March 17, 2022 • 26 mins
This week, Chelsea is sitting down with Kara Swisher, a fierce reporter who has spent decades chronicling the tech industry–its successes, failures and blind-spots. They discuss the progress we’ve made (and lost), the responsibility of the industry and its leaders, and what needs to happen next to achieve equality for women in this industry and beyond.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Chelsea Clinton. And this season on in fact,
we're celebrating Women's History Month. I'll be talking with trailblazing
women at the top of their fields about their personal journeys,
the progress women have made, and how far we still
have to go. Today, we're looking at women in the
(00:23):
tech industry with Kara Swisher, a fierce reporter who has
been decades chronicling the tech industry, its successes, its failures.
It's blind spots all well, being clear and blunt about
what she thinks the responsibilities of the industry and its
leaders are well here that by numbers alone, the tech
industry looks like and often is, a man's world. Women
(00:43):
hold roughly of leadership positions in tech companies, and the
percentage of women earning computer science degrees is about half
of what it was. So we're arguably losing ground in
the fight for an equitable future for women in the
tech industry. And then they're funding. Last year was a
record breaking year in terms of interricopital funding, and yet
(01:06):
women only led startups received just two percent of total
investment dollars, the lowest share since And when you look
at women teamed up with men, the percentage jumps to
fifteen point six percent. Still, that means that more than
eighty percent of funding went to all male teams, and
of course numbers don't tell the full story. There's the
(01:28):
lived experience of being one of the few women in
a male dominated field. The sexism, the man splaining, the exclusion,
the harassment, the feeling and the knowledge that your ideas
aren't being taken seriously, and the pressure of feeling like
you're representing an entire gender. That said, there are certainly
(01:49):
bright spots female founders, investors, inventors, engineers, and CEOs, including
Chard Dubai, the CEO of the Match Group, a dating
and tech company, who will hear from later this season.
Kara Swisher has probably talked to more tech leaders, over
more time and more places than well anyone. She's been
(02:10):
described as the most feared and well liked journalist in
Silicon Valley. Among her many accomplishments, she was a reporter
for The Washington Post in the Wall Street Journal, and
she co founded the tech news website Recode. She now
co hosts the podcast Pivot for Vox Media, and she
writes an opinion column and hosts the podcast Sway for
(02:31):
the New York Times. So just before I ask any questions,
I just wanted to say thank you, thank you very much.
And I hope since this is Women's History Month, we
could start with a little bit of your history. I
don't think that many people listening may know that you
didn't first start off as a kind of internet or
(02:51):
tech reporter. No, well, there wasn't the Internet. I'm old.
There wasn't the Internet. Yeah, so can you talk about
like your first jobs in journalism, You're time at the
Washington Post, and then how you the decision to take
this big leap into the future. Well, like I said,
digital wasn't really existing. There were obviously computers had been introduced,
but it wasn't widespread. It wasn't a consumer item really,
it was just starting to become one. I had an
(03:12):
Apple to see at college, and then there was the
iMac at some point, but I had I hadn't been
very technical at all, and I didn't have an office job.
And where I started work, we didn't have typewriters. We
had these large computers. I can't remember the system, but
it was not the most consumer friendly experienced the way
it is today. Then I worked at the City Paper,
in Washington, which is a free paper. And then I
(03:34):
got a job in the mail room at the Washington Post.
And I had been a stringer at the Washington Post
in college to from Georgetown and it got me into
Columbia Journalism School. So it was sort of this weird
back and forth with the Post, but eventually I ended
up the Post as a reporter, and I covered retail
if you lived in which you did live in Washington.
There was a half family track Auto Dark Drug. They
(03:55):
owned a beverage thing, and they were a very famous
retail family, and so I covered them and they were fighting,
and I covered Heckender and Woodies and all these things
that were just local retail essentially, but at the time
it was under siege from a very technically literate company
called Walmart, which was eating everybody's lunch because they used
technology so definitely in terms of how to stock stores,
(04:17):
and I was super interested in and I was like, oh,
that's interesting. And then I was going out with someone
who lived in the former Soviet Union and I communicated
over these Internet things and I was fascinated with it.
So that was your first experience with the internet, was
communicating with ding. Yeah, exactly, and it was very it
was super hard to do. And then suddenly there was
(04:37):
a lot of commercial stuff and they were all in
Washington because one of the hubs of the Internet was
in Washington. There's May East and May West. If tech
people are so funny, and so May East was here.
And then suddenly there were all these Internet connection companies.
And when I was at the Post, I did a
fellowship at Duke University and I started downloading books onto
the system, and I was fascinated with it, and I
(05:00):
messed it up once. Do you remember the first book
you downloaded? Calvin and Hobbs Cartoon Collection because I wanted
to see something visual, And the guy who was running
the computer center, and I was mad at me because
I did something wrong. They mucked up to say, you know,
it would take time. Everybody couldn't be on at once.
It was sort of like having one single spicket. And
I kept saying, I downloaded a book into my computer.
(05:21):
You believe that? And he's like, yeah, whatever, And I
was like, no, no, no, this is really a big deal.
And I kept sort of focusing on it, and I
kept being really interested in At the Washington Post, we
had a big cell phone, essentially a suitcase phone, but
it was portable and you could take it with your car.
I'm the only one who used it. Really, I felt
like I was. We had these things, these k pros,
these portable computers that we'd put couplers on a on
(05:43):
a telephone and send stuff. And I was like, this
can't be the end of it. So I started to
get really more interested in that than the stories I
was writing, and I kept talking about it, and David
Ignatious was my editor at the time who's now writes
about national security and other things. He was like, if
you're so interested, you should write about it. And I
was like, okay. And I there was a company called
A O L And that was the first commercial consumer
(06:06):
oriented company, and it was here in Washington because of
the location close to May East. And I met Steve
Case when he had a very small amount of people
and was riveted instantly. I understood that it was a shift,
a major shift in communications, just like the printing press
or television or radio. And I had been a student
of that, so it was like, Oh, this is going
to change everything. And I was I think I saw
(06:27):
it way before other people. And did you expect it
to change your life too. Yes, I was totally interested
in it. Being at the Washington Post, the big thing
was to cover politics, and I was like, I'm not
interested at all in politics, which was at Washington Post.
