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SheCanCode's Spilling The T
SheCanCode's Spilling The T
Up in the cloud: what a career in cloud technology can offer
Cloud computing is becoming ever-increasingly popular within organisations across the globe. Cloud allows on-demand access to resources, data storage, networks and intelligence.
But what does a career in cloud technology look like and what can offer women in tech?
To tell us more, we’re joined by Emma McGuigan, Global Lead - Enterprise & Industry Technologies, Accenture.
Emma McGuigan leads Accenture Enterprise & Industry Technologies, which helps clients achieve enterprise-wide transformation by bringing Accenture’s deep technology, functional and industry expertise across SAP, Oracle, Salesforce, Workday, Adobe and other leading platforms. Emma oversees Accenture’s relationships, strategy and capabilities globally and across all industries for the Enterprise partners. She is a member of Accenture’s Global Management Committee.
SheCanCode is a collaborative community of women in tech working together to tackle the tech gender gap.
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Hello everyone. Thank you for tuning in Again. I am Kayleigh Batesman, the content director at SheCanCode C. Today, we're discussing what a career in Cloud technology can offer. Cloud computing is becoming ever-increasingly popular within organizations across the globe. It allows on-demand access to resources, data storage, networks and intelligence. But what does a career in Cloud technology look like and what can it offer women in tech? Luckily, I'm joined by the amazing Emma McQuiggan, senior managing director at Ascension, to dive into this further with me. Today we're also going to touch upon her work in Generative AI a bit too. Welcome, Emma. Thank you so much for joining us on here.
Emma McGuigan:Thank you for having me on here, Kayleigh. I'm really excited to join you Good.
Kayleigh Bateman:Thank you, we haven't spoken about this. I love the fact that we have such a range of topics on this podcast, and we haven't spoken about Cloud, for some reason yet on this podcast. Can we kick off, though, with a bit of background about yourself and your background, please?
Emma McGuigan:Yeah, of course. I'm originally from Aberdeen in the North-East of Scotland. I went to Edinburgh and did a Masters in Engineering, specializing in electronics. I went down that path because I could spend a year in the French Alps doing my project placement. I came out and the thing I knew I wanted to do was to go and work in tech. I was lucky enough to start my career with Anderson Consulting, as Accenture was back then.
Emma McGuigan:I started out as a engineer, really cutting code, helping write the solutions that would solve the problems our clients were facing. I've spent nearly 29 years here developing that career and really moving from being very technical into a broader role where I'm still very much in technology but also really focused on the business aspects, the business cases, the business problems that we're solving for. During that, I run all of our global ecosystem for Accenture. I work with our biggest partners around the world, and Cloud underpins all of those solution providers. Today, this is a topic very close to my heart and I'm very excited to be here talking about it. Kayleigh, I should just also say that I'm happily married and I have three kids and a dog, but slightly less happily married today because the dog ran away while she was out for work with my husband. She went back home, it's okay.
Kayleigh Bateman:I'll take my load for that Amazing. It sounds like it's incredibly balanced as well at Accenture. I mean you have a well-balanced family life, work life. You've been Accenture 29 years. I mean that's incredibly loyal. They must be doing something right to get you for 29 years. I mean, what is it about Accenture that made you stay?
Emma McGuigan:I think it's two things. One thing that's always there's always something new happening here, so there's a new role, there's new technologies to get involved with, there's new clients to work with, new partners to work with, so there's always something new that keeps you interested. I love learning. I love learning new stuff, I love really exploring how technology is evolving and it can help solve new problems. But the other thing that's kept me here are the people. We work in such a collaborative environment where people are there to support each other, and I have made so many good friends here over the years and I think when you have that sense of belonging and you can serve that level of curiosity and desire that we have to be fulfilled, then why would you change?
Kayleigh Bateman:Yes, exactly that, and I love the fact that as well. You said you knew you wanted to go into tech and you knew you wanted to be an engineer. What's it about tech? Because we don't always hear that often. We always hear that ladies fall into the tech sector, but you had a plan. So what was it about tech that really attracted you to the industry?
Emma McGuigan:So I think from a really young age I like to understand how things work and I can remember as a nine year old being given a new, very secondhand bike and taking it all to parts and my mother looking at me slightly dubiously as to whether I put it back together.
