Why Aren't There More Female Leaders in Technology?

METALLIC NOISE

>> In talking to Tina Seelig who preceded me, I said, you know, what's with this, why aren't there more women leaders in technology and how do we foster getting more of our girls and younger women into this? So that's specifically why I had my four distinguished panelists as well. So I thought I'd ask them a couple questions, because they're all female leaders in technology, and I think we all kind of agreed that's not the brand that we want to have necessarily. But we do want to make sure that the gender difference, the gender divide is crossed. So maybe I could start, Jasmine, you and I had a great conversation about the differences between technology ideas and getting, men tend to start the engineering ideas but the morphing tends to come when the women pick up on the product ideas. You want to talk about what you've seen and any, any key differences?

>> Right, what's been interesting to me is that I think there's two ideas about innovation and leadership. I've begun to see, especially because my background is more in product marketing and sales and so I tend to look at a lot of companies at a little bit later stage. And I have begun to see a lot more women in leadership positions as a company matures, especially in the Valley. We tend to have an over-accentuation of products that are really tech versus lot of, more consumer products that come out of the East Coast. There's even like the East Coast, West Coast divide. And I think it's interesting that I've met lots and lots of technology founders which tend to be guys who, and, and now I think that's beginning to change. I'm beginning to see a lot more women, eally, really a huge critical mass of women engineers who are now in their early 30s, really starting up companies. And then also as the company is, and especially with, you know, with Google, I think a lot of companies feel like, well, I've got this great technology, they will come. And I think that that is no longer the case for anything, so you basically have to really have people who are really smart and kind of getting to the market and learning where the market is. And so, especially because I think there are a lot of women who've always been in leadership in marketing and sales and BD area, I've seen a lot more women innovating in that area and also coming into leadership to help kind of, you know, round out the leadership team of many organizations in the Valley.

>> Okay, Marissa you want to comment on what you've seen?

>> Well, I mean, for me I would say that, you know, people ask me a lot of like, what is it like to be at Google, and as a woman. And I have to say my experience there just isn't really from that vantage point. Right, for me I'm a geek, like I was up late coding, I'm trying to learn Python last night. inaudible it was killing me that I don't have an iPhone 3GS yet. I haven't had time to get to the store to get one. But like, I'm a technology person, I'm a geek, and at Google I'm surrounded by people who are interested in those same things, who are fired up about, about those same ideas. And I think that that really makes me very comfortable, and I think that has made it a great environment for women. But not because it was about the gender divide --

>> Right --

>> -- or really focused on those issues. It's just something where like-minded people with like-minded interests really, really flourish, because it's a great, comfortable environment.

>> And you teach at Stanford, right, the undergraduate class? I mean, do you do anything to, special to try and encourage women or do you see more women coming up or do you think there's anything that's keeping them from coming up through this track?

>> I mean, I think one of the things that definitely is concerning is actually in the engineering field, the percentage of women graduates has been rising in all engineering fields except for computer science --

>> Wow --

>> -- where it's actually dipped since 2000. And that's, that's concerning. I actually think that it's really, it is really important to, you know, foster and encourage women in those classes, and I have done some of that. I actually think that my mentor here at Stanford, Eric Roberts, has been much better about that. He actually, you know, for me and some of my other women classmates would, you know, scoop us up, encourage us to become teaching assistants, gave us the opportunities in terms of research and lecturing and was really, really great at, at fostering us along. And I think that that's important, so I do think good mentoring and a sense of community is important to keep that, that high. But I think that that overall trend in computer science for women isn't well understood, and it's something that we definitely need to turn around.

>> Right. Absolutely. Polly, any comments? Through your career particularly, because you kind of had different types of jobs and seen women come up and down and up and down again, right?

>> Right, yeah, absolutely. So I think a couple of things that I would suggest. First of all, I think it's really important to get on the revenue side of the business. And if you are looked at by your peers and by others -- no matter whether you're male or female -- and you are responsible for driving growth, then people listen a lot more about what you have to say than if you are, and your ideas and the kinds of things that you think about. So I think getting on the revenue side of the business is really important. Having a P and L. I think a lot of women manage and run their budgets at home, so it's just kind of a natural thing. But in the software industry it's very difficult to think about your business as a P and L, and you typically have to go somewhere internationally or run a services business to have access to that. That was very different than it was in the hardware business. So this is kind of a transition over time. And the third thing that I've found is that, you know, I'm a big believer that no idea is a dumb idea. They change, they either gather momentum or whatever. So I've also found that, you know, it's kind of where I ended up a couple times was because I didn't say no. cough So somebody would create a really scary project that everybody else was afraid to do, and I was too dumb to say no, I guess, and so I would go and just take a fresh look at the project and I would turn it around and it would all of a sudden come up with roses and then people said, "Oh, well then she can go do more." So I think in some ways it's just that never being afraid of failure because you can't have innovation and you can't rise in a business and you can't grow your business unless you're willing to take a lot of risk. They kind of all go together. This sort of notion of innovation, disruption, risk, you know, not being afraid, all those things. And I think some ways we don't tell our kids that enough -- male, female, whatever gender.

>> Right --

>> People are just kind of, okay, well, maybe I'm just not going to be disruptive. I'm going to live in my little cocoon and, you know, run my life in its own way, and that doesn't make change for the rest of the world.

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==== Transcribed by Automatic Sync Technologies ====