make the tech industry more diverse when
we develop a product we wanted to be
used by as many people as possible and
many different people men women disabled
people people of color and many more
when the airbag of the modern car was
developed it was tested and then
released to the market but the problem
was that it was only tested with tall
male dummies this resulted in the fact
that some women and children died in car
accident because the airbag was not
designed for smaller people when the
team that develops a product consists of
people that are very similar we run the
risk that we forget one or more groups
of people that will end up using our
product on the other hand if we have a
diverse team with people of different
backgrounds and stories and
characteristics we have a higher chance
of representing a larger user base of
our product now I’m a software developer
and ever since I joined the industry
three years ago I’ve always been the
only woman in my team and I found some
good things about that for example the
entry into the industry I found pretty
easy I picked up my favorite company and
I asked them for an internship and even
though they didn’t have one they created
a position for me and I could start two
weeks later later when I asked my boss
why they gave me this opportunity and
they created this internship
he said mainly because of my high
motivation to learn but also they were
looking to make their team more diverse
because you see until that point the
company had existed for eight years and
they had never had a female developer
until that point also having worked in
other industries like the sports
industry and the travel industry I found
the people in
the tech industry exceptionally helpful
my teammates always answered all my
questions they wanted me to learn and
they gave me the feeling to belong there
and they encouraged me to ask more
questions they always made me feel
comfortable even though I didn’t know
many things about software development
at that time but being the only woman in
a software team has not always been easy
sometimes when I went to work I felt
like dressing nicely so and for that I
got some weird comments from from
colleagues at my company and one of the
guys said you know you don’t have to
dress up anymore
you already got the job and I was like
oh my god dude I think that I want to
get some kind of advantage with the way
I dress because this was not at all what
I wanted so I thought I have to change
myself I put my nice clothes on the back
of my closet and I started wearing back
conference t-shirts and hoodies like the
guys did now they approved of that a lot
one of them even congratulated me for
becoming a nerd too but I didn’t feel
very good about this not because I don’t
like these clothes but I only did it to
fit in so I went back to wearing the
clothes I wanted I got some more strange
comments and then it was fine then one
day we went to work at the customers
office and it was my first time there
and I was walking down the aisle with a
teammate of my company and then some
guys from the customers company passed
us and one of these guys asked my
teammate hey dude is his bring your
daughter to work day and I didn’t even
know what to say and then my colleague
said you know she’s a fully grown
engineer and the other gap guy felt so
bad about this and he apologized and he
even bought me a cookie to make up for
his mistake
so yes I don’t think this will happen to
him again so then I realized at that
point that it was not normal for a woman
to be in a technical position and people
automatically associate this with
something else so in this case I was my
colleagues daughter even though I was
only one year younger than he was and I
wanted to change that because I don’t
always want to explain myself why I’m a
developer and also I don’t always want
to be the only woman in my team so I
co-founded a free programming course for
women that’s running weekly to attract
new women to software development to
show them that it’s actually a very
creative job that and that you have to
have a lot of empathy to understand the
users needs and that it’s not that we
are not like wasted away nerds in
cellars with crazy hair and uncapable of
social interaction so and I’m very happy
to say that some of these women are on
their way are or already are software
developers now so I’m very happy about
this also I co-founded women techmakers
this is a Google initiative to provide
visibility and a platform for women in
technology and I talk to many women and
I realized that not only do we have the
problem that many women don’t consider
position in a technical field but also
many women that used to work in a
technical position left many times to
work in marketing or communication and
when I asked them for the reason about
why they left they gave me some answers
that made me think a lot and I want to
share three of their statements with you
one lady said my salary is much lower
than the men’s salary even though our
work is the same a second lady said
I was the only woman in the team and
they didn’t take me seriously as a
female developer and the third lady said
I applied for a promotion and even
though my boss said that I was more
suitable for the job they promoted the
guy in my team because it was what
everyone expected
now I thought a long time about this and
I did research on this and I came up
with three main reasons for these
problems
the first is men tend to ask for more
more salary for promotions and I wanted
to find out if this was true so I talked
to many guys in my company and outside
and many of them said oh yeah I asked
for a raise in every performance review
when I asked women at our meetups about
this topic they say oh no I’m already
glad that they gave me a job and I don’t
want to seem ungrateful and I think they
will give me a raise when they think
it’s time well from my experience you
hardly get something for free without
asking the second problem is the
difference of the handling of success
and failure in men and women men tend to
attribute their success to themselves to
their hard work to their skills and
their failure to you know circumstances
and bad luck on the other hand women
tend to attribute their failures to
themselves and the lack of skills and
they attribute their success not to
themselves but to the team and to being
at the right place at the right time and
this is all about how we present
ourselves and I also did a little
experiment on that with a friend of mine
who’s also female developer we went to
to a workshop like a hackathon where the
main idea was to learn about new
technologies and to build something with
these new technologies and we were
working and other teams passed by and
asked how we were doing
and she answered we are doing terrible
and we almost didn’t achieve anything so
far and I don’t think that this will go
anywhere and then nobody passed by
anymore and today was over some weeks
later we attended such an event again
people stopped buying asked how we were
doing and before this time before she
could answer I said we are doing correct
we you know I’ve learned so many things
in the last two hours we even started to
build something and we will continue in
the afternoon then I heard some people
go to the organizers team and to tell
them that they are onto something and I
think they do a really good job in the
end we got to present our project but
guess what we didn’t achieve any more on
the second day than we did on the first
it was all about how we presented
ourselves and our work the third problem
and I think this is the most important
is unconscious bias unconscious bias is
the ability of our brain to categorize
events that we experience and and like
categorize them unconsciously for many
things this is useful because our brain
can’t handle everything consciously but
it can be dangerous if decisions in the
workplace are based on unconscious bias
an example for this might be if a man
and the woman applied for a promotion
and there are only men in the team and
the person making the decision is also a
man and unconsciously he might think you
know the man that applied here maybe he
looks similar maybe he has similar
values maybe they even went for beers in
the last couple of weeks so he gets this
kind of feeling that the man is more
suitable for the job and when decisions
are made on a basis of unconscious bias
it’s very hard to argue even if you have
facts on the table that the woman is
more suitable now I thought a long time
what we can do about this and free
programming courses
and meetups for women in tech is great
but I find that that the only way to
change this problem is if every woman in
technology changes her own situation we
should not wait until the industry
magically changes itself we should be
part of this change so if you’re a woman
in technology and you feel that you are
treated unfairly
if you feel or you know that you get
less salary for the same work
you should call to your supervisor you
should stand up for yourself and you
should ask for more more salary because
everyone else does it too and it it
doesn’t hurt
then next take credit for your success
when you did a great job you can be
proud of it
of course many times it’s the work of
the team but you can be proud of the
contribution you made to that team and
take credit for that and finally call
out unconscious bias only then do the
people working with us have the
opportunity to change their behavior my
colleague called out unconscious bias in
the guy who asked if it’s bring your
daughter to work day and I could see on
his reaction that he didn’t do it on
purpose and he didn’t mean bad and it
will not happen to him again so by
changing our own situation we can also
help changing the situation of other
women that will later at the point later
in time work with these people and I
know it takes a lot of courage and it’s
sometimes hard to change that and to
stand up for yourself but I can tell you
from my own experience it feels good
thank you [Applause]