Subhasree Mandal Inspires Female STEM Leaders at Google
By Keily Gupta
Subhasree Mandal is currently a distinguished engineer at Google, where she is paving her own path to make an impact in STEM as a woman. Mandal was born in India, where she lived until she graduated from the Indian Institutes of Technology, commonly known as IIT.
After attending I.I.T., she traveled to the United States and then received her master’s degree in engineering at UC Santa Cruz. Later on, she studied for a second master's degree in mathematics at Stanford before becoming a long-time employee at Google.
Mandal is currently in charge of a team that helps to build and grow Google’s backbone network worldwide, ensuring that everything is up-to-date and functional. Mandal described it as making a tunnel from one server to another.
Mandal has had to blaze her own path in a historically male-dominated field of work. When she was younger, there were typically more boys than girls in her classes. During her high school years, there were 70 to 80 boys in her class with five to six girls. After graduating from I.I.T., she immigrated to the United States for college and joined the workforce shortly after as an engineer in the technological direction.
One hurdle Mandal battled with when immigrating to the United States was dealing with a completely different environment and language that she had to become accustomed to. In addition, during her college time, Mandal had to learn to speak up for herself and find the courage to pursue what she believed was right.
“[During my time at Stanford], at the end of each semester, I would think to myself, ‘Oh, that’s it, I’m not doing this anymore,’” Mandal reflects on her experience. “When the next quarter [would start], I would think, ‘Oh, if I stop here, then all the work that I’ve done so far would go down the drain. And I can’t have that happening.’”
Furthermore, Mandal shares that she has struggled with her work-life balance throughout her career. Mandal has needed to be able to balance her job and also take care of her two young children simultaneously. She has dealt with feelings of inadequacy while maintaining this balance, especially when she has witnessed her male coworkers staying later to work more hours. Additionally, Mandal has also wanted to be able to spend more time with her children because her father played such a big role in her own life, inspiring her to do the same for her own children.
“My dad has always inspired me... he’s a math professor and he used to teach me math [during high school],” Mandal recalled. “He taught me how to problem solve... he used to give me a lot of interesting problems as a kid.”
Mandal rose through the ranks at Google and ended up being promoted to a distinguished engineer a couple of years ago. When asked about the application process, Mandal commented that the process was quite challenging. When she was promoted to manager, Mandal had to start hiring people to work under her team. However, there were new skill sets that had to be learned.
“I was told that I was too intimidating to the people I was interviewing,” laughed Mandal. “Because I had the [idea] that I had to be very strong, and I think I was a bit too much for them, especially since they were already nervous when interviewing.”
When talking about her work experience, Mandal explains that “[she] joined as a junior engineer. Over time, as [she] gained more seniority and more experience... And demonstrated more confidence. [She] gradually got more responsibilities and then the role grew into [what it is today].”
Mandal also commented that when she was in her manager position, she “really liked [watching] junior engineers grow. It was really rewarding when [she] hired a junior engineer and [saw] them grow and become independent engineers themselves.”
Mandal’s current job focuses on solving problems in terms of networking. However, she believes that when the future generation grows up, they’ll have new problems that need to be solved.
“[Students should] keep their eyes and ears open and learn how to solve problems,“ Mandal advises.
“[They also need] determination, no one has a smooth path. There will be failures, there will be setbacks... and [one should] follow your dreams,” Mandal states, recounting her own journey towards the prestigious job title she holds today.
Mandal is a wonderful role model for young girls to look up to when faced with challenges in life, and she hopes to inspire more females in this profession.
“I would encourage [young girls] to think of what they really like, and if they like problem-solving [or] math, they should absolutely pursue STEM,” Mandal said. “They should get rid of all their hesitation. You should have people of all backgrounds, men and women, to create a rich, innovative solution.”