Emma McGuigan:And, sure enough, I reassembled it all. And that really talks to who I am. I like to understand how things work and I like to make things. And actually being an engineer with a mindset like that, very practical, very pragmatic that sort of underpins why I wanted to go into tech and then, of course, it, because it was moving so fast and it was evolving even all those years ago when I started out, and that for me, that whole solving problems and solving problems through practical solutions that you could actually go build in tech that for me is really at the core of what had me wanting to move into a career in technology from an early days. And you find your way into a degree because you were good at things at school and maths and physics always came more easily to me.
Kayleigh Bateman:I see, so we always ask on here. You know where you're, that child that took the toaster apart, but I know that you took your bike apart. At least you could put it back together. So it sends me a mindset of certain children that go into STEM subjects.
Kayleigh Bateman:And now fast forward. What do you love about your role in the industry? Now? I mean, you said that you you know you wanted to build things and to be involved in that. You take that nothing has changed there. You're still involved in being able to build things and make an impact in the tech sector and actually, even as your role has changed in a center, I take it you still have a hand in feeling that way as you did when you were a child.
Emma McGuigan:Absolutely, and I think the only thing that changes is your role evolves.
Emma McGuigan:So, if you like, I'm now in the earlier discussions with clients, really exploring with them the challenges that they're facing within their industry, within their sector, and thinking about how tech can help enable that change, that transformation, that resolution, that fix, whatever it is that they're after.
Emma McGuigan:But working with my colleagues who are deep within the industry or deep within the function, who really understand the regulatory requirements or the nuance of the change that's being chased, and that that is one of the things that I think Accenture's an organization is really good at is bringing, recognizing those different capabilities and bringing them together. But you're right, in some respects my role hasn't changed because I'm still solving problems I'm looking at, I work with all the partners and that has been a great. That wasn't something I did a few years ago and I've been. But I've been working with the partners for five, six years now and really helping work out how Accenture and a Microsoft or an SAP or an Oracle can partner together to help unlock the value for our clients, help solve problems for our clients and in a way that everybody you know there's a way forward for everybody.
Kayleigh Bateman:I mean that's a pretty good place to be in a career right, definitely, and I think people have this, this misconception as well about what it's like to work in technology and, like you said, your role has become more and more broad and actually you started off in a very technical role. I think that's. That's kind of. That's what people think. It's all it's going to be. You have to be very techie. You come in, you have a very techie role and that's kind of it. But yourself you've moved through several different roles and even to come into the tech industry, you don't have to be technical at all actually do you.
Kayleigh Bateman:You don't have to start off as you did.
Emma McGuigan:No, not at all, and of course you know. The thing today, kayleigh, is that that everything is evolving. And you think about the, the jobs I did when I started out as an engineer at Accenture nearly 29 years ago. Those roles are automated now. The products have been prebuilt. The way we cut, code, it's all be. You know, so much of it is being automated. The way we used to gather requirements and turn them into documents that we then could code. All of that we can automate today.
Emma McGuigan:But what that does is it moves the value to a different place and it changes the skills and the capabilities. So today, if you were starting out today for a career in tech, the breadth of opportunity for you to get involved is way broader than it was 29 years ago, because it's the code, is almost, is almost. Of course, these are the people who code, and I'm not suggesting we don't. But you go all the way up to Gen AI. You go deep into understanding how cloud architectures can come together. You think about the experience that a customer wants to have when they're buying their new online item of clothing. That's going to be powered by how technology can serve that experience for that individual. Understanding all these different pieces. Nobody has all of that, so the skills that we need are they're continuing to evolve every day, and I think that's what makes technology really exciting, and that the most important thing for me if you're thinking about a career in technology, is being curious. You have to be innately curious and keen to solve problems and not new value.
Kayleigh Bateman:Yes, and I love that. You just touched upon Gen AI there and I wanted to talk to you a little bit about what makes cloud and Gen AI great sectors to work in, and you just you just hit the nail on the head there. You have to be very curious and you have to. You know, it's a great sector to work in because it's constantly evolving. I take it you would never, ever be bored.
Emma McGuigan:Oh no, I'm not very good at being bored and my husband will tell you, I'm not very good at sitting still.