It was like, what do you mean we want to
give you this pollet. I was a good reporter, and
they wanted me to move there, and I was like,
I couldn't be less interested. So I said, I'll cover this,
and I started covering a o well. And then it
(06:50):
extended to Amazon, which was a very small company. Jeff
showed me around this sort of crappy little space and
and then I met the Yahoo guys and Mark Andres
and he was very young who created the browser. And
so I was riveted instantly because I think I understood
what it would do to media. I was particularly obsessed
with classified and about delivery and subscriptions and delivery of
(07:12):
information and so so I had plenty to write about.
And I just I have not gotten tired of it since.
And Karen, listening to you recite the founders that you met,
they're all men, Yes, indeed they were are Was that
something you were aware of at the time. It's just
like man after man generally white man after white man. Oh. Absolutely,
(07:32):
something I talked about a lot, and I talked about
it for years, and I believe it has to do
with why we're having so many problems too. One time
someone said, what do you think the real reason it's
so much problematic around misinformation and safety? And this I said,
because the people who created the modern internet never felt
unsafe a day in their lives. They just weren't unsafe people.
And so if you don't feel, if you have a
(07:54):
lack of feeling about safety, you don't think about building
it into a system. Right. I don't think it's cruel
or maleve one. It's just it's not the way they think.
You know, I have sons and they don't feel unsafe.
They don't in America. They don't have things coming at
them all the time. When they built these tools, they
didn't think people would use them in a malevolent way necessarily,
But once it started happening, they needed to do something
(08:15):
about it, and Karat they still haven't. No, they haven't, no, no, no,
they didn't want to get dragged into this. That's what
you have to understand, is, you know, the the analogy
I use is a city they've created a city and
they don't care about the police. They don't want to
give you firewater, you know, everything, stop signs, everything that
makes a city, okay, like anything police, anything with standards,
(08:38):
and they're like, we don't want to do that, but
we're taking all the rent via information via data. But
you know, you're on your own. They don't want to
take responsibility and and they're also are unqualified to do so,
and I think they sense that. So I definitely was
struck by. It was me and a lot of men
in a room essentially, and then the women that were there.
There are some women technologist absolutely and very critical ones.
(09:00):
There's several a Apple, for example, in other places that
were there in the early days, but they kind of
got flushed out. You know. It was an interesting thing
to see. And often they were in positions of marketing.
And as anyone who covers technos, if you're not in
the tech part, you ain't no one, right, that's the part.
You have to be a techie to have power in
technology companies. That's always true in other companies for sure.
(09:25):
We'll be right back, stay with us, okay, I think
about these different data points whenever this conversation comes up
or admittedly when I catalyze it, which is that I
got my first computer from Santa And how old are you?
(09:49):
I was seven? Okay, Santa Claus brought me a computer.
What was it? I was a commodore. What did you
do on it? What did you actually do on it?
I played math games, basically interesting because I was nerdy,
and all right, that felt like a great way to
be a nerd. And it was all though, that kind
of weird pulsating green color. I remember when I got
(10:13):
my next computer. I think when I was twelve, and
there was color. Yeah, probably an apple, right, yep, I
just like, this is amazing. But in seven more than
a third of the computer science graduates in our country
were women. And then when I went to Stanford in
the late nineties, it was still about a quarter. And
then when I became a parent seven half years ago,
(10:36):
it was like, right, So we've seen this deterioration. And
the deterioration also obscures the raw number challenge, because clearly
the denominator has only grown from the mid nineteen eighties
of computer science programs, and yet the percentage of women.
Let me ask you, why didn't you go into computers.
If you were a math person, what happened? Yeah, I
(10:57):
think about that, characause I loved math. I was good
at math. I had parents who were excited that I
loved math, was good at man. My calculus teacher in
high school, Mrs Goldman, was a woman and was like
tough as nails but fair and made learning calculus fun.
I always have been interested in math as a utility
(11:18):
for public health and medicine and biology, and so it
never even occurred to me like I didn't make an
affirmative choice to not go into computer science, although I
did make an affirmative choice to go to Stanford. I
did have this sense in the late night the font
of many of these places, many of these companies were
all started so curious. I was like, what is happening
in this place called Palo Alto, which from like d
(11:40):
C felt like this like very far away land. But
you didn't do it. We were in exactly the right
place at the right time to move into that end,
I know, And yet it didn't appeal to me. And
then I wonder was I hard coded in ways that
no pun intended like to still think that wasn't for me.
I don't know. Something happens to girls. And this has
been studied a lot at a certain age and it's
(12:01):
probably just past ten years old. It's it's largely like
early early middle school, yes, where it's they suddenly move
away from it, and it's either because they don't feel
but they belong, or that they're pushed that way, or
that there's a stigma for being a geek that is
way too much harder for women than men. But it's
certainly apparent that something occurs. Now. Lots of women get through,
(12:21):
for sure, and a lot of a lot of those
women end up going into medicine or the sciences. You'll
you don't find that as much in the sciences in
all the difference. I mean, I teach at the School
of Public Health that Columbian have many, you know, women
colleagues who are epidemiologists, hardcore research scientists, economists, lots of everything,
and so it's a really interesting thing. Is it then
(12:41):
it's is it the atmosphere? Is it the you sort of?
It's everything I think, And you know, Maria Clawe, who
runs Harvey Mud, has a lot of interesting observations of
why that is. And one of the things she told
me once was that there's always one man who makes
it impossible for a lot of people, one particular man
in a computer us. It just really denigrates and insults
(13:02):
and it just creates a really bad atmosphere. And it
often not just women. It leaves out different people so
that it tends to favor a certain kind of man.
