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Continuing our focus on women in tech, we discuss the multiple pathways to enter the tech industry, including coding, with our 3 guests, Elena Kolevska, a Senior Technical Enablement Architect at Redislabs, Helen Tabunshchyk, Director of ‘Women Who Code’ London, and Kristina Kushner, a Senior Project Manager at PMP. 
Coding’s gendered history
Though it’s not the case anymore, coding used to be more friendly to women. Helen explains, “Until the mid-1980s, programming was most often a woman's job. But as the profession started to bring in more money, the competition started rising. And then suddenly, it wasn’t a woman's job anymore.” 
Impostor syndrome is a symptom
Impostor syndrome is an issue all our guests share. Helen says, “Often, you start thinking, ‘It must be me.’ But when you have a community of women who all share the same story, you can totally see the common patterns. And you realize it's not you, it’s society and our gender education.”
Elena also links the chronic self-doubt characteristic of impostor syndrome to how women are socialized as children. “I think it's related to how we are taught to handle failure. As girls, we are taught to do everything perfectly and never make any mistakes,” she says, “And well, boys will be boys. But the world is not like that. We should be held accountable to the same standards.”
To code or not to code
There are many other touchpoints to enter the tech industry that aren’t coding. Our guests name several:
Project or product managementHuman ResourcesMarketingTechnical writingFinance/accountingDesignersBut how can you tell if coding is right for you? If you prefer to work with people more, consider one of the above roles, says Kristina. “But if you prefer to work on your own, to go deep into analysis mode, give coding a try.”
Mentorship + teamwork are critical to diversity
In a previous episode, we’ve spoken about the importance of mentorship; studies also back this up. Helen says, “Research supports that it’s not diversity and inclusion training that’s effective, but mentorship programs.” She adds, “And working in teams as well. Those are the two deciding factors on how inclusive the work environment is.”
Get more ideas for closing the gender gap in your workplace at Women in Tech or Women Who Code.

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Today we speak with three leaders and women in tech, Susan An, the Senior Sales Director of Tessian, Jessica Alderson, the Co-Founder & CEO of So Syncd, and Maria Antinkaapo, VP of Customer Success at Platform.sh, on the gender imbalance in tech, including the impact of internal and external biases.
Fixing the disparity in tech requires a perspective shift
The ratio of women to men in tech is often as unbalanced as 25:75. Susan is blunt, “We don't have enough female talent or leaders. Globally, only 2% of venture capital investment goes to all female-led teams.”
However, this disparity can depend on what roles or departments you’re looking at; Susan points out that management teams are often full of women. “So the question is if women are good enough to manage teams, why wouldn't they be considered leaders? What's the perception difference between a woman managing versus a woman leading?” She asks.
Imagining a different “profile” of success
When she started her career, her employers told Susan there was a “type” of salesperson to hire.“Loud and confident and aggressive ones,” she says. In addition to being more typically male-associated traits, which skews the hiring process, she adds, “I found that that’s not necessarily the profile that gets results. You can hire introverts with softer personality types, who are thinkers, introspective, or more methodical. They also sell very well to customers and add great value to the trajectory of the company.”
Jessica agrees. “When I talk to investors and ask the differences they see in women vs. men pitching to them, most of them say, ‘Men pitch a lot more boldly or exaggerate their numbers to some extent,’ But that’s a bias, because the stats show that that's not an indication of whether they'll be successful in running a company or not. Specifically, you should be more focused on the results you’ve achieved so far rather than these more superficial things.”
Becoming a parent can make you a better leader
Some companies still hesitate to hire or promote women for fear of losing them if they start a family. Susan has a strong rebuttal to that line of thinking. “Becoming a parent is not a handicap. After I became a parent, it changed something in me as a leader. I really started to think about translating how I parent to how I manage my team. I feel like I've become a much more empathetic and insightful leader as a result of being a parent.”

Check out Tessian or So Syncd.

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Our guests today, Jane Frankland, owner and CEO of KnewStart, Fareedah Shaheed, CEO and founder of Sekuva, and Eliza-May Austin, Co-Founder of th4ts3cur1ty.company,  help us determine the state of the cybersecurity world today and how it can affect you.
Defining cybersecurity
All three guests admit the term “cybersecurity” is broad. Eliza May says,” Cybersecurity is broad for a reason; it has to encompass lots of different avenues of data; computer, network, phone, apps, and there is a social aspect to it as well.”
Education and social responsibility in cybersecurity
Jane believes those in the cybersecurity field have a responsibility to push the field in the right direction, but she acknowledges the difficulties. She says, “Cybersecurity professionals have a job to do in terms of trying to influence and steer countries into making the right decisions. But it’s very difficult as technology advances, and we become more connected — we lose a certain amount of control.”
Bringing more people into understanding cybersecurity can help lift the burden, explains Fareedah, “When we're trying to educate the public on phishing or social engineering attacks, we have to talk to them as if they're as smart as they actually are and in a way that they can understand, especially if they’re from different backgrounds. Really breaking down concepts and being there with them and helping them understand how it affects them and their daily life is critical.”
Cybersecurity strategies at a business level
As with most things, there is no way to protect yourself 100% when it comes to cybersecurity. But Eliza-May suggests some steps you can take to make your business more secure.
Know your risk level and level of risk-toleranceUnderstand the variety of strategies you could employAssess your resources  — what budget, processes, technologies, and talent do you possess to put your strategies into practice?The work is never over
Our three guests emphasize that the cybersecurity field can be challenging for those who work in it. “Many cybersecurity professionals are stressed and under-resourced,” Jane admits. But that’s also because the nature of the work is inherently more complex. “It’s much easier for attackers; they only have to find one way in. Our job of protecting and defending is much harder.” she says.
Learn more about our guests’ organizations; KnewStart, Sekuva, and th4ts3cur1ty.

