 Live from Houston, Texas, it's The Cube, covering Grace Hopper's celebration of women in computing. Welcome back to The Cube's coverage of the Grace Hopper Conference in Houston, Texas. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. I'm joined by co-hosts. We have Tori Bedford. We have Keras Hustad and Pooja Sivaraman. They are our tech reporting fellows. This year we're doing a tech reporting fellowship in partnership with the Ground Truth Project. So it's the end of the day, the first day of the Grace Hopper Conference, 15,000 men and women from 83 countries around the world gathered here, the best and brightest minds in the technology industry. I want to hear your thoughts, your impressions, what you're seeing, what you're hearing. Do you want to talk a little bit about your interview with Rebecca? Sure, so it's actually, yeah, 15,000 people, 14,000 of them are women. Yeah, and then about 1,000 are men, which is a hugely increased number from previous years, which is very exciting. And so many people are still here. It's still very, there's just a lot of people walking around and talking to people and networking. Yeah, I just spoke to Dr. Rebecca Parsons, who's the CTO of ThoughtWorks, and they just received an award from the Anita Borg Institute from their survey. They received an award for being the most diverse and welcoming company to women. So they have the more women in leadership positions, more women or women throughout the organization. Yes, it's based upon the recruitment and the retaining, and then the advancement also, not just getting women in, not just keeping women in, because you might just be keeping them in those same positions, but then also advancing them and moving them up in their careers, which is very exciting. And in her, I wanted to talk to her because in her acceptance speech of the award, she was very, you know, we're in the midst of this huge celebration. It's a celebration of women in computing, and we had, there's somebody who's shooting up a T-shirt gun, and there's a DJ, and it's just, yeah, there's like all kinds of excitement, and it's wonderful, but she had talked about kind of, you know, it's a reminder that we really need to, we need to work harder. This just means that this is great, and this is wonderful, and we should take this time to celebrate, but all this means is that we have so much work still to do, and that this is just like one more step in a long road that we need to get through. She said that when she started, when I just spoke to her, she said when she started working at ThoughtWorks, she felt a little bit, because she had faced a lot of the hurdles that a lot of women face, you know, harassment and being treated differently because of her gender, and she said that she felt that she was kind of in a bubble when she was at ThoughtWorks, and that's kind of what Grace Hopper is a little bit to, is this bubble, which is wonderful. It creates a safe space. It's where people come to rejuvenate themselves after dealing with just a cascading feeling. There's a lot that can get you down, and so she wanted to give us a little bit of a reminder that, yes, this is so exciting and celebratory and wonderful, and we're making such advancements, but we are not there yet. Right, right. It was a real battle cry to other women to keep working on this, and the men too in the audience too, because we need them as allies. Yes, so, Karis, tell me a little bit about what you're seeing and what you're hearing here on the ground, particularly at the booths and what you're hearing from the recruiters. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, as you can see, even just from behind us at the Cube, this is in the Expo Hall. This is where the recruiting is happening in real time, and it is, I think, the busiest recruiting event I have ever seen in my life. I mean, the people who are at each of these companies have lines of people waiting to talk to them. Snapchat, Facebook, Google are just swarmed by women, and so it's a really exciting time, I think, to be a woman who's looking for a job and also to be a recruiter who's looking for women. I talked to a couple of recruiters just to ask them about why they come to Grace Hopper and how often they've been coming, and they said, I mean, they're always looking for the most qualified applicants. They were very clear to say that, but they said, you know, because they're such great talent at Grace Hopper, they really have to bring their A-game here if they want to get the top women technologists. So it's been really interesting to see how people have set up their booths, what kind of swag they're giving out, you know, to make sure that women know that this is. You got to get good swag, I mean, why else are we here? Because, I mean, it's about creating community. You know, I think that for so long, women have felt like tech wasn't really for them, or, you know, the companies just weren't catered to them, and so I think they're really trying to find a way to say, you know, there is a place for you and we're creating our company so that you can be a big part of it as well. So what's some of the best swag? Let's hear it. Yeah, so one of the most unique ones that LinkedIn is giving out infinity scarves, which are sort of, you