I wrote a piece once called the men and No
Women of Facebook, and all I did was published their
pictures and say, hey, this guy does this, and they
got mad at me. I was like, I'm just putting
that's your pictures of those people. And I did the
(13:25):
same thing years later, which I found even more disturbing,
which was the men and no Women of Internet company
boards right Web two point o company boards. Now, in
that case there's plenty of women qualified to go on boards,
but still Twitter was a particular example of that, which
was they had ten men of the same type. It was,
it was the same type of person. And when I
(13:47):
wrote this piece about them, I wrote, I think the
single best lead I've ever written, and I should have
retired right after which I said, on the board of Twitter,
which has three peters in a dick, there are no
women and half the usages by women and third of
the usage by people of color. This kind of thing,
and the CEO Di Costlo is very funny called man,
He's like, that's a really funny lead. I'm like, I know,
(14:08):
I made a penis joke. But he's like, that's unfair,
because you know, we have standards. Started with that we
have standards thing, And I'm like, you guys right now
are in a terrible position. So how is it that
you found ten men of the same type. It's mathematically
impossible and I'm not even good at math to understand
why how that happens, and all of them can't be qualified,
and that you can't find qualified people. And so what
(14:30):
I began to understand when I started to talk to
a lot of tech people, they always use the word standards.
They never apply it to people like themselves. They only
apply it to women and people of color. The default
is that people like themselves have already met the standards,
whatever those standards are, whatever they are, And there are
certain standards, absolutely, but there are interesting new ideas around
blind hiring and all kinds of things, and it will
be interesting to see what happens after the pandemic. Because
(14:52):
people have been working at home, so it creates a
very different environment, and tech particularly has been pushing the
idea that you don't need to go in the office.
I think that will be interesting to see what happens
when that takes hold over a long period of time.
And how do you think work from home in the
tech industry has affected women or what have you observed?
I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I mean, they can't
(15:14):
create these little bro fests. And I hate to use
that term, I try not to, but it really is
that if there's just no other way around it, you
create centers of comfort. Right, there's centers of comfort with
people you're comfortable with whether they're going to go on
ski trips or whatever they all do. But there's a
culture around it where people either belong or don't belong.
And so if you don't have those things, how do
(15:35):
you create linkage? Is I don't know. You really can't
grow it up on zoom. It can't be. It can't.
I don't think you can, or maybe they will, but
it's harder. I think it'll be an interesting because it
will last in tech, It will certainly last. The people
will be remote, they'll be living elsewhere, they'll be creating
things in other communities and tech will lead the way
on that for sure. It's it's interesting, like reflecting on
(15:59):
the challenge of creating those sort of bro hubs on Zoom,
I think it would expose how purposeful those kind of
bro hubs often are. You can't pretend that it's just
like incidental that you all happened to converge around the
ping pong table or you all happen to have a
beer after work together. Yes, yeah, it'll be interesting to
see what happens, especially with remote work where people you know,
(16:21):
a lot of Silom Valley people are moving out of
Silm Valley right There really was a very tight culture there,
and if it's not there from a social point of
view and a business point of view, you wonder how
things develop or how they fund things. That's where it
all starts. As far as I'm concerned, is that the
number of people that get funded women it's just dropped
again quite considerably. And there's money everywhere. There's money everywhere.
(16:47):
We're taking a quick break. Stay with us, since we've
talked so much about the dearth of women in tech.
And while you very much are a journalist, you are
(17:08):
one of the most recognizable women in the tech conversation.
Do you have young or maybe even not so young
women who reach out to you for advice all the time.
What questions do you get? One of the things they
seem to be asking is will I suffer if I
take a leap? I think a lot of especially a
lot of women, tend to be nervous about changing because
(17:30):
they have a certain achievement somewhere and they don't want
to jump. The other thing they tend to do is
take what's offered them rather than what they want to do.
Men are very much more directed. I want to do this,
and I'm going to do this. I often say where
would your ideal place to work? How would your workplace
look like? What do you want to spend your days,
your limited days on this planet doing? I always use
that word so they get a sense of, you know,
(17:51):
time as a chicken, and so I do find women
are I wouldn't say more risk averse, but there's something
that they don't think they can I don't whether it's
a sense of responsibility. Obviously. Family questions come up a
lot still with women. I mean the idea that we
don't have universal childcare or universal treakare everything are agnomous.
State is not having universal paid leave or universal paid
(18:14):
early childhood education, and it's crazy. It's so bad for
the economy, like all that stuff, And so I think
women are still carry the burden of that more than men,
very clearly, And that's no question. I think it's it's
going to be interesting to see. I think the pandemics
and the yield all kinds of interesting trends around the workplace,
how people operate with each other at home and where
(18:34):
you work from and how the hours you work. And
I think some of it does favor more involvement by women.
More flexibility creates more ability to achieve. I think in
a lot of ways. Where do you think though will
be in a decade or whatever the way quantum of
time is in technology, I guess broadly, but also for women,
(18:55):
do you think there will be more women in leadership position?
Whether from a management perspective or a board perspective. And
if the answer is not, how do we try to
change that prognostication? Well, what's interesting is what's the technology
going to be? Like what's happened is not what's going
to happen. There's all this movement around cryptocurrency. Is quite
(19:16):
a lot of women involved in cryptocurrency, which is more men,
but a lot more women than you usually see some
of them. So a lot more women than say like
web two point now, yes, a dent there, but not
a lot, but more for sure. There's a lot of
women in robotics, which I think is a big area,
a lot more women like significantly not an AI though
for AI as man man man man man, which is
(19:37):
which is critically important. There's a lot more women involved in,
you know, all the mechanical engineering stuff, which I think
will be interesting. Food is another area of food innovation.
You might see climate change. There's all kinds of really
interesting climate change companies, and I do run into more
women in those. I call it chimate change tech. But
there's whether it's carbon capture, food or water one of
(20:00):
the two people that did the m RNA vaccine for
fives or a lot of women. And of course that's
where a lot of stuff is going to focus in
on in the future, is health and stuff like that.
