 Live from Houston, Texas. It's theCUBE, covering Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. We're live, all right, great, we're live. We're here, we're in Houston. At the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, 16,000 women and men coming together to talk about every topic you can imagine on the latest cutting edge and what's going on in tech. AI, AR, machine learning. It's all covered here. It's a huge recruiting event. It's a great feel-good event for women and young women and women looking for a job in computer science. We're really happy to be there. As August said, we've got the biggest CUBE booth we've ever had, 40 foot by 40 foot. You can't miss us come on down to the floor. So we're really excited to have Rebecca Knight back joining us for the three days here of wall-to-wall coverage and a return visit from August Goldman, the chief people officer from GoDaddy, welcome back August. Thanks, Jeff, great to be back. And Arana Wasti, you are the VP of inclusion at GoDaddy, correct? Nice to meet you. Welcome. Thank you. So first off, we saw you last year. What did you think of the show this year? I'll tell you, last year, as you know, Jeff, we had 12,000 people, which was a huge jump from the 8,000 before. What did they say, 15? Close to 16. Close to 16,000 men and women came to this conference again. It's been so much of the industry. You can see the entire industry is here. This is a very important conference for us at GoDaddy as well. The poor people at the American, or not the Toyota, the Toyota center, where the Houston Rockets play, they couldn't deal with all the crowds. They had to keep opening sections. They didn't know what was going on. Somebody told me the Houston Rockets don't even fill up that place anymore. We filled a basketball stadium. We filled a stadium today with young men and women who want to come and be part of our industry. I tell you, it was a special moment. And what fantastic keynotes, right? And terrific. And one of the big topics, which we're going to get into is benchmarking, right? And how do you get better at anything in life if you don't first measure where you are, where the leaders are, where you want to go? But the first thing you got to do is measure. And I know that's... In August, your company yesterday released its first ever gender diversity report. Actually, it's our second year. Second year, okay, it's the second ever. And you know, transparency for us, you're absolutely right, Rebecca. It's so important. It's the hallmark. And you need to get comfortable with uncomfortable data is what we talk about. We didn't know where the data was in line. When we first started it, we took a look at, especially the pay equities. So last year was the first year. We actually went out and said, how are we paying men and women in the same roles, at the same performance, the same level, in the same geography, are we paying them the same? And we released the data last year. We did it again this year as well. Okay, so tell me what happened last year and now what did you report this year? So the biggest movement that we had and that you have the data, the data is interesting. So we pay for like technical women, I sent more. So they make a $1.01 for every man that makes a dollar in the same role and same level. Last year, if you look at leadership, where we suck, where we struggled. And again, this is a multi-year effort. This isn't going to be solved one year to the next. Last year we had 96 cents to a dollar. So a woman would make in leadership, 96 cents for every dollar that a man made. This year it's 98 cents. So we've gained two cents. Is it where we want to be? No, you want to be a parody. You want to be a dollar. But it just shows it takes progress. It takes looking at the numbers and it takes being transparent. If you don't measure it, it won't get better. So transparency is important. How did your employees react to it? What do you think, Arana? I actually think it was great because imagine the conversations we can have internally now with our employees. You can talk at the water cooler about how much you make. Well, and you can talk about, here's where you are on the spectrum. Here's how we're going to continue to grow you in the level you're at, at the next level. You know exactly where you stand, where your peers stand, and what is it that you need to do to get to the next level or wherever you want to take your career. So I think the fact that it's transparent makes for amazing conversations with employees and employees feel like it's all out on the table. We can have those objective, honest discussions. So it's been great. Reporting these numbers, you're not the first company to do this. So this really is a movement in Silicon Valley. And yet there are many other companies that are outside the Valley and even some still in the tech industry who aren't as willing to be as transparent about this. What do you say to them? You know, I say the downside of doing it is not outweighed by the upside, the upside for the culture, the upside for the employees, the upside for understanding that you're not going to be happy with the numbers, accept it. No one is. If we were happy with the numbers, we wouldn't need conferences like this. We have these conferences because we need the movement to get better. A lot of these folks come to these conferences and realize they're not alone. There are others in the same boat. We can be transparent. It's okay, you're not going to be shamed, show your numbers. And you know what? Congratulations to Google. They were the first to do it. And no one knew the results, what the reaction was going to be. Congratulations to them. They were first and we all said, we can join them. And to ThoughtWorks, right? So ThoughtWorks was the big winner today in the survey that I need a board released. And you've seen their effort. And the numbers that they have with you, right up there. Especially the bar charts compared to everybody else in the mean, they're off the hook. So, you know, phenomenal business. And we had to talk with Kim Stevenson a while back at Intel, same thing. You know, the company made a commitment that the first step is measure where you are, right? Put that line in the sand, you know, get that baseline. So now you can start adding a penny, adding two pennies, doing the things that you're talking about. But it's also not just the survey itself. It's the work that goes in survey to survey, right? Meaning once you measure it, then once it's out in the open, you want to make sure that you're