Kayleigh Bateman:Yeah, I mean as well. You spoke a little bit there about skills that are different now compared to 29 years ago, and that's that's something that we struggle with as as a sector, isn't it we? Sometimes we you know employers can struggle to keep up with how fast the sector moves and the skills that are needed, and actually, you know people that are studying the technology now. Their skills might be outdated by the time they get into the industry, but that is everything about that that makes it so interesting to to come into, you know, to the world and and Gen AI. Is there anything else that you think is super exciting about those industries? I'm assuming the salaries are good, you know they're. They're a wide range of roles that most people probably hadn't even thought of.
Emma McGuigan:A wide range of roles and also a really wide range of employers, because technology is helping serve every organization in every industry. Technology is needed because it doesn't matter. If you think about the level, the way we changed through the pandemic we were accessing, we were calling our our doctor via a zoom window or a teams window in a way that we would never have thought possible. We were not just buying, doing our weekly shopping online. We were buying anything we ever wanted online. We were talking to tradesmen online to understand how we could repair things and suddenly we realized this was all a lot more convenient. And so you think about the level of disruption that has happened. You know we have a disruption index that we use at Accenture and if you go back to pre pandemic, the level of disruption year on year was about 4%. And when we're talking about that, we're talking about socio, socioeconomic, geopolitical, anything else that's factoring into that level of disruption that we face in our lives every day. Over the last three years, we're now looking at an annual disruption index of 200%. I mean, if you just think about that for a minute, and that's one of the big triggers around all of this is the way technology is evolving and but our willingness to adopt and do things differently, and so you think about that, and that gives you a clue into that breadth of roles and the breadth of employees, employers, sorry.
Emma McGuigan:And the final thing I just want to say is people worry a bit that the skills that they're learning today are going to be redundant before they finish their education, whether that secondary or tertiary education. And what I would say to you is actually what our education is good at is teaching principles, and the principles remain pretty consistent. So the language or the adoption or the thought, you know the actual capabilities that we're going to evolve, but the principles with which we develop technology, the logic systems, you know the creativity needed, those principles that are founded around that, they remain constant. So don't feel downbeat about any degree choices that people are making, any A level choices that you're making, because actually there's just a huge opportunity ahead, because they're teaching those fundamental principles around solving problems, and that's what the sector needs.
Kayleigh Bateman:Yes, definitely, and I think as well those principles.
Kayleigh Bateman:They lead into the importance of soft skills as well and I think that's always something that is quite overlooked in technology and everybody thinks they have to have the computer science degree and I have to learn all of the technical skills.
Kayleigh Bateman:And we have lots of career switches on this podcast and on our webinars and they kind of underestimate the fact that some of them have been in work 15, 20 years already and they switch into the career sector and don't realise that they have all these fantastic soft skills Because it's been drummed into them. To come into tech you have to have a computer science degree out fresh out of university and then when they get into tech they actually realise actually I'm at quite an advantage of all of these great skills because I've been in the workplace already. You know, I'm assuming during your time as well, in the tech sector and even now working at a century, you come across a wide range of people that have come from a wide range of backgrounds. Is that true? You know, even at a century? The people that you work with they're not all fresh out of uni from computer science degrees, they come from everywhere.
Emma McGuigan:Absolutely not. All diversity, all sorts of educational backgrounds, and what we really want and what we really celebrate is diversity of thought. And diversity, of course, comes through gender, but it also comes through ethnicity, it comes through degrees, it comes through your background. All these things contribute, and what we need in the tech sector is we need people coming from all sorts of different backgrounds who've grown up with a passion in solving problems, a passion in interacting with technology, and who doesn't love their mobile phone, especially our teenagers. And really that's what's important, because if you're passionate about something, you'll engage in it in a way that's really meaningful, and getting out of bed to go to work is so much easier, and I think we sometimes forget this. But if I look at my roles today, I look at all that, the ecosystem, and I look after those biggest partners for Accenture. I have a whole suite of clients that I work with. The reason we do all of this is because of the relationships that we build, and when we go to work with a new client, the client agrees to work with us because they're buying the people who they meet. It's the same as in every sector. You have to be able to build those relationships. You have to be able to communicate well. You have to be able to understand the scope of what's going on and have that ability to really understand that breadth. Some people need to go deep in a technology to be able to be, but you need this team of people who've got all these different skills. You need other people who are really going to understand how that's going to impact the user. How do I help this user understand they're going to have to work differently and actually that's different processes, and maybe this is like somebody who's done the same role for 20 years and actually we need to help them understand how this is going to help them in their job, whereas actually their reaction is to be resistant. And so you think about that. Think about it, just pause for a second. That huge range of skills. So no, I think the misconception that the tech sector is limited is not the right one.
