The changing identity of the technology industry

By Rohan Swamy | Updated: 7 March 2014 16:37 IST

The technology industry is supposed to be an egalitarian space where you skills and knowledge count for more than anything else. Is that a reality or just another myth being fostered? Today, there are more women in leadership roles in the industry than ever before, but the fact is that girls are still discouraged from pursuing jobs in science, research and technology.

In a 2013 study, called What Women Want @ Work reinforced the fact that women are expected to balance their personal and professional lives - male employees know they can focus on the job, but in general, women are expected to worry about their kids and kitchens.

What's interesting to see from the study, which was carried out across 14 countries, was that women in India were the most satisfied, with 94 percent of the women describing their careers as successful. This was followed by Brazil at 88 percent and Netherlands at 87 percent.

The study also highlights in addition to their personal and professional aspirations, the problems and challenges that they face at work. For instance 48 percent Indian women say that there is lack of investment in professional development, while 43 percent mention the absence of a role model as another challenge and 85 percent of them aspire for greater flexibility at the workplace.

(Also see: Five apps for women that make you go 'What were they thinking!')

To get more insights, we interviewed Prachi Gupta, Engineering Manager & [in]cubator co-founder at LinkedIn. Gupta has been with LinkedIn for the last four years, and before that worked for Garmin; she is one of the women in Silicon Valley who has been successful in climbing the corporate ladder, and talked to us about her experiences, and what young women should expect from the industry.

Can you tell us a little bit about your role in LinkedIn?
I lead the Engineering and Research for Identity Engagement at LinkedIn. My team focuses on building experiences on the LinkedIn site that lead to people interacting and engaging with each other more. Some products that I own are "Skill endorsements" and "Who viewed your profile".

In my role as an Engineering Manager, I am responsible for formulating the strategy and vision for the team, defining the team roadmap in tandem with my product management partners, collaborating with other teams across the organisation and guiding the technical choices and design for the products built by my team.

You are a founding member of the [in]cubator programme at LinkedIn. What kind of work is the programme involved with?
At LinkedIn we set aside one day a month for people to work on or learn anything they want. People often chose to build a cool hack to try out an idea they might have and we get together as a company to demo these hacks the following week.

From there, people started wondering how to take these ideas ahead - and we designed a program that would allow anyone in the company with an idea to pitch it to the executives and if approved get up to three months to work on their idea and bring it to life. Think of it like getting to do a startup minus all of the risk, where funding is in form of time. You still keep all your benefits, pay and perks but you work on your own idea instead of whatever else your regular day job was.

What was the Silicon Valley culture like when you first reached there, and how is it today?
When I first came here, about six years ago, the valley was a little muted. Around 2007-2008 it was still recovering from the economic downturn and people were mostly trying to take stock of the situation and reassemble.

Since then, there are many more hopeful and talented entrepreneurs, there is a constant influx of great ideas and people in general are very open, supportive and collaborative. Coffee shops are full of people on their laptops coding up the next big consumer application. Mostly I'd say things are positive.

The only thing that saddens me a little is that sometimes I think there is an increasing lack of depth in the ideas coming out right now. There are way too many people focused on what I like to call Pop-technology ventures, things like the next Instagram or Uber for dogs (just making things up here). Don't get me wrong, there are people working on trying to solve harder problems as well, my hope is that the ratio of pop-tech startups will remain at a healthy balance.

Do you feel that the industry hasn't caught up with changing times? Are women getting their fair dues?
Most people don't realise that women have been behind a lot of technology innovation since the very beginning, ENIAC the first computer was invented by women. The first compiler and the first programming language were created by women and the first software patent ever issued was to a female inventor for writing the first telephone exchange software, the basic principles of which are still in use.

I think that the situation has definitely changed for the better and is headed in the right direction. There are more and more role models for young women to look up to, strong women leaders like Sheryl Sandberg, Marissa Mayer, Padmasree Warrior, Meg Whitman etc. have certainly made it easier for young women to have an ideal to strive towards. It is no longer the case that people couldn't name any famous women in STEM fields who was still alive and had to revert to Ada Lovelace, Marie Curie etc. for examples.

But that said, we are far from done. There are still many more women who have and continue to have significant impact on the course of technology but aren't as celebrated as they should be.

What advice you would want to give young women who wish to pursue a career in research, technology and other allied streams?
I think any advice I would give to young women would be pretty intuitive to them on their own, but sometimes you have to keep hearing the same thing over and over again until one day it finally hits home and becomes a part of your nature. Don't shy away from hard work or from asserting yourself. Don't let anyone tell you what you are and aren't capable of doing.

Most of the women pioneers in technology were told to forget about math or about getting a PhD, go home and raise a family. The world is a better place because they didn't listen and ignored the naysayers. Stop looking for reasons to not do something and take action instead. I've seen some women use diversity as an excuse to expect special behaviour, don't be that person, you will just get in your way and reinforce the very stereotype we need to do away with.

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