doing something against it. You want to make sure it improves because it again contributes to the technology industry, to your company. So it's not just taking the survey, it's the work that goes in between. Let me follow up on that then. So when the survey first came out a year ago, kind of in the employee ranks, I mean, he's biased, I can't ask August. He's at the top of the chief people officer. But within the constituency, was it like, okay, they're taking the survey? Because as you said, if you don't have action to support that moment in time, then it's just a moment in time. So did people, did they see this as an indicator of a renewed focus? Was it kind of a validation of something that they'd heard in the past? And what were the steps that told the people in the rank and file that this is actually an indicator of something different, of something better? Yeah, absolutely. Well actually, GoDaddy has been on this journey of focusing on diversity, not just women diversity, diversity as a whole for the last several years. So by the time we took the survey, it was actually one of the steps that GoDaddy has taken to ensure that there is focus on diversity, why we focus on diversity, and getting commitment across the company to focus on it. So we've done things over the last couple of years to focus on, how do we rate people? How do we promote people? How do calibration sessions happen? Again, one of the things we happen to do is take the survey about the payout as well. We've been selected by ABI as one of the top companies for women technologies last year. So we continue to make progress on that journey, and this is another step on that journey. But of course once the data came out, the first survey came out, it spun up a lot of good conversations. It spun up the conversations off to August point, why isn't there parity at certain levels? Why are certain people placed within the level of payout on the lower end and the high end? How can they move up? So it spurred great conversations, which then got us to partner with more companies to improve those processes. So like Klayman Institute for Gender Bias Studies, how do we make sure that everything we do is equitable and gets people continue to grow within the career? And that's what we see in the survey results this year. It's better. I could give an example of that. Irona is spot on. I don't know if you remember, Jeff, last year we spoke about promotion management and how are we promoting folks through the ranks. So now what we're doing is we're triggering managers that if someone's been in the role a certain amount of time, the manager has to review that person for promotion. We can't leave it just to the goodwill of managers to remember. They get triggered and if they're not ready to promote that person, they have to explain why. With actionable, specific feedback for that employee to reach that level. What's the time? What's the time? It's probably based on different roles, I understand. But I mean just kind of generally. Level one, 12 months. 12 months. Yeah, you should go from a level one to a level two, generally between 12 and 18 months. And is that also because millennials typically want to be reviewed earlier and are more famously more ambitious and hungry for their next thing? Excellent question, Beckett. There's a lot of research that says if you promote even little promotions, more often, Irona knows this well, rather than wait multiple years, you attrition and employee engagement and sentiment skyrockets. So little tiny promotions, level three to level four. Great, you get a little bit more equity, a little bit more money, a little more cash. You get expectations going, you feel really good. You feel like your career is moving. You feel totally appreciated. So on that same track, when you're making these moves, the little moves that make people feel good. So little money's always good, little equity's always good. But I'm curious on your take on the role of titles. Because we're in this kind of weird place, it feels like in titles. Titles used to be really important and define who you were. Now with the jeans and the t-shirts and we're kind of less title centric and people come up with fun titles, where do titles play in this continuous kind of promotion? How do you manage that? I love this discussion. I love this, well, this is, let me give you my take and I'd love Irona's take on this. So what we do with titles, we actually have two different kinds of titles. We have the titles in our backend systems that are actually just levels because we want people to be able to be leveled and career managed and we want them to get promoted often. So that's for us to be able to manage their career. Then we let people choose their own title. They write their own title in our systems and we ask people, be authentic to what you do. And generally people do. We do have masters of the universe and we do have queen of all things, but those are fun. But generally people write the title that's descriptive to what they do. I don't know what your take is on that. Yeah, but I think the leveling is interesting because we've leveled every job family there is and because there are these tight levels and progression, what people then focus on isn't about the title, but it's what does that level mean, right? So every step of the way you mentioned, yes, there's a little bit of equity, there's a little bit of promotion compensation, but then it's what is different between this level versus my prior level and then what's going to get me to the next level. So having those levels and definition of what they are helps to focus the conversation off. Like here's what this means to be at this level, whatever the title you pick. So we've talked a little bit about the culture at GoDaddy. Now let's talk about the product of GoDaddy and you are VP of product, so you're great to talk about this. What is, what are some of the new cool things that you're working on and where will growth come from? Yeah, it's a great question. I think one of the things I always love to share and it surprises people is that more than half of our customers, small business customers, are those small businesses that are run by women. So when we think about diversity, when we think about inclusion, when we're thinking about why this matters for our business, well, that's where our customers are and if my product team isn't diverse, I'm not going to represent the customers that I'm serving. But in terms of what's exciting in product world, I think what's exciting about GoDaddy