 Okay. I think we can start. Well, first thing, welcome to ThoughtWorks. Tonight we're actually lucky we've got Dr. Rebecca Parsons with us tonight. Some of you may know Rebecca is the CTO of ThoughtWorks. She's been the CTO for over 10 years now and has been at ThoughtWorks for over 19 years. Obviously, she's a passionate technologist, but more than that, I think Rebecca has a deep passion and has been an advocate for women in STEM as well as helping women build their careers in tech. So while she's actually in Singapore promoting her new book on evolutionary architecture, we thought it would be a great opportunity for her to do a session to talk about her personal journey, how she's developed a career in tech, and eventually now become the CTO of ThoughtWorks. And I'd encourage you to ask questions, share your journey through a blocker's ask her for advice. And we'll keep this pretty casual, so feel free to stop or ask her any questions along the way. All right. I'll hand over to Rebecca. Okay. Well, thank you very much. Pleasure to be here. So I've always considered myself a geek. When I was a kid, I wasn't exactly sure I knew what that meant. I was one of those weird people who loved school. And I know that's not something you necessarily admit in public, but I did really enjoy going to school. But I was always passionate about reading history, science, math. And I think that really affected me throughout my career. And I want to talk about some of the basic decision points that I went through and kind of the lessons that I learned from some of those, both the things I think that went well, and perhaps the things that didn't go quite so well. So some basic background. I actually started programming when I was about 13 years old. And we had switched school systems. My parent, my father had gotten a new job and we moved to a new school system. And I was in an algebra class. And my teacher very quickly recognized that I knew everything he was going to teach me that semester, because I had actually had it two years before. And he happened to be taking a course at the local university. And so he threw me out of class, but bought me a programming book and said, learn how to program. That's going to be what your year long algebra class is going to be about. And I fell in love with it. I eventually got a degree in computer science, but I also got a degree in economics. I had a wonderful economics teacher for my first economics course. And so I decided, well, I've got all of these electives I have to fill. I will fill them with economics courses. And so I got a degree in economics. I was a cooperative education student with one of the local employers. And basically what that meant was I worked full time for some of the semesters I was actually going to school. So I got to get some real work experience while I was still going to school. I became a part time graduate student and a full time graduate student. So I worked for several years, was taking some part time courses and then decided if I was really serious about getting a degree, I should go back full time. I did some postdoctoral research. And then I ended up in academia. And then I ended up back in industry at ThoughtWorks. And so through the course of this talk, you'll see where some of those decisions came from. So first, as I said, I was self taught in programming. My teacher literally threw me out of class, gave me his textbook. He was taking a course at the local university and said, and he actually gave me a key to the key punch room. That's how long ago it was. I have no idea why my high school had a key punch because we didn't offer any computer classes, but we did. And so I typed up my programs, gave him the cards and he ran for me at the university when he ran his own programs. And I also at the time got a chance to play with a personal computer. So I learned the CPM operating system and such. And I just fell in love with it. I don't know what it was that appealed to me, but I really fell in love with programming. And so some of them were around data structures. Some of the things I did on the personal computer, my a friend of mine's father owned his own business. And so we kind of automated some of his accounting to help it. Just stupid stuff. It was just fun. But a lot of the things in the textbook were more around basic data structures. Can you manipulate a list? Things like that. What bonus or portrait? PL-1. PL-1. And on the PC it was basic. And then some assembly language, which will be a theme. So lesson number one, you don't need to be taught to learn. And if you can manage to approach learning not as a chore, but as play, then it's much less intimidating. So don't worry if you don't know something. Just say, okay, I'll figure out how to learn it. So the next one is this co-op assignment that I was mentioning earlier. So it didn't exist for computer science graduates at that time at the local employee who was Caterpillar Tractor Company. They had them in lots of different engineering disciplines, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, and all of that, but not computer science. I was working for a dentist at the time. And the person who ran the program was a patient of my dentist. And he came in for a dental appointment, talked to my dentist, and they came out and said, would you like to pilot a co-op program for computer science majors at Caterpillar? And so I said sure. And by that time, I