Women in Technology

Marissa Mayer (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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There is a lot of coverage and tweets about Sheryl Sandberg‘s new book “Lean In” and for the decision Marissa Mayer made to stop Telecommuting at Yahoo. If only there was this much coverage for all the decisions made by CEO’s of the Fortune 500 companies or for the books written by others? I am really happy to see them both getting good media coverage because as one of old saying goes in Hollywood “Does not matter what you write about me just get my name right!”, maybe it does not apply to these cases. I am big proponent and supporter of getting more women in the workplace, equal rights or actually increase the benefits, rewards and compensation primarily because they are a lot more committed to focusing on Work and Family, which is a very important requirement because without a proper balance anyone can burn out in the world of entrepreneurship.  There are a number of women leaders today in many large organizations like IBM, HP, Xerox etc so I am pretty sure the Glass ceiling that people talk about is not as prevalent as it was a decade ago.

I actually want more women to participate in Software development and DevOps, because I think they are excellent in it. We are running an experiment in GreenQloud, where any student especially women who are able to take a couple of hours in a week and are willing to spend that time in our office, will be paired with our Development and Operations team members so they can teach the students what we do. We now have 4 interns like that… all women! learning about running Cloud Computing Infrastructure and Software development in the real world and being part of a startup. I wish more companies would be open minded about taking on interns this way as it would really solve the skills challenge that IT and Software companies always seem to complain about. And I also believe it will solve the gender diversity problem, more opportunity for women to participate then there is no bias.

Related articles

• Marissa Mayer is killing telecommuting, and that’s a good thing (venturebeat.com)
• Women In Tech Defend Marissa Mayer, Sheryl Sandberg Despite Recent Attacks (huffingtonpost.com)
• Watch: Person of the Week: Sheryl Sandberg (abcnews.go.com)
• Carly Fiorina on Marissa, Sheryl, and Women in Tech (businessweek.com)
• Sheryl Sandberg is more of a feminist crusader than people give her credit for | Jill Filipovic (guardian.co.uk)