 from Houston, Texas, extracting the signal from the noise. It's theCUBE, covering Grace Hopper's celebration of women in computing. Now your hosts, John Furrier and Jeff Frick. Hey, welcome back everyone. We are here live at the Grace Hopper celebration of women in computing in Houston, Texas. The Silicon Angles theCUBE, our flagship program where we go out to the events and extract the signal and the noise. I'm John Furrier with my co-host, Jeff Frick. Our next guest is August Goldman who's the Chief People Officer at GoDaddy. Welcome to theCUBE. Thanks, great to be here, John, appreciate it. Chief People Officer, you've been a CIO, you've done a lot of things. You're at GoDaddy. GoDaddy has really been doing a lot of great stuff for the news. Domain names are at more extensions every day. I got a zillion of them. I'm a big customer, real happy with the customer support, customer service. You guys are very kind of transparent with your customer service. But here is the women in tech celebration, women in computing. What are you guys doing? You had a press release, talk about what you got going on and we'll jump in. No, thanks, John. Look, hey, we're a technology company. We're a tech organization. We have over a thousand engineers in our company. And so we absolutely love to come to Grace Hopper Celebration to both connect with our community, find incredible talent, and we do a lot of hiring here. Plus, we're sending over 50 of our engineers to come here and do incredible things and be part of this great community. So this is a unique place. There's nothing quite like Grace Hopper. And we cover a lot of events. I'm sure you've been in the industry event. You've been to a lot of events. You said this is your second year at Grace Hopper as co-daddy, a couple years into your HR role. And here you have this giant booth and giant presence. Talk about what's special about Grace Hopper compared to all the other industry events. Well, this is super important for us because, look, this is setting the stage of how we're going to talk about diversity and inclusion and engineering, and just great tech overall. So we decided not to kind of go small into this event. We opened this up to all of our employees who want to come in and look at it. We're sponsoring over 60 students to come here and actually participate, but just saying, hey, look, on our dime, come here and be part of this great event. As you can see, I'm not sure if you can see behind me our incredible booth that's filled with people who want to talk about our story, talk about our transformation. This event is massively important for how we're going to talk about our credibility in this community and how we're going to acquire incredible talent. So you guys just put a fresh result on a survey gender salary data. Can you share your findings? Obviously it's out there, some stories being written. But since we got you here, what was the net net? What was the big walk away from your finding? Look, I think if we take a step back and ask why did we do it before we get into the numbers, then what we did is to be super transparent. A lot of our tech companies, a lot of this industry, and we're very happy about this, are now being transparent of where are we in diversity? And to be transparent, you have to show the numbers first. You have to say, where are we today? No one is happy where we are. We all have a lot of work to do. So it starts by being super transparent with the numbers. And so last year we launched, we published our diversity in tech, our gender ratios. This year we went one step further and as Blake just talked about on the main stage, we decided to publish and expose our salary numbers. Where we are on the same roles, women and men and engineering and across the company, how are they making on the same salary? And where are they different? This is massively important as we talk about our transformation, talk about our transparency and we want everyone, we're asking everyone to follow us to expose not just gender diversity, but compensation diversity as well. And was that top down from Blake? What initiated kind of the degree of effort behind this? You know, it started last year, started last year at this conference when the conversation came up of talking not just about gender diversity, but talking about other kinds of inclusion and parity and equality in organizations. And we started talking about compensation. And we said, where are we? Actually, there's two elements of this. There's salary and then there is where are you in the range and the band of an organization and the level? And so what Blake also talked about was not only how are we doing on salary parity, but if you look at like, for example, our software development engineers and we have 10 levels of engineers, we see that men form a consistent standard deviated curve across all 10 levels, whereas women are generally in the five level one through five and we do not see women continue through all the range. This is very important. As you dig deep into the data, you start to realize it's not just about salary, but how are you doing having equality across the whole organization? Yeah, it's terrific. It's great work, you know. We had Elizabeth Ames on earlier this year talking about the Grace Hopper survey and really how important, even if you don't necessarily do well, to take the first step to baseline, to