised the flexible, work-from-home nature of her business by offering clients fixed prices for projects. Her goal was for her company to be treated the same as any other company. ‘Who would have guessed,’ she said in a 2020 speech to the British Computer Society, that programming for the Concorde’s flight recorder ‘was done by a team of 30 women working in their homes?’”

• “In 1975, an anti-discrimination law required Ms. Shirley to diversify her work force, and she started hiring more men. In 1991, she began restructuring her company to share ownership with her employees. By her count, 70 eventually became millionaires.” READ MORE