know, these scarves you can wrap around your head. I don't think I've ever seen that at a conference, but they're in the nice sort of pastel shade. It's a little LinkedIn logo, so that's kind of cool. Google has some great tote bags. I believe another company, Open Table, was giving out lattes in their own branded mugs. You can go home with your, a little caffeine as well as a mug there, so it's pretty fun. I think I like Airbnb's, I actually set up the most. It looks like sort of a very fancy California bungalow kind of set up, and so they've had a pretty busy booth throughout the whole time. So I think people are thinking creatively about how to create these setups that are really inviting. And appeal to female talent. Yeah, a diverse kind of talent. You know, not one that just is attracted to one type of company or another. So I think that's pretty cool. Pooja, talk to me a little bit more about the recruiter you were talking to about the differences between Grace Hopper and recruiting at a co-ed event. Yeah, so I mean, as you know, I was looking a lot into gaming. So I went to one of the very few gaming companies who was actually present at this conference was Twitch. They're a gaming site for live streaming. And when I went there, there was just swarms of women around that table, and I could barely get in to actually talk to the marketer. But she was telling me how what's so important about Grace Hopper is that she's been to several recruiting events, and oftentimes you'll see potential employees who are male and potential employees who are female of equal talent, of equal caliber. But the women tend to ask for internships, whereas the men ask for entry-level positions. And I found that so interesting. And she was saying how at Grace Hopper, that playing field is just, is equal. You know, like people are more willing to push others out of the way, they're more willing to actually get some face time with the recruiters. And that was really refreshing to hear. And I realized why this massive stadium of 15,000 people is so important because there is a difference in career fairs and that difference is very gender-based. So it's great that there's a place like Grace Hopper where that playing field is equal. Do you think that, you know, the research, the research is so clear about the ways in which women approach their careers and the ways in which men approach their careers in terms of how often they speak in meetings, where they sit in meetings, how they ask the bosses for promotions, whether they even consider themselves ready for promotions. So we know the research, but when do you think it will start filtering down and actually changing the way women manage their careers and their lives? I have another point which I found interesting with this recruiter was she was saying that when those women would go up to her and be like, what internships do you have available? She would be like, no, you're qualified. You shouldn't be asking for internships. You deserve an entry-level job. And she was also saying how oftentimes at co-ed recruiting events, a man will sort of push his way to the front, but she'll make sure to focus her attention on the quieter women in the back. So I think a lot of it does come from the recruiters as well to be mindful of who they're paying attention to and who they're giving face to. So the onus is also on the hiring manager. Exactly, okay, okay. Do you think knowing all of this vast body of research has changed the way you manage your career? I think it's interesting. I just went to, we just spoke to Susan Cain and who wrote Quiet and Quiet Power, which kind of examines the power of introverts. And I think for me, I've always been very outspoken and I've really had to kind of check myself in terms of making sure that I don't interrupt people, making sure that I'm not the only voice in the room that I'm not sucking all the air out of the room. And then I'm really listening to people because there's so much to be learned from introverted people and there's so much to be learned from working as a team. But often I do find myself falling into these traps that it's just good to be conscious of, like apologizing for stuff, apologizing for taking up space, just for being a woman. That's something that I've done a lot and I don't think it's really doing me any favors. But it's really hard because sometimes it doesn't fall on us. Sometimes the onus really isn't on women. It's just something that we sort of, it's a mixture of playing the game and trying to subvert the game. It's built expectations and how we are. And so that's what's really exciting about Grace Hopper is that there are so many new opportunities to totally rethink the game and totally rethink what we think of when we think of a workplace or what we think of when we think of communications or technology. It's really exciting. What about tomorrow? So tomorrow, day two of this conference, many exciting speakers, many exciting sessions coming up. Do you have anything that you're particular looking at, Karis? Yeah, Thursday is going to be crazy in the best possible way. I think that we've got some real heavy hitter tech leaders who are going to be doing some panels. There's one about women tech leadership that's going to have a VP of engineering