Google Exec Marissa Mayer Explains Why There Aren't More Girl Geeks

In 1999, Marissa Mayer, then a recent Stanford University graduate, joined a little-known startup with fewer than 20 employees that she calculated as having a two percent chance of success: Google.

Now, as a senior executive with the search giant, Mayer is one of the most powerful women in Silicon Valley. Her work at Google influences how hundreds of millions of people access information on the web and she plays a key role in shaping Google's most important products, from the look and feel of its homepage to popular features like Google News and Gmail, as well as its more recent forays into location-based services.

One of the most iconic women in tech today, Mayer's career path offers lessons for how to attract more women to a male-dominated field and undermines the assumption that to foster more female techies, it's early or never. Mayer, who calls herself a "proud geek," did not grow up obsessed with computers -- she bought her first one in college -- or with dreams of becoming the next Bill Gates. She wanted to be a pediatric neurosurgeon.

Mayer credits Stanford's "exorbitant" tuition fees with turning her on to tech. Frustrated with how much more she was paying to take the same courses and memorize the same chemistry facts as her peers attending less expensive colleges in her home state, Wisconsin, Mayer switched to a major that would let her take advantage of courses and faculty only offered at Stanford: symbolic systems, a blend of psychology, linguistics, philosophy and computer science.

Even after the switch, working at Google was not an obvious pick for Mayer. "I like to overwhelm myself with choice," she said. She received 14 job offers, and in an effort to choose between them, she created a matrix ranking how each position compared across a slew of characteristics, including location, salary, lifestyle index, career trajectory and predicted happiness on a scale of one to ten.

The Google Mayer was considering joining after graduation was a far cry from the powerhouse it is today. The company had just grown out of its office in a Menlo Park garage and was up against over a dozen more established search engines, such as AltaVista and Yahoo, that themselves had trouble eking meaningful revenues out of online queries. Then there were the workplace demographics to consider: there was not a single other female engineer -- Mayer would become Google's first -- and she would be one of fewer than two dozen employees.

The other position Mayer was most seriously weighing was with McKinsey & Company, a prestigious consulting firm with a distinguished lineage and dozens of alumni who went on to become the CEOs of Fortune 500 firms. It had smart people, more women and a strong track record.

Unable to decide, Mayer recruited an economist she knew to help analyze her options. The night before she ultimately accepted Google's offer, Mayer spent more than four hours with her friend graphing and charting the pros and cons of the jobs. Frustrated, she eventually collapsed in tears. Her friend then gave her what she says is still the best advice she has ever received -- advice that ultimately convinced her to pick the burgeoning search engine company over McKinsey.

"You're approaching this all wrong," she remembers him telling her. "You're approaching this as though there's one right answer and that's just not what I'm seeing here. I'm seeing a bunch of really good choices and then there's the one that you pick and that you commit to and that you make great. Go and sleep on it, and then just pick and commit to that."

Mayer said that when she woke up the next morning, she had made a decision. "I wanted to work at Google because the smartest people were there," she said. "And I wanted to work at Google because I felt utterly unprepared to work at a search engine."

The odds for success Mayer gave Google were 100 times better than what she calculated for the other startups she was considering. But Mayer admits that she could hardly have predicted that the company, which today has over 1 billion users and a dominance that has attracted antitrust scrutiny from regulators, would have grown so far beyond search.

"I thought if we were successful, we'd be successful as a search engine," said Mayer. "I had no idea we would come to mean so many different things to so many different people and that we would be doing such interesting work along so many lines of technology."

She advises people pursuing careers in the high-tech industry, whether at startups or Fortune 500 firms, to consider four things when choosing between jobs: "Work with the smartest people you can find, do something you're not ready to do, find an environment in which you're very comfortable so you can find your voice, and work for someone who believes in you -- because when they believe in you, they'll invest in you."

SOUND BYTES: Marissa Mayer on...

Her indispensable gadget: Her phone

Her favorite app: Google Maps and Bejeweled Blitz

Her favorite account to follow on Twitter: @TechCrunch

Her "required reading" recommendation: Donald Norman's "The Design of Everyday Things"

In her latest role as Google's vice president of location and local services, Mayer has been pursuing what she describes as the next big idea in tech: developing new cellphone-based programs that deliver customized ads, directions, recommendations, and other information based on users' locations. Yet even as Mayer and her employer deliver an increasing number of services designed to keep us glued to our phones, tablets, browsers and keyboards, Mayer acknowledges that these services and our gadgets may be negatively affecting how we engage with complex topics that require focused attention.