So yeah, I would hope that there's lots more opportunities
as it spreads out. That said, cars mostly men like
autonomous cars, and space. It's a guy thing, as you
know from Jeff Bezos is Rocket, but in the big
(20:24):
areas AI and autonomous transportation, men everywhere you look. And
as technology moves from just tech only to every company
is a tech company. It's an opportunity, I would guess.
So the question is where does it go, who makes
the investments, who gets funded? And so whether it's cryptocurrency
(20:45):
or a new media stuff or almost anything, it's hard
to find women leaders. Yes, and so Kara, is that
a pipeline challenge? Is that an investment challenge? Is that
a platform slash like amplification and challenge? And how do
we try to accelerate? It's an investment challenge because if
you don't have women at the beginning, if they're not
(21:07):
if you're not a founder, if you're not on the
cap table, that really is it. And then you have
some women who now have a lot of money, like
Mackenzie Bezos or Melinda Gates. Melinda is making a ton
of investments via her firm, which is called Pivotal Ventures
in Women Backed Enterprises. She's specific and she feels like
it's an economic opportunity for her, and it's not charity
(21:29):
it's not trying to be you know, woke or whatever.
She's doing it because she thinks it's missed opportunity by
a lot of men. And she's investing a lot in
the childcare economy, right she is. Why not because we
all need it, so hopefully for those of us that
are our parents who have little girls with big dreams,
we can try to at least insert that possibility. You
have girls, right, I do have a girl and two boys. Yeah,
(21:51):
it's interesting. I just had a daughter and she's too
and she's so confident. And it's really interesting because these
boys and they're very confident of themselves and I she's
so confident, and I'm wondering. I'm sort of waiting for
that moment where something happens, and I'm paying a lot
of attention to it because I did see that moment
with my boys. They grew up in San Francisco. One
of my kids loved the color pink, and he had
(22:13):
a pink hat he work forever. Loved it, and then
he got a message somewhere that he shouldn't like pink.
I don't know where it was, but he definitely started
to get these gender things. And I was like, how
did that happen? It is what it is. And I
wasn't like doing the whole feminist rain dance around it
running like that, but I was sort of riveted. And and
and so when you have a girl, you have to
wonder what is her like. She's very mechanical, Like you
(22:33):
can tell she looks how things are made, and I'm like,
will she go that way or will she think she
should be in the soft you know what I mean?
Not not? I don't know. Is it going to be
interesting to say for sure? Well, Kara, the last question
I want to ask is just also about like other
women covering tech, like how do you see your journalistic colleagues.
Do you see challenges that younger women have covering tech
(22:57):
or they also able? Is the way you clearly have
been able to puncture through the bro like culture. There
are a lot of probably more men covering tech than women,
but some of the really top level ones are all women,
whether it's Nicole pearl Roth who covers cyber technology, tailor
Lawrence who covers internet culture. She's amazing, Yeah, and she
has certainly had to deal with some of the ugliest
(23:19):
parts of the Internet. Those assholes. It's interesting they never
come from at me. They come at her, and I
was always interested in that, Like, what do you think
that's about? They're frightened of me and they don't feel
like they're frightening, But I love them to come at me.
Come will come on down. Boys, Let's see what happens
in that fight. But also Jessica Lesson, she has the information,
which is great. She started her own company and she's
(23:40):
really does an amazing job. There's a lot of women
in prominent roles in technology coverage. Zephanie Rule very great
business reporter, but covers a lot of tech. There's quite
a few, and they're in positions of authority and just
really killing it all over the place. That's great to hear.
Is there one statistic or fact about women in tech
(24:02):
that gives you hope to end on an optimistic note, No,
I'm sorry. The numbers are down. I don't know what
to say that. The numbers are down. Numbers are done.
And so for anyone listening, what could we do to
then try to I guess, create that hope and to
try to change the numbers. You know, it has to
(24:22):
be a bigger thinking about diversity in general, not just women.
It has to be people of color, age, different backgrounds,
including conservative and liberal, you know what I mean. Like,
there is definitely a monoculture there. And another thing I
always say is that they think it's a meritocracy. It's
a mirror autocracy, and maybe that's not the best way
to build these things. The more voices that are involved
(24:43):
in it, the better for all of us. Yeah, all
of us, for all of us, because we're the ones
that use them and this we're the ones affected by them.
And then of course Congress has to act and do
something about it, legislate. Biden's made some good moves of
hiring people like Lena Cohn and some others, but they've
got it. Congress has aggregated its responsibility here so well.
And the tech companies continue to say they want to
be regulated, even though they clearly want to write their
(25:04):
own regulations. But it is time, I think, for for
government to take its responsibility and to govern in this way.
All right, here's a good one. I am very heartened
by people like Senator Klovich R And Lena Cohn and
some other women who are at the forefront of this,
even Elizabeth Warren, who tends to lecture these guys on taxes.
But the fact of the matter is the tax system
is the one. They're just following the rules. Margaret Vestiger
(25:26):
in Europe. But I think there's a lot of women
in positions of power that are significantly important. So it's
really kind of interesting that a lot of women are
at the lead of this stuff and they're not being cowed.
They're not yeah, they're not taking their foot off the
off the pedal, no way, Karen, thank you so much
for everything, including your time today. Thank you, Chelsea. You
(25:49):
can find Kara Swisher on social media at Kara Swisher. Yeah.
In Fact is brought to you by I Heart Radio.
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(26:12):
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Hi, I'm Chelsea Clinton. And this season on in fact,
we're celebrating Women's History Month. I'll be talking with trailblazing
women at the top of their fields about their personal journeys,
the progress women have made, and how far we still
have to go. Today, we're looking at women in the
(00:23):
tech industry with Kara Swisher, a fierce reporter who has
been decades chronicling the tech industry, its successes, its failures.