take the first step to document, to take the first step to see where you are, acknowledge where you can make improvements, that's the first step of the journey. It absolutely is the first step. And in fact, last year, we decided to take the survey ourselves, we decided to be included, we decided to talk and be very open about where are we in terms of our own diversity? Where are we in our promotions? Where are we in how we're looking at salary? Where are we in terms of sentiment internally? What was absolutely wonderful is ABI came back and told us, look, we think you're one of the great places for women technologists. And in fact, we made their list of one of the great places for women technologists to come and work. That meant a lot to us. It doesn't mean that we've got it solved, but what it means is we're on the right track. There's a lot more to do and it kind of just validates, we're on a path that we need to continue where nowhere near where we want to be. What are the challenges going forward? Because for, not just for you guys, for other companies, you've been in the industry, you mentioned transparency, that's actually a hard thing right now. And the theme that we're seeing in the big data landscape, the cloud landscape is transparency to the data. Am I hoarding the data or am I letting it go free? So what's your thoughts on that? I'll see you're fro letting it go free, but how do you do that in a competitive market where data is the competitive advantage? Look, I tell you, not only just open source, but if you look at a lot of the candidates, a lot of the folks coming out of university, it's absolutely expected. They talk about how are you sharing your data? How are you open sourcing your software? How can I be collaborative in hackathons and meetups and other organizations outside of GoDaddy? If I want to come here, I want to contribute to your success and the success of the community. Collaborative environments, agile development, this is becoming the absolute standard. The idea that our code is only our code is no longer valid. We share it, and at the same time, the data though, how you use our data more intelligently than how one of our competitors uses our data, this becomes our competitive advantage. So it's really the algorithm more than the data, right? It's what you do with it, how you bring it. Sure, you have a data lake, you have it on Hadoop, and it's all decided how are you going to use that data? What are you going to do to give insights to your customers, not just to us, but to our 13 million small businesses? How are we going to give those insights using that data for them to drive their business? It begs an interesting question, which I love on the whole open source movement, because if you have engineers and they want to contribute to open source and being a contributed open source is a great thing. It gives a lot of kudos to engineers. How do you manage how much time they're working on GoDaddy stuff specifically versus open source project? How do you kind of get through the marginal hour of work challenge? It all comes back. It absolutely all comes back. In fact, we were some of the main contributors at CentOS, we're our main contributor to Apache Traffic Server. It all comes back. The more you give into that community, the more the community wants to have you at a seat at the table, the more they're going to involve you in projects. There is no such thing as like, oh, we're spending too much time on open source, so not our own product, because everything that you're doing is contributing to code that you're going to reuse. And in fact, a lot of the work that we're doing, a lot of the products we're doing, we're going and grabbing great open source code and then do something special on top of it. Talk about that dynamic, which you just said was very compelling and very relevant for other companies. And it's actually counterintuitive for maybe some older management styles. The more you give, the more you get back. And talk specifically about the benefits. How do you measure that KPI? It's all reputation, right? It's all reputation. And if you are contributors, if you are core contributors, it's a very small community. And if you're known for having those folks who are contributing to open source and those folks that are involved in the community, you're going to be asked to be a thought leader. You're going to be asked to come back time and time again. And beyond that, you're going to get great thought leaders and great engineers into your organization. Talk about a recruiting mechanism and a retention mechanism. Because it's not just about bringing great talent into your organization. There's great talent all around us. It's how we're going to develop that talent and allow them to have multiple careers in our company, multiple tours of duty in our organization so they can continually make an impact, not only on go to adding our customers, but an impact on the larger community. And that really is the new model. That's the new social equation. Getting people using the code and open source as a tier one platform. It was the old days back when I worked at HP back in the day that had beer blasts with employees. Now the new beer blasts is go have a hackathon. Yeah, have a meetup, have a hackathon. There's one going on right now. We do a lot of hackathons around the country and they're not