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Expo Spotlight Panel
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Sundaythat is done. From a certain point,
money does not have an effect
anymore. It’s more about how
interesting the problem is you are
working on. So I guess everyone has its
own way to attract talent.
Terrence:
With the current high
competition with recruiting talents,
even for a big company, it is not easy. In
our case, we will need to compete with
a lot of competition in terms of
compensation and we need to really
encourage our candidates with all the
means that we have. For example, we
work on healthcare topics. And we are
trying to find people who can imagine
themselves
in revolutionising
healthcare, with the technology we
have. We are in Princeton, which is a
top school district in the United States,
and the housing prices are reasonable
compared to some other areas. So if
you are with a family and want a
decent house, this is a good place.
Things like that - you have to use all the
weapons to get top talents. Sometimes
you get them, and after a few years you
lose them again. So I think this will
never end.
Julie:
I had the advantage to work both
in a start-up and a large company, and I
appreciated the experience I have had
in both of them. I think the underlying
thing that appeals to people when they
are looking at an opportunity is: what’s
the work? If it’s a really interesting idea
or problem, that’s where they are
really going to gravitate to. Whether it’s
a big or small start-up, or a large
company.
Xin:
Our company is kind of in-between
a start-up and a big company. So I think
our advantage is that we have the right
resources like big companies have, but
also we have a start-up environment.
So this is something appealing to many
applicants.
Ralph: I want to change to a maybe
more complex topic. I was told several
times the joke that “in Computer
Vision, we have more Davids than
women”. So the next question would
be - what are we doing to have a
workforce to be more equal?
Julie:
This is a really hard problem. It’s
something that starts way earlier than
when somebody is looking for a job. In
middle school, 74% of girls are
interested
in
engineering
opportunities. But when it comes to
graduating high school, only 0.4% of
graduating women move into a
Computer Science degree. So there is a
huge break there and we have to
understand what that break is and how
we can improve on that. It’s a societal
issue in a lot of ways. It is very
challenging as a woman to move into a
science degree, but I think it’s really
important to have that diversity when
it comes to innovation and research.
Xin:
Just an example, we have female
engineers and some of them have
become leaders of the company, which
I think is very encouraging for female
colleagues. In our team, we have
female colleagues in deep learning and
they are just as good as the male
colleagues. I personally have two
daughters and hope that the landscape
will change.
Ralph: This brings me to a very
important point. How do we solve
these problems actually? From my
interviews I know that one answer
comes again and again: the need for
role models. It helps to show that
even when there are difficulties, if
Gender imbalance
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