"All of this technology has allowed us to multitask to an incredibly deep degree. Normally that's a good thing, but I do worry about what it means in terms of people's ability to go really deep on a topic and understand it really thoroughly," Mayer said. "I think it's hard to deeply understand a concept when you have ten things going on and so many of those things operate in short blurts of information."

Mayer also has concerns about the relatively low number of women working in tech. She estimates that just 15 to 17 percent of Silicon Valley engineers are women, who make up less than 20 percent of all engineering and computer science majors in the US.

Mayer blames the dearth of female programmers and Internet entrepreneurs in part on tech's image problem. She argues that growing up, girls are offered a narrow stereotype of what it means to be a "geek" -- something akin to the bespectacled loner who spends hours typing away at a screen. Attracting more women to the Silicon Valleys, Alleys and Roundabouts of the world requires doing away with those stereotypes and showing young women that techies don't have to love video games. Mayer herself is no ordinary geek: she's a former ballet dancer with a penchant for cupcakes and the fashion designer Oscar de la Renta.

"The number one most important thing we can do to increase the number of women in tech is to show a multiplicity of different role models," Mayer said. "The stereotype of that very complete and rigid picture of what being a computer scientist means really hurts people's understanding and ability to identify with the role and say, 'Yes, this is something I can be in and want to be in.'"

Mayer is optimistic that sites like Facebook, Twitter and Google, as well as smartphones and the programs they run, will be a catalyst for changing the ratio in technical fields by clarifying the practical applications of computer science. Though she maintains that men and women in the industry face similar challenges, she allows that some women differ from men in that it's important to them to understand how their careers will influence people's daily lives.

"Women, to some extent more than men, really want to see the application of what they do in people's everyday lives," she explained. "For a lot of women, they didn't see how computer science touches people."

As women become more familiar with technology, Mayer predicts they will become more curious about it, which in turn will attract more of them to computer science and engineering.

"One reason I think this will improve in coming years is that girls are experiencing a lot of computer science and a lot of technology on an everyday basis," said Mayer. "When you use those things every day, you become curious in terms of how they were made. And that type of technology hasn't touched us the way it does today for very long. I think it will create a curiosity and spur a lot more women into computer science and the technical fields."

Women in Tech, a series from HuffPostTech, will showcase profiles of innovative female pioneers, from CEOs and scientists to entrepreneurs and engineers, who are changing the way we think about and engage with technology.

Loading Slideshow

• Kathryn Minshew, Founder & CEO, The Muse & The Daily Muse

  <strong>"Just pretend you're a man and go with that." </strong> "I got this advice while raising a seed round for TheMuse.com, and it was terrible. The same behaviors don't always come off the same way from a man vs. a woman, and I could have saved myself a lot of trouble by eschewing the 'startup founder in hoodie' ideal and trusting my instincts earlier."

• Christina Wallace, Co-founder, Quincy Apparel

  <strong>"Sit tight, pay your dues, and let your work speak for itself. People will notice you and give you opportunities at the right time."</strong>

• Cindy Gallop, Founder & CEO, IfWeRanTheWorld & MakeLoveNotPorn

  <strong>"Your problem, Cindy, is that you're thinking too big. You need to think really small."</strong> "Worst career advice I've ever received, from a VC to whom I was pitching my startup <a href="http://ifwerantheworld.com/">IfWeRanTheWorld</a>."

• Brenda Romero, Chief Operating Officer, Lootdrop

  <strong>"Oh, Brenda. Don't do it."</strong> "The translation of this advice is, 'Stay away from potentially controversial topics and risky projects including starting your own business.' What if you fail? What if you stir up trouble? Staying the status quo and doing only the known thing are sure routes to mediocracy and intellectual stagnation. "I have created games about challenging topics that no one else dared approach and, as a result, found new ways to educate people about difficult historical topics and opened many eyes to the power of games."

• Rachel Sklar, Co-Founder, Change The Ratio & TheLi.st

  <strong>"I wouldn't ask for too much. The economy is pretty bad. You're lucky to have a job." </strong> "[This] from a friend of mine in 2009 who came from a VC/private equity background, on how I should broach the equity discussion around Mediaite, for which I was employee #1 and recruited the entire core team. I candidly admit that I knew very little about norms around startups and equity back then, despite being a former corporate lawyer. "Now that I am much more aware of how key early startup employees are compensated I am amazed that my friend -- who really did know -- reinforced all the tropes around women (that they shouldn't be pushy, that they are lucky, that they should just be happy to help, etc.) "It's my mission to let women know, loudly, that they should know what they bring to the table and what the market value of that is, and what it will mean to the organization, so they can be clear on what they ought to be entitled to -- and that even if they are lucky to have a job, well, that job is lucky to have them."

