Each month, we ask Senior Technical Women to share their stories and what they have learned. This Senior Technical Woman Profile features Cynthia Srinivas, Engineering Director, NetApp.
1. How did you decide to pursue a career in technology?
As a child, I always preferred science and math over literature, history or geography primarily because I could apply logic – I didn’t need to remember too many dates or facts. When I was in the final years of schooling, computer science was the new thing and so I chose computer science over biological sciences. So when it was time for college, my natural choice was to pursue Engineering in Computer Science.
2. Based on your own experience, what skill(s) or characteristic(s) do you think are most important for technical women to succeed?
Firstly, be willing to learn – Technology is changing so fast that you need to keep pace with development in your work front so you can have the right conversations. Secondly – it is important to acknowledge that as you move up the chain, you may not be able to keep up with every detail – ensure that you leverage your team enough so that you are able to make the right decisions and accomplish what the business needs. Know your business enough so as to ask the right questions. Thirdly, it is important to communicate candidly, crisply and precisely especially when businesses are now global and you are most of the time talking to someone who is remote. Last but not least, whether you are an Individual contributor or in a management role, never give up – it is okay to take calculated risks – try and fail, than not try for the fear of failing. If you succeed great! If you didn’t, at least you have learned what not to do.
3. What was the greatest challenge that you overcame in your career?
One of the biggest challenge was when at one point in my career I led a global charter managing teams in India and a couple of sites in the US. The challenge was to ensure that I was available for my team and people did not feel that their leader being remote was a disadvantage. Personally it was challenging because of the long hours given the time zone difference. But it was also one of the phases where I learned a lot – so it was a key development opportunity, where I experienced what it was to lead a global team, drive a global strategy and get work done.
4. How do you manage work/life balance?
I do try to avoid early evening meetings that interfere with my time with family. Instead I am flexible working late night hours especially with the US – so I am available for important meetings. I work very hard during the week to avoid things spilling over to the next week, so I can really take the weekend off. If required to attend to any urgent family matter that needs my physical presence at home, I opt to work from home.
5. What advice would you give to women in high tech who want to advance on the management track specifically?
I would advise that they spend sufficient time at the first line manager level – there is a lot of learning that happens here on the technology front, people management related aspects, team building. The first line managers are the folks who run the day to day operations – it gives you a good idea of the challenges, dependencies and risks. A sufficient exposure at this level gives you a solid foundation to move into higher level and perform strategic roles, and ensures that decision making takes into account ground realities. It is also important to learn business skills and build that into your development plan. I would suggest that as you grow senior, you also explore newer roles and opportunities that can give you a well rounded experience (more breadth).
6. How do you stay current in your technical field?
Attend tech talks, read up relevant technology tidbits on your company intranet, do not miss opportunities to attend technical events that showcase latest technology in your field. Time is a big constraint and so how much you do varies, depends on how much time you can allocate for this kind of learning.
7. In your opinion, what (if any) are the remaining barriers faced by women in technology?
I think women today have equal opportunities as men and the talent and skills too. At least from my experience I don’t see any barrier – we just need to be more confident, step out of our comfort zone, raise your hand when an opportunity strikes and ASK (we don’t do that very well). Another thing that we probably don’t do very well is networking with industry colleagues – so that might help too.
Biography
Cynthia Srinivas has over two decades of professional experience in product development, engineering management, and leadership in different technology companies spanning telecom, networking and storage domains.
She is presently an Engineering Director at NetApp, responsible for testing for the Continuous Product Engineering business unit for NetApp’s ONTAP Product Suite – an extremely successful market leading storage software solution that powers many of the fortune 500 majors. Prior to this, Cynthia has led initiatives in Test tools and infrastructure development, Data processing services at NetApp. Prior to NetApp she held key delivery leadership positions at Cisco and Motorola. While at Motorola, she worked in the Wireless Communications domain, managing GPRS stack development – a significant, ‘industry first’ initiative (in 1998-99) very successfully. She moved to Cisco Systems in 2000 in an Engineering Management role working on mid to high range Edge Routers. She joined NetApp in 2004, and has been leading different initiatives on different aspects of Storage Technology business since then.
Cynthia has significant experience in product development, QA, tools and infrastructure development, process improvements and client facing & delivery roles.
While at Motorola she drove many taskforces in Quality engineering and became a Certified Quality Analyst from the Quality Assurance Institute, University of Florida.
She is an active Women in Technology core member and drives the WIT forum at NetApp India. She has been a speaker at two of the Grace Hopper India conferences.