just go-daddy employees. We invite folks in the community. We want them to be part of it. All right, so I got to ask you on the feedback on the survey. So some people might say, I'm not there saying this, but like might be critical of it. Hey, you guys are just throwing numbers out there. Real's the, you know, you faking the numbers. Are you really doing it? Is it really real? You actually did the work. There'll be a lot of naysayers out there. What's your response to people who are going to challenge you on the survey? All surveys can be challenged. How do you respond to that or potentially respond to that? Look, I think if you were, if any company were to present very top level data and say, here's where we're looking at. We feel good about it and walk away. It deserves to be challenged. You should ask, let's dig deeper into that data. Let's understand why. So for example, let's say you say, look, our women are actually, women engineers are high in the range and the salary range of any given job. They're at the 60th percentile or the 70th percentile of that range. And they say, we're good. My immediate response would be, how long have they been in that particular level? Yeah, what's the trending line? What's the trending line? Because if you're in that level- And what's the total compensation package? That salary plus total cost. This is exactly right. We need to dig into it. So don't be satisfied. This is what Blake was talking about on stage and I love that transparency and that we got a great response internally at GoDaddy. Because when we first looked at the numbers, they looked pretty good. We didn't walk away. We said, let's keep digging. And then we found some areas. We were like, whoa, wait a second. Now we have to go find some answers. I think the thing that's a case study for me and for you guys is, if you're open about it, which you are, you also have your employees who are on Glassdoor, these other platforms. If it doesn't jive, you're going to be discovered. So why even attempt to do something crazy with it? Just do it right. There's no need to. There's no need to. This is a problem. We're not going to improve anything if we're trying just to put spin on anything. Instead, be super authentic and build trust in your own business. And do it for the right reasons. And so what are the right reasons? That's a great point. What are the right reasons? What are the right reasons? Well, the beauty is there's right reasons, but then there's great business reasons. That's the silver lining, right? It's got a real ROI. That's the absolute beauty of this. I mean, the right reason, it's the right thing to do. Of course, it creates a better culture. Here's another, and this is what Blake mentioned as well. 58% of small business in America is run and operated by women. Our customers come from an amazing diversity. We want to build the best product for them. We want to have the same level of diversity, the same thought diversity inside our organization. I'll tell you what, this makes a lot of business sense. That's why we're investing so much in this company. Well, this show here is really more about opportunities, because you're seeing the coders. But what you're hitting on and why I asked the question is the real doing the right thing is equality and pay. I mean, the fact is I get so much feedback from real people, CFO senior levels, they're not getting paid the same as men. And that has been a historical thing. It's changing. So you guys are a great piece of data out there. It's a great piece of data just the beginning. This is just the beginning. I mean, this is the first shot at it. We're going to do this every year. And plus we want our colleagues, our this community to follow suit. And what's interesting too, and think about this as well, it's not just those entry level jobs. Let's think about those mid and senior level jobs, because normally when you recruit someone, what is it you do? You look at their pay that they had and said, I'll raise you 15%. I'll raise you 20%. Well, guess what? What if they were already underpaid, considerably underpaid? You're just what- In some cases, mostly that was the case. And most of the times it is the case. And so we have all of us an obligation to, A, think about what is the midpoint of the job versus what is the pay they have today? Let's not pay it backward, as Blake said. Let's pay it forward and get folks correctly paid. Pay equality is a big issue. Now, some about opportunities. So there's a big recruiting opportunity. It's a subtle, so about the open source mindset, the more you give, the more you get back. Same thing here. You guys are contributing second year, big play here with the presence. Are you getting a good surround sound feedback coming from the recruiting standpoint? Because the opportunities for developers and there's a lot of tech people here. The best in class. There's some great technology. Last year we hired 10 folks. We're going for 20, 25 hires in the next three days alone. And our bar is pretty high. Our bar is high. I tell you, the buzz in the booth, I just spent an hour and a half in the booth before walking up here. The buzz was great. Folks are coming by. They're loving the transformation. They're loving the transparency. They're loving the story. And ultimately, and this is what's really important, it's the impact they're going to make to 13 million