Emma McGuigan:And, if I may tell you, I have a story of my favorite switch role ever and I was at a guest speaker at a women in tech event with one of our financial services clients and I slept over to Canary Wharf to their offices and I went in and I met this lady who was the head of security and I was like, oh, this is amazing, head of cyber security, and this is quite a long time ago, it's probably about 15 years ago. And I was like, so how did you get into this? How long have you been working in cyber? Because cyber was still, whilst it was very important, it wasn't it wasn't on the scale of unemployment that it is today. And she said, well, I've only been working in cyber for maybe three or five years. It was a relatively short period.
Emma McGuigan:And I said, well, what did you do beforehand to get here to have such a senior role? And she said, oh, I transformed from doing physical security. So she had spent the first 15 years of her career doing physical building security and she was approached by an organization to say that we we need more people and we can't hire enough people with the right skills in cyber. And what we really need is we need people who can systematically understand how you keep people out. And if you do building security, you understand how to keep people out, but let the right people in.
Emma McGuigan:And so she said it was really interesting because she took all of those principles that she she brought her career on and had to flip them essentially into a virtual world. Now, of course, cyber careers we've got lots of deep technology, deep engineers, deep technologists but we also have people who have to understand systematically the problem that you're trying to solve whether you're keeping people out, whether you're letting people in, you know where the data needs to be held, etc. Etc. If you think about all of that virtual security in a physical way, well, a, it helps us understand, but you can see like that was how she's transitioned.
Kayleigh Bateman:So my one of my favorite transition stories yeah, that I think that's one of the best ones I've heard, because, you're right, people come from all walks of life and they kind of forget that. You know, all of those skills that they learned in the previous job are so important and perfect example there that all of those years that lady had spent and all of those wonderful skills that she had soaked up along the way, she probably she probably didn't even make the connection until somebody came to her. Amazing, and I wanted to talk to you a little bit about those skills and what skills are important for a career in cloud and generative AI, which back in a little bit about soft skills. Obviously you took that communication and lots of other things. Are there any other skills that you think are important or that our listeners should be, you know, very aware of if they're thinking about a career in those areas?
Emma McGuigan:So I think they're quite different. So if we maybe start with the cloud and if you think about when we think about the cloud, it's everything from the infrastructure piece, which is relatively tech, technical, it's more at the engineering level, all the way up into how we think about the data sets that we're holding, how we want to provide access, and then thinking about the applications, the software as a service, applications that are sitting on there and how we can then maintain. You know there's no maintenance cycle on those sorts of applications, so thinking about how you can unlock the value that sits there is very much at the business or the customer end of things. So if I put that into a Telestorience and plain English, if you think about what that looks like, we have people when you log on to your favorite shopping app, you're using an app that's running on cloud, so it's an application running on the cloud. You're the people who design that. They need to understand the user experience. They're not technical in the way that you did the person who's running the infrastructure and what they understand. They understand how people interact, how people want to see what this item of clothing might look like on them or what this food might taste like they want to get the description, not just the picture. But if you haven't got the picture, they're never going to click on the description. It's that really understanding how people buy, and that's all about behavioral science. It's understanding repeat patterns. It's understanding the data that allows all of that to happen.
Emma McGuigan:Just in that one role, I've covered two or three disciplines. At the other end, on the infrastructure end, you've got people who really need to understand between public cloud, which can be accessed it's a common space where you can have other data sets and applications running, and then we put build security around it. So it's public cloud but it's secured all the way through to private cloud that where it's just for your own organization, your own data set. You need security. You need to understand the engineering of how the data gets held. You need to make sure that you're following all the rules around the data privacy to make sure nothing is being overstepped Like. There is a long list. Some of those are deep engineering capabilities. Some of them sit more in the legal space. Understanding data jurisdiction is a legal expertise and that's a. So just in that one space around cloud, many, many different types of capabilities and all of them are good entry points for careers in cloud.
