Jin Zhang of Facebook will present the upcoming conference “Extraordinary Women in Technology”

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Jin Zhang, Facebook’s Director of Engineering

LinkedIn

Jin Zhang, Facebook’s Director of Engineering, is the keynote speaker for the upcoming Extraordinary Women in Tech conference, which aims to encourage women to reach higher levels within organizations.

Zhang has come a long way in her life and career, making it easy to see why she was chosen for the role of keynote speaker. She is ethnic Chinese, from Inner Mongolia, the mother of two small children and with ambitious career goals.

I recently spoke to Zhang about his role at the upcoming conference in San Francisco: Here are my notes:

I asked Zhang what he will talk about during his keynote address. He says he still doesn’t know, it hasn’t been written yet. But an important point she wants to convey will be that women shouldn’t give up too quickly in pursuing their career goals.

It can be easy to get discouraged as an ambitious female executive in making progress within many organizations, but her advice is not to give up too quickly, staying on course a little longer can be very rewarding.

The Women in Tech conference features a long list of senior female executives who share their stories and serve as examples and mentors for other women.

Zhang does a lot of mentoring and has actively sought opportunities to mentor others through workplace programs, and has also been involved with STEM programs in schools – she’s working on the pipeline – which will ultimately result in more women in technology. and in the higher levels of management phases.

Many tech companies are cited for their lack of diversity in hiring, but is it okay to be critical as it is illegal to hire based on ethnicity or gender? And with few female candidates qualified for advertised jobs, these companies have no legal way to improve their diversity scores.

I asked Zhang if the pipeline excuse is still valid. She says that if you look at recruiting from the perspective of specific job titles, then there are fewer women, but there are many female candidates with job titles who would be qualified to be promoted to higher levels within organizations.

The diversity pipeline is improving, and Zhang says everyone can help improve it further through volunteer programs.

Zhang’s career has been aided by mentors and she in turn helps many others. Mentors don’t have to be defined by gender, she had male mentors. But sometimes she needs a female mentor’s feedback on certain issues.

He says diversity is very important to an organization and has seen it in action. He notes that when he worked at IBM in the database software group, the diversity in his team was very valuable in finding solutions for clients.

I stressed that additional diversity factors need to be included. Most tech workers come from the same wealthy middle class, a middle class that shares the same culture, regardless of country of origin or gender.

Zhang says organizations are trying to explain this lack of representation within their teams by including a discussion on the impact of diversity as part of the product development process, as is the case with Facebook.

Oakland Mayor Libby Shaaf has often talked about how he wishes to see the children of his hometown economically depressed area in the San Francisco Bay Area have the opportunity to compete for Silicon Valley tech jobs. This means going against the graduates of MIT and Stanford University.

We still have a long way to go to improve diversity in the technology sector. Conferences such as Extraordinary Women in Tech in December will help accelerate this journey by providing attendees with the inspiration, motivation and practical career advice of over 36 successful female executives who work at major tech companies such as Microsoft, Google, Oracle, Uber and PayPal. .

It will bring us closer to an inevitable goal and a very different workforce for the tech industry.

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