had done my first semester at university, and then I learned Fortran, as well as yet another assembly language. But I hadn't learned cobalt yet. But that's what Caterpillar used. So I bought a book and I taught myself cobalt. So lesson number one again, you don't need a class. Just think of it as fun. But the second thing is think about and then ask for what you want. Because who knows? You might be surprised and get it. And part of where this lesson came from. So even though the dentist patient was the overall head of the program, the person who worked for him wasn't yet convinced that these computer things were really going to be that important. And that it wasn't necessarily that important to have computer scientists because they had this wonderful training program and they literally were hiring people with philosophy degrees and anthropology degrees who could think logically. And they trained them on cobalt, on job control language. Yes, that's how old I am. And they trained them how to do all that stuff. So why would we need to hire computer scientists? And why would we take up space in our important co-op program with computer scientists? So even though I had the big boss who wanted me there, the guy who was actually administering everything didn't want it. And so I could have said, okay, well, this is just too hard. But it actually sounded interesting. I wanted to know what it was like to program for a job rather than just doing it for fun. Because everything I'd done so far was really for fun. So make sure that if it is something you want, continue to fight for it. So now came decision time. As I said, I also had a degree in economics. And the local employer offered me a job, both as an economist and as a computer scientist. And I did all the right stuff. You know, I had my list of pros and cons for both of the jobs and thought about them. And I decided I was going to take the job in economics. My short phrase for that was if somebody's actually going to pay me to read the Wall Street Journal, why wouldn't I take the job? So I called the recruiter and he said, okay, which job do you want? And I said, I'm going to take the computer science job. And I thought, what did I just say? But I realized that I wasn't going to say, wait a minute, wait a minute, I made a mistake. I want the economics job. Because even though with this clinical analysis, I had come up with the fact that I should really take the economics job, what I really wanted to do was the computer science job. And I think part of it was that it was still exciting to me. I knew what I was going to be doing. And I was really excited about the projects that I was going to be able to work on. And so what I learned from this really is to trust your instincts. And what I had been doing and hadn't really realized it until I thought about it was over this time when I was making the decision, I was basically playing with it in the back of my head. What would it feel like if I was actually doing the computer science job? What would it feel like if I was actually going to work every day and reading the Wall Street Journal and doing that job? And I realized that when I thought about the work that I was going to be doing and the things I would be accomplishing and the computer job, I got all excited. And when I thought about the other job, it was kind of like, okay, and so trust your instincts. Yes, you should still go through this analysis of what are the pros and cons of both of the possible options. But also just try to think about what would it feel like? How do you feel when in your in your mind, you say to yourself, I've made this decision, and just pay attention to how you feel. And if you're really excited about one and kind of on the other, well, that's telling you something. Listen to it. And I did have a blast. I learned a lot. But eventually I hit a wall. This was back in the early 80s. Young, ambitious, intelligent women were not necessarily the norm in a lot of jobs. And I kind of got tired of hearing, Oh, yes, well, we're giving that to John because he has a family to provide for it. Yeah, it's like, wait a minute. This is really, this is really exciting. I feel like I've hit a wall and they said, Well, I'm sorry, but you know, John's John's getting that. And then John got the next one. And John got the next one. And I finally said, Okay, obviously, this is not the place for me. And so I moved on. And that's the first lesson is no when it's time to move on. No when for whatever reason, you're no longer in the right place. But the important thing to realize as well is make sure that you're going towards something, not running away from something. Make sure that this isn't just I finally found an alternative. But you can say why it is you're excited to be going to where you're going. Because if all you're doing is saying, at least I'm escaping, and you don't have anything positive, you're not going to be in a good frame of mind. And it's going to be very difficult for you to be happy and to succeed in word wherever it is you've gone. So make sure when somebody comes up to you, and says, Where are you going? It's you've got something that you can say you're excited about why not that you're leaving why you're going to where you're going. Now, what to do when I was in a situation. I was asked by my direct boss to lie to a client. We were standing outside a conference room. At the client side, the client was