 from Palo Alto, it's theCUBE, covering Women Transforming Technology 2017, brought to you by VMware. Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of Women Transforming Technology here in sunny Palo Alto at the VMware conference. I am Rebecca Knight, your host. I'm joined by Josie Gillan. She is the senior director of engineering at Cloudera and a passionate advocate for getting more women into technology. Josie, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you very much for inviting me. Pleasure to be here. So I want to start out by asking a question that should be obvious, but it may not be. Why do we need more women in technology? Right, so that's the classic question and I think I probably would have the classic answer, which is just so many studies have shown that diversity results in much better products, much better ideas, and we've found numerous stories where products were developed by mostly white males and they just have actually alienated many, many of their customers, right? So there's definitely that we need to have that diversity. And I think 50%, 51%, I think actually of the population is women, right? So let's not disregard half of them. I think women have a lot to offer and a lot to add. It's a generalization, but women generally are more collaborative and supportive. So it's just the right thing to do and obviously the numbers in tech are just so fast skewed off what the actual numbers in population are that it's time to continue to do something about it, but it's hard. I want to talk to you about what you just said about women and their approach to work, their approach to being on a team. You said it more collaborative. You were talking a little bit earlier about EQ and the importance of EQ. Can you comment on the perspective that women bring and the approach that they take to being on a team that is different in your experience? Yeah, I think it's just that women are generally, probably, again, I'm really generalizing here, but the way that women network with each other and support each other and generally want to touch and connect, I think that's a lot of what it is about networking. So for example, again, this is not all women, but in like one-on-ones and meeting with your fellow peers, I think there's all this real connection is really important and building the relationships and probably being a little more vulnerable, I think is really important rather than sort of the stoic, I'm here to get what I need. I think women generally tend to say, okay, what can we get together? And I think that's a natural trait that women have, but again, purely generalizing. In terms of Silicon Valley, you've been around at a lot of different companies, you've built your career here. Is it better? And also particularly now at a time where we are hearing so many horrible stories about overt sexism, everything from subtle biases to overt sexism and sexual harassment, what's it like? Tell us the tales from the trenches. I mean, do you have... Well, first of all, I think you were going to start saying, is it getting better? Unfortunately, it's not. And there's a lot of studies to show that. What I think is changing though, is that we are talking about it more and more. I mean, starting with like, I guess it was two years ago and there was this sort of grassroots effort after one of the Grace Hopper conferences to get companies to actually public, publicize their diversity data. So I think that's number one, right? That we're actually getting companies to say what their numbers are, both for gender and people of color, right? So the first step is really awareness that there could be a problem. Exactly, and then there's a lot of companies investing in, and obviously hiring sort of a diversity and inclusion leader. I was at Atlassian before I came to Clareira and Atlassian is a great company, got some really good two CEOs who really believe in diversity. But again, like other companies, their numbers were pretty bad. And it was in Australia too, primarily that I actually moved to Australia for a year. And I think it was very young. It was not only not so diverse on the gender, but also very young, which is again very common in tech companies. But they've gone and hired a diversity inclusion leader and she's doing an amazing job at bringing in more programs, getting awareness out there and trying to make a difference. But it's not an easy job. I think she's doing amazing. I think our folks at Clareira are doing amazing. Salesforce doing amazing. And it's just, yeah, there is awareness, but it's a very difficult issue. So that's the hiring part of it, is it's bringing more women in. But then just what about the culture too? We were talking earlier too about the supportive environment as supportive leadership. What will it take for a big cultural shift in the technology industry? So when I came back, basically my story is I'm from New Zealand originally, but I've lived over here. I moved to America in 98 and worked for several different companies, Oracle, Salesforce, and thought always, hey, I wouldn't mind going back home and being close to my family. So we actually moved to Sydney for a year and that's where I worked for Atlassian, which was a really interesting experience. But it sort of made me realize that the Bay Area was home. And I think the culture of Silicon Valley is something that you can't get outside of Silicon Valley. And I really- For better or for worse? For better or for worse. But again, back to that collaboration. I mean, in Sydney, there's not that many tech companies. Right, so I didn't find that collaboration. These kind of events were very, very rare and especially in engineering, right? I mean, I could meet people who worked with Google Office in Sydney, but they were more in non-technical roles. I mean, there were some. So when I came back, it was really important for me to find a company that again, as you mentioned, had that high EQ and a really good culture. And what I mean by that is not, it's got a free lunch. Cloudera has free lunches, but that's not what attracted me to Cloudera. What attracted me to Cloudera was talking to my manager who's the SVP of engineering and my peers who are all VPs of engineering. And it was the conversation in the interviews about that really were conversations and just very, very respectful. And it wasn't all about, I'm sort of, this is what I do and this is what you must do. It was about a collaborative conversation. And one thing I really got from talking with both my manager and my peers was that they really were out to support each other. And one thing I think is amazing about the culture we have at Cloudera is that what will happen is if I've got a, I'm leading quality performance building infrastructure and quality is at the top of our list at the moment. We need, you know, we can always improve on quality. And we had an extraordinary developer in one of my peers teams who wanted to come and help with quality problem. Now normally what would happen is the development VP might say, I don't want to leave him. Yes, there's silos there. Right. But he was like, the development VP was well, you know, really sad to lose him, but this is a much bigger problem and I'm going to help him. I'm going to help help him move. And I think that is a really interesting leadership style that isn't prevalent throughout Silicon Valley, which is I'm going to do what's good for the company and the overall good of the company and just what's right, rather than my department, my own turf. So, and what we want to do at Cloudera is bring that further through the