It's blind spots all well, being clear and blunt about
what she thinks the responsibilities of the industry and its
leaders are well here that by numbers alone, the tech
industry looks like and often is, a man's world. Women
(00:43):
hold roughly of leadership positions in tech companies, and the
percentage of women earning computer science degrees is about half
of what it was. So we're arguably losing ground in
the fight for an equitable future for women in the
tech industry. And then they're funding. Last year was a
record breaking year in terms of interricopital funding, and yet
(01:06):
women only led startups received just two percent of total
investment dollars, the lowest share since And when you look
at women teamed up with men, the percentage jumps to
fifteen point six percent. Still, that means that more than
eighty percent of funding went to all male teams, and
of course numbers don't tell the full story. There's the
(01:28):
lived experience of being one of the few women in
a male dominated field. The sexism, the man splaining, the exclusion,
the harassment, the feeling and the knowledge that your ideas
aren't being taken seriously, and the pressure of feeling like
you're representing an entire gender. That said, there are certainly
(01:49):
bright spots female founders, investors, inventors, engineers, and CEOs, including
Chard Dubai, the CEO of the Match Group, a dating
and tech company, who will hear from later this season.
Kara Swisher has probably talked to more tech leaders, over
more time and more places than well anyone. She's been
(02:10):
described as the most feared and well liked journalist in
Silicon Valley. Among her many accomplishments, she was a reporter
for The Washington Post in the Wall Street Journal, and
she co founded the tech news website Recode. She now
co hosts the podcast Pivot for Vox Media, and she
writes an opinion column and hosts the podcast Sway for
(02:31):
the New York Times. So just before I ask any questions,
I just wanted to say thank you, thank you very much.
And I hope since this is Women's History Month, we
could start with a little bit of your history. I
don't think that many people listening may know that you
didn't first start off as a kind of internet or
(02:51):
tech reporter. No, well, there wasn't the Internet. I'm old.
There wasn't the Internet. Yeah, so can you talk about
like your first jobs in journalism, You're time at the
Washington Post, and then how you the decision to take
this big leap into the future. Well, like I said,
digital wasn't really existing. There were obviously computers had been introduced,
but it wasn't widespread. It wasn't a consumer item really,
it was just starting to become one. I had an
(03:12):
Apple to see at college, and then there was the
iMac at some point, but I had I hadn't been
very technical at all, and I didn't have an office job.
And where I started work, we didn't have typewriters. We
had these large computers. I can't remember the system, but
it was not the most consumer friendly experienced the way
it is today. Then I worked at the City Paper,
in Washington, which is a free paper. And then I
(03:34):
got a job in the mail room at the Washington Post.
And I had been a stringer at the Washington Post
in college to from Georgetown and it got me into
Columbia Journalism School. So it was sort of this weird
back and forth with the Post, but eventually I ended
up the Post as a reporter, and I covered retail
if you lived in which you did live in Washington.
There was a half family track Auto Dark Drug. They
(03:55):
owned a beverage thing, and they were a very famous
retail family, and so I covered them and they were fighting,
and I covered Heckender and Woodies and all these things
that were just local retail essentially, but at the time
it was under siege from a very technically literate company
called Walmart, which was eating everybody's lunch because they used
technology so definitely in terms of how to stock stores,
(04:17):
and I was super interested in and I was like, oh,
that's interesting. And then I was going out with someone
who lived in the former Soviet Union and I communicated
over these Internet things and I was fascinated with it.
So that was your first experience with the internet, was
communicating with ding. Yeah, exactly, and it was very it
was super hard to do. And then suddenly there was
(04:37):
a lot of commercial stuff and they were all in
Washington because one of the hubs of the Internet was
in Washington. There's May East and May West. If tech
people are so funny, and so May East was here.
And then suddenly there were all these Internet connection companies.
And when I was at the Post, I did a
fellowship at Duke University and I started downloading books onto
the system, and I was fascinated with it, and I
(05:00):
messed it up once. Do you remember the first book
you downloaded? Calvin and Hobbs Cartoon Collection because I wanted
to see something visual, And the guy who was running
the computer center, and I was mad at me because
I did something wrong. They mucked up to say, you know,
it would take time. Everybody couldn't be on at once.
It was sort of like having one single spicket. And
I kept saying, I downloaded a book into my computer.
(05:21):
You believe that? And he's like, yeah, whatever, And I
was like, no, no, no, this is really a big deal.
And I kept sort of focusing on it, and I
kept being really interested in At the Washington Post, we
had a big cell phone, essentially a suitcase phone, but
it was portable and you could take it with your car.
I'm the only one who used it. Really, I felt
like I was. We had these things, these k pros,
these portable computers that we'd put couplers on a on
(05:43):
a telephone and send stuff. And I was like, this
can't be the end of it. So I started to
get really more interested in that than the stories I
was writing, and I kept talking about it, and David
Ignatious was my editor at the time who's now writes
about national security and other things. He was like, if
you're so interested, you should write about it. And I
was like, okay. And I there was a company called
A O L And that was the first commercial consumer
(06:06):
oriented company, and it was here in Washington because of
the location close to May East. And I met Steve
Case when he had a very small amount of people
and was riveted instantly. I understood that it was a shift,
a major shift in communications, just like the printing press
or television or radio. And I had been a student
of that, so it was like, Oh, this is going
to change everything. And I was I think I saw
(06:27):
it way before other people. And did you expect it
to change your life too. Yes, I was totally interested
in it. Being at the Washington Post, the big thing
was to cover politics, and I was like, I'm not
interested at all in politics, which was at Washington Post.
It was like, what do you mean we want to
give you this pollet. I was a good reporter, and
they wanted me to move there, and I was like,
I couldn't be less interested. So I said, I'll cover this,
and I started covering a o well. And then it
(06:50):
extended to Amazon, which was a very small company. Jeff
showed me around this sort of crappy little space and
and then I met the Yahoo guys and Mark Andres
and he was very young who created the browser. And
so I was riveted instantly because I think I understood
what it would do to media. I was particularly obsessed
with classified and about delivery and subscriptions and delivery of
(07:12):
information and so so I had plenty to write about.