in the conference room. He said, If you are asked this question, you will give this answer. And I said, No, I won't. That's not true. And he said it again. And I said it again, I will not say that. And we're standing there arguing outside the client's conference room. And I finally said, This is the most I will do. If he asked the question, I'll let you answer. Even though I felt terrible about even doing that. So what am I going to do? I'm standing outside the client's conference room. I'm 800 miles from home because we were at their site. Fortunately, for me in my conscience, he never the client never asked the question. But I went home that day. And decided I can't work in this organization. But I was lucky because what I had in the mail was my acceptance to the PhD program at Rice University. And so I could go in the next day and talk to my boss and ultimately my boss's boss. I was in another situation in an organization where at its peak, we had about 28 to 30 people working in this group, had the most wonderful boss, the best manager I have had in my entire career. And then he got promoted. Great for Steve, not so great for us. Because the person they brought in was a fantastic individual contributor who could not manage his way out of a paper bag. And they tried everything. They sent him to management training course after management training course after management training course. And people quit and quit and quit. And by the time I got fed up, we were down to 13 people. I was covering five people's jobs. And I was exhausted. And I was fed up. And so I resigned. In the first case, the VP of engineering asked me why I was leaving. And I said, I'm leaving to go to graduate school. I said, what do you think of your manager? I said, this is what happened to me yesterday. He was fired. What happened on the second one? My boss, the one that I thought so highly of came into my office. And he said, are you leaving because of your new boss? And I said yes. And he said, will you talk to the VP of engineering? And I said yes. That was on a Tuesday afternoon, Wednesday morning, I went into the VP of engineering's office. And I told him, these are the things that have been happening. These are the courses that you've tried to send him to because he would come back and he would talk the language that he learned in the course. But then he would refer to his old behaviors. Because in his heart, he was a fantastic scientist and a very bad people person. And I just laid it out very calmly, very rationally. And security packed up his office and moved him to another building and they put him once again into a chief scientist position, which is what he should be doing. He was an incredible scientist. He just couldn't be a manager. And one of the things the VP told me is of all of those people that quit, not a single one said anything bad about that manager. And yet every single one told me that they were leaving because of him. And none of them said a word. So two lessons. First thing, in the short term, if you're in a bad position, do what you need to do to protect yourself. That's what I did standing outside that conference room. I was so glad that I didn't have to keep my mouth shut when he lied to the client, when I knew he was lying. But that was the best I could come up with in that situation. So do what you have to do. But you have to tell the truth. The people you work with and for cannot solve problems they don't know exist. And the people that you work for cannot deal with situations unless they have the facts. And this is a story I tell to a lot of people that I work with or who work quote unquote for me. You have to give me the information because I cannot fix problems that I don't know exist. You have to tell me. And so even though it's hard and I'm not proud of the fact that one person got fired and one person effectively got demoted on the basis of what I said, but then on the other hand I start to think about well, that person should not have been a manager. So yes, he was back in a job that perhaps he didn't want anymore. But what about the people who could now be effective at their job, who could now enjoy their job, who could now be productive in their job. So one person was hurt, but it helped everybody that was left. And oh, by the way, I stayed because we were less than 50 percent and I knew a whole lot about how to run that particular system. So do what you need to do to protect yourself, but ultimately tell the truth. And if you're calm, if you're rational, if you're factual, you can actually make a difference. My old manager, Steve, told me later that the VP of Engineering was really scared about this because he thought, of course, you know, flighty woman, that I was going to be yelling and screaming and crying and all of that. And he was shocked that I came in and fact, fact, fact, fact responded to questions. So do what you can to be very prepared for a meeting like that, because what you don't want to do is you don't want to burn bridges. You don't want to make enemies, but you have to do the right thing. So now I'm in graduate school and it's very early in my first semester. And there's this talk, these professors come from the University of Wisconsin and talk about something. And one of the professors who happened to be teaching one of the courses I'm taking, but I still don't really know anybody because it's still very early in the semester, he asked this