is our mission is to help these small businesses, these life-fulfilling ventures, to get started, getting a domain name, to create an online digital presence with their website, to keep growing their business and digital presence with tools like domain-based email and help them run their business better. And we try to do that for small businesses across the world, right? So when you think about the number of small businesses in the US and you think about all the international growth in different countries, that's what's exciting in terms of the direction that GoDaddy's going in and that's where the growth comes from, right? It's the small businesses worldwide that continue to sort of pop up and we continue to serve them. What are some of the biggest challenges that you're seeing in working with these small business owners who, as you said, are trying to do something new and different oftentimes while they're working full-time jobs and this is their passion project? Yeah, there's a couple things. One is, to your point, this is their passion project, right? For some people it's a passion, for some people it's the way to make living, for some people it's extra income, but their passion isn't running their business and developing their idea. So our goal is to provide the tools for them that are so easy to use that they don't need to worry about the technology behind it, they just want to run their business. So how can we help them do that in the most easy, seamless way? So, Becca, what about you? You? You have a business. Well, it's about activating your domain name as well. So do you have an email address activated to your own domain name? I do not. You're going to tell me? And this is to hide our product for all of you who have done that. We will talk about that and why you need one. But I think the second challenge is because there's so much growth outside of US, this is where it comes back to diversity, right? Our customers are so diverse and international, we need to build products that work for everyone and they need to work for those customers in those regions, those languages, those cultures. So that's where the exciting challenge comes from is how do we build products at scale but then serve all these different diverse customers and again, it goes back to diversity on the team. And then you've got the whole .tv, .net, . whatever, I don't even, how many, how many dot whatever's are there? 700, just over 700 of them. 700. Oh my gosh. So you know what's interesting, people get a suite. People get a suite that's most close to what they do. So if they're dot bikes, they're in Palo Alto, you get dot Palo Alto, you know, you get dot sports, you could bring it all together and it's multi-channel. So you bring everyone together from different channels on these different domain names into your business. Right. Something that reflects who you are, that's the most accurate description of kind of your online presence. Do you think we are becoming as a culture and society more authentic because we do have to be thinking about all these things in the terms of make it reflect who you are, have your title be something that speaks to your core as a human being. I mean, do you think that this is having a bigger effect? Well, be authentic is one of our values. I mean, we always talk about bring your authentic self. Our discussion here at this conference is breakthrough moments. And we always thought you don't have to be different from outside the company to when you walk in that front door. When you hit the front door in the morning, you are the same person, bring yourself. And so we hire, today we're going to be looking at hiring of quite a few folks, we'll hire two our values. And those who are most authentic, they're going to do very well at GoDaddy. I would look up the interview that we did years ago with Gal, but we have no internet here. That's a different question. Come on, call them. We need to beg them. But it was a great statement about when people get hired, you hire this great person, you interview them to have attributes and characteristics that you think are going to contribute to the company. And then so often then the company would just squish them into the box, right? So you take this great creative person that you're so excited about and then here's the employee manual that's four and just thick, now conformed. So it's really a different kind of a strategy to say we want you to be you and to perform with us for us as you. I mean, it's totally ironic, you could speak as a hiring manager, she hires quite a few people. Yeah, and again, all it takes is just to visit one of GoDaddy offices to see how different the culture is from what you said, right? And that we do want people to bring their whole self to work and that whole self could be exhibited in many different ways. So for example, when I joined three and a half years ago, one of the things I feel passionate about is helping women create a network and a community together. I approached our CEO Blake at the time as a new hire and said, what do you think about launching women in technology network? I got full support, we launched a network, Blake has been a key contributor and promoter of it, now it's 500 people strong, spun off six more employer resource groups just from that all volunteer based, all within the people who work at GoDaddy, right? None of that is corporate driven, et cetera. So that allowed me to bring my whole self to work, that allowed a lot more people to bring their whole self to work, right? And again, those employer resource groups some are diversity, some about fitness, some are veterans. So it's just the opportunity is there and I think what's been exciting about GoDaddy is everybody who joins helps shape the culture versus adjust to whatever the strict culture is because there isn't. That's part of the reason, again, we attract employees to GoDaddy and again, all it takes is visiting an office. Right, that's great. So take the top off the box, something might grow, right? Exactly. Exactly, exactly. So Augusta, Rana, thanks for stopping by. Congratulations on a good show. Next year I promise to have an 80 foot by 80 foot. Yeah, look, you set the bar now on what you guys are bringing to this conference. All right, well thanks again for stopping by. I'm Jeff Rick, you're watching theCUBE's day one of three days of live coverage here from the Grace Hopper celebration of women competing in Houston. We'll be back with our next guest after this short break. Thanks for watching. Hi, I'm John Furrier, the co-