The last decade has seen conversations around diversity and inclusion in the tech industry reach fever pitch. Pushback against historical imbalances in workplace demographics coincided with Hollywood’s steps to rectify its own gender disparities through the #MeToo movement, and the need for a culture overhaul across industries soon became the talking point du jour.

So why are tech’s diversity numbers still slow to change?

While too many companywide programs lack effective implementation or position themselves around superficial statistics and buzzwords, tech leaders such as Syamla Bandla (pictured), director of production engineering at Facebook Inc., are looking to improve industry inclusion for good by focusing efforts on the individual.

“We all have to pay it forward,” Bandla said. “We as women who are in influential positions and can make an impact on the younger generation … need to absolutely do a lot more.”

Bandla spoke with Lisa Martin, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the CloudNOW “Top Women in Cloud” Innovation Awards event in Menlo Park, California.

This week, theCUBE spotlights Syamla Bandla in its Women in Tech feature.

The impact of inclusion

Bandla’s work building and scaling cloud strategy as vice president of global cloud operations and DevOps at cloud security company Qualys Inc. earned her a Top Woman in Cloud recognition by CloudNOW in 2016. Bandla left the event with not only an award, but a renewed vigor for the tech community after experiencing CloudNOW’s enthusiastically inclusive culture.

“When I walked out of the event, [it was] not just being the award recipient,” she said. “Meeting the other award winners, as well as the speakers, I was completely pumped up and charged.”

When Bandla’s career took her to Facebook nine months ago, the engineer was impressed by the company’s commitment to diversity. “Facebook actually cares about diversity and inclusion, and cloud computing and conversion technologies [are] an area where women are underrepresented,” she said.

Facebook began its journey to equity in 2015, with a number of initiatives helmed by Global Chief Diversity Officer Maxine Williams, including unconscious bias training and donations to inclusive organizations such as the Anita Borg Institute. When Bandla approached Facebook with the idea of hosting this year’s CloudNOW Awards, it was an easy sell.

“I pitched to my leadership team that when we care so much about [this], we should be hosting this year’s event,” Bandla said. “They jumped onboard immediately.”

Paying it forward

Bandla’s pay-it-forward outlook underpinned the event itself. The 7th Annual CloudNOW Awards sold out with more than 300 attendees through word of mouth, as well as the promise of a stellar speaker lineup. With Bandla’s help, the event secured Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook and author of “Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead,” as a keynote speaker.

The event, which offers an opportunity to network and collaborate on challenges both technical and cultural, drew attention from award nominees as well. Bandla and the CloudNOW committee reviewed more than 100 nominations and decided on a selection of honorees that they felt exemplifies the value in giving diverse perspectives a seat at the table.

“We really wanted to make sure we had a diverse set of winners not only [in] their backgrounds, but also the technology domain they represent,” Bandla said.

‘We have a lot more to do’

Although the dialogue around diversity and inclusion initiatives is more prominent than ever, Bandla is still challenged in her efforts to break the cycle of homogeneous hiring within her own team at Facebook. “Production engineering, predominantly in the industry, is male-dominated,” she said. “We have a lot more to do.”

Despite its equity efforts, Facebook has still seen little progress over the past five years. In that time, the number of women in technical roles has only increased from 15 to 22 percent, and an extremely low number of Black and Hispanic employees only grew marginally, from 2 to 4 percent and 4 to 5 percent, respectively.

Last year 80 percent of businesses agreed diversity and inclusion was important, but had also seen a 50 percent drop in D&I initiative participation year over year. As rude awakenings such as James Damore’s discriminatory Google memo fade from memory, the risk of diversity fatigue limiting productive action is all too real. That passivity has tangible consequences on business ethics, as well as the bottom line.

Bandla is fighting the uphill battle against tech marginalization through direct action at the personal level. A significant factor in the underrepresentation of women in technology is the high attrition rate that results in part from poor retainment and a lack of community. It’s up to people in the industry who have some influence to use it purposefully in cultivating other young women’s careers through mentorship and teaching, according to Bandla.

“Early on in their career, encourage them to believe in themselves,” she said. “Do networking, which I think in general women shy away from. [If they’re] meeting with people in the industry, they would be learning a lot more.”

Despite a rigid status quo, Bandla has succeeded in making progress this year at Facebook and can see the positive effect of a more diverse team in its collaboration and output. Parity may still be a distant goal, but the alliance of Facebook’s influence and Bandla’s perseverance is a promising one.

“Just this year we have hired quite a [few] female managers, as well as individual contributors,” she said. “The open thoughts, the collaboration. It’s just great to be in an environment where we can foster that culture.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the CloudNOW “Top Women in Cloud” Innovation Awards event:

Photo: SiliconANGLE