• Kellee Khalil, Founder and CEO, Lover.ly

  <strong>"Failure is for failures."</strong>

• Maya Baratz, Senior Product Manager, ABC News

  <strong>"Find a mentor." </strong> "Mentors come and go, offering advice throughout your career, but it's unlikely you'll have one dedicated person in your life -- like a career messiah -- who will guide you. That guide should be you. You'll need to carve your own path, while making sure to listen to and parse out the good advice from the bad, as it comes in via different influential people in your life."

• Claire Mazur, Co-founder, Of A Kind

  <strong>"Play games."</strong> "This is something that comes up a lot in relation to the fundraising process -- this idea of trying to manipulate a situation by being incredibly tactical. And I'm sure it works for some people, but any time I've tried to do it I just end up feeling really inauthentic and uncomfortable -- and it's never had particularly amazing results."

• Anthea Watson Strong, Consultant, Google Public Policy & Elections

  <strong>"It's not what you know, it's who you know."</strong> "Instead of valuing your network by the quantity of connections to people in places of power, value quality connections at all levels. Take special care to identify up-and-coming rockstars, and make sure they have what they need to be successful. Those relationships will return tenfold over that coffee chat you once had with the CEO."

• Erika Trautman, Co-Founder & CEO, Flixmaster

  "Some of the worst advice I ever got was from an entrepreneur who told me to <strong>'Stick to your guns, no matter what.'</strong> He gave me the advice in the context of our product vision as well as our investor relations. "There is no doubt that a huge part of successful entrepreneurship involves having vision for something that might not exist yet and having the fortitude to hear hundreds of no's for every yes. But there are also critical (and frequent) moments in entrepreneurship when you have to adapt and adjust. Its a fine line to walk. "But I think there is a lot of mythology around sticking to your guns in the face of insurmountable opposition. The reality is, even in the face of insurmountable opposition, there is a lot of adjustment that has to go on to be successful."

• Leslie Bradshaw, Chief Operating Officer, Guide

  "When I was 23, I was told in my annual review that <strong>I was delivering 'Bentleys' when they were asking for 'Fords.'</strong> In other words, my boss was looking for me to pare back the depth of and breadth of what I was delivering. He went on to add that I was 'too enthusiastic' and 'too grateful' about everything I was working on. "Although I did heed some of his advice and learned when and where to over-deliver, seven years later my positivity and 'Bentley' approach has brought me more long-term business relationships, meaningful collegial bonds and industry respect than any amount of 'Ford' production could have."

• Whitney Johnson, Co-Founder, Rose Park Advisors

  <strong>"'Keep your head down."</strong>

Comments

[jfbuf]

09:59 AM on 08/30/2011

it sounds like the only reason she got into this field was because of her minority status, just like her choice to go to work at goggle. I'd call it taking advantage of a situation, not that there is anything wrong with that.

[SonyaInTx]

11:23 PM on 08/24/2011

Boys usually get things like chemistry sets and microscopes from parents when they are children.

Girls get Easy Bake Ovens and baby dolls from moms.

Start getting girls into math and science early and they will excel just like the guys....

[xdaemon76]

05:58 PM on 08/20/2011

I think it's mostly because most of us tech/engineering types, like myself, are introverts. Society in America encourages extroversion in general, but I can see a definite bias toward girls and young women to be extroverted more than boys and young men.

[Susan Huotari]

09:08 AM on 08/17/2011

When I started my user interaction design career at a cell phone manufacturer, all my female colleagues did not have cell phones, but our male colleagues did, even the intern. We had to borrow phones from the coders. Consequently, we were humiliated when we didn't understand how to make them work, especially in front of them, so we designed user interaction specifications to focus on user friendliness, and brought one of the most successful cell phones ever to market. One of those unintentional accidents that brought out true innovation...

[Dana Seilhan]

12:11 PM on 07/11/2011

Hopefully this is changing but it's what I've seen from my own school experience and I hear about it all the time from other women. And it's one reason single-gender classrooms are coming back into vogue.

I don't believe the explanation is that we're "wired" a certain way. I think it's what we're taught about proper social behavior. Believe you me, girls can be every bit as bold as boys--my daughter is like that. And boys can be every bit as shy as girls. But at the end of the day it's not the bold girls speaking up in the classroom, nine times out of ten. Because when boys speak out of turn and try to run the show, we just let them do it instead of impressing upon them that life does not revolve around them and that they should give others a turn.

That's got to change because I don't think going back to single-gender schools is going to be a sustainable answer in the long run.

