Tracy Chou
Software engineer at Pinterest, previously early team at Quora
Discussion
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Tracy Chou
@triketora · Software Engineer, Pinterest
Hi I'm Tracy! I'm a software engineer at Pinterest on the home feed team. In my 3+ years here I've worked on building many parts of the product, including serving as a tech lead on the redesign and rewrite of the site in 2012, and on the monetization team. Before Pinterest, I was an early engineer at Quora. Ask me anything
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Ryan Hoover
@rrhoover · Founder, Product Hunt
Hi, Tracy! Career hopping in tech is common with many people switching jobs every year. You've been at Pinterest for over 3 years. Why have you stayed and what challenges fuel your excitement?
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Tracy Chou
@triketora · Software Engineer, Pinterest
@rrhoover For the growth opportunities, and for the culture. On growth: The company has grown from ~10 people when I joined to ~650 now, and it's been an incredible journey. So many learning opportunities not just in scaling engineering, but in scaling the team, product, and business as well. On culture: When I first joined Pinterest, I was pleasantly startled to realize it was the first place I was treated as an engineer and not a female engineer; overall it's just a warm, friendly, collaborative, inspiring place to be. The company has also been amazingly supportive of my work on the diversity front and for that work I find a lot of leverage in being at Pinterest.
Ryan Hoover
@rrhoover · Founder, Product Hunt
@triketora wow! I didn't realize you joined around 10. I joined PlayHaven around that same time and over 3 years we grew to ~100. Scaling and changing processes in 10x growth is hard enough.
Matt Mullenweg
@photomatt · CEO, Automattic
@triketora You have thirty minutes with a classroom of elementary-age girls, what would you tell or teach for them to be as successful as possible in the world as it exists today.
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Tracy Chou
@triketora · Software Engineer, Pinterest
@photomatt It's okay to be better than the boys. In fact, you should aim to be better than them :) Sometimes people will say silly things that make you feel bad about being smart or creative or "not girly". Ignore them, they don't know better. Make friends when you can, and be friends with girls and boys and people who aren't just like you. Try to see things through other people's eyes. Work hard. Read books. Have fun.
Ben Tossell
@bentossell · Community Lead, Product Hunt
@triketora What are you most proud of since starting at Pinterest?
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Tracy Chou
@triketora · Software Engineer, Pinterest
@bentossell Writing https://medium.com/@triketora/wh..., setting up https://github.com/triketora/wom..., and helping to kickstart the diversity data disclosures across the tech industry. I give a lot of credit to Pinterest for supporting that work and being okay with me putting our numbers out there in a very public way so early on :)
Steven W
@mrwongsteven · Nice guys finish lunch.
@triketora I'm a huge fan of Pinterest and Quora. What inspired you to code and how did you learn the craft?
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Tracy Chou
@triketora · Software Engineer, Pinterest
@mrwongsteven It's hard to say that I was inspired to code, per se... I think the way it went down was more that I had friends who were taking CS classes and recommended that I take them too, and because I never really planned out anything in advance, I ended up in those classes. But I didn't learn much of the craft in school; I studied electrical engineering for my undergrad, and though I did a master's in computer science, it was in AI/ML which was very mathematics-heavy. I learned how to be a software engineer on the job at my first job out of school, at Quora. I had some fantastic mentors there, including Adam D'Angelo (I still remember him staying late at the office with me teaching me how to use the Python shell for debugging) and Edmond Lau (who has now written a whole book on how to be an effective engineer).
Taufiq Husain
@taufiqhusainca · Managing Director at Polar Hills.
Hi Tracy! In an LA Times article, it was reported the following: Tracy Chou, 27, a well-known engineer at Pinterest, said she was once bypassed at a previous start-up because her boss thought a new male hire was more qualified. When Chou pressed for an explanation, she recalled him saying: "It's just this feeling I have that this person will be able to get stuff done faster than you."
Do you think this type of mentality is ingrained in men's minds? I see that you often talk about gender inequality issues and everyone (including me) agree, but the problem keeps on persisting. How should startups go about recruiting, attracting and retaining more female talent if women are afraid of unfair treatment already?
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Tracy Chou
@triketora · Software Engineer, Pinterest
@taufiqhusainca There is indeed a lot of unconscious bias, and sometimes I sense some defensiveness as well, when people don't want to confront the fact that maybe they don't deserve all the success they've had, that other people who've worked just as hard as they have haven't had the same opportunities to excel. It takes a long time to unseat these very deep-seated beliefs and emotions, but it's not impossible.
Erik Torenberg
@eriktorenberg · Former Product Hunt
Hey Tracy! Thanks for joining us.
1) What do you think is this biggest misconception/misunderstanding you see when people talk about diversity in tech?
2) What life advice would you tell your 25 year old self? or , alternatively, if you were 25 in 2015, what would you do?
brad
@be_radu
@eriktorenberg @triketora upvote, as a current 25 year old I'm interested in your answer to question #2 :)
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Tracy Chou
@triketora · Software Engineer, Pinterest
@eriktorenberg
1. That achieving diversity in tech is about lowering the bar. It's not. It's about identifying and unlocking talent even when it doesn't pattern match well against our woefully non-diverse industry now.
2. Hm, 25-year-old me was only 2-years-ago me, so I don't know that I've accumulated a lot of life wisdom since then! I would tell my 25-year-old self to keep working hard but to be intentional about the time you're spending on work versus play and who you're spending time with. On the last point -- someone recently gave me a useful framework to consider the people you interact with: 1s are people you love being with, that give you energy, that make you excited about life. 3s are people that just take and never give, they drain you. 2s are in between. Only spend time with 1s.
Erik Torenberg
@eriktorenberg · Former Product Hunt
HUGE thanks to @triketora for taking the time to chat with us today!
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Tracy Chou
@triketora · Software Engineer, Pinterest
@eriktorenberg Thanks for having me!!
Teresa Hammerl
@colazionearoma · Socialmediapreneur
Hi Tracy, thanks for doing an AMA! I started learning how to code some time ago, I joined some workshops and did some online tutorials. But that never really worked out. Do you have any tips how to make it more fun to learn how to code? Thanks!
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Tracy Chou
@triketora · Software Engineer, Pinterest
@colazionearoma I've always found the most gratifying part of writing code to be building things that are useful. Maybe it'll help you to find ideas for simple web or mobile apps that you wish existed and would be useful to you, and try to build those.
[deleted user]
@deleted_user
What do you see as the primary cause for the under-representation of women in tech? Can it be solved, how?
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Tracy Chou
@triketora · Software Engineer, Pinterest
@levinotik It's hard to single out a single primary cause. Issues like the pipeline problem (not having enough girls interested in and pursuing STEM education) and the retention problem (keeping women in the tech workplace) are closely interrelated; for example, the thin numbers of women entering the tech industry mean the culture is imbalanced from the start and as a consequence often less welcoming to women, but when women are exiting the tech workplace at such high rates and not advancing to leadership roles, there aren't enough role models to draw girls in, either.
In terms of solving the problem... there's no silver bullet, but lots of lead bullets. There are people tackling the problem on the education side, like Hadi Partovi at CODE.org, and organizations like Girls Who Code, Black Girls Code, etc. trying to foster those communities amongst girls. We also need to take responsibility from the industry angle and try to build more diverse and inclusive workplaces.