When and how did you decide to join the technology field (as a career)?
I started my career in technology field in 1983 with high motivation from a special faculty at National Institute of Development Administration while he was bringing the class to his workplace which is one of the top banks in Thailand. He took the class to the Data Center describing the various functionalities of the major systems/ applications. Most parts of the business i.e. products, services and business information analysis are dependent on the technology. At that time, I felt that technology is much more crucial than I ever thought of. Downtime in just a couple minutes can highly impact the revenue and image of business. So I thought this must be the challenging area I was keen to pursue.
Did you ever feel discriminated against in your work place because of your gender?
Luckily, the places I’ve worked are neutral from this kind of circumstances especially at TMB Bank. Competency-based is the work philosophy here. No any limitation on how far you grow as long as you can create value to the organization and shareholders. Besides the gender, it is also believed that there is a glass ceiling of career path for the people growing from support units like technology field, but here I even saw people from this field can go beyond my position. However, in some countries and organizations there might be gender discrimination situations as a result of culture complexity, but very few in Thailand.
How do you balance your work and family responsibilities? Do you think you have to sacrifice one for the sake of the other?
I accept that technology job is very demanding as it involved in almost every part of the organization. Banking services have expanded extremely to gain the competitiveness and customer satisfaction. For example, now we have the branches in department stores or crucial business area that open 7-day a week, the number of ATM and EDC expansion enormously, etc and these are rely on technology. However I think work/ life balancing is manageable as long as you put enough effort and set the right priority for the tasks in your life. It is not at the level of scarification, but the contribution occasionally.
Please describe your typical day in office and at home?
Most of my working days involve lots of meetings: management, problem solving, etc. Nevertheless, I set the time for monitoring project progress in overall, finding the innovative way to use technology for business advantage and process improvement, mentoring subordinates - which I think it is as important as the other major tasks –, and also giving them information/ policy update to ensure that everyone in the team will be aligned to the corporation. Occasionally I join the vendor seminar or research conference to update knowledge and sharpen my skill. At home, usually I spend time with my family together in the weekend as everyone is pretty busy on the working days. We often go out to have dinner together and sometimes go to the provinces for leisure activity. My hobby is reading, especially on news and management books, in order to get myself updated and enhance my job & life quality.
In the West, the proportion of women in IT is declining. Do you think the situation in Asia is better in this regard?
In Thailand, I even saw the number increasing not only in IT, but in the top level like CEO/ MD. If we are just back to the basic, the ratio of women/ men is increasing and the opportunity to reach the education is equal. IT careers are quite broad and open for both men and women to be able to select their preference path, for example application programmer, software engineer, system engineer, network engineer, database, etc. So I think the number of women in IT is changing naturally. In some countries, there might be some culture/norms relevant, but I think it is getting better as the education can be reached more evenly.
Women leave IT because they can and that men typically don’t have that alternative because they tend to be the primary breadwinners. Do you agree?
It is possible in some cases but not the majority as most of women have their own job and financially independent from men. There may be some area of IT that required intensive working time which might not be suitable when women are going to have family / baby, but this is also the same fact for other industries that have the similar working style.
Does gender diversity bring a competitive edge to IT companies?
Yes, but in some areas. For example there are some particular job that one gender is prevail over the other such as physical/ security related job or customer services.
Should IT companies consciously increase the percentage of women in their employee pool?
Yes, they should, but must be based on competency principle as well.
What are the benefits of doing so?
Men and women are equal in principle. There may be some advantage/ disadvantage relevant to gender, but this is like the jigsaw puzzle, if we can put the right pieces on the right positions, we will get the beautiful picture.
