Five years ago, my friend Lovisa Svallingson was struck by a car and killed while crossing the street in San Francisco. She was a brilliant, dynamic and gregarious person who spoke a bajillion languages and was a friend to at least as many people. Lovisa was an incredible influence on my life and my career, and I will forever wish I could see her one last time.
Coincidentally, five is also the total number of years I was friends with Lovisa before she died. We met while working at Rally Software in early 2016, a startup that had recently been acquired by big tech and was still rife with ping pong, beer kegs and a very fun college-like atmosphere. We both came from coding boot camps and bonded over being the only two female coders in the Denver office. Some random memories from our time together:
* Despite being essentially brand new to the field, Lovisa frequently gave presentations at tech meet ups and conferences. Other than her accent, you would absolutely never know that English was not her first language.
* While passing each other in the bathroom one day, I learned she used the Diva Cup. It took me years to finally try it myself, but now I’ll never go back to tampons. ✌️
* Me writing ✌️ right there was channeling her advanced use of emojis. Not only did she have cool emoji usage, but she often willed non-existent emojis into her text messages using the Slack shorthand of :keyword: – something like “I’m so nervous :supersweaty:” leaving you to imagine how sweaty an emoji could get.
* Lovisa hosted a 2016 election party (which obviously was an abject failure) and the next day we came to the office hung over as hell and played ping pong with our obtuse male coworkers (me: “fuck, what a horrible day”, male coworker: “huh, what happened?”)
* We occasionally gossiped about the hotness of said male coworkers.
* Once, when I was confiding in Lovisa about my insecurities with my technical skills (/venting about how said male coworkers seemingly had no insecurities), she said “someday we’ll be such good programmers, we’ll be coding in our sleep”. I think of this quote often.
We worked together for less than a year before Lovisa moved on to a new opportunity, but we formed a “Power of 3” support group with our mutual friend Beth (formidable in her own right!) to keep in touch. We would meet every few weeks to check in, to hear each other's wins, struggles, etc as we navigated our careers as women in the ever-broy field of tech.
All three of us were overachievers doing cool things those years, but Lovisa's last move was especially inspiring to me. In 2020 she joined a company called Patch to build software that facilitated carbon offset purchases. Lovisa took a pay cut to join, but she simultaneously got a title jump to “Senior Software Engineer” (a title I myself didn’t attain until years later). I asked her how she felt about the pay cut (“I’m at a point in my life where I can afford to do it, a job in climate tech is worth it”) and how she felt about being a senior in the field (“I feel like I’m at this level”). I dream of making a similar pivot to climate tech myself; I imagine Lovisa would have been characteristically helpful in supporting me.
Lovisa moved to San Francisco for the job with her boyfriend and lived there just a couple months before she died. He miraculously survived the accident and was able to resume his life after months of intensive physical therapy.
Lovisa always exuded such confidence in her career, but through the “Power of 3” I saw the struggles beneath the surface. A friendship with a male coworker takes a toxic turn because of porous boundaries. One opinionated coworker dominates the team’s power dynamics. Insecurities flare when a new hire comes in with less technical experience but more seniority. These sorts of things were not incidents she effortlessly brushed off, but rather tough and exhausting conflicts she laboriously worked through.
At Lovisa’s memorial service, she was described as almost saintlike – we should all live our lives like Lovisa did. This sort of talk flared up the angry period of my grief. Lovisa was not a saint, she was a human person just trying to survive her twenties + Trump’s America + a career path filled with misogyny without losing her mind. Was she supposed to get killed by that drunk driver hit and run so we could all be better people? I'd bet my savings if someone had told her “you’re going to die tomorrow” on May 17th 2021 she would have freaked the fuck out.
Lovisa's death hit me hard back in 2021. She was an integral part of my support system as a woman working in tech, and I’ve never really managed to fill that gap. If anything, it’s been filled with kid duties, kid worries and kid heartaches that make everything in my work world seem trivial. I’m not sure I care about my career in the same way I did back then. But then I imagine that the “Power of 3” would have celebrated my perceived indifference as a sign I'm more secure in my career, and it makes me feel less cynical.
Five years out and Lovisa now feels like an old friend I lost touch with. I wish she were back in town randomly and we could spend a few hours catching up. I wish we could bitch about AI together. I wish she could meet my two year old, and meet the person my baby has become five years later. I wish I could share my achievements with her. And I wish that drunk driver hadn’t robbed her of the countless achievements, a whole lifetime, she would have had.
I wish I could just give her a hug and tell her “I miss you”, “thank you” and “fuck that guy, that definitely sounds like his own imposter syndrome”.
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