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Hey TechSis

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  For the longest time I found it hard to reconcile my love and curiosity for technology and the thoughts that I wasn’t good enough. Even after each significant milestone like getting my degree or becoming a software developer, this thought now became when that I could cut it in the industry. I mean sure the predominantly men environment plus other issues added a whole new dimension to it but the truth was that even when I had proved to myself that I could do all those things that voice still remained. Coming up in the industry I would see women who seemed so sure of their abilities and walked with an air of assurance that were making it. One of those was a classmate of mine who graduated top of our class. I would listen to these successful women in tech talk about how you needed to be confident. No disrespect to them because they were right to an extent. But I would ask myself where was this illusive confidence that seemed to allude me, the way they made it seem was as if it was somet
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The Change is You!

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  I am the youngest of five siblings, growing up I never really thought I had anything worthwhile to say amongst the already four other voices. There was always someone to tell me what I should and shouldn’t do, how I should be and shouldn’t be besides my parents. And being an introvert did not help my case though I found my safe spaces among certain of my siblings whose names I shall not mention for fear of igniting some world wars. Growing up and going through different stages in life, my ability to speak up or find my voice did not get upgraded much. Though I always had an opinion, just never the courage to say it because I thought it did not matter much. Fast-forward to my college days, by this time I had somewhat formed a personality or had an idea of who I was becoming. It was at this point too I realized that every time I would see an injustice around my surroundings and wanted to do something to change it. Finding myself in a space where as girls we were treated unjustly only
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Imposter syndrome

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When I was in College, every time I walked into one of my computer science classes I could feel the unwelcome energy from the guys. Thankfully the class had some girls too, it was a class of around forty and of those about five were girls. In most cases I usually would just ignore it and go about minding my own business. But as time passed, and being only human there was a desire to be accepted by the group.  One thing I had noticed was that one of the girls who is till this day a close friend seemed to have their respect because she was usually top of the class.  The mindset of most guys at the time, was that this is a boy’s thing, so the only explanation of a girl’s presence there was that you were really smart. Even after I graduated and I would tell people mostly guys what I do the response was “Oh, you must be very smart.” The only problem is I don’t think I am the smartest person in the world, and while in college I certainly was not top of my class. But somehow this experience
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  A couple of weeks ago I was having trouble with one of the tasks on my ALX project, so I reached out to one of the backend specialization groups I am in.  I was able to have my challenged addressed and finish my project on time. It got me thinking about the power of a supporting community. A community can be defined as the condition of sharing or having certain attitude and interests in common. There are different types of communities that can be formed based on a shared interests, struggles, vision or beliefs. You can even have a community within a community, one such example is within a family were certain family members can form their own community based on shared interests. In this particular article I want to focus on the power a community has of lifting us when we feel we are at our weakest. My first software community was online and it came in the form of stack overflow, I was so surprised to find that they were people who I could relate to in my struggles in the developer wor
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My Journey Part 2

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  I continued working hard to deliver on my tasks but like with any projects there are certain tasks that are delayed or performed not according to the specification. This did not sit well with my supervisor, it seemed that regardless of how I performed at a task it never met his requirements even if those requirements were set by him. Now I am of the firm belief that the breakdown in any relationship is never on just one party but on both individuals, In my working relationship with my supervisor however it seemed like he was hell bent on making me the villain, by labelling me as the underperforming employee.   He seemed not willing to see how things could be resolved together. I cannot and will not speculate on his behavior but I do know that his views made it impossible for him to handle our working environment better through his comments that usually carried micro aggressions by referencing my gender when it came down to perform certain tasks.   Sadly enough I parted with the
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My Journey

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  Last week some of you commented on how you would like me to talk about the technical aspect of the job and my insight as a woman.   So here we are, I knew however that I could not give a full picture unless I started from the beginning. However because there is a lot to talk about this will be in two parts. I have a degree in Computer Science which I obtained some years back, you don’t need to know the actual dates. In case it reveals my age, lol. My degree consisted of an introduction to computer science and all the aspects related to it Networking, Programming, Database etc. However it was a program based on understanding the theory part of it and did not offer much room for practicality. In my first programming class I feel in love with it and concluded that, that was what I was going to do. As I mentioned the practical aspect of my degree was non-existent except for our final year project which I worked on with some of the guys. And it was during that project that I realized
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  Being Women’s month I thought it only right that I do something. A couple of months ago I wrote an article about my first experience with a computer that sparked my interest and love of technology. I talked about how, I had felt like an outsider looking into an elite club that I wasn’t invited to. How even after several years in the industry there were times I would walk into a room and I would feel like that little girl again seeking to be welcomed to this elite club. That my only way to defeat my inner demons was to tell that little girl that I never needed their invite to do what I love I just needed to do it. Then a few weeks later I was talking to my niece who was about to start college. Now my niece had used my laptop before mainly to get movies and series so I had just assumed she knew all about it. But on this particular day that she came to visit, she said words that stirred something in me, by announcing that she did not in fact know how to use a laptop. After gaining my
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