What the Great Grandmother of San Francisco Taught Me About Women in Tech

During the long weekend, we visited the vibrant city of San Francisco and learned about Alma de Bretteville Spreckels, known as the “Great Grandmother of San Francisco” and I haven’t stopped thinking about how relevant her story still feels to women in tech today.

Not because she worked in technology.
Because she understood power.

Alma moved through San Francisco during a time when women were expected to be decorative, socially useful, and ultimately secondary to the men building institutions around them.

And yet somehow, she still managed to shape the cultural identity of the city.

She wasn’t supposed to hold influence in the way men did.
So she built it differently.

That feels familiar.

Women in Tech Still Navigate Power Indirectly

One of the strange realities of being a woman in tech is realizing that technical skill alone is often not enough.

You also have to manage perception.

You learn quickly that people are constantly evaluating:

• how confident you sound
• whether you’re “too intense”
• whether you’re likable enough
• whether you explain things too much
• whether you challenge people too directly
• whether your competence threatens someone else’s identity

A lot of women become highly skilled at reading environments because they have to.

Not for survival in a dramatic sense.
For professional survival.

Alma seemed to understand this dynamic long before modern corporate culture existed.

She operated in elite social systems that were controlled largely by wealthy men, but instead of waiting for permission, she built cultural relevance around herself.

That’s still what many women in tech are doing today.

The Tech Industry Pretends Merit Is Everything

The industry likes to tell itself that the best ideas win.
That talent naturally rises.
That technology is rational.

It isn’t.

Tech is deeply social.

Influence matters.
Confidence matters.
Narrative matters.
Timing matters.
Access matters.

And women often enter the industry believing the system is more objective than it actually is.

That disconnect creates frustration.

You think:
“If I become technically excellent, that should be enough.”

But organizations are made of humans, not logic.

That doesn’t mean merit is irrelevant.
It means merit alone rarely determines who gets visibility, trust, leadership, or influence.

Alma de Bretteville Spreckels understood something many ambitious women eventually discover: visibility itself is strategic.

Reinvention Is Part of Survival

What struck me most about San Francisco was how much reinvention is built into the city’s identity.

Gold rushes.
Earthquakes.
Booms.
Collapses.
Tech waves.
Cultural shifts.

The city survives by reinventing itself repeatedly.

Women in tech often have to do the same thing.

Especially because the industry changes constantly:

• tools become obsolete
• roles evolve
• companies restructure
• entire specialties disappear

You cannot build a stable career in tech if your identity is attached to one version of yourself forever.

The women who last are usually the ones willing to evolve without completely abandoning themselves in the process.

That balance is difficult.

Alma’s Story Feels Modern Because the Core Problem Never Changed

The details change across generations.
The dynamics don’t.

Women are still navigating systems where influence is unevenly distributed.
They’re still balancing competence with social acceptability.
They’re still fighting to be taken seriously without becoming emotionally exhausted by the performance of proving themselves.

That’s why Alma’s story still resonates.

Not because history repeats perfectly.
But because ambition, power, perception, and legitimacy are timeless human dynamics.

Final Thoughts

San Francisco feels layered in a way most cities don’t.

And maybe that’s why Alma de Bretteville Spreckels feels like such an interesting symbol for women in tech.

She reminds me that women have always found ways to shape industries, culture, and institutions, even when they weren’t fully recognized by the systems around them.

Not by waiting for permission.
By becoming impossible to ignore.

If you ever find yourself in San Francisco, her story is worth reading about.