And I just I have not gotten tired of it since.
And Karen, listening to you recite the founders that you met,
they're all men, Yes, indeed they were are Was that
something you were aware of at the time. It's just
like man after man generally white man after white man. Oh. Absolutely,
(07:32):
something I talked about a lot, and I talked about
it for years, and I believe it has to do
with why we're having so many problems too. One time
someone said, what do you think the real reason it's
so much problematic around misinformation and safety? And this I said,
because the people who created the modern internet never felt
unsafe a day in their lives. They just weren't unsafe people.
And so if you don't feel, if you have a
(07:54):
lack of feeling about safety, you don't think about building
it into a system. Right. I don't think it's cruel
or maleve one. It's just it's not the way they think.
You know, I have sons and they don't feel unsafe.
They don't in America. They don't have things coming at
them all the time. When they built these tools, they
didn't think people would use them in a malevolent way necessarily,
But once it started happening, they needed to do something
(08:15):
about it, and Karat they still haven't. No, they haven't, no, no, no,
they didn't want to get dragged into this. That's what
you have to understand, is, you know, the the analogy
I use is a city they've created a city and
they don't care about the police. They don't want to
give you firewater, you know, everything, stop signs, everything that
makes a city, okay, like anything police, anything with standards,
(08:38):
and they're like, we don't want to do that, but
we're taking all the rent via information via data. But
you know, you're on your own. They don't want to
take responsibility and and they're also are unqualified to do so,
and I think they sense that. So I definitely was
struck by. It was me and a lot of men
in a room essentially, and then the women that were there.
There are some women technologist absolutely and very critical ones.
(09:00):
There's several a Apple, for example, in other places that
were there in the early days, but they kind of
got flushed out. You know. It was an interesting thing
to see. And often they were in positions of marketing.
And as anyone who covers technos, if you're not in
the tech part, you ain't no one, right, that's the part.
You have to be a techie to have power in
technology companies. That's always true in other companies for sure.
(09:25):
We'll be right back, stay with us, okay, I think
about these different data points whenever this conversation comes up
or admittedly when I catalyze it, which is that I
got my first computer from Santa And how old are you?
(09:49):
I was seven? Okay, Santa Claus brought me a computer.
What was it? I was a commodore. What did you
do on it? What did you actually do on it?
I played math games, basically interesting because I was nerdy,
and all right, that felt like a great way to
be a nerd. And it was all though, that kind
of weird pulsating green color. I remember when I got
(10:13):
my next computer. I think when I was twelve, and
there was color. Yeah, probably an apple, right, yep, I
just like, this is amazing. But in seven more than
a third of the computer science graduates in our country
were women. And then when I went to Stanford in
the late nineties, it was still about a quarter. And
then when I became a parent seven half years ago,
(10:36):
it was like, right, So we've seen this deterioration. And
the deterioration also obscures the raw number challenge, because clearly
the denominator has only grown from the mid nineteen eighties
of computer science programs, and yet the percentage of women.
Let me ask you, why didn't you go into computers.
If you were a math person, what happened? Yeah, I
(10:57):
think about that, characause I loved math. I was good
at math. I had parents who were excited that I
loved math, was good at man. My calculus teacher in
high school, Mrs Goldman, was a woman and was like
tough as nails but fair and made learning calculus fun.
I always have been interested in math as a utility
(11:18):
for public health and medicine and biology, and so it
never even occurred to me like I didn't make an
affirmative choice to not go into computer science, although I
did make an affirmative choice to go to Stanford. I
did have this sense in the late night the font
of many of these places, many of these companies were
all started so curious. I was like, what is happening
in this place called Palo Alto, which from like d
(11:40):
C felt like this like very far away land. But
you didn't do it. We were in exactly the right
place at the right time to move into that end,
I know, And yet it didn't appeal to me. And
then I wonder was I hard coded in ways that
no pun intended like to still think that wasn't for me.
I don't know. Something happens to girls. And this has
been studied a lot at a certain age and it's
(12:01):
probably just past ten years old. It's it's largely like
early early middle school, yes, where it's they suddenly move
away from it, and it's either because they don't feel
but they belong, or that they're pushed that way, or
that there's a stigma for being a geek that is
way too much harder for women than men. But it's
certainly apparent that something occurs. Now. Lots of women get through,
(12:21):
for sure, and a lot of a lot of those
women end up going into medicine or the sciences. You'll
you don't find that as much in the sciences in
all the difference. I mean, I teach at the School
of Public Health that Columbian have many, you know, women
colleagues who are epidemiologists, hardcore research scientists, economists, lots of everything,
and so it's a really interesting thing. Is it then
(12:41):
it's is it the atmosphere? Is it the you sort of?
It's everything I think, And you know, Maria Clawe, who
runs Harvey Mud, has a lot of interesting observations of
why that is. And one of the things she told
me once was that there's always one man who makes
it impossible for a lot of people, one particular man
in a computer us. It just really denigrates and insults
(13:02):
and it just creates a really bad atmosphere. And it
often not just women. It leaves out different people so
that it tends to favor a certain kind of man.
