Each month, the Anita Borg Institute profiles Senior Technical Women. We have selected 7 questions and asked each of these amazing women to share their answers.

1. How did you decide to pursue a career in technology?

   I began working with computers my freshman year in high school, and I also had friends working with computers. I began programming that year and stayed involved. It then seemed natural to study computer science in college, although I did a double major in economics out of interest. Finally, I was fortunate enough to do several coop stints in computer science. When I completed my degree, I did have the option to go the economist route, but I chose technology and haven’t looked back.

2. Based on your own experience, what skill(s) or characteristic(s) do you think are most important for technical women to succeed?

   Confidence in her own abilities. The ability to learn new things on her own.  Good communication skills.  Integrity.

3. What was the greatest challenge that you overcame in your career?

   Towards the end of my graduate student time, I had a series of family and personal problems (illness, death in the family, separation, etc). While all this was going on, I had to complete and defend my dissertation. Completing such an emotionally and intellectually draining task in the midst of such turmoil was a tremendous challenge.

4. How do you deal with work/life balance?

   I can categorically state that I am the poster child for a lack of work/life balance.  That said, I have made it clear that I will be there for my family if they need me.The best that I can say is that I love my job, so I enjoy working.  Still, work/life balance is something I am working on.

5. What advice would you give to women in high tech who want to advance on the individual contributor technical track specifically?

   First, it helps to believe that the individual contributor technical track is valuable to the organization and to the individual. It can be more of an isolated existence, and that is not for everyone. Many women are told that their chance for advancement in more managerial tracks is better since they (tend to) have a broader range of skills, including people and management skills. Such statements often result in women leaving the individual contributor track, feeling their chances are better in management.

   Then, she should make sure she understands what the real criteria (not the stated criteria) for advancement are. Next, she should ensure that she gets the visibility of her contributions, even if they are shared contributions.  Accepting compliments for achievements is hard, but learning to accept such compliments is important. Finally, realistically assess the environment for women advancing.  Perhaps most critically, she must ensure that her success criteria align with that of the organization. Attempting to advance otherwise is self-destructive in my experience.

6. How do you stay current in your technical field?

   I read a lot, and I surround myself with people whose tastes and sense for technology complements mine. I don’t try to stay deeply current in everything. I try rather to maintain a broad awareness and I also continue to do selective deep dives to retain my ability to do that as well. Ultimately, I rely heavily on my ability to learn things when I come across the need to do so, using the broad information I glean to identify when a deep dive is needed.

7. In your opinion, what (if any) are the remaining barriers faced by women in technology?

   I think there is still a significant amount of implicit bias present in our society, not just in business or technology. Numerous blind studies show us this. There are still graduate students being steered away from advanced degrees. There are still blatantly sexist remarks being made at conferences and in online forums. There is still the recurring belief held by many that women just don’t have the aptitude in general to handle math, science, engineering or computer science. In such a climate, a woman must be better than average to be recognized as average. However, things are much better than they were. There are increasing numbers of men who stand up and object to these attitudes and comments. There are increasing numbers of companies that care about the lack of diversity and are trying to address it, including trying to understand how their organizations might make women uncomfortable and how their implicit bias might be working against the hiring, advancement and retention of women. The trend line is in the right direction, and that means there is much more hope. We all need to celebrate the progress as we continue to work to remedy the problems.

Rebecca Parsons Biography

Dr. Rebecca Parsons is ThoughtWorks’ Chief Technology Officer. She has more than 20 years’ application development experience, in industries ranging from telecommunications to emergent internet services. Rebecca has published in both language and artificial intelligence publications, served on numerous program committees, and reviews for several journals. She has extensive experience leading in the creation of large-scale distributed object applications and the integration of disparate systems. 



Before coming to ThoughtWorks she worked as an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Central Florida where she taught courses in compilers, program optimization, distributed computation, programming languages, theory of computation, machine learning and computational biology. She also worked as Director’s Post Doctoral Fellow at the Los Alamos National Laboratory researching issues in parallel and distributed computation, genetic algorithms, computational biology and non-linear dynamical systems. 



Rebecca received a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science and Economics from Bradley University, a Masters of Science in Computer Science from Rice University and her Ph.D. in Computer Science from Rice University.