question, has this particular area of research been pursued yet? And the answer was no, we're focusing on this area. And I thought that sounds really cool. And so I went up afterwards and I said, they were talking about that area. And I said to this professor, I would really like to work on that. And so very early in my first semester, I knew what my PhD topic was going to be. I actually published a paper probably a year and a half earlier, simply because I knew what I was writing about. So when you see something like that, when something really excites you, when you're passionate about something, go ask for it. Pay attention to when your eyes light up. Pay attention to when you get really excited and you just can't stand still, because those are things that you want to grab a hold of. Even if you're not sure. So Nora Denzel is someone that I've heard speak multiple times. And she was standing on a stage once in India and said, fake it till you make it. And she actually said, so make believe you're standing on a stage in front of a thousand people and you're actually comfortable doing it. And that's exactly what she said. It's like, I'm up here faking it, but eventually I'm going to be okay with this. Now I think by that time she was actually okay with it. But sometimes it's not that you can't do it. It's that little voice sitting on your shoulder is telling you you can't do it. And sometimes you have to say, little voice, you need to go take a hike. Let me get on with this. So even if you're not sure, give it a try. Believe in yourself. So now next decision point. I finished my my doctorate. I finished my postdoc. And I'm deciding should I stay at Los Alamos and be a researcher or should I go to academia? Yes. While I had been at Los Alamos, I was an adjunct professor. And I had decided actually when I went back to graduate school, I said two things. I will never live in the state of Florida in the US. And I will never be an assistant professor on the tenure track. And so I thought, okay, I'm going to go be a researcher. But I had all of these people telling me, you're a wonderful teacher. You really ought to do this. And the way the academic system works, at least in the United States, if you don't go into academia shortly after you finish your PhD, it's going to be another 10 or 15 years before they'll take you into academia. So it was really a decision point. If this was something I wanted to do, I had to do it then. And so I listened to what everybody told me. And I became an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Central Florida. I don't use that N word anymore. Never doesn't work out very well for me. And what I realized is that I was right and that they were wrong. I really didn't like being in academia. I loved working with the students. I loved the excitement of all the new people coming in every semester with their bright ideas and where their questions and all of that. I found that fascinating. But academia was not for me. And so one of the things that I learned first, not all decisions are right. Sometimes you're going to get it wrong. Learn from the mistake, but don't dwell on it. You can never know how things would have turned out on the other path. And saying, well, if only I had done that, my life would be wonderful. But you don't know. You didn't expect this one to go wrong. How do you know the other one wouldn't have gone wrong in some other way? So don't dwell on it. Yes. The politics. Yeah. Although of all the places I could have been in Florida, I was in Orlando, which was actually marginally tolerable. I lived there for 10 years, but so don't don't dwell on it. Learn from it, but don't dwell on it. And one of the things that I learned is that when you're getting a lot of advice from other people that runs counter to what you really think, think about where they're coming from. And I should have realized this because when I was back talking to that VP of engineering about going back to graduate school, one of the things he said to me is I would love to be able to talk you out of it. But I didn't go when I had the chance like you do. And I regret that. And I think a lot of what happened with the people who are giving me the advice is that it was a similar situation. They regretted not going into academia when they had the chance. Think about whether or not people are projecting some things on you. I'm not saying never take advice from people. You want to seek out advice. But if it really runs counter to what you think is right, think about where they might be coming from and why. Because ultimately I took that job because I listened to what other people were telling me as opposed to listening to what my gut was telling me. So I ignored what was a lesson to. That idea. So I ended up with ThoughtWorks after spending about four years in academia. Yes. And for the first time in my career, I had a leadership development coach. What do I do with a coach? I never had one before. And he kept asking me these difficult questions. Like what did I want to do? And you might have been able to discern from this that I didn't really have a career plan. I had known since I was five that I was going to get a PhD. I didn't know what it was going to be in. But I really didn't know when I was going to get it. And so I didn't really have this grand plan mapped out. A lot of these things were opportunistic. And after a lot of questioning and searching, what I