[MUSIC PLAYING]
TIMOTHY JORDAN: Hi, everyone.
I'm Timothy Jordan.
NATALIE VILLALOBOS: And I'm Natalie Villalobos.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: And we're here at the Grace Hopper Celebration
of Women in Computing 2017.
NATALIE VILLALOBOS: In Orlando, Florida.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: That's right.
And we're going to talk to some people about their experience
here at the conference.
NATALIE VILLALOBOS: Awesome.
I'm really excited about it.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: Me too.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
TIMOTHY JORDAN: We're sitting here
with Avni Shah, a VP of Product Management at Google.
Hi, Avni.
AVNI SHAH: Hi.
Thanks for having me.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: Thanks for being here.
So we're at Grace Hopper, the Celebration of Women
in Computing, and you just had a panel about product management,
and it was awesome.
I was hoping we could share, like,
a little taste of that with everybody
out there on the internets.
AVNI SHAH: Product management is a unique position
because I think it differs from--
it could differ from the PM sitting
across the hall from you, from the PM down the hall.
And I remember my first few months at Google,
Google Groups was going through this major redesign.
And the team was working all weekend for this launch that
was coming up on Monday.
And it was Sunday afternoon and the team
was looking pretty tired, and the PM, Adrian,
in the afternoon at some point left for about 45 minutes,
and he came back and he had these like armloads
of sandwiches because clearly the team hadn't
eaten in a really long time.
And so he's handing out these sandwiches,
and I hear this engineer at his desk
from behind me say, oh, so that's what PMs do.
NATALIE VILLALOBOS: They go to Togo's or Subway.
AVNI SHAH: And get sandwiches.
And what stuck with me then, which
was really interesting and I've learned since is that, I mean,
clearly, we don't just deliver sandwiches.
But PMs kind of have to do whatever it takes.
Whether it's keeping the team happy and fed,
or planning roadmaps, or hiring people,
or setting a vision, or kind of the more
typical PM-type things.
NATALIE VILLALOBOS: Basically doing
whatever you need to do to be successful.
AVNI SHAH: Yep.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
TIMOTHY JORDAN: Tell us a little bit
about what it's like to be here at the conference.
AVNI SHAH: It is incredible.
So last year was my first year at Grace Hopper,
and I did not know what to expect.
Like, just seeing the masses of women here and how they--
just like this palpable energy in the air
that's just kind of incredible.
And people speaking about very, very different domains
of expertise.
So like there are panels on artificial intelligence
and chip design.
It's just, it's kind of all over the place.
And just seeing people connecting with each other
and being able to learn and having a community of people
that are here, it's just--
it's kind of amazing.
It's like nothing I've ever seen.
NATALIE VILLALOBOS: Do you think it's valuable for men
to be here?
And if so, why?
AVNI SHAH: Absolutely.
And I--
TIMOTHY JORDAN: Yes.
AVNI SHAH: It's great--
yes, thank you for being here.
[LAUGHTER]
AVNI SHAH: I think it's great.
I think it's great on both sides.
I think on the one side, it's great for men
to hear what women go through and just
to, like, be a part of the conversation.
Also, be able to maybe even contribute in their own way.
For women, I think it's really valuable
to see that they have allies across the table.
If we're really going to change the culture of how
women are seen in computing, it kind of
has to be from everybody.
We can't do it from just us.
And so having the male allies, as you said,
is pretty critical to the journey.
So seeing, like, 1,000 men here, it just
reinforces that the change is going
to happen from both sides.
NATALIE VILLALOBOS: And I think Grace Hopper
is going to continue to grow.
I think even though this is our biggest year yet,
I think more, as more and more women come into tech,
we're going to see more and more women participating
in Grace Hopper.
And Grace Hopper's been happening I think--
Anita Borg Institute has been around for about, I think,
30 years, and I think Grace Hopper has been around
for maybe a little bit less.
And so I think it humbly started from 500.
So to go from 500 to, like, almost 20,000,
and I feel like we're just getting
started in a lot of ways, feels really exciting
and is really invigorating, too.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: You know, another thing that I've noticed
is I've heard you talk a lot about visibility of women
in technology and how that's so important for other women
to enter into technology and to see the technology.
I think one of the things that I've
realized at this conference is it's also
really important for male allies to be at a conference like this
and see just like the enormous amount of women
leaders and people that we can follow in technology as well.
And so that's been just really exciting to go
to all these sessions I'm super excited
about and to have it be not always people
that just look like me.
And that's a little bit of what it
was like to be here at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women
in Computing 2017.
Natalie, is there anything else you'd
like to tell our audience before we go?
NATALIE VILLALOBOS: Definitely come to Grace Hopper next year.
There's going to be even more incredible women in computing.
And if you want to get more involved in Women Techmakers,
go to WomenTechmakers.com and join our membership community.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: Awesome.
Thank you, Natalie.
NATALIE VILLALOBOS: No problem.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: See you all next time.
Thanks for tuning into one of our developers
show segments from somewhere in the world.
If you'd like to catch some of our prior episodes,
check them out right over here.