When researchers and others suggest that tech companies change their cultures to accommodate individual differences, many people question what that might actually entail.

Josie Gillan (pictured), senior director of engineering at Cloudera Inc., accepted her role at the company in part because of its supportive culture. “And what I mean by that is not, it’s got free lunch,” she told Rebecca Knight (@knightrm), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile live streaming studio. (*Disclosure below.)

During an interview at the Women Transforming Technology Conference in Palo Alto, CA, Gillan explained what an inclusive and supportive culture is in her view.

First of all, supportive corporate culture respects individuals and includes them in decision making at multiple levels. What drew her to Cloudera “was the conversations and the interviews that really were conversations,” she said.

Gillan added that even superiors do not take an authoritarian tone with those they lead. “It wasn’t all about sort of, ‘This is what I do, and this is what you must do.’ It was about a collaborative conversation,” she explained.

The greater good

Gillan, who works in a quality performance area at Cloudera, gave the example of a talented developer on one of her peer’s teams. He told the development VP that he wanted to go and work on a problem in quality. Gillan said that normally the VP would have fought to keep the developer on his turf. “But the development VP was like, ‘Well, I’m really sad to lose him, but this is a much bigger problem, and I’m going to help him move,'” Gillan said.

This is how a culture supports individuals for their own good and the good of the company overall, she stated.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of the Women Transforming Technology 2017 event. (*Disclosure: TheCUBE is a media partner at the conference. Neither VMware Inc. nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo:SiliconANGLE