Trailer for the talk
Here's a sneak peek of the talk: Erica, a full stack, Cloud, DevOps engineer, and CEO, will talk about how she started in the tech field and resources she used to progress her developer career.
About the talk
How do you establish your career and continue to grow as a woman in a male dominant industry? As a Software Developer with over 8 years of experience in Full Stack development, Cloud and DevOps, I will share how I started in the tech field, what I wish I knew then, and the resources I used to progress my tech career as a woman.
This talk will cover
- Where to begin if you are new or transitioning into tech
- How to choose a company that values diversity and inclusion
- How to grow and thrive once you’ve joined a company and team
- How to plan your career and avoid shortchanging yourself
We’ll use Zoom meeting to hold and record the event. Register to the event to access recordings afterwards.
About the speaker
Erica Thompson is a DevOps and Cloud Infrastructure Engineer with 7+ years of experience. She’s currently the CEO of She’s Brilliant LLC.
Highlights of the talk
Why focus on getting women in tech?
For over 4 decades, there has been a gender gap in the tech space which has surprisingly worsened over the years. There is 1 woman in 5 people working in the industry today. The goal of She’s Brilliant is for the women they help get into tech to eventually serve on the Board of Directors, which is currently only about 37% of tech companies. What this means is there is 1 woman on most Board of Directors. Getting more women into leadership positions means diversity. Even in FAANG companies, the number of females employed at each company is 20% to 30%. Women hold 14% of all software engineering and 25% of computer-science related jobs.
Where to begin if you are new or transitioning into tech?
Step 1: Where do I start? Solve a problem
Solving problems leads to making things. Most things started with a thought, so find a problem that’s around you and aim to solve it. Erica’s first problem was that she wanted to build a kid-safe app for her sons to play games and watch things like “Stick with Mick” without being interrupted by advertisements that were not kids friendly.
Step 2: Which language should you start with?
This depends on what you want to build. Do you want to build an app? Do you want to build a website? Do you want to build a game? Or do you just want to automate things in your everyday job?
Step 3: How should I learn?
It depends on how you learn. Are you a visual learner who learns best from graphs, diagrams, and charts? Or are you an audio learner who learns best with audiobooks, lectures, and group discussions? Or perhaps, you learn by doing things, which is more hands-on. Are you the type that likes to hop into a problem and just start breaking it and fixing it, and breaking it and fixing it. You just have to come up with what works for you and start from there.
Step 4: Where do I find learning resources
Figure out the best way that you learn, then look for resources that’ll help you out. You can utilize books, online resources such as Udemy and Coursera, or interactive tutorials like FreeCodeCamp and bento.io. FreeCodeCamp and Bento.io are great because they take the thought process of having to figure out what you need to know and learn. It’s step by step, and you hop in, and you just stay in the environment.
Step 5: Beginner to intermediate
After you’ve done all the steps, and already have a job as a junior developer role, you ask what’s next. This is where the growth comes in, this is the time to get really good at solving problems, so if you learn how to break your problems down into smaller bite sizes, you can really solve most issues. For instance, if you’re going into an interview, start with what you know, take that small amount that you know and you look at the problem as a whole, and then you break it down to smaller sizes. Lastly, always be practicing. Even when you feel like you’re good, always take out 20-30 minutes out of your day to continue to remember and continue to learn.
How do you choose a company that values diversity and inclusion?
This includes gender, ethnicity, age, religion, race, sexual orientation, physical disability and more! Don’t box diversity and inclusion. You want to be somewhere where the employees feel valued and included in decisions, opportunities, and challenges. You want your voice and others’ voices to be heard. When you’re looking or thinking about a job, go on LinkedIn, go to the companies’ page, click “people” and scroll through and see if there’s anyone there that represents and looks like you. When you see someone who has a similar background, you can reach out to them and ask them all the big questions like:
- How do you feel about working there?
- Does your day end at 5pm or are you there until midnight?
- How are your weekends?
- What do you like about your company? Do you feel valued?
The next thing to do is to look at the executive team. You go to their board of directors and higher ups and see what they look like. If there’s no diversity at the top, then you might need to be worried about the diversity of the entire company. And then you go on there and see if they’re doing more things to include more women and others that do not look like them.