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EZContent is a Drupal distribution, decoupled framework, and publishing platform created by Srijan. It has many out-of-the-box reusable components for layout building and editing, including AI and machine learning features. We discuss EZContent with experienced Drupal folks, Ishan Mahajan, Kamalpreet Kaur, and Vinay KG.
EZContent’s features address modern-day marketer’s needs
As a CMS, EZContent has many features that make editors’, publishers’, and marketers’ lives easier, such as a drag-and-drop layout builder, the ability to preview drafts, and component-based architecture. 
In addition to these tools, EZContent addresses some key concerns for marketers today. Ishan says, “Marketers have so much on their plates these days, many KPIs they need to keep track of related to SEO, performance, and accessibility.” The burden of these responsibilities can be exacerbated or reach a bottleneck if a site has or needs fast content turnover. Ishan specifies three main ways EZContent can help.
Multichannel outreach — An omnichannel experience is easier to deliver to customers with a decoupled framework like EZContentFaster time-to-market — EZContent’s AI/ML toolset speeds up the content creation workflow Greater marketer independence — Marketers don’t have to rely or wait on developers to build pages in the backendWhat differentiates EZContent
Two aspects of EZContent set it apart from other distributors: support for decoupled frameworks and its AI and machine-learning capabilities. EZContent’s AI/ML features include:
Auto-tagging and captioning of images — Kamalpreet explains, “Relevant tags will automatically be populated, which makes it very easy and quick for editors and marketers to do their work.”Auto-transcriptions of videosAuto-generation of podcasts and other contentThe goal of these AI/ML features is to free marketers up for other tasks that require their attention. Vinay says, “We want to give marketers the ability to focus on more creative tasks where they’re more needed.”
EZContent is an intelligent CMS that speeds your time-to-market
Kamalpreet, Vinay, and Ishan have a lot of faith in their platform. Says Vinay, “At the end of the day, EZContent is for anyone who wants to save time and resources, gain a faster time-to-market, and improve the flexibility of their publishing platform.”
Try EZContent on Platform.sh today. 

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We speak with María Paula Fernández, Mattias Nystrom, and Stefan Adolf about the Golem Network, and the implications of creating a future internet based on distributed computing, with more focus on privacy.
The Golem Network
The Golem Network is an accessible, reliable, open access and censorship-resistant protocol, which democratizes access to digital resources and connects users through a flexible, open source platform. As María Paula Fernández defines it, “At the highest level, Golem is a protocol for the exchange of digital resources. And not just digital resources like computing power, but also devices. It’s a constellation of digital marketplaces where you can exchange with users across the globe.”
To enable these exchanges, Golem works with a reference implementation called the Yagna daemon. Mattias explains the daemon’s function, “The Yagna daemon helps you sort out your agreements as a requester, provider, or developer on the Golem Network.” Golem is anonymous and permissionless to join, so anyone can make use of the network and become a requester or provider. Golem uses Ethereum-based tokens, called GLMs, to enable the peer-to-peer exchanges.
Golem solves problems with monopolies and deplatforming
If you need more computing power or storage, Golem can help — but the network also goes beyond those issues. The motivation for Golem is not to be at the mercy of corporations which often don’t have your best interests in mind. María explains, “If the project you're running maybe doesn't fit with any of the tech giants like Google, AWS, Azure, Microsoft, or Instagram’s terms and conditions, which can be really vague, you risk being taken down, and you lose your work. If you get deplatformed and that’s your livelihood, that’s a really big deal. That’s why we need decentralized and censorship-resistant alternatives to the platforms that we have.”
Try the Golem Network as a provider, requester, or developer.

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Calling APIs to retrieve data can be a difficult and messy process. Our two guests, Mark Stuart and Shruti Kapoor, are both engineers at PayPal who use GraphQL to bring order to their APIs and data.
What is GraphQL
GraphQL is a query language for your API, but as Shruti says, “A common myth people have about GraphQL is that we’re querying the database. But we’re not; we’re querying the API.” She adds, “GraphQL provides a way to call your API and get the data that you need.” Mark adds his own definition. “GraphQL is a query language that’s used to grab data and as a way to tell the backend system to change things, such as mutating operations. It also hides the mess of your APIs by putting almost a facade in front of it.” 
GraphQL as an orchestration layer
Shruti says another way they use GraphQL at PayPal is as an orchestration layer. She explains this more in-depth: “Let's say you've got five different rest APIs, and now you want to combine them under GraphQL. So what you want is that your client should only see GraphQL APIs. But behind the scenes, you've got like this dirty table of all these REST APIs, which send you so much data, so you want to clean that up, right? So you put a nice tablecloth on it. That tablecloth is a GraphQL orchestration layer.”
How GraphQL combines with Apollo
The Apollo Graph Platform is one of the most popular tools to combine with GraphQL, with additional resources and documentation to help out. Shruti sums up Apollo’s uses for us: “They have Apollo Client for consuming GraphQL API on the client-side, and then they have Apollo server for building a GraphQL API on the server-side.” Apollo includes tools for consistent error handling, different hooks, as well as enterprise-level tools. Mark can attest to its usefulness. “At PayPal, we had a lot of duplication, a lot of graphs,” Mark says. “Apollo has some really cool tools to help merge all of that.” 
Try Apollo and GraphQL to declutter your APIs.
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Platform.sh is a robust, reliable hosting platform that gives development teams the tools to build and scale applications efficiently. Whether you run one or one thousand websites, you can focus on creating features and functionality with your favorite tech stack.