Emma McGuigan:Taking what you learn, building one app to learn to move it on to another, understanding the behavioral science that has me click onto this image but not this other image and understanding what that does. Being able to make sure our data itself is safe and secure so that it doesn't get leaked and used on the black net All of these things are so important, but huge range of skills and I think that's what makes that whole space that's a little bit better known by some of the listeners. If you go to Gen AI, the secret to Gen AI is all around the data set. It's around those large language models or those image libraries. And if we stick with large language models today, you look at the sort of explosion of excitement over chat, gpt this year and as it really reached the level of maturity, and the fact that it can help provide all sorts of access to how you might think about things, how you might harvest data and put it together. The secret to all of that is the harvesting of the data and then understanding how to query that data.
Emma McGuigan:These are really different types of skills, because this is really about understanding language. It's understanding collection. It's understanding how the querying happens. So if I query on this word, what's that going to give me? You've got this notion of prompt engineers who are, but you know you can see how the prompt engineer is the person who writes the prompts. These roles are going to evolve really, really quickly, but nobody knew what prompt engineer was two years ago. You know what I mean it's like. So you can see how in that Gen AI space and that's the mechanism of how it works.
Emma McGuigan:If you then go to the use case, what's this so what? It's great that I've got an essay I need to write and I can type in the title and Gen AI will give me some ideas about how I might write my essay. But think about the use cases. Think about the use cases that say I'm this patient and I've got these issues. What might I expect my outcome to be?
Emma McGuigan:Being able to enter all that data query against a large healthcare database and come back with predictions which may or may not tally with the experience of the GP you're talking to. I mean, this is going to disrupt our lives. It's really significantly over the next few years and that's what makes this whole space so exciting. But you can see again the depths of skills. Now those data sets have to sit on cloud infrastructure. They have to be accessed in a way that makes sense. So you still need your behavioral scientists, you still need your engineers, and that's how it all sort of comes together. But that just gives you a little bit of a flavor of all those different skills that we need in this space and how exciting it is for people thinking about what their next career move might be.
Kayleigh Bateman:Yeah, and I suppose as well our listeners in particular, but anybody that's interested in going into those roles should not feel intimidated by the tech industry and going into, even looking into a career in either of those two areas. I think that's from our guests on here and people that I've heard that are interested in coming into tech they're always intimidated by is there a place for me? Is it going to be highly technical? But actually, as you said, even talking about cloud and a food app as an example, jobs you don't have to be highly technical and sometimes just dipping your toe in the water and seeing what is good for you and whether or not you move around from there. The tech industry is really good for that as well, isn't it? Once you're in, it is you are free to move around and try different things and to transition even your skills over from one technical discipline to another. I don't think many industries are like that. To you, it's we're quite excited.
Emma McGuigan:I think it's a really good point you may, and actually because it's evolving so fast. It's one of the fastest evolving spaces. These roles are continuing to grow and open all the time and we need the diversity because if we don't get the diversity, we're going to continue to train bias into our AI agents, and that's not a place any of us want to be and we all have bias, so it's naive of us to think we don't. So you need a diverse diversity of talent coming in so that we can end up with the best results possible and we have more stories. We can spend the rest of the next two hours talking about all the stories and where that came to life, but I think that's really, really important that we just people, are not scared, that they're confident about what they know and they're confident about their curiosity and their desire to be a part of something that's going to shape the next 10, 15, 20 years of our lives.
Kayleigh Bateman:Yes, and you mentioned a little bit about diversity. You've mentioned a little bit before about diversity of thought, which is something you very much have at Ascension. As a whole, do you feel the technology sector is inclusive?
Emma McGuigan:Well, there's a great question, I think. Loaded question, emma, it really is. I think when you ask the question about does technology have enough inclusivity, the answer is always that it could do better. If you look statistically, we're nowhere near a gender parity in terms of numbers. So you look at it from a race perspective and we're not near to what we should do, and so the answer has to be we're not there yet.
