Erin: The importance of diversity of perspective on a security team

Hi everyone. My name is Erin and I am a privacy engineer at Google. I work on speculative and emerging technology. So think of things that don't exist in the world, and that are coming within the next two to five years. My role is basically to take a look at all of the things that we are creating in terms of technology, and making sure that privacy is embedded in that. I am thinking for users before they even touch the product, making sure that when they utilize them, they'll have some form of trust in the engagement with that product. As well as knowing that we are protecting their privacy, things that they don't want to share or broadcast, and making sure that they're informed before they even touch the product. I always talk about soft skills being the most important thing over the technical skills. Because we can teach you anything but we can't teach you how to relate to people. That is something that you bring to the table. Diversity of thought and diversity of perspectives are very useful in understanding the world that we exist in. Because if we are designing products for everyday people, we need everyday people to basically help us understand those perspectives. Because I may look at something one way, but my colleague may see it another way based on their own experiences. And so, when you work together and come from different environments, you actually bring more equity and more depth to the things that you're looking at. And the perspective that you bring is the essential voice that is required in order to make a product better. When you look at people who work in journalism, or people who, like myself, worked in entertainment, they are bringing a different perspective for how they would tackle something. Or if we have a product where we are trying to convince a product team that maybe we shouldn't do this, it's always helpful to say, from someone who worked in journalism, do we really want this to end up in The Times? Probably not, right? And that is a way to come at people that, on the ground floor, they understand what that looks like. All of the experiences that you have had from the time you were born to now, they have been your experience. And you have to think about that in terms of where we're going with technology. When we're developing for a wide array of people, your experience may be someone else's experience. And so if we don't have you in the room, then we are missing the opportunity to actually bring something beautiful, I would say, to the equation. Which is why I encourage people, please come work with us in terms of technology. Get involved in STEM because the equity across product security, privacy, you name it, whether it be software engineering, everything requires a different voice. And it actually requires your voice.