small businesses. Small business that are fighting to succeed. One to five employees who are doing something passionate and these folks want to come in, they want to ship code that's actually going to help their lives. What's the biggest learnings that you've walked away from your survey and here today, this event so far, that have been magnified to you? The learnings are that there is, you can't be satisfied where you are and you have to continue to dig deeper. Every time we look and we see something that we like, let's continue to dig, let's continue to drive the conversation. We are not where we want to be. We have a long road ahead of us. We're going to be a great hopper for a decade and more. And every year we want to see improvement, we're happy with progress, we're not satisfied where we are. I had a post on my Facebook page, don't get your opinion on this, because you can never get the language right, what guys should do. So I wrote, going to Grace Hopper, is it not politically correct to say that I love women in tech? And I put it out there and the responses were amazing. Everyone was like, first of all, the word politically correct was in there. The word love was in there, which was debated as like five versions of love and be yourself. So like it was just one big circle, a circular recurrence of the same theme that, which is no one, guys don't know what to do. And then even the women are debating is that women are ladies. Well, the Silicon Valley, the word ladies, doesn't resonate well. If you're in the South, ladies is better than women. As a people officer, how do you balance this? What do you advise? Well, I'll tell you what I love. I love to come here and be in these breakout sessions, listen to great technologists and I'm the only man. And I sit back and I look at and go, you know what? This might be the feeling that I'm feeling right now is what a lot of women technologists feel every day. When they're on a scrum team, when they're on a group and there's very underrepresented women. So when I come here and I have that personal experience which is amazing, it allows me to start to reflect, okay, how can we change this equation? You know, and I posted I was going to Grace Hopper and I did something about, I'm ready to be inspired. And a lot of people said, let's do it. That's great. And be yourself, the theme I got was, be yourself, be respectful, but just do your thing. So. Let me touch on one more thing before we let you go, which I think is again, you need to Grace Hopper. A lot of companies bring a huge team here. And it's not the team that's executing the show. All people bring large teams to execute the show. But it's bringing people, like you said, you're sponsoring students. I would imagine it's probably early career technology folks that you're bringing. Talk about why that's important to them and the feedback you get after they come to something like this. Yeah, there's two reasons, that's a great question. There's two reasons why it's super important. Number one, there's empirical absolute evidence that those folks in college, early in their first, second year, if they come to Grace Hopper, they're less likely to a trip from CS. This is incredibly important to allow folks to be inspired, to understand they can do it, to hear the stories of folks who went through the same journey. Computer science is hard. And I tell you those first couple of years, we do not want folks to leave CS as they're going to get their graduate degree. We all want more CS folks and certainly more women in technology. Coming to Grace Hopper is empirically shown that those folks who come have a less likely to a trip and more likely to graduate. So that's number one, that's why we sponsor students. That's why a lot of folks sponsor students. Shout out to Apple, shout out to a ton of other organizations who sponsor students as well. For our own engineers, I tell you, this is a great conference. This is one of the great tech conferences of the year. And we're sending a ton, as I said, over 50 of our own engineers to come and be inspired, to learn great technology, to learn from the community. They walk away, hey, thanks very much for this opportunity to come be here. So the small portion of our folks are the recruiters and who put this on. It's a community. It ultimately, it is now a community that is so established and only growing. Well, last year was, first it was two years, three years ago it was 4,000. Then it's 8,000, and this year it's 12. It sold out in like a week. Oh, it sold out, I know. We had to use our special connections to get some more tickets. We're like, wait, did you say it sold out? We need like 50 tickets. So, no, all credit to Telly and all credit to ABI, which is a great partner. Great organization. We're a supporter. We love big cheerleaders of the effort. Congratulations on your mission on the survey. It really took a lot of stuff to do that and you guys pulled it together and the data's great. Being transparent is a super phenomenal business strategy. We'll be back here next year. I hope to come up on this stage and see what we'll talk about where our numbers look like. All right, thanks for joining us. We're CUBE here live in Houston, Texas with Grace Hopper Women in Tech Celebration. Women in Computing, this is theCUBE. I'm John Furrier with Jeff Frick. We'll be right back after this short break.