Stories, Not Stats: About Diversity in Technology (Part 2 of 5)
By Shreya Shankar
If you haven’t already, read the first part of the series. As a refresher, here are the women I talked to:
- Julie Black: CTO at Evidation Health, B.S. and M.S. in computer science
- Briana Berger: high school junior in Florida
- Cynthia Lee: lecturer at Stanford University, Ph.D. in computer science
- Sunny Wu: sophomore at Stanford University
- Priya Ganesan: senior at Stanford University
- Julia Hu: high school junior in New York
Here are their stories, continued.
“When did you first notice you were a minority in your field?”
Briana (high school junior): “In 9th grade, I took a real intro to Java course. There were barely any girls in the class. When there was free time, there were no girls to talk to. It didn’t bother me at first because I was young; I didn’t really mind. But it affected me later. When I talk about the career path or classes I’m taking, people are automatically surprised when I say I even want to major in CS. I keep trying to find ways to keep myself in the field. I don’t want to be dissuaded by negative experiences.”
Priya (college senior): “I don’t think I actually noticed the gender gap until I came to Stanford because my mom is in the tech industry. I don’t think I’ve personally experienced much sexism. Every summer I’ve been very fortunate to have supportive mentors — some even went out of their way to acknowledge the gender gap and make my internship a positive experience for me. I do have some stories about imposter syndrome though. It was the second week of one of my summer internships. I asked one of the other interns for help — for an hour he took over my computer and keyboard and mouse. The whole time, I was like, ‘Are you sure this is right?’ But he was positive that he was right. An hour later, I found a much more elegant solution. That was one instance when I realized that there was a confidence gap.”
Julie (CTO at Evidation Health): “When I was in high school, I took a summer computer science class in which there were about 18 boys and two girls. At the time, I didn’t feel like it made much of a difference: I was outspoken and enjoyed participating with all of the other students. The only other notable memory I have was during my coterm at Stanford when I went to take a quantum computing class in which I was the only woman. Now, however, I’m lucky to work with lots of welcoming and inclusive colleagues. I’ve found partners from all sorts of diverse backgrounds and don’t often find myself feeling like a minority.”
Cynthia (lecturer at Stanford): “When I started coding in high school, I was doing web design, but I thought of it as an artistic endeavor instead of coding. At my internship at NASA, I was fortunate that the leader of the group I was hired into was a woman, and her boss was a woman — which probably wasn’t an accident. However, I don’t remember any other women in the office. Anything about my feminine side felt out of place in that office. For example, I decorated my office with pictures of flowers, and everyone who passed by would gawk and say, ‘Wow this office looks different!’ I would often come in wearing a sundress, and people would comment on my outfits. They were often positive comments — ‘What a ray of sunshine you are!’ — but it made me feel self-conscious of my femaleness. I was 17 or barely 18, and there was a 35-year-old guy who was overly friendly to the point where I had to speak to my supervisor about it. It was discouraging, but I’ve always drawn motivation from being underestimated.”
“What made you consider technology as a career path?”
Julia (high school junior): “Before tech, I had a variety of dreams that changed one day after another. Looking back at it, I’m not sure if the goals were genuine or based on what other people wanted me to pursue. I wanted to be a doctor for some time, since my parents have both created successful careers in medicine. But I also think it’s cool that almost every future career could involve tech — you wouldn’t just have to problem-solve; you’d have to develop creative solutions using code.”
Sunny (college sophomore): “Something that has been extremely important to me this quarter is the CS community at Stanford. I’m extremely people-oriented, and I have always said that no matter what I do in the future, I want to work with people. When I took psychology courses last year, even though I enjoyed the material, it was difficult to find people to talk about my classes with, and it often felt isolating reading my textbook alone when everyone in CS classes could easily find each other and collaborate on their assignments. That being said, it’s been refreshing this quarter embarking on the CS route and discovering that I can talk to so many people about my classes and ask for advice about how to apply for internships. But the CS route is definitely challenging, and I think that it’s going to take a lot of perseverance and a positive outlook to not balk at continuing to pursue this path when things become difficult. However, it’s reassuring to realize that literally everyone who has graduated from here with a CS degree has taken the exact same courses that I find myself struggling in. They had all likely struggled and failed many times, but the majority of these CS graduates are probably being very successful in the Silicon Valley tech industry right now. With resilience and perseverance, I’m confident that everything will be all right in the long run.”
Cynthia: “I liked literature and coding — so I thought I would double major. Two things drew me in more strongly to computer science. First, I naturally fell into teaching coding to others — first helping my friends and classmates, then being officially hired by the department as a lab tutor. I loved thinking of ways I could explain things to people so they could understand it without giving them the answer, and it gave me an emotional and community connection to the field. Second, I found a technical specialization within CS that really fascinated me, which was natural language processing. As a junior I was taking a graduate course in it, and the class project turned into a part of a startup, and before I knew it, I was completely immersed in computer science. It was thrilling to so quickly reach the threshold of current human knowledge about something and work on open problems as an undergrad. I think you have to have both those attachment points — a hook into something that excites you technically but also an emotional connection to the field.”
Shreya is a sophomore majoring in CS at Stanford. She loves trying new foods, working out, playing around with various programming tools, solving puzzles, and listening to music. Outside her classes, Shreya section leads for CS106A/B and is pretty involved in she++, TreeHacks, and CS+Social Good.
Stay tuned for part 3 of Shreya’s stories on Wednesday! Read her post on her personal Medium account here.
