Margie Levine didn't set out to become a role model, one of the rare women who have achieved top-level positions in the Silicon Valley without leaving the highly technical side of engineering and moving into management or marketing. In fact, she didn't even set out to be an engineer.

Levine, who grew up in Evanston, Illinois, arrived at Michigan in 1981 intending to major in philosophy or political science. It wasn't until she began dating a computer science major that she became interested in how computers worked.

"I struggled because I had never worked on a computer. I didn't know the basic tenets of programming, like for-loops and if-then-else's [see Glossary—Ed.], and it was difficult for me at first," Levine says. "But gradually, I got kind of addicted to it. We'd be with a group of friends and we'd spend these late nights in the computer lab working until 5 a.m. trying to figure out this program or another. I used (computer punch) cards my first year—we didn't even use a terminal!"

The camaraderie with her fellow students during those late nights in the computer lab was the high point of her education, Levine says. "It was just a fun way to work together with people—you were all working together to solve a problem, all doing the same thing and all suffering and struggling. I really think that's what got me focused on computers. And that's actually what I still like about it."

Spinning off from SGI

Photo by Will Woodford Levine

Levine may have found computer programming a struggle in the beginning, but she definitely found her niche as a software architect. She's currently chief technology officer (CTO) and director of software of ReShape Inc. in Mountain View, California. At ReShape, she has helped create a fully automated design flow that gives chip designers the flexibility to choose a variety of design flow parameters. Based on a combination of commercial and proprietary electronic design automation tools, this flow enables ReShape to provide semiconductor companies with fast, cost-effective solutions for a wide range of tasks, Levine says.

Levine and chip designer Paul Rodman founded ReShape in 1997 with the rights to automation technology they had developed while working together at nearby Silicon Graphics Inc. In the high-tech world, such spin-offs are not unusual.

The company has created a "meta-tool" (see glossary) that can automatically schedule and launch thousands of individual steps in the design process, speeding the time it takes to design a computer chip from months down to a matter of weeks.

They leaped before they looked
Levine, 37, says co-founding a company and learning how to run it has been exciting. "We didn't know what we were doing," Levine admits, describing how she and Rodman started the company without even creating a business plan. "We decided on a whim to do it on our own. We were fairly naive. I think others must do it differently-research it before they jump in."

When they failed to garner venture capital funding initially, they didn't give up. Instead, they took on contracting jobs, adding new people as the jobs got bigger while keeping the rights to the software they developed. ReShape operated for three years without venture capital funding before receiving $7 million last year. The privately held company has grown to include 15 employees.

Unlike many software directors who focus solely on management issues, Levine tries to maintain a deep understanding of the technical problems her team is trying to solve. "I wear two hats," she says. "When I'm wearing the software director hat, I have to deal with schedules, hiring and team dynamics. But the real fun is in wearing the CTO hat, which lets me participate in technical debates and help figure out solutions to problems. I'd love still to be able to go program the solutions to those problems, but generally time doesn't permit that anymore. Fortunately, there's still enough of my old code around that sometimes I get to dive in and fix a bug or two."

Her code encompasses a variety of programs, each represent a piece of the design puzzle as well as the "infrastructure" code which ties these programs together in an automated and individualizeable manner.

Curious About Artificial Intelligence
During her undergraduate days, Michigan's computer classes were part of the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, not the College of Engineering as is the case today. "I probably wouldn't have ended up an engineer had computer science not been part of Liberal Arts," she says. "I'm sure I never would have thought then to join the Engineering College!"

Her undergraduate work focused on artificial intelligence, which was the hot topic at the time. "That was interesting, but it's very far away from the computer," she says. It wasn't until she took an assembly language programming class during her senior year that she discovered her passion for highly technical work.

Levine, who received her bachelor's degree in computer science in 1985 and a master's degree in computer engineering in 1987, says she got an excellent, well-rounded education at Michigan, but most useful was the foundation in problem-solving that she got during her computer classes. She cites as an example having to write a program that figured out how six city buses could get from the bus station to their destinations on different routes and back in a minimum amount of time.

Her first response to such assignments was always the same: "You'd look at it and go, 'I have no idea!'" But as she learned to program, she learned a way of thinking and breaking down large tasks into manageable pieces, a skill she uses every day on the job.

Women's Place in High-Tech
The research is overwhelmingly troubling: Despite efforts to encourage more young girls to succeed in math and science classes, relatively few will go on to major in a technology-related subject in college, and fewer still will enter tech-related careers.

Early this year, two new studies were released showing how little progress has been made:

• A study by the University of California-Los Angeles found that female college freshmen were as computer-literate as men, but men were twice as likely to rate their skills as "above average."

• An Arthur Anderson Growth and Retention of Women Project study showed high school girls were five times less likely than boys to consider technology-related studies in college or technology-related careers despite being equally computer literate.

"That was a really great real-world experience," the first time she put her classroom knowledge to practical use, she says. She now wishes she'd participated in an internship program during her undergraduate studies also, and hopes her young company will one day bring in student interns. "We should put something into the next generation coming out of school because these students are going to be our workforce in just a few years," she says.

The Motherhood Balancing Act
Giving birth to Lila in December 1999 has forced Levine to put more balance into her life. She envisions eventually leaving the company—although not for at least several years—and possibly moving into philanthropy. "I'm looking forward to the unknown after ReShape makes it. I feel like I've done computers now—it's fun to think I'll go back to school, find a new niche," she says.

Before becoming a mother Levine would "get so obsessed with a bug that sometimes I'd go back to work at 11 p.m. and stay until 6 a.m. I think you have to be forced not to work like that." Now, she makes herself leave work at 5 p.m. each day, even if it means leaving during a meeting or cutting a conversation short. Even software bugs, she has learned, can wait a day.

"It's frantic, I have to say," she says, describing cramming what she used to spend at least 12 hours a day doing into no more than eight. "I've stopped answering my phone, I've stopped answering email sometimes. People are like, 'You're never there. I can never reach you.' I tell them, 'Nope, no time to answer the phone. I'll call you when I'm in my car.' I make extensive use of my cell phone," she says, laughing. She's not kidding, either. Our half-hour trip between her home in Menlo Park and ReShape headquarters in Mountain View was filled almost non-stop with telephone conversations with friends, family members and colleagues. But leaving at 5 is worth it, she says, because "in the end, your work is your work. It's your family, your friends, who are going to be there for you."

What's Ahead for Lila?
When she hears the statistics about girls and science, Margie Levine hopes the current pattern won't be an issue as Lila grows up. But Levine may have her work cut out for her in teaching Lila to love computers and the Internet. By 14 months old, Lila had already learned that the computer could be competition for her parents' attention. Levine says she and her husband, Krist Roginski, who consults in the electronic design automation field, quickly learned not to work from home while Lila is awake.

"She hates the computer; she sees me sit down at it, and she tugs on the cord that attaches me to the Internet," Levine says, chuckling before getting more serious. "It's very difficult. You feel sort of torn. You're in the middle of maybe responding to someone or fixing a bug, and here's your kid now, and she's crying and wants your attention. So when I'm here with her, I'm focused on her."

Aviva L. Brandt is a free-lance writer based in Portland, Oregon.

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