realized is I knew very well what I didn't want to do. And I was always very clear. These are the things I don't want to do. But I really struggled with saying what I did want to do because I was afraid that if I was too specific about what I wanted to do, there would be this really exciting thing over here that no one would tell me about. And I didn't want to miss out on those things. So I said, okay, I just won't say what I want to do and then I won't have to worry about that. But that actually doesn't give the people you work with the kind of guidance they need to help bring you opportunities. And so what we did was we actually got to the point where I could describe these are the characteristics of what I want. And it came down to two words. I wanted to be an impactful technologist. I am a geek. I will always be a geek. So being a technologist, being seen as a technologist is a very important thing to me. And one of the things I always knew I didn't want to do is I do not want to be a manager. And like that manager that I had so long ago, I'm probably not a very good manager. I need to be in some other kind of role. But I also wanted to have an impact. I wanted to make a difference. It was important to me to do things that would somehow make an impact. And so don't be afraid to articulate what it is that you want. When I put that out there, the job that I got was the job I have now. Chief technology of ThoughtWorks. Because they could see how that lined up with what it is I said I wanted to do. I still get to do all kinds of other things. I'm out on the speaking circuit. I'm getting involved in all kinds of different things. It's not stopping me from getting anything that I wanted. So I needed to stop being afraid that somehow I was going to cut off paths by actually putting a goal out there. It does help to have something to shoot for. Now, be aware of the boxes that you put yourself in. Pretty much since I joined the company, I've been on most of the senior management groups. And for a long time, I was the only woman and I was the only geek. Unless you would consider our founder a geek and he would argue back and forth on whether or not he was a geek. But I put myself in a box. I said I'm here because I'm the voice of the technology community. And there was one meeting we had. And we were talking about forecasts. And I asked the question of our global head of demand, are you comfortable that you have the sales personnel necessary to achieve this plan? And he said no. I thought, well, this is a problem. But I looked around the table and all of these other management types who understood business, who understood all of this stuff, they didn't seem concerned. So I thought, obviously I'm missing something. So I didn't say anything. And lo and behold, a couple of months in, it's like we're scrambling because, gee, we don't have enough people in our demand organization to meet our revenue plan. And it's like, you know, I knew that. But I didn't say anything. It wasn't that they put me in the geek box. I put myself in the geek box. And I said, I shouldn't be challenging this. Because clearly, my better is no more about this than I do. Don't do that to yourself. If you're in a situation like that, bring your whole self. You might be there because you represent a constituency. But you're not just there because of that constituency. And you don't have to say what you idiots, he just said he can't do it. You can say, this is what I should have said, and I've said similar things since. Okay, clearly, you all understand something that I don't. But this makes no sense to me. Can you explain to me why I'm the only one who's worried about that answer? Because clearly, I'm missing something. And that allows them to either educate me about what I'm missing, or say, hmm, maybe we should be paying more attention to that. But the important thing is, I wasn't put in a box, I put myself in that box. Sometimes others will put you in a box. But it's just as easy to put yourself there. And if you've put yourself in a box, the only one who can get you out of that box is yourself. So now it's sabbatical, one of the wonderful perks of ThoughtWorks. At 10 years, you get a three month sabbatical. It's like, what in the world am I going to do with myself for three months? And so I had to decide. And so I thought long and hard, what are the characteristics of the things that I want to do? And I came up with three things. I wanted to experience a different culture. I wanted to do something obviously that had an impact, but I wanted to do something that actually took advantage of who I was. And so I knew someone with a lot of contacts on the continent of Africa and he put me in touch with several people. And they said, well, gee, I'm setting up a computer lab in Accra, Ghana. So why don't you come and pull cables and help us set the lab up? And said, well, that would have an impact and it would definitely be a different culture. But there are a lot of people who know how to pull cables. So that really didn't satisfy that third criteria. And so what I ended up doing was being a fellow for UNICEF working in their technology for development division in Kampala, Uganda. And I was bringing all of my experience and having dealt with systems because they're senior most technologists. And he was brilliant. But he was 24 years old. There's a whole lot you haven't seen when you're 24 years old. For example, what