After months of working at SUSE, my Jungle Green t-shirt was finally recognized at a store. “SUSE?” the gentleman asked, pointing at the large white letters.
“Yes, I work there!” I responded, thrilled that I had the opportunity to engage in our mutual love of the chameleon, Geeko, “But I don’t work on the technology, I’m in Program Management.”
“Well, let me ask you this – what is the operating system on your computer at home?” he asked, inquiring to my level of SUSE-ness.
“Just the basic… Microsoft,” I responded.
He continued, “I have a virtual machine with Slackware 1.0 I’m running, and I’ve been trying to get my hands on something old, openSUSE older than 5.3.”
I breathed a sigh of relief when our conversation was cut short and he ran off to help another customer. Slackware? Virtual Machine? All terms I had just enough exposure to know what category they belonged in, yet not enough to carry a conversation. Despite the embarrassment, I knew I wasn’t alone. A 2020 study by the AnitaB.org Institute found that women make up 28.8% of the tech workforce. When considering open source technology, this number further shrinks down to the single digits.
Nonetheless, the number of women becoming cloud native practitioners is growing. Recently, Lynne Chamberlain, CEO of SUSE Rancher Government Solutions, and Denise Schannon, Director of Engineering, joined special host Katie Gamanji for a special feature of OCTOpod in which they discussed their contributions to Linux, challenges they have faced and shared inspiring stories on how they’ve overcome those challenges to get to where they are today.
