ORLANDO, Fla. — Catherine Tan, a senior at UCLA, said she learned a lot last summer while interning at Tumblr, a social networking site that’s in the midst of big changes. She developed her skills as a software engineer, and said she had a positive experience in the workplace, something that’s not always true for women in tech.
Just steps away, some of those reputations were being pressed on recruiters from about 300 companies that had all converged on the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando for the Grace Hopper Celebration — the largest conference of women in technology, which also doubles as a job market. The tech industry remains far from gender parity, and in interviews with NBC News, women in various stages of their careers said they were finding ways large and small to cooperate with one another and push back against male dominance. The thousands of young female workers who are entering the tech industry through channels like this one are taking lessons from the recent sexual misconduct scandals, and considering ways they can reshape the places they’ll work.