3 “Happy Accidents” shaped my path to VP at Google
How a little encouragement helped shape my career moves.
Looking back at my career, my story is really about paving and exploring my own path, and along that path a few “happy accidents” helped to lead where I am today. My role at Google is leading an innovative and passionate team in partner engineering bringing new technologies (such as Google Assistant and Mobile Web Technologies) to the market. I have started building this new team since Summer 2017. It’s challenging starting anything from scratch but building for the future is very exciting.
How I came to learn to pave my own path —
I grew up in China in a strict home environment.
My mother challenged me even as young as 5 or 6 years old to be ambitious and to think big. Despite her “encouragement” telling me to “fly as far as I could”, she also limited the scope of my interests and studies; no dancing, no sports, just academic studying. It’s no surprise then, that as I grew older, I grew more rebellious and defiant. I chose the opposite of everything she wanted me to do. She wanted me to go to study to become a medical doctor; but…
I decided to skip college to become a flight attendant by chance (Happy Accident #1)
I returned to college after realizing that being a flight attendant for the rest of my life wasn’t wise, and then my mom wanted me to study to be an accountant and settle into a stable career and life. It was then that I decided to come to the U.S. for an exchange program just to gain a new experience.
Coming to the States was my Happy Accident #2
When I arrived in the U.S. at age of 19, I initially intended to return to China. However, after I experienced my first taste of academic and personal freedom, I made a decision to pursue a second degree in computer science , which was something that could not have happened if I stayed in the Chinese University System.
I had no doubt in my ability to be an accountant but I’d be a very grumpy one. Engineering, on the other hand, helped me to understand so much more about the world and made me want to create endless new possibilities.
I joined a startup and started my career in tech as soon as I finished my CS degree. Roughly 15 years ago, I came to Google and have honestly enjoyed every step along my way, growing together with this amazing company.
Google has always focused on finding and hiring the very best engineers. In fact, when I joined the company, my cubicle mate when I started at was a person who wrote one of textbooks I used in college!
It seemed clear to me at the time, that to stand out among these top engineers would be an uphill battle for me…
…and my interests were more centered at the intersection of people, business and technology. That’s when I decided (paving my own path) to be the smartest engineer in sales — I knew I’d be happier in a world that wasn’t exclusively engineering-focused. I enjoy working with and understanding people. And, I like to be in the business while continuing to grow my technical skills. It is incredibly rewarding for me to enable (or lead a team to enable) technology partnerships, and there are still endless new possibilities.
About two years ago, I had the very fortunate opportunity to go through a learning experience with 70 women engineers on my team. It is through that experience that I started to understand a lot more about how we, as women in tech, are more the same than different. I thought to myself, “how might we help and support each other’s growth?”
When I was studying Computer Science, I remember starting in classes with very few females (only 25%).
As semesters went on that number dwindled. I saw less and less of us, and in the higher level courses, I recall at times being the only woman in class. Throughout my career, as a woman and as an immigrant, being a minority never intimidated me but I am still occasionally reminded of my own struggle with “imposter syndrome” and my self deprecating behavior. Today I cherish and welcome the opportunity to collaborate with other women in tech and aim to do what I can to help them in their careers.
Happy Accident #3 created TOPPA@Google!
I will end my story with my Happy Accident #3; which also happened about two years ago. A group of long-time friends at Google wanted to celebrate my promotion to VP so we went out for lunch. They were proud that “I made it” and there was some strong interest in having a follow-up meeting to discuss career opportunities and challenges, so we decided to brainstorm how we best help support each other. Fast forward to six month later; that “follow-up meeting” turned into the inauguration of TOPPA@Google events, an initiative organized purely by passionate volunteers to help Asian Googlers to be more empowered, successful. To date, we’ve had two large, successful TOPPA events with hundreds of people attending each time.
Diversity, Inclusion and Equality have come long way in tech in the past two decades I have been in Silicon Valley, and there is so much work to be done still. I shall continue to explore and pave my path, and I wonder and welcome any other happy accidents I shall come across along the way.
Megan Pi is a @Google VP on the cutting edge of disruptive technologies. She’s an advocate for women empowerment (striving to be a role model for women of color, and people from diverse background), and is dedicated to reinventing a new set of corporate cultural norms to unleash the true potential in each one of us. Her desire is to create a cultural norm that accepts people of all kinds.
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