Emma McGuigan:Do I think there's opportunity for everybody? Yes, I do think there is, and I think we need to continue to push. We need to encourage our younger women, especially our younger women, to really understand the opportunities that can be ahead for them. And then we need to encourage everybody to stay and to continue to push the envelope, and I think we, until you get to a critical mass, that becomes a difficult thing, and I think we just have to keep working, working, working. We need to keep spreading the message of how great and diverse and enduring careers in technology are and how much fun you can have, because you know, at the end of the day, I do podcasts like this because I've had a great career. I kind of want to share it with everybody and I want to encourage other people to kind of take that opportunity.
Kayleigh Bateman:Yes, I love the fact that you mentioned. Actually there are kind of two problems we're trying to solve. Not just encouraging people in, but encouraging people to stay is a whole other ballpark. I completely agree with what you said. And what more do you think could be done to improve diversity and remove bias in the industry?
Emma McGuigan:So I think, with some simple things organizations need to do, they need to set metrics and they need to measure them. They need to measure themselves to those metrics, and I have no excuses on this. I think there's no excuse for this, and I think organizations get lazy. Honestly, I think we just organizations, as a sweeping generalization get lazy. So they the good ones set metrics, the really good ones hold themselves to those metrics and the really good ones hold themselves and then make them public, and so I think those things are really, really important and I think it's important. You measure entry, you measure that retention piece and you also measure progression, because without progression we're not going to change the game. And I think, I think those things are really important and I, we shouldn't, we should be beyond debate about whether it's fair if we promote a woman over a man because of a target that we've set ourselves, because we're rebalancing the network, the behaviors, the behaviors that we have all got used to rewarding, and if we don't set these targets, we just we're never going to change. So I, I can talk to that point for for hours, but I think that's really important. So the metrics piece and living to the metrics is really important.
Emma McGuigan:And the the third thing is we just also need to hold ourselves to be continuing to think about the language that we're using and the behaviors that we show, and they are. They're different. They are related but they are different, and we need to be aware of some of the language that we use that is steeped in paternal or military legacy, and most business organizations are have adopted over many decades a military or structure and they use military language and that well, a it was designed for a different purpose, because you wanted people to always follow unquestionably follow an instruction, and it was. It's not where we are with our businesses today, where we want. We want voice from the most junior to the most senior people. We want everybody to have voice and share opinion because that's how, that's how organizations thrive. That's a somewhat in conflict to a traditional hierarchy.
Emma McGuigan:We also need to watch language because you know we say we talk about, about, we use language that's associated with, with warfare all the time. We don't even realize it. You know you talk about. I was in the trenches with my team. We had our sleeves rolled up, we were in there getting dirty, and you and then, but we saw it because we hiked out and we made out the other side and you're like, oh my gosh, oh my God, because if you think about that, that's not really you know. And actually if you, if you look at the English language, it's the same most languages. There's a whole load of language in there that's quite, which has quite a heap of bias against it which can push some of your diverse people back and out. So I think language is important and I think the third thing is that we just need to give people space to speak out.
Emma McGuigan:And we've all had those moments in our career where somebody has made a decision on our behalf because they thought they knew best for us. And I was coming returning from maternity leave for the second time. I have three kids and the leader for the business I was in had changed while I'd been away and I was going to go back straight back into client work after I think I'd had about seven months maternity leave and the leader said no, no, no, emma, shouldn't you go back to client work? It's just back from maternity leave. She should do internal work and make it easy for her. And the guy I was working for said do you know, emma?
Kayleigh Bateman:I had to ask Emma.
Emma McGuigan:Exactly and he went. At the very least, we should ask Emma. I have asked Emma and he went no, no, no, you need to ask her again. She's just saying that. And of course, I did exactly want to go back and do client work and it's that thing that we don't presume. And I've heard stories of like well, we had two candidates, but it's about living away from home Monday to Friday, away from the kids, so we sent them out. Well, maybe the man didn't really want to go either because he didn't want to be away from his kids. And did we ask women, did we ask the man what they wanted? And I think we just we need to hold ourselves to account that we're not doing making those same behaviors that we have witnessed, because people jump to a bias that they thought was in the interest of the individual and they hadn't actually asked the person. So I think there's a thing there for us all to do and call it out if it happens to you.
