Xiaole Kuang, lead engineer for payments and pricing
Xiaole is the lead engineer for payments and pricing in Grab, and she leads a team of 7 engineers, most of whom are male. She is working to develop cashless payment solutions for Grab. She studied computer science at Fudan University in Shanghai and completed her Masters in Human Computer Interaction at the National University of Singapore.
As a female manager
Outside of Grab, I think some people are surprised when they hear I manage a team of engineers, but I shrug it off. I don’t see my team as working for me. My job is to empower them to do their best work. If they believe they have a better method than I do, I will enable them by all means.
My thoughts on women in tech
I don’t look at gender when building my team. I want people with the right skills and personality, and I won’t downgrade my standards. But I believe there is a case for having more women in the industry. There are very few female leaders in IT, much less CTOs. There are times when I’ve even questioned how far I can go in this field. We need to see more role models so women can believe in their own potential to progress.
Engineering, to me, is…
Very creative. We’re doing things at Grab that no one else has done before. For instance, my team is building up a cashless payments solution for Grab. But how do we get people in cash-based economies to put digital money into an app? You need a lot of creativity to solve such problems, especially when there are no obvious answers.
Increasingly, I find communication skills are becoming more important than technical skills in engineering. No job is a ‘solo’ one these days. It’s all about teamwork. Engineers must know how to express themselves and convince others of their ideas.
My advice for women
If you are a woman in a male-dominated team, my advice is: Don’t think of yourself as a woman on the team. Just focus on the tasks and do what you believe is best for the company.
Source: Yahoo! News