[2crudedudes]

01:20 PM on 08/02/2011

"Because when boys speak out of turn and try to run the show, we just let them do it instead of impressing upon them that life does not revolve around them and that they should give others a turn."

Maybe you're doing it wrong, because I was never allowed to "speak out of turn".

[Dana Seilhan]

12:10 PM on 07/11/2011

3. It's all well and good to say girls should be exposed more to math. Here's what I see going on with that. I already said teaching ability is rare. It is. Math-teaching ability is even more rare. You're taking a pure abstraction based on rules of logic and trying to teach it to a bunch of kids with no background in logic and with poor grasp of abstraction. (Even geeks will have trouble with it--they're not all math geniuses.) Most math teachers are not up to the task, and those of their students who succeed do it in spite of them.

Then on top of that, as I said to another commenter here, girls are not socialized to make waves. If a boy has trouble understanding a math concept, he'll pester the teacher and monopolize the conversation til the issue is resolved to his satisfaction. If the girls are lucky, it's a problem they were wrestling with too, and the boy making waves will help them learn the concept as well. But if they're stuck on something else, and he's up there hogging the teacher's attention, they may never get the extra help they need. And many of them are too shy to approach the teacher afterward--if they even have time, the way the school day is often structured.

continued one more time...

[Dana Seilhan]

12:08 PM on 07/11/2011

2. As far as the stereotypical computer geek who's into role-playing games and video games and sci-fi, there are lots of girl geeks there too. Let me tell you, the culture is bizarre. Guy geeks have historically not been accepted by mainstream guy culture, so they sort of position themselves as anti-macho--but when the chips are down, that macho comes out and it's "bros before hos." Most of the time, girl geeks deal. Many of us have trouble identifying with mainstream chick culture anyway, and are more likely to identify with the guys, which can make the situation interesting--not always in a good way.

Nevertheless, if we're interested in computers or math we had better have the fortitude to learn about those things ourselves, even with the guys talking over us and drowning us out. They sure won't teach us. Teaching ability is rare anyway no matter which subculture you're in, and it's particularly rare in a population with a high percentage of Aspies and other people with few to no social skills, and with that latent machismo coming out at inconvenient times.

continued again...

[Dana Seilhan]

12:08 PM on 07/11/2011

Oh, I have SO many thoughts about this and I can't fit it all into one comment. Sorry about that.

1. There are so many ways to be a geek. Yes, you can be a computer geek, but you can be a geek about anything that intensely interests you. There are "girl geeks" in every field imaginable, including arts and crafts (if I had a nickel for every knitting geek I've run into online, I could at least buy myself a nice skein of qiviut!). This is true for guys too. I know a guy who's a geek about several topics, not just computers--lately, it's weaving. Yes, with a loom.

So as far as I'm concerned, dismisssing a woman's geek cred because she's not a Bill Gates is just another way of slapping women down. So sorry she doesn't suit your narrow standards, people, but you can just deal.

continued...

[Difster]

11:31 AM on 07/11/2011

The idea that girls need to be encouraged to go in to math/science/computers more is utter nonsense. Most girls simply aren't interested in those things. GENERALLY, boys are more analytical than girls. Boys tend to have a mind set geared more toward engineering and problem solving, etc. GENERALLY, girls just aren't wired that way. There are of course lots of exceptions but that is generally the truth. It has nothing to do with intelligence, or discrimination or a glass ceiling, etc. It's just the difference between the nature of males vs. the nature of females.

Walk in to any government office and look at the staff. Government office tend to be staffed primarily by women. Look at the HR departments of any corporation, they tend to be staffed primarily by women.

Let's switch gears, how many black people play hockey? Should we encourage more black people to play hockey? Why? Is the game somehow worse off for the lack of people with more melanin? There are even fewer Asian hockey players, what about them.

Bottom line is, people will gravitate towards things they want to do. Technology fields are not worse off for a dearth of women; there is simply a dearth of women. Why push the issue?

[Dana Seilhan]

11:54 AM on 07/11/2011

Never make the assumption that because girls are not gravitating to something, that means they're not interested in it. Girls are socialized early to not make waves. The entirety of the culture works against it. No one wants to hear you speak up, and they will slap you down, nine times out of ten, if you dare do so.

Especially with male-dominated interests and professions. I'll write my own comment about my own experiences but to sum up, it's hard to speak up and say "Hey I'm interested in this, how do I learn more about it" when the guys are busy talking to one another and drowning you out.

Kind of like you're doing now. You have decided your analysis of the situation is 100 percent correct and I doubt you'll listen very long to any woman who tells you otherwise.