chains because, you know, as a company, as it's growing, we've got many different product teams and we want to make sure that that collaboration goes across the development managers, the quality engineering managers to really learn from each other and support each other. So, I mean, your question is how do we, and that to me is very, very important. And I think we need to start talking about it and we need to showcase companies that do it well. And, you know, I'm sure there's like the sort of, we've actually gone through one of those sort of personality tests or wasn't actually a personality test at what drives you, whether it's more strategic or problem-solving. People are into the process and I think that's a real, those are really good things to do so that you can all work to communicate with each other and work with each other. You mentioned earlier that one of the things about working in Sydney that struck you is that conferences like this one, but women transforming technology are rare. Why are they so important, do you think? Oh, right. I've been to Grace Hopper Conference four times and it's, you're so used to being the minority. And it's fantastic to come to a conference like that where you're not the minority anymore. And I think one thing that extraordinary, have you been to the Grace Hopper Conference? I have, I was there in Houston in October. One thing that I find extraordinary about the Grace Hopper is the camaraderie. And you'll be lining up to get a coffee and just the people that will, you'll start a conversation. And I've actually made some really, really great friends from Grace Hopper that I still keep in contact with and it's the networking and the, oh, hang on a minute, she's having the same problem I'm having, which you're not in. Are these professional problems that you're facing or are these strategic? A bit of both. A bit of both. It could be technical problems. It could be, a lot of it's, how do I get a team to collaborate on something? It's how do I overcome my imposter syndrome? How do I be a good leader? And the connections you make and there's just, you're not, it's really feel that you can truly be yourself. And I loved what Kara was just saying before about being authentic and being genuine. I think something like Grace Hopper is somewhere where you can truly, truly feel authentic and genuine. And the thing for me, is it always gives me a great big confidence. I just feel great after these conferences and I'm inspired to just go back and really continue to move an evil. If you could, so here, this is a women's conference. It's mostly women attending. If you could send a message to the men of Silicon Valley, what would it be? I mean, if you could just gather all of them in a room and say, give them some advice about either helping a young woman in her career or just, hey, fellas, know this. Yeah, I think it's, I think the big advice is listen, right? And we were at the Grace Hopper Conference two years ago. No, I wasn't. He missed that one. Here, I'm not sure if you heard about the male allies panel, but it was kind of interesting because basically there's a male allies panel, which was done with all good intention, but it got a lot of flak because why the hell are males taking up our space? And what the people who were on the panel did, which was really interesting is they actually created a second panel the next day and said, okay, we're going to shut up. We're going to listen. And it's really quite hard. I mean, for all of us in technology, we're all sort of used to solving problems and we want to have our say and to get them to be quiet and listen is so important and not try and solve the problem. Just try and understand. And Kara was saying that before, right, about some of the stuff that's going on with Uber and everything is some of the males she talks to, but I don't see it. Well, of course you don't see it because you're not experiencing it, right? So listen, talk to women and make it very clear that it's a safe space and that you were just here to listen and you're not going to try and solve the problem, but try and get an understanding because they're in a very, very different space than we are. The story that's going on with Uber, it is depressing as a woman in technology in Silicon Valley, particularly just a couple of years after the Ellen Powell lawsuit. Are you hopeful that things will get better? I'm hopeful things will get better. I mean, it's brave women like Susan who are telling their stories. We need to support each other and really support people like Susan who are brave enough to say that. And obviously now, because she's done it, a lot of other people are coming forward and Uber has to take some responsibility and has to do something. So I'm hopeful it's getting better because we're talking about a lot more, but it's a very, very difficult situation and the more we talk about it and there's people a lot smarter than me and a lot different who are very experienced in this kind of social issues and that to be able to figure out how the hell we address this. But a lot of it is to get the conversation going and as I say to listen. If you could give a piece of advice to the younger version of you that young girl in New Zealand dreaming of a career in technology. You mentioned imposter syndrome. What would you say to... Again, back to Kara's talk, she talked about don't worry so much about what people think of you. Oh, that's so hard though. It's so hard. And I remember, gosh, in my early days in my career, I was like sitting in a me, I can't say anything. I'm not, I really want to say something, but I'm going to look stupid. And it's like, be curious. I mean, I think that's my best advice. What I love when I'm interviewing, I've done a lot of interviewing of college grads. And what I'll do is see what questions they ask. So I think you don't have to have all the answers and you don't have to show, I'm the best Java programmer there is. But oh, tell me about this. And I really love that your company does this. And how do you approach this kind of problem? And just that thirst for knowledge and that curiosity and that eagerness to learn, I think it's really important to ask questions. And I think that's a good way to get over sort of the imposter syndrome because you're not necessarily coming up as like, I'm trying to be an expert on something. So I'm trying to contribute to the conversation and help me understand. And I think it's a really good way to get people out there and getting people talking. So be curious, don't care so much what people think of you. You don't have to be the smartest person at the table. And build your network. And especially like if you see somebody in a meeting that handled a particular situation very well, I think it's really great to be able to go up to them afterwards and say, look, I love how you said that. Can you maybe chat to me about how you came up with that? Because I'd love to learn from you. You know, there's a lot of this talk about mentorship. And I think it's really true that Sheryl Sandberg sort of says it's not really the best way to say, could you be my mentor, please? But to actually just say, hey, I love this. Ask for advice. Ask for advice. And you know, very few women would say, like, I don't want to talk about that. Most women are like, well, that's great. And want to be able to help out the younger generation. Josie Gillan, thank you so much for joining us. It's been a pleasure talking to you. Thank you so much. I'm Rebecca Knight for theCUBE and our coverage of women transforming technology. We'll be right back.