My Journey

 

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 how far back in terms of knowledge and skills I (woman) was compared to some of the guys in our year. Our class composed of about forty students and five of us were girls.

I did not know about html or css, but in that project I had to learn them. I started to feel unprepared for the working world I was stepping into. Surely enough when I stared applying for positions the feedback I kept getting was I did not have the experience or skill for the position. Two years went by and I still was not able to find employment in the technology sector. I had found employment but it was nothing to do with programming or computer science. I started feeling restless about what I was doing with my life. Due to some other reasons I left my position, thinking somehow this was a God sent opportunity to pursue my passion. I did not have the funds to enroll into some sort of program for skills upgrading. So I decided to start teaching myself the basics of programming.

I started with html and CSS, in my head I had worked it out that I could start by developing websites. At that time responsive websites had just become a thing, I think this tells you how young I am. With the motivation to learn and be better I was able to learn enough of these languages and other tools to help me build my first website. So I started developing websites as a freelance, I did this for a year. I was still applying for positions and by some miracle I got a call back for one of the positions I had interviewed with, the position was for a software developer. I was beyond elated at the same time extremely nervous I was about to step into unchartered territory.

Access to information has dramatically changed since then, when I started my position I knew that I would be walking into a place where I was probably two or three years behind current trends in development and all. But I also knew that I would be walking into a room full of men, some who would like me some who wouldn’t. I am so thankful that when I started they were two other guys starting with me and together we leaned on each other in this new ship. One of my adjustments was learning the culture of development processes in a group. I had never used online source code storage platforms like Git, or project management tools like trello or Slack. So I was quite overwhelmed but my desire to learn and know better got me through it.

Because I was officially starting out my developer journey I also had to find a focus, much like specialization. The project we were working on was to be developed using React j.s on the frontend and Node js and MySQL database.  When I had started developing websites, my vision was to dive deeper into all sorts of applications which meant learning and understanding backend development. So when it came to tasks assignment I was excited to try something new. However my supervisor at the time thought it best to give me front end tasks as I seemed to be good at those stuff.I had gotten the sense that the theory was that most girls were not cut out for backend development due to its rigorous requirement of logic. Being my first software position I quietly accepted the tasks to preserve the peace. What puzzled me was how the backend tasks were assigned to my male colleague even though this would have been his first time using the chosen languages of Node js and MYSQL as he was an android developer. It would be these little micro aggressions I would continue to face in this new environment. Despite all this hustle and bustle I stayed focus on my tasks, I learnt React js and new styling tools like materialize and updated CSS component.

To be continued....💜