 Live from San Francisco, it's The Cube. Here's your host, Jeff Frick. Hi, Jeff Frick here. We're on the ground at Pier 48 in San Francisco at the Top Coder Open 2014, 14th year. They had a bunch of people coming together, trying to solve hard problems. But that's interesting. But why we really came is really add a new program this year about girls and STEM. High school girls and STEM specifically where they had some great role models from the tech industry, sitting on a panel in front of 200 Bay Area high school students, girls from the peninsula, San Francisco, San Jose, the East Bay, the Way East Bay. Really talking about their journeys and their careers in tech and then answering questions. So I'm really excited to be joined by the moderator of the panel, Deep D. Srivastava. That's right. Did I get it right? Yeah. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you. So what does it mean for you to take time out of your busy day to come and sit and have an opportunity to really talk to these girls? You know, I think that's what drives me, to be honest. We have a really busy week going on this week. We have roadmap planning, all that kind of stuff going on. But I got up today and I'm like, yes, I'm going to go talk to a bunch of high school girls and just the energy from them and the excitement that I see in them and the possibilities of this endless new world that they're stepping into is what I drive for and that's what I want. I want to inspire them to be in technology and that's why I'm here. Right. And there can't be enough good role models, right? I mean, they hear that over and over and over. There can't be enough good women role models for these girls. I agree. I think there can't be enough role models to begin with, but definitely women because there are very few women in the field in general and that's something we try to strive towards making better. I mean, Google is very, you know, making a lot of effort into increasing the pipeline and like getting more girls excited about being a part of technology. And I personally, I mean, I am a technologist. I love technology. I don't understand how people can't be excited about, you know, everything that's around you all the time. But I think that's why I'm here to like make sure that, you know, we can show girls and show people that, you know, it's not all about being a nerd in a corner coding or whatever. Right. You know, it's more than that. It's not just around you. It's part of you. You either get with it or you're left behind really. Right. And you, like many of the panelists talked about dance and your passion for dance as well as being a nerd. So talk about a little bit how the perception of nerdness has changed, especially around here. You go to a Stanford game, right? It's like nerd nation t-shirts all over the place and they take publicity photos with glasses with the tape on the middle. I mean, do you feel and is it your experience that's really changing being a nerd isn't not so negative as it maybe used to be? Yeah. But I think, again, we're in Silicon Valley and we're in San Francisco in the Bay Area where nerdiness is the thing. It's that street cred has actually become dev cred as one of the panelists said. But, you know, honestly, like what I really want to showcase is that, you know, being a technologist, being a programmer, being a software engineer, being a technical program manager, which is what I am, you know, and I went to school as a, got a computer science degree. I went to grad school and, you know, study distributed systems. So I was hardcore and the point is that, you know, you don't have to be like nerdy whether negative or positive in order to, you don't have to be in a pigeonhole, I think is the point, right? Like I performed on stage. I love dancing. I used to be a salsa dancer. I used to be a Bollywood dancer. I've performed actually close to here, you know, a few couple years back and I still go back to it. So I think the point is that, you know, as a software engineer or as a technologist, you don't have to be in one pigeonhole where you can't wear cool clothes or you have to look nerdy. I mean, the nerd perception has changed, but I feel like it's going a little bit the other way where people are going out of their way to fit into the nerd pigeonhole. And I think the point today for us, for the panel to showcase was that you're not, it's not just about sort of fitting into a pigeonhole. You can be who you want to be and be a technologist. It's fun. Yeah. Now one of the things you talked about that you're excited is the ability to touch so many people with code. To know that you write a piece of code that goes into an application and before you know it, it's distributed all over the world and people are using it. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, impact is why we're all here. We love impact, right? I mean, I work at Google, right? So when, so my particular product is actually a back data store for a bunch of other front-end Google products like Google Plus, Google Maps, all that stuff. And the fact that what I do on a day-to-day basis, which is run this project, can change the lives of people across the world. For example, Google Maps has this earthquake feature where if there's an earthquake, they will show you the epicenter and then you can make sure that you understand whether you're inside the red zone and you need to leave or not. The fact that you could do that with technology, the fact that you can be in a different part of the world and still diagnose problems as a doctor, right? Using technologies like Google Hangouts and things like that. I mean, that's amazing. You couldn't do that five years ago. You couldn't do that 10 years ago, right? I mean, the fact that I write a line of code here or I have a project where people like write lines of code and that affects people across the world is just unbelievable. Yeah, that's great. That's a great example as well. And Google just continues to roll out new features and stuff all the time, too. When did the earthquake feature roll out? Was it out for the last couple of years? No, it's been rolled out for a while. Okay, all right, great. So the other thing I thought was really cool was the girl's questions. They were clearly not the questions that their mom told them to ask or that their teacher told them to ask, like the classic college application. You can tell what the kid wrote versus what the parent told them. And the one that you responded to directly was one gal that said, you know, I'm passionate about cars because passion was a big part of the topic. And it was interesting to me, one that she felt comfortable enough to ask that question in this technology environment, and two, that she really did not have the awareness that a car is basically a rolling technology platform. Yeah, absolutely. I think the point we wanted to get across is, you know, you should do what you're passionate about and don't be afraid of external pressures or social pressures or whatnot. But turns out the girls are not intimidated. I'm inspired by them, right? Like, I think that's great. But yeah, about the car itself, I mean, that's the thing that we have to get across to people is that technology is all around you. You don't know it, but it exists in your microwave. It exists on your iPhone. It exists in your cars. I mean, we have Googles doing these self-driving car projects that we've seen. And so it's, you know, it's part of who you are around you everywhere. And if you're not part of it, you're missing out. You're missing out on, you can find jobs that are where you can combine your passion for technology and your passion for cars into, you know, these cars. And even if they're not self-driving cars, I mean, you know, you have drive-by-wire and fly-by-wire and all these things. So there's a lot of stuff going on, right? Yeah, absolutely. And I love the fact that you guys are so passionate and also it's really helping them drive career choices at a time in their life when they're starting to think about colleges, think about majors, think about what they should do. So I know you're involved in a lot of things. You're passionate. I'll give you the last word. What are some of the other organizations that you're involved with around this cause? Sure. So within Google, we care a lot about, you know, inculcating the talent we already have. So I'm part of Women at Google, which is a, you know, an umbrella organization to help women within Google. And I'm leading with another Googler, you know, another Googler woman, a tech women initiative to help, you know, people in tech, women in tech bond and create a community around them. And then outside, I'm also on a board for a nonprofit called Professional Business Women of California. And they have a one-day summit for young women, which is called Young Women Summit. And I chair that. So again, we try to encourage girls there to, like, go for their passion. You know, we want to encourage them to be, if they are professionally minded, you know, how they navigate from college to career and, you know, high school to college. I mean, we need skill building and we need to encourage this. This is the next generation of leaders of the country and the world and we need to encourage them. And we need to inspire them and educate them about technology and about just going after their passion and not being afraid. Well, Dita, your passion comes through. So thank you for spending the time. Thank you. Thanks for the Boys Down in Mountain View for letting you have an hour to come up here and spend with the girls. I think it's a well-worth-wild cause. So again, I'm Jeff Frick. We're at Pier 48 in San Francisco at the top Coder Open 2014. Really, it's all about girls and STEM. You're watching The Cube.