[Difster]

12:13 PM on 07/11/2011

Your bias is showing. If I've decided my analysis is 100% correct, why would I care if it was a man or woman telling me otherwise? You're obviously the one with an axe to grind, not me.

And girls are not conditioned by society not to make waves.

And let's talk about the difference between male and female dominated professions. Women are far more vicious to women in the work place then men are. Women (speaking in generalities here) hold grudges and keep other women down in the work place. Women don't simply want to say "I'm interested" and then join in as equals, they want to join in and change the game. That's why they get drowned out. It has nothing to do with their interest in any particular thing. Men have a certain way of communicating and whether they're talking about sports, work, computer games, or mowing the lawn, a group of guys wants to be left alone to discuss it. And the same applies to women too, they don't want men intruding on their conversations. The difference is, that men seem to intrinsically understand this and generally don't even attempt to join in those conversations.

So yes, I believe you're wrong. You have not made a cogent argument. No, my disagreement with you has nothing to do with you being a woman, I would say the same thing to a man. Get over yourself.

[2crudedudes]

01:29 PM on 08/02/2011

It really sounds like you are A) older (from a previous, more male-centered generation) or B) from a conservative part of the country (from a more male-centered region).

I grew up in California, and I actually had the opposite happen. I grew up with the stigma that men are evil and that women are defenseless little flowers who deserve everything their hearts desire.

I'm not screaming "oppression" quite yet, but I think the tables have definitely turned in the past couple of decades.

[Sara Swafford]

10:51 AM on 07/09/2011

I agree she doesn't sound like a true geek to me... a true geek gets into the field because they LOVE what they do. I've been programming for over 30 years and know that there are many good female software engineers, but yes we are a minority. Looking back to high school I remember feeling a bit of an outcast because I excelled in math/science. It also used to be unpopular for guy geeks as well. It's much better now for both, but I think girls need extra encouragement to pursue the career... but only if they love it!

[2crudedudes]

01:42 PM on 08/02/2011

Everyone who prefers math and science is considered an outcast, especially so in middle/high school. Women should just learn to accept it for what it is and not fool themselves into thinking they're going to be patted on the back every step of the way.

[Sara Swafford]

02:18 PM on 08/02/2011

The fact remains that our culture encourages each of the sexes to gravitate toward certain "traditional" careers. Another example is men who enter nursing. So it's not about needing a "pat on the back every step of the way" but dispelling gender bias for certain career paths.

[scandalouse]

01:27 PM on 07/08/2011

It also helps if you date one of the co-founders of the company for four years:
http://gawker.com/valleywag/tech/top/editorial-googles-power-couple-152210.php

Or if your sister rents them a garage and you marry the other co-founder:
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/techinvestor/corporatenews/2007-07-04-google-wojcicki_N.htm

These just-so stories of ambition and ability are nice and all, but without talking about the intense personal and sexual relations that invest and define hothouse start-ups you do everyone a disservice.

[Natedc]

01:16 PM on 07/08/2011

This is a stupid puff piece to make Google look good, that woman isn't even a geek, she admits she never got into computers. Boo on you for allowing a woman with a fancy philosophy degree to call herself a geek and not question it. Get one of those 15-17% of silicon valley engineers if you want a geek, not some executive tool.

[evesapple]

01:41 PM on 07/08/2011

You're hangin' with the wrong women!

[TruEngineHearing]

09:27 AM on 07/10/2011

...maybe, but he'll be hung by the right women...

[Pi Pom]

02:11 AM on 07/09/2011

*intelligent

[rbryanh]

12:53 AM on 07/08/2011

She started off wanting to help children with brain disorders. She's ended up settling for "Don't be evil."

We should admire this women… why?

[MichaelTenery]

10:15 AM on 07/08/2011

Did you ever change your major or switch Jobs? We don't need to be judgmental about someone's choice of job based on their first thoughts, especially when they help to redefine women's roles allowing for more choices by example.

[rbryanh]

03:25 PM on 07/08/2011

I've changed my mind about many things, and when I've changed from good to bad, I've deserved censure.

[EricBishop]

12:53 PM on 07/08/2011

Her company facilitates information transfer and transparency on an epic scale. Google is as responsible as any single entity for bringing an open internet to fruition.

[rbryanh]

03:26 PM on 07/08/2011

Given that no single company is or need be responsible for that, what exactly does that mean?

And how does Google's behavior with regard to China fit into that theory?

[SoCalNick]

10:47 PM on 07/07/2011

Girl Geeks are HOTTTTT!!!!

That is all