5 minute read
Tan Lee Chew Chats About the Importance of Women Participation in Tech
THE GREAT TALENT CRUNCH: Finding the Missing Half
TAN LEE CHEW
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Senior Member, SCS Honouree, SG100WIT List 2021 President, SCS Women in Tech Chapter President Commercial, ST Engineering Earliest Tech Experience: Lugging around a Macintosh Portable (about as heavy as a sack of rice) Currently Reading: HBR Emotional Intelligence series article on Resilience
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TraceTogether Last Googled: Ian Bremmer on big tech becoming geopolitical actors Pet Topic of the Moment: Digital skills
Favourite Way to Relax:
Walking and golfing
With tech giants from Alibaba to Zoom setting up headquarters in Singapore, the tech talent crunch is getting real. While we produce 2,800 tech graduates every year – an estimated 60,000 tech professionals are needed over the next three years. How are we going to make up for this shortfall – and can women be key to solving this? We speak to Tan Lee Chew, President Commercial of ST Engineering to find out.
Q: Question, LC: Lee Chew
Q: We’ve heard a lot about the tech talent shortage – and calls for greater women participation. What is your take?
LC: The fact is that we just don’t have enough digital talents, and the pandemic has accelerated the race for great talent. This whole shortage is driving the entire industry to think beyond the resource pool coming out of universities, and making us realise that we cannot ignore half of the working population. On the bright side, findings show that while women only make up 29% of tech graduates in Singapore, they make up 41% of the tech workforce1. Which means Singapore is already doubling down to attract women from non-tech backgrounds.
Q: You graduated with a degree in philosophy yourself. How did you end up in the tech industry?
LC: I got into the industry by chance. I wanted to do something different after two years at the Ministry of Finance, so I went to interview for a job selling Apple Macintoshes. I remember the interviewer asking me, “You have no IT background and no sales background. Why would you be successful in this job?” Then maybe to scare me off, I was asked to submit a paper on how I would market the Macintosh.
That afternoon I bought every Mac and Apple magazine there was from a bookstore. The more I read, the more intrigued I was by the technology and its potential as a productivity tool. To this day, I don’t know how my paper fared. But I landed the job – and I like to think my resolve moved the interviewer to give me a chance. And over the years, my tenacity and adaptability continue to serve me well. I relish rising to challenges in a fast-paced industry – one that allows me to be always learning and doing things that are new and foreign to me.
Q: A recent study showed that 50% of surveyed women tech workers drop out by age 352 . Why is this so, and how was it different for you?
LC: I can’t say if that figure is the same for Singapore, but I can think of a few reasons. Working in the tech
industry can be very consuming – it is not for everyone. If you add to that society’s expectations of women playing multifaceted roles and the fact that tech is a male-dominated industry, you can see why there’s a high dropout rate of women workers.
For myself, there were two things I learnt when I dropped out of tech for a couple of years. When I became the Senior Vice President for Sales in State Street Investment Bank some years back, I learnt that – first, I really love tech after all. There’s so much sharing and energy in tech, it’s always vibrant and changing. That’s not necessarily something you find in every industry. The second thing was that many skills are transferable. I knew I could apply my sales skills, strategic thinking and ability to operate at different levels across multiple countries in different job roles. I guess these moments liberated me, because I realised that I could do almost anything I’m interested in. As long as I continue to learn, add value and make a difference.
Q: What about further up the career ladder – when women become tech leaders?
LC: There are plenty of leadership traits that are gender neutral – things like being authentic, visionary and inclusive. Early in my career, building inner confidence – and knowing I didn’t have to be like men to be successful was important. Women can lead in ways that are no less charismatic than their male counterparts. And there may be some areas in which women do better simply because they inspire and see things differently.
A female leader in any organisation is in a very unique position. Having more women leaders will encourage diverse hiring – it has a natural halo effect. The other thing is that leaders set the tone for any business. Being in a leadership position, women can shape conversations and put in place mechanisms to support women workers in different phases of their life. Deliberate effort in developing female talent is necessary in enabling us to better build a bigger resource pool and a resilient industry capable of creating relevant and needful solutions for our societies.
How does women participation contribute to better business for everyone?
What is the showstopper for women to join tech? And progress up the career ladder in tech?
I am looking forward to the day when… What are must-have attributes for women to succeed in tech?
What is an advice you have for women who are non-tech native and thinking of joining the tech industry?