one of the things they were trying to do is move from pilot to a country wide rollout of a kiosk. They wanted to put at least one kiosk in every village in the country of Uganda. At that time, there were 55,000 villages in Uganda. And I asked him, so how are you going to do software updates? Hmm, hadn't thought of that one. At that time, all of those kiosks didn't even have internet connectivity. Bad roads, 55,000 at a minimum, that would mean even in the large cities you only had one. They had never thought about configuration management because you don't think about it. When you're dealing with pilots and proofs of concept and small scale systems, you don't worry about that because it's not that much of a problem. But large Fortune 100 companies have entire departments that do configuration management for estates that are maybe 25,000 or 30,000. And they have connectivity to all of them. So this was exactly what I was looking for, something where I could take advantage of who I was and make a difference. And the lesson I learned here is you need to decide for yourself what constitutes success. And then figure out what you have to do to meet that definition of success. And ultimately, what I realized is why I wasn't happy in academia. Is their definition of success and mine didn't line up? And that meant I was faced with a choice. I either performed to their standards and be miserable but successful or I performed to my standards and be unsuccessful in their eyes. And that didn't sit well with me. Either. So you have to understand what does success mean for you in your job? What does success mean for you when you're when you have an opportunity like this? Figure out what's most important to you. Figure out what you can ignore because some things, yeah, might not have been ideal, but I could cope with it. What are your absolutes? What are you passionate about? What gets your eyes to light up when you talk about it? What are your non negotiables? And then everything else in the middle you can negotiate on. But it's up to you to figure out what success looks like and make sure it's something that you're passionate about. That's one of the things that I really have learned. If your eyes don't start to light up when you're talking about something in your life, you need to go find something that gives that to you. It may not be your job. Not all jobs can can be that thing for you, but make sure there's something that you can get that excited about. Because who knows what might happen. I must admit I never thought I would be wearing a bulletproof vest on my sabbatical. But at that time we went to the northern part of Uganda and there was some inter gang rivalry between a couple of different sheep rustling gangs. And so they were firing at all the UN Jeeps. So if we were out of the cities we had to wear a peth helmet and a bulletproof vest. So that's me on my sabbatical. So how much did it matter that I was a woman? In college it mattered some, but not a big deal. I had one professor who stated categorically women were incapable of understanding math and computer science. There were 58 of us, four women. The four of us banded together and decided we're going to prove this guy wrong. All four of us got A's. Some of the men flunked out of the course. But one thing about this is there was one of us that I don't think she would have made it if it wasn't for the support of the other three. Because she had heard that same thing from her family and from her relatives. Oh math is hard. You're a girl you can't do that. But she stuck with it because we stuck together and we proved him wrong. In my early jobs, again some. But it had more to do with the environment than I think it had to do with the opportunities except for that. Well no, John has to do that because he has a family to support. But at that time there was a lot of very casual sexism that went on. And you just accepted it. In graduate school I did not sense anything at all. It may have been that I was just so happy to be in school and I know that sounds terrible. Once again in academia there were some. It's still a reality. Unfortunately at ThoughtWorks I am happy to say not at all. But in our industry it's still there. And it's much less obvious in some ways. It's really not socially acceptable anymore for somebody to say the kinds of things that professor said. He said it in front of the class. Women are incapable of understanding math and computer science. That is no longer socially acceptable. In some ways though it's more subtle. And so it makes it more difficult to fight. But I think more what we're dealing with is just an atmosphere that right now there's this archetype of what a good technologist is. And there are a lot of people who don't fit that archetype. And that's part of what we're railing against. So the final lesson fundamentally the only thing you can do is your best. If you deal with people with integrity. If you tell the truth. That's the best you can do. That's all anyone can ask of you. And that's how you can look yourself in the mirror in the morning and say I did the right thing. And you can go to sleep at night. And yeah. OK maybe you made a mistake but you did the best you could. Deal with honesty and integrity. Tell the truth. And things in general will work out for you. And hopefully you don't have to repeat the mistakes that I have made. Thank you very much. So questions. Could you share some of your.