Gadgetory

you know I was reading an article there was an article that came out in November of 2011 in San Francisco magazine and it was called who's the next female Mark Zuckerberg and it really got me thinking about sort of the state of the industry there seems to be a lot of attention on this question of women in tech lately and so I just wanted to ask the panel generally where do you think we'll start with your Padma where do you think we are in the industry in terms of women in tech right now yeah I think they've come a long way actually feel pretty good about where women are in technology I think if you kind of look at two of the largest tech companies today IBM and HP they have women CEOs and a lot of amazing founders or creating technology companies that have made a lot of difference in our lives and so I mean it's not that progress is ever you know Don right I mean there's more we can do and we should do to get more women actually I was thinking as I was walking the CES fleurs am I going to be on the panel just to see some women I would like to see more women and out out in on the floor as well and I think that is that is more we can do but I do feel like in the last 10 years we've made a lot of progress if you could put women in some key areas in each of your industries or business what do you think they would be if you just make sure there was a woman and you know a few spots throughout the industry I'll be honest I think that what we're really playing is a numbers game right now is a great time to your women in tech but there's not enough more than intact right but I worry that a lot of times the conversation gets really focused on what percentage of the pie is women right and the truth is the pie isn't big enough right we're not producing enough computer scientist we're not producing enough product designers we need a lot more people to keep up with all of these gadgets all this technology all these possibilities the jobs of the future we really need a lot more people interested in mobile technology in computers right we need a lot more people and if we grow that number the number of women will by its very nature go up right the statistics are things like for the advanced placement exam 200,000 students a year take cut the calculus exam only 14,000 take the computer science exam so seven percent of kids who think they're good at math take both the math exam and the computer science exam but if you talk to Google engineers they'd actually done studies only two percent of Google engineers weren't exposed to computer science in high school which means if you graduate from high school and you haven't been exposed to computer science the odds that you're going to end up being an engineer somewhere are incredibly low so we really just need to get that number up right imagine if we had 200,000 or 500,000 students graduating from high school every year that we're taking computer science as well as calculus as opposed to just seven percent work-life balance can you do you have stories that you can share with us you know we've talked a lot about the stories and I think that that is obviously hugely influential if the audience would like to hear it how how do you accomplish it is it by setting your own schedules how do you ask for help so my my daughter was was very jealous of me going to meetings so she knew that reason whenever I was going to a meeting it was something that excluded her right so she would she started doing these I'm sorry it's going to be a little bit cute so she started doing these sort of meetings with her stuffed animals and things and I was like so what do you guys talk about in your meetings and she says balloons and elephants and so I decided what we would do is we would we would start having our own meetings and we would kind of include her and this feeling of being involved in in work and so we started having family meetings we have them every friday morning at 8am and we sit around the breakfast table and we literally have a family meeting we talk about what was good what was bad we talk about our work we very specifically talked about our work with each other and have her meet one and then you know what we want to learn in the coming week and so we now have a meeting and it just kind of like feels Roger that gets meetings now the really big thing about the meeting really is the having the notepad and a really sharp pencil and I don't know that's not a good ended up reading it very well how are you on the panel how do you feel about taking that mantle in some cases you do how do you think you be a hero to women who are interested in technology and do you ever see it as a burden for younger women both male and female yeah I know that Sheryl Sandberg has talked a lot about how choosing not to get too soft here but choosing it the right partner is one of the best choices you can make for your career and I think you know I have a son and a daughter and it's really important really important for me to model for my son that I can do both of these things and that he gets to see a partnership at work at home and that that model extends to our children and also maybe to our high schools I mean I really appreciate the comment about getting people involved in engineering at the high school level because I suspect that not many high schools have computer science programs at all and certainly in them I doubt there are many female computer science high school teachers but it is value in sharing your experience yes and that is something I really believe it and I think I often talk to people i canna share my experiences and it's not that anybody can translate your experience to theirs and it's not something you can extrapolate and say okay this work this didn't work for me therefore it may or may not work for you but it's actually just relating a story of this is how I dealt with the situation and I think there's value in that