Why should you read this?
Good question! So I would like to encourage women to join me on this exiting adventure of being a software eng...
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In my humble opinion, and using the not-always-compatible-with-software-world architecture example, almost anyone with basic bricklaying skills can build a ground floor house. You don't need any type of formal background in structure calculus, etc etc.
I mean, my grandfather built his own house and he didn't even know how to read.
That doesn't make someone an engineer. Solving problems at scale does. That's why my grandfather never called himself an architect :D.
It's sad, but now both a developer with 15 y.o. experience and a junior programmer can call themselves engineers. They can even use bigger words: architect, mogul, jedi, ninja...
Said that, if you are able to gain the right exposure and invest enough time in learning ( either via formal education, or self-taught ) you will reach a point where you'll be ready to build a skyscraper.
BTW, I believe your gender is irrelevant to the article .
The gender gap in our industry is HUGE and, in order to become a female software engineering, one must overcome other stereotypes that men don't usually face. As Angelika precisely pointed in the article:
I believe this is enough to point out that the gender in an article like this one is relevant.
I agree there's a lot of gender gap in the industry. But that will be solved with more and more knowledgeable feminine role models in STEM ( and that begins in elementary school) . And not by saying "you know what, hey women, it doesn't matter you're not good at Math, you can still be a software engineer".
I could agree with a "hey, beings, you don't really need to be good at math to do frontend development" , though.
Yes sounds great what you propose. But let's think in reality. School sucks. Why is that? Because some teachers suck. I had a great math teacher, that's probably why I loved it and even started studying it for 4 semesters.
But after doing that and now being an engineer. I feel that it is not a basic requirement. The only basic requirement is your self-esteem and willingness to learn.
You cannot expect that anyone has an amazing degree because they went to an amazing school. Not everyone is that lucky in life.
What I am trying to do here is basically being Beyonce. Gender doesn't matter. I just want to share that I am in this field. That I have a voice and that other women can follow me. If they just see articles from men they might be frightened.
That's all I'm saying.
We can talk about quality in a different article. But I did not talk about how you become the best of the best. Let's start somewhere.
Anyways I would be more than happy if you could help building this STEM in schools. Will help everyone.
And you have your opinion and I do have mine and that's ok :)
I'm happy for the feedback.
Yes! Gender is irrelevant. But that's the point! If it is irrelevant why are so less women with me in the team?
I don't think it is sad that a Junior Programmer and a developer with 15 years of experience can call themselves engineers. Why is that sad? Everyone has to start somewhere.
If someone wants to stress that they have more experience they can call themselves Senior or Stack or anything.
I think it really helps to call yourself what you want to become. If you cannot see yourself as an engineer how will you be able to reach there?
And speaking of names. Calling someone a junior might already affect of how they see themselves, their quality of work and their opinion. At least it was like this for me.
I feel very happy to hear the story of your grandfather. He is a doer! He did not care about how anyone would call him :)
And I completely agree, if you invest enough time and hard work, you can do anything :)
Let's do that!!
coding field is great because it really is what you said: it doesn't care. code is all product-driven and doesn't care what your skin color is, what your gender is, where you come from, or what your formal education is. anyone WILL find a job and be successful if you ...
... don't blame outside sources for your own lack of skill or initiative of learning
... are cooperative in teams and fair to coworkers
funny you mention the stereotypes... I've met way more crossfit athletes in software than a lot of other fields I've been around with, haha.
welcome and good luck!
Completely agree to what you say!
If you don't try to search for excuses for what you cannot do but rather find reasons for your success, life changes. You can be anything :-)
Haha that's so cool! Haven't had a crossfit athlete in my team yet, but still all of us are super divers. I love it.
Thanks for the positivity!
that's an amazing journey Angelika!
I'm also a kind of self-taught software engineer - I've graduated in Journalism.
I love the fact that you're empowering more women to the field - we DO NEED to have more of them for diversity of perspectives + professionalism improvs.
best of luck to you!
Thank you so much! I agree!! I feel that anyone (in this case women) who is not from this field can bring so much improvement by just having a look from a different angle.
Your story must be also really interesting! Would love to hear or read about it :)
In a (not-so-much) nutshell:
After graduating from Journalism in Brazil, I didn’t feel like going to the Communication business so I looked back to what passionated me in the past and started remembering the days I was programming game bots to IRC channels (I was around 13 yr old). Then, I started a kind of Java bootcamp sponsored by the state (or province) and after completing that I went to another graduation: Software Engineering.
Even before starting the classes, I’ve got an internship in one of the best SaaS companies of South-Brazil (rdstation.com) and started to really understand web development - using Ruby on Rails and jQuery that time. After 3 semesters of out-of-date content in the university, I dropped and kept working as a full-timer. 3 years later, I moved to Toronto - Canada - and got a job as a front-end developer in a bootstrapped company called EventMobi (eventmobi.com). I've just completed my first year working for them! 😁
Coool! That is super interesting! :)
My manager is also from Brazil! :)
Great spirit! Keep it :)
And good luck on your journey!
I totally support this every field in the world is coming to computing whether they like it or not.
I have friends who are doctors and they're learning programming not because they like it but they're compelled to as they have to complete their research.
Girls in tech are like finding Nemo on desert they're so rare. I'm happy about this change as we'll have cool work mates I'm already tired of working with XY genes.
Welcome to the site Angelika. All the best for your future journey.
Thank you :-)
Best of luck
Thanks!!
Pleasure!