I wrote a piece once called the men and No
Women of Facebook, and all I did was published their
pictures and say, hey, this guy does this, and they
got mad at me. I was like, I'm just putting
that's your pictures of those people. And I did the
(13:25):
same thing years later, which I found even more disturbing,
which was the men and no Women of Internet company
boards right Web two point o company boards. Now, in
that case there's plenty of women qualified to go on boards,
but still Twitter was a particular example of that, which
was they had ten men of the same type. It was,
it was the same type of person. And when I
(13:47):
wrote this piece about them, I wrote, I think the
single best lead I've ever written, and I should have
retired right after which I said, on the board of Twitter,
which has three peters in a dick, there are no
women and half the usages by women and third of
the usage by people of color. This kind of thing,
and the CEO Di Costlo is very funny called man,
He's like, that's a really funny lead. I'm like, I know,
(14:08):
I made a penis joke. But he's like, that's unfair,
because you know, we have standards. Started with that we
have standards thing, And I'm like, you guys right now
are in a terrible position. So how is it that
you found ten men of the same type. It's mathematically
impossible and I'm not even good at math to understand
why how that happens, and all of them can't be qualified,
and that you can't find qualified people. And so what
(14:30):
I began to understand when I started to talk to
a lot of tech people, they always use the word standards.
They never apply it to people like themselves. They only
apply it to women and people of color. The default
is that people like themselves have already met the standards,
whatever those standards are, whatever they are, And there are
certain standards, absolutely, but there are interesting new ideas around
blind hiring and all kinds of things, and it will
be interesting to see what happens after the pandemic. Because
(14:52):
people have been working at home, so it creates a
very different environment, and tech particularly has been pushing the
idea that you don't need to go in the office.
I think that will be interesting to see what happens
when that takes hold over a long period of time.
And how do you think work from home in the
tech industry has affected women or what have you observed?
I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I mean, they can't
(15:14):
create these little bro fests. And I hate to use
that term, I try not to, but it really is
that if there's just no other way around it, you
create centers of comfort. Right, there's centers of comfort with
people you're comfortable with whether they're going to go on
ski trips or whatever they all do. But there's a
culture around it where people either belong or don't belong.
And so if you don't have those things, how do
(15:35):
you create linkage? Is I don't know. You really can't
grow it up on zoom. It can't be. It can't.
I don't think you can, or maybe they will, but
it's harder. I think it'll be an interesting because it
will last in tech, It will certainly last. The people
will be remote, they'll be living elsewhere, they'll be creating
things in other communities and tech will lead the way
on that for sure. It's it's interesting, like reflecting on
(15:59):
the challenge of creating those sort of bro hubs on Zoom,
I think it would expose how purposeful those kind of
bro hubs often are. You can't pretend that it's just
like incidental that you all happened to converge around the
ping pong table or you all happen to have a
beer after work together. Yes, yeah, it'll be interesting to
see what happens, especially with remote work where people you know,
(16:21):
a lot of Silom Valley people are moving out of
Silm Valley right There really was a very tight culture there,
and if it's not there from a social point of
view and a business point of view, you wonder how
things develop or how they fund things. That's where it
all starts. As far as I'm concerned, is that the
number of people that get funded women it's just dropped
again quite considerably. And there's money everywhere. There's money everywhere.
(16:47):
We're taking a quick break. Stay with us, since we've
talked so much about the dearth of women in tech.
And while you very much are a journalist, you are
(17:08):
one of the most recognizable women in the tech conversation.
Do you have young or maybe even not so young
women who reach out to you for advice all the time.
What questions do you get? One of the things they
seem to be asking is will I suffer if I
take a leap? I think a lot of especially a
lot of women, tend to be nervous about changing because
(17:30):
they have a certain achievement somewhere and they don't want
to jump. The other thing they tend to do is
take what's offered them rather than what they want to do.
Men are very much more directed. I want to do this,
and I'm going to do this. I often say where
would your ideal place to work? How would your workplace
look like? What do you want to spend your days,
your limited days on this planet doing? I always use
that word so they get a sense of, you know,
(17:51):
time as a chicken, and so I do find women
are I wouldn't say more risk averse, but there's something
that they don't think they can I don't whether it's
a sense of responsibility. Obviously. Family questions come up a
lot still with women. I mean the idea that we
don't have universal childcare or universal treakare everything are agnomous.
State is not having universal paid leave or universal paid
(18:14):
early childhood education, and it's crazy. It's so bad for
the economy, like all that stuff, And so I think
women are still carry the burden of that more than men,
very clearly, And that's no question. I think it's it's
going to be interesting to see. I think the pandemics
and the yield all kinds of interesting trends around the workplace,
how people operate with each other at home and where
(18:34):
you work from and how the hours you work. And
I think some of it does favor more involvement by women.
More flexibility creates more ability to achieve. I think in
a lot of ways. Where do you think though will
be in a decade or whatever the way quantum of
time is in technology, I guess broadly, but also for women,
(18:55):
do you think there will be more women in leadership position?
Whether from a management perspective or a board perspective. And
if the answer is not, how do we try to
change that prognostication? Well, what's interesting is what's the technology
going to be? Like what's happened is not what's going
to happen. There's all this movement around cryptocurrency. Is quite
(19:16):
a lot of women involved in cryptocurrency, which is more men,
but a lot more women than you usually see some
of them. So a lot more women than say like
web two point now, yes, a dent there, but not
a lot, but more for sure. There's a lot of
women in robotics, which I think is a big area,
a lot more women like significantly not an AI though
for AI as man man man man man, which is
(19:37):
which is critically important. There's a lot more women involved in,
you know, all the mechanical engineering stuff, which I think
will be interesting. Food is another area of food innovation.
You might see climate change. There's all kinds of really
interesting climate change companies, and I do run into more
women in those. I call it chimate change tech. But
there's whether it's carbon capture, food or water one of
(20:00):
the two people that did the m RNA vaccine for
fives or a lot of women. And of course that's
where a lot of stuff is going to focus in
on in the future, is health and stuff like that.
So yeah, I would hope that there's lots more opportunities
as it spreads out. That said, cars mostly men like
autonomous cars, and space. It's a guy thing, as you
know from Jeff Bezos is Rocket, but in the big
(20:24):
areas AI and autonomous transportation, men everywhere you look. And
as technology moves from just tech only to every company
is a tech company. It's an opportunity, I would guess.
