Senior Software Engineer Vaishnavi Kondapalli shares her insights for aspiring women in technology. This empowered woman dreamer, coder, and musician shares expertise on how to best protect your privacy, advice to budding coders on breaking into the industry, managing gender balanced teams, and navigating the tech industry’s shift to work from home. She also shares how she balances her passion for music with her career, the growing role of women in the industry, and the need for the industry to accommodate different work-life balance needs. We are excited to bring you Vaishnavi’s perspectives on the Tech sector’s most pressing topics.

1) Tell us about your career path, and your experience as the only woman on your team. How do you see gender balance and diversity on teams changing?

I started my career as an Intern in Iperia in Burlington, USA back in 2001. I was writing code in C++ on Linux and we had a very small team of 6 people.  I was the only woman on the team. For that matter,  most of the places I worked had very few women coders. It never bothered me much at all.  Through the years, I have seen many women rise up and take on more responsible roles. I still don't find that many female coders, but there are women in HR, Product teams QA roles, and in Management. 

2) Also, the tech industry is very big on work from home in light of the pandemic, Google pushing WFH until July 2021 for example, what are your thoughts on this, particularly for families and recent graduates? 

Yes, The Pandemic has been a boon and a bane to many working families across the globe. I see some of these funny memes and forwards in Whatsapp about working from home that totally tell you what people really are facing working from home.  Very tough for families with young kids that need daycare etc. I think recent graduates who started out working are doing just fine.  At least I can speak for my son, a recent graduate working for a startup based out of Boston. I think people who tend to enjoy solitude with their computer and headphones and their work might be happier folk, than the social bees which I somewhat am. I love to chat and talk to my co-workers, go for a stroll in the afternoon, chat about weather at the coffee machine. We do miss all of that. 

But, working from home gave me a big advantage that I otherwise didn't have, I can sing my lungs out at my house in between my work breaks that I otherwise couldn't, walk outside with my dog,  talk to my family every little while.  I picked up a bit of weeding the garden which I never did in my life. So in all, I might prefer a hybrid version of this when Pandemic days pass. 

3) Many people dream of learning to code, and there are so many resources all over the internet, yet often people give up or procrastinate? What is your advice to budding coders? 

 “You need to be passionate about what you do for a living, be it coding, building things, writing, treating patients, singing, dancing or painting. There are a lot of resources online for free and some with a very nominal fee to pick up any new technology. In the case of software,

I believe that it is an art more than a science and thus my advice would be, do as an artist would, I.e learn from a variety of sources (online tutorials, classes, videos free and commercial) and then try to apply it by getting an internship, work for free on small programming tasks, reach out to networks where small gigs are offered. Nothing beats actually building software for the real world. Sort of like swimming, you need to jump in , flail a bit, but you get better with practice.

This is the age of information. There's so much out there there is no excuse to say 'I don't have the means.' All you need is your computer and the WIFI password :)”

4) Between data science, AI, machine learning etc, What trends in technology do you see having the biggest rise in the next few years?   

“Data Science, AI and Machine Learning all feed into each other.  The cloud technology has enabled us access to petabytes of information.  Life has to come to a full circle right?  Same with technology.  Big Data and Machine learning technologies can be applied to so many fields: from medicine to finance, to behavioral science to clean energy . The sky's the limit. I remember my son was fascinated watching the Microsoft Cloud Technology Ad on TV. 

The big trends that we will see over the next 5 to 10 years is the actual application of software that can make decisions and take actions autonomously to solve real world problems with minimal human intervention. The nirvana of technology is not about replacing humans but leveraging software to have the ability to think like humans and react. “

5) You are also an incredibly talented musician. Tell us more about your music, and how you balance between music and work? 

Music is my first love and I am not sure how I didn't end up being a full time musician. It is definitely a balancing act to be able to devote time to Riyaz and a full time job. Indian Classical Music demands time from me and Raag Riyaz takes a lot of focus, creative mind and being in the moment.  I find it a bit difficult at times when I have used up my brain power for the day at work.  As an artist I find myself trying to find that sweet spot where I feel accomplished at the end of the day. 

6) In some ways, many are scared of tech with regards to their privacy, impact on small business, and targeted ads; the antitrust hearings reflect that sentiment. What are your thoughts on this, as a software engineer across industries. What do you think the industry standard should be? 

You have touched many different issues in this question. Privacy nowadays is a huge concern. When you use a “free” product, remember that your information is the cost paid for the product. Every device you use stores data at many different levels. The antidote to this problem is also technology. There are so many alternatives to safe- guard your privacy.  Instead of using google to search an alternative would be Duckduckgo that does not save or re-sell your search/location data. Similarly you can switch to secure and private email,like Protonmail, Browsers like Brave and ad-blockers like uBlock can be used to get a level of privacy and protection. It is concerning that all our data, location and photographs are being collected by large corporations & we do not know how it might be used in 10-20 years from now. These are actions that we as individuals can take to protect ourselves.

When it comes to the topic of anti-trust, which is a huge topic in of itself, we can be sure that regulations will always lag technology. 

In a similar vein, it is pretty hard for a standard to be created across the board. So the path of least resistance is to take individual actions for common sense privacy today.

A counter argument to the impact on small businesses due to technology  is that we do see a lot of startups that are small businesses in technology as well, that are creating jobs and contributing to society. 

7) What are tech organizations doing to empower the women on their teams? Do you think there is room for more? 

Often, I get invites to many conferences to Women In Tech,  meets etc. Facebook has an event almost every quarter inviting women to their campus and facilitating networking events etc.  I think most companies have started paying attention to empowering women in tech. 

The biggest challenge that nobody seems to actually address is the work life balance in tech industry This actually impacts men and women more so families I suppose.  I would like to take this opportunity to voice my one of the biggest issues: when it comes to part-time jobs, there are pretty much none in tech industry. Although I must say Tech sector provides  flexible hours and work from home options , there is not much is being done by companies to enable part time employment for folks who would love to remain in this industry but cannot devote 40 hours a week.   This is something I would like to see change.

Thank You Vaishnavi for empowering our

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