from Google, Facebook, all of these top tier plays. So I'm really excited to hear. The who's who of Silicon Valley. Exactly, their insights on creating tech and like being leaders in the tech space. There's also a really interesting panel on doing self-driving cars from diverse perspectives. So again, that's kind of looking at text infrastructure and who's creating it and how that impacts the product as it moves forward. So those are two that I'm really excited about. Okay, how about you, Pooja? So I thought today was going to be an easier day and I've just been nonstop all day. And tomorrow there's so many back to back gaming panels that I plan on going to and really diving into the issue more deeply. So there's, in the morning, there's a panel on diversity and gaming with Lindsey Pearson who's the head producer at Sims. And Sims just recently came out with a simulation of what it would be like if more women were in the workplace. So I think that's a really interesting segue into tomorrow because they just in the workplace are also in leadership positions. I mean, both, they would use different simulators and see how more women would affect revenue, how more women would affect different aspects of a company. So I think it's a really interesting branch of what Grace Hopper's philosophy is and the gaming world. So I'm really interested to attend that talk. How do you think about this conference striking a balance between being about women in computing but then also being about computing? So you're trying to tackle the woman issue but then also bring in all these themes in technology, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, gaming, chip making. I mean, do you think that it is striking a balance between dealing with this technology and really digging deep for the people who want to go there and also really thinking about the issues about, okay, how do we build our pipeline and how do we make sure that we are retaining workers too? I think that, well, I was going to say, I think it's key to remember they're intertwined. You know, it's like the way that you create tech is influenced by the person you are. And so I think that for, I think that Grace Hopper does a great job of focusing on both of those tracks but I think it's really important to have both of those side by side because they do just influence each other so much. And I think it's important for us to be viewing these people and these human beings as experts in their fields. We talked earlier with cybersecurity, she works cybersecurity Andrea Lobago of Endgame and she thanked us for talking about her field because she's an expert in it and cybersecurity is very relevant right now. And though there are a lot of issues in her field for women, it's ultimately she's an expert and she's the right person to ask these questions to. So I think it's, you can have both. Right, right, yeah, she's not a woman of cybersecurity expert, she happens to be a woman. Right, exactly, exactly. How about you Pooja, do you think that it is striking that balance? I definitely, I agree with all the sentiments that were just shared. I think I just interviewed today an 18 year old woman who co-founded her own VR startup. So I think while, 18, I think while it's definitely notable to say she's 18 and she's in an industry where there aren't that many women, she is a genius and that's who she is and she's going to talk about her work just as much as she's going to talk about what it's like to be a woman in that industry and I think both are valid and this conference is a great way of balancing the two. So I'm going to wrap up here but I want to get one final piece that you learned today. So something you either learned about the technology industry or you learned from an inspirational woman who told her story about how she came up in this industry. Yeah, I think one thing that was really striking to me about ThoughtWorks is I talked with a few people at ThoughtWorks about what makes it a good place to work and what makes it sort of this inclusive area and both the people I talked to did not have computer science degrees and I thought that was really interesting. They had a code bootcamp and another one had come up through a nonprofit that helps low income minorities get into tech companies and I think that was something that was very striking to me because we think of computer science as like you get a degree and then you work your way up in a tech company but I think what people are realizing more and more is really the key to diversity is going outside the system a little bit and creating those training programs for people who just aren't served by the programs we have right now. Okay, we're running out of time, but so go look. Susan Cain being here is cool because she's introducing a different type of diversity which is personality types. Okay, all right. It's exciting. Okay, Pooja? I think I'm just in awe of the sheer confidence of every woman I've met and I just think everyone's such a go-getter and I think it's really inspiring. A great note to end on. Thank you so much for being here on our first day of coverage in Houston, Texas. The Grace Hopper Conference will be back tomorrow. Looking forward to seeing you then. I'm Rebecca Knight, your host. Thank you very much.