So the question is where does it go, who makes
the investments, who gets funded? And so whether it's cryptocurrency
(20:45):
or a new media stuff or almost anything, it's hard
to find women leaders. Yes, and so Kara, is that
a pipeline challenge? Is that an investment challenge? Is that
a platform slash like amplification and challenge? And how do
we try to accelerate? It's an investment challenge because if
you don't have women at the beginning, if they're not
(21:07):
if you're not a founder, if you're not on the
cap table, that really is it. And then you have
some women who now have a lot of money, like
Mackenzie Bezos or Melinda Gates. Melinda is making a ton
of investments via her firm, which is called Pivotal Ventures
in Women Backed Enterprises. She's specific and she feels like
it's an economic opportunity for her, and it's not charity
(21:29):
it's not trying to be you know, woke or whatever.
She's doing it because she thinks it's missed opportunity by
a lot of men. And she's investing a lot in
the childcare economy, right she is. Why not because we
all need it, so hopefully for those of us that
are our parents who have little girls with big dreams,
we can try to at least insert that possibility. You
have girls, right, I do have a girl and two boys. Yeah,
(21:51):
it's interesting. I just had a daughter and she's too
and she's so confident. And it's really interesting because these
boys and they're very confident of themselves and I she's
so confident, and I'm wondering. I'm sort of waiting for
that moment where something happens, and I'm paying a lot
of attention to it because I did see that moment
with my boys. They grew up in San Francisco. One
of my kids loved the color pink, and he had
(22:13):
a pink hat he work forever. Loved it, and then
he got a message somewhere that he shouldn't like pink.
I don't know where it was, but he definitely started
to get these gender things. And I was like, how
did that happen? It is what it is. And I
wasn't like doing the whole feminist rain dance around it
running like that, but I was sort of riveted. And and
and so when you have a girl, you have to
wonder what is her like. She's very mechanical, Like you
(22:33):
can tell she looks how things are made, and I'm like,
will she go that way or will she think she
should be in the soft you know what I mean?
Not not? I don't know. Is it going to be
interesting to say for sure? Well, Kara, the last question
I want to ask is just also about like other
women covering tech, like how do you see your journalistic colleagues.
Do you see challenges that younger women have covering tech
(22:57):
or they also able? Is the way you clearly have
been able to puncture through the bro like culture. There
are a lot of probably more men covering tech than women,
but some of the really top level ones are all women,
whether it's Nicole pearl Roth who covers cyber technology, tailor
Lawrence who covers internet culture. She's amazing, Yeah, and she
has certainly had to deal with some of the ugliest
(23:19):
parts of the Internet. Those assholes. It's interesting they never
come from at me. They come at her, and I
was always interested in that, Like, what do you think
that's about? They're frightened of me and they don't feel
like they're frightening, But I love them to come at me.
Come will come on down. Boys, Let's see what happens
in that fight. But also Jessica Lesson, she has the information,
which is great. She started her own company and she's
(23:40):
really does an amazing job. There's a lot of women
in prominent roles in technology coverage. Zephanie Rule very great
business reporter, but covers a lot of tech. There's quite
a few, and they're in positions of authority and just
really killing it all over the place. That's great to hear.
Is there one statistic or fact about women in tech
(24:02):
that gives you hope to end on an optimistic note, No,
I'm sorry. The numbers are down. I don't know what
to say that. The numbers are down. Numbers are done.
And so for anyone listening, what could we do to
then try to I guess, create that hope and to
try to change the numbers. You know, it has to
(24:22):
be a bigger thinking about diversity in general, not just women.
It has to be people of color, age, different backgrounds,
including conservative and liberal, you know what I mean. Like,
there is definitely a monoculture there. And another thing I
always say is that they think it's a meritocracy. It's
a mirror autocracy, and maybe that's not the best way
to build these things. The more voices that are involved
(24:43):
in it, the better for all of us. Yeah, all
of us, for all of us, because we're the ones
that use them and this we're the ones affected by them.
And then of course Congress has to act and do
something about it, legislate. Biden's made some good moves of
hiring people like Lena Cohn and some others, but they've
got it. Congress has aggregated its responsibility here so well.
And the tech companies continue to say they want to
be regulated, even though they clearly want to write their
(25:04):
own regulations. But it is time, I think, for for
government to take its responsibility and to govern in this way.
All right, here's a good one. I am very heartened
by people like Senator Klovich R And Lena Cohn and
some other women who are at the forefront of this,
even Elizabeth Warren, who tends to lecture these guys on taxes.
But the fact of the matter is the tax system
is the one. They're just following the rules. Margaret Vestiger
(25:26):
in Europe. But I think there's a lot of women
in positions of power that are significantly important. So it's
really kind of interesting that a lot of women are
at the lead of this stuff and they're not being cowed.
They're not yeah, they're not taking their foot off the
off the pedal, no way, Karen, thank you so much
for everything, including your time today. Thank you, Chelsea. You
(25:49):
can find Kara Swisher on social media at Kara Swisher. Yeah.
In Fact is brought to you by I Heart Radio.
We are produced by a mighty group of women and
one amazing man, Erica Goodmanson, Mart Harr, Sarah Horowitz, Jessmine Molly,
(26:12):
and Justin Wright, with help from Lindsay Hoffman, Barry Laurie,
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music is by Justin Wright. If you like this episode
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Decisions, Decisions
Welcome to "Decisions, Decisions," the podcast where boundaries are pushed, and conversations get candid! Join your favorite hosts, Mandii B and WeezyWTF, as they dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often-taboo topics surrounding dating, sex, and love. Every Monday, Mandii and Weezy invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms. With a blend of humor, vulnerability, and authenticity, they share their personal journeys navigating their 30s, tackling the complexities of modern relationships, and engaging in thought-provoking discussions that challenge societal expectations. From groundbreaking interviews with diverse guests to relatable stories that resonate with your experiences, "Decisions, Decisions" is your go-to source for open dialogue about what it truly means to love and connect in today's world. Get ready to reshape your understanding of relationships and embrace the freedom of authentic connections—tune in and join the conversation!