Kayleigh Bateman:Yes, I love that. And just being mindful, as you said, just, you know, not making those decisions, I think being mindful about so many other things as well, and even what we do and what we put out in the industry. You mentioned cyber security earlier and we've even noticed at she Can Code. When we go to write stories about cyber crime, all of the pictures are hackers or men, and always you see that in the news there's always a man with his hood up and that doesn't make you think that women would want to come into the industry. There's always a male hacker, which is not always the case.
Kayleigh Bateman:But just to be more mindful and you said about language, there I had a discussion with a lady recently who kept saying that a space station was manned and she kept changing it and she said no, I want to say crude. She said it was crude by a team, but the language that we use you just kind of get used to it was manned by this team. Manpower. Yes, exactly, it's something we say every day, as you said once. I think people realise that and you hold the mirror up to somebody and say could you just be mindful of something? It tends to seep in and people usually are quite open. Do you have any advice for women looking to get into the industry?
Emma McGuigan:Yes, it's to, it's to get involved. So it's a bit like any, it's a bit like any Anybody I would be telling to get back involved, and I was. I was talking to a colleague of mine who's taken quite an extended career break with having children and it's like go back and get involved. There are lots of amazing networking opportunities from Younger girls who are looking to be in the tech space entrepreneurs, organisations like stem x go join those. Go meet other people who are on that same point in their journey. Because if you and it doesn't matter Whether you're starting out the first time or if you're a maternity returner, I think super blacks, tech mums is a fantastic organization.
Emma McGuigan:You can turn up at the BCS or the there there's the Westville company of IT. These people, they've amazing communities that you can go and be a part of and you can start to build your network. You can understand what other people are doing, what was their journey in. Listen to podcasts like this, find out. You know, just here are the people's stories because it will help you unlock the path, the right path for you, and don't be scared. And I think as soon as you start putting yourself out there at some of these networks. You start to realize there's so many people who are a little bit like you maybe not quite like you, but the little bit like you is all you need, and Then they will start. They'll. They'll have connections, get on LinkedIn, join some of the communities on LinkedIn, get to know people, but also go meet people as well. I think it's really important because then we build a support network around ourselves and I think that support network is invaluable.
Kayleigh Bateman:Yes, definitely. You mentioned tech mums and stem x and super fans of both a brilliant Networks and, as you said, just getting in and hearing other people feel the same as you. We hold hackathons throughout the year and we hope on last week about women returners and career transitions, and there were three ladies there that were nurses. They were transitioning into tech and just to come together and hear other people are feeling exactly the same way as them. Lots of ladies that attended had never been to a hackathon and it was a confidence boost for them. And but your right to get involved and just Something, yes, and we could talk for another four hours, actually not another two hours, but we're nearly out of time and I just wanted to ask you one last thing. You've obviously been in tech for some time, so we want to know could you share as the most valuable thing you've learned during your career?
Emma McGuigan:That's easy. It's to ask for help, and I think we can worry that if we ask for help, people will think we don't know anything, or If we ask for help, they'll think we are somehow inferior or We'll show any number of negative things. My view is asking for help is a great way of building a new relationship, it's a great, great well of cementing an existing relationship and it's a great well of way of putting people in and Remember, every time you ask somebody for help, they feel like you've made them feel good about themselves because they must have something to offer you so they feel a little bit better. So if you do nothing else, you've at least made them feel better and you might learn. You might, you might learn the thing that's going to help you with the problem that you've got. So my most important thing is never be shy, asking for help, because I just think it's we all need to help each other and we all need help every day.
Kayleigh Bateman:Yes, I love that. You know what. So many times on this podcast I've heard ladies say they're stepped into a leadership position and they've they fall. Everybody on their team expected them to know everything because they stepped into a leadership position and it's not like suddenly you know overnight everything. That's what your team is there for to reach out, ask and even outside of your team. Just asking externally as well can can also help. So lovely advice to end it on. Thank you so much, emma. It's been an absolute pleasure having you on here today. So thank you so much for joining us. Well, thank you for having me. Kaylee, really good. Thank you to everybody listening, as always. Thank you so much for joining us and we hope to see you again next time.
