Tracy Chou

This article is about the software engineer and women-in-tech advocate. For the Hong Kong actress, see Tracy Chu.
Tracy Chou

A picture of Tracy Chou.

Chou at TechCrunch Disrupt 2015.
Born 1987 (age 28–29)
United States
Nationality American
Alma mater Stanford University[1]
(B.S. Electrical Engineering, 2009)
(M.S. Computer Science, 2010)
Occupation Software engineer

Tracy Chou (born 1987[2][3]) is a software engineer and advocate for diversity in her field. She has prior work experience at Pinterest, Quora and internship experience at Rocket Fuel Inc., Google, and Facebook.[4][5]

She is most famous for raising the profile of the issue of the low representation of women in technology companies, and pressuring companies to reveal more statistics about the composition of their workforce.[6][7][8] In 2016, she co-founded the advocacy group Project Include with 7 other women from the industry.[9]

Biography

Chou is a daughter of computer scientists based in Silicon Valley who immigrated from Taiwan.[8][10] She went to school in Mountain View and studied computer science at Stanford University with a specialization in machine learning and artificial intelligence.[5] While studying at Stanford, she interned at Google, Facebook, and Rocket Fuel and went on to receive a master's.[4][5]

Describing her experience as an undergraduate, Chou said that she found her male classmates were helpful and supportive when she was struggling with the material but were less cooperative once she started becoming better at the work than her peers. She also noted that her male colleagues would be more likely to frame their performance in terms more favorable to them, and it took her time to figure out that she was actually doing a lot better in the courses than her much more confident male colleagues.[7]

Even though she was studying computer science and enjoyed programming, Chou did not seriously consider programming as a full-time job. Even after an internship as a programmer at Facebook, she was not considering becoming a software engineer and instead hoped to get her doctorate to do quantitative marketing research. However, in 2010, Quora, which was then a small startup, approached her and convinced her start working as an engineer there. She joined Quora, but left in October 2011 to join Pinterest, becoming one of the first 15 employees at the then fledgeling pinboard company.[4][5]

In February 2015, Chou signed on as a consultant for the United States Digital Service, a consortium of technology practitioners trying to make government in the United States more efficient.[11] In August 2015, TechCrunch reported that Chou is a featured maker at Makerbase, a service that "make[s] it easier for anyone to discover who built some of the most popular websites and apps people use every day."[12]

Activism

In October 2013, Chou attended the annual Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, where she became curious about the issue of female representation in technology companies, and decided to gather data to assess the severity of the issue. This led her to write a blog post urging technology companies to disclose the numbers of women they had in technical roles.[5][7][8][13] Chou has argued that releasing data to quantify a problem is a first step to finding constructive solutions.[5] To facilitate sharing of the responses she received, Chou set up a repository on code-sharing site GitHub and invited everybody to participate. Within a week, the repository had statistics on over 50 firms, and by January 2016, it had statistics on 250 firms.[7][14] Chou's focus on the issue is also credited with pressuring larger companies such as Google, Facebook, and Microsoft to release diversity reports.[5] In July 2014, Chou published an update on Pinterest's engineering blog describing the company's progress so far on diversity and inclusion.[15]

Chou has identified a number of possible reasons for the disparity in representation of women in technology. She has argued that if nobody suggests to a woman that a career as a software engineer is a realistic possibility, she is less likely to consider it.[6] She also thinks that networking opportunities and role models are more limited for women and minorities.[6] Chou has also stated that condescending attitudes toward women are pervasive in Silicon Valley.[16] According to one of her examples, a man she met at a conference tried to repeatedly correct her about a Quora feature that had been built while she worked at the company.[7] She has also commented on the fact that women who look very feminine are often ignored in technical settings.[8]

In late July 2015, Pinterest launched a project to hire more women and minorities, and announced its commitment to publicly disclose its progress toward these goals and any obstacles encountered. Chou's pioneering role in highlighting the issue has been credited as a reason for the initiative. The initiative received praise from Jesse Jackson.[17] In August 2015, Chou participated in the Twitter hashtag campaign #ILookLikeAnEngineer, started by Isis Wenger from OneLogic and intended to show that people (particularly women) of a wide range of appearances could be engineers. Chou's participation was noted in the New York Times.[18] May 2016 saw the launch of the diversity consulting group Project Include, founded by Chou, Freada Kapor Klein, Ellen Pao and others. Its approach was quickly described as "taking a page out of open source software".[9]

References

  1. ↑ "Levo 100 Rising Stars". Levo. Retrieved 2016-07-30.
  2. ↑ Tafoya, Angela; Pang, Jeanine Celeste (2013-07-16). "SF's Rising Stars: 30 Under 30". Refinery29. Retrieved 2016-07-29.
  3. ↑ Lorenz, Taylor (2014-11-21). "Meet the female Pinterest engineer who forced tech companies to release their diversity numbers". Business Insider. Retrieved 2016-07-29.
  4. 1 2 3 "Tracy Chou". LinkedIn. Retrieved August 5, 2015.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Hempel, Jessi (April 21, 2015). "Quantifying Silicon Valley's Diversity Issue". Wired. Retrieved August 5, 2015.
  6. 1 2 3 Larson, Selena (November 11, 2014). "Pinterest's Tracy Chou: How I Got My Start In Tech—Despite Myself. Now she's empowering others to do the same.". ReadWriteWeb. Retrieved August 5, 2015.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 Levintova, Hannah. "Meet the Engineer Who Forced Silicon Valley's Gender Problem Into the Open. Tracy Chou is not, as one brogrammer put it, "too pretty to code."". Mother Jones. Retrieved August 5, 2015.
  8. 1 2 3 4 Heller, Nathan (November 21, 2014). "How Pinterest Engineer Tracy Chou is Breaking the Silicon Ceiling". Vogue. Retrieved August 5, 2015.
  9. 1 2 Isaac, Mike (2016-05-03). "Women in Tech Band Together to Track Diversity, After Hours". The New York Times. Retrieved 2016-07-29.
  10. ↑ "Tracy Chou — Software Engineer and Geek Girl". 100 Passionate People. 2010-05-31. Retrieved 2016-07-30.
  11. ↑ Burns, Matt (June 29, 2015). "Pinterest's Tracy Chou To Talk Diversity At Disrupt SF 2015". TechCrunch. Retrieved August 5, 2015.
  12. ↑ Perez, Sarah (August 11, 2015). "Makerbase Is An IMDb Of Who Made Your Favorite Apps And Websites". TechCrunch. Retrieved August 11, 2015.
  13. ↑ Chou, Tracy (October 11, 2013). "Where are the numbers?". Retrieved August 5, 2015.
  14. ↑ "Techies Interview". 2016-01-31. Retrieved 2016-07-30.
  15. ↑ "Diversity and inclusion at Pinterest". Pinterest. July 24, 2014. Retrieved August 5, 2015.
  16. ↑ "What are some of the sexist and insulting statements women in technology/engineering hear from male colleagues?". Quora. Retrieved 2016-07-30.
  17. ↑ Guynn, Jessica (July 31, 2015). "Exclusive: Pinterest launches innovative diversity project". USA Today. Retrieved August 5, 2015.
  18. ↑ Varn, Kathryn (August 5, 2015). "Woman Behind #ILookLikeAnEngineer Says Campaign Against Gender Stereotypes Is 'Long Overdue'". New York Times. Retrieved August 11, 2015.
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