Hashnode's #WomenWhoTech writing challenge
Background
In my first Outreachy Internship blog post in May 2021 - meet the latest Outreachy and Ushahidi Intern, I wrote briefly about myself, my education, the work I was doing at the time I decided to start learning to code; and how my health was also instrumental to my getting into tech. So I will just focus on some other aspect(s) of my tech journey in this blog post. I will start with parts of my life that are not tech-related, talk a little about my now very "techie life", and then finish up with anything that comes to mind by the time I finish writing this blog post.
If someone had told me ten or five years ago that I would be in tech or ever carry the "developer" or "engineer" title, I would have told the person to get out of my face (that's my way of saying "I would not have believed it"). For some other people, it may have been some other person(s) that told them that tech is not for them or they don't belong to tech. In my case, I was the one who didn't see myself as "good enough" to be involved in tech. I just saw it as something way beyond me. I don't know why but, I do think that the discouragements I have experienced in the past (in some other areas of life) may have contributed to the development of this thought in my head. The discouragements I have experienced are mostly associated with my gender (being a female) and my health (including physical appearance).
When I was much younger, if the discouragement had to do with my being a girl, then I would try to overcome this feeling by competing with boys (my soccer skills in primary school, my academic scores particularly in secondary school, my guitar strumming and fingerpicking skills while studying accounting at the University then - yup! "boys" feared me 😂). If the discouragement had to do with my health situation, then I would try to overcome the feeling by doing more than my health would naturally permit me to do to show that "I can do it (too or even more)". Well, I don't do those anymore, and I don't think they were great ways to respond to those thoughts and/or discouragement thrown at me, now that I think about it.
My tech story, things I discovered and learned
I started learning to code in December 2018 (HTML and CSS in 2018, and then javascript in late 2019). I did not "grow the balls" to start applying for (remote) software engineering or web development internships/jobs until towards the end of 2020. Here is a summary of my (tech) experiences between October 2020 and April 2022:
- Open source contributor (Ushahidi, Code Collabo)
- Outreachy Software Engineering Intern (Ushahidi)
- Program Assistant and mentor - Andela Learning Community (Google Africa Developer Scholarship program)
- Product Engineer (Catlog)
Every single experience in my tech journey is important to me. I am proud of them all and I am glad they happened to me (including the job application rejections 😉). I remember asking for feedback during an interview (for an internship) in early 2021. In the feedback email, I was told to go and get real-world experience. I became annoyed and was like... "and where will I get the real-world experience if all of you are rejecting me - even internships? Since you people won't give me the experience, I will create it". That is one of the things that lead me to start building (Code Collabo) open-source community on Github, even when there was no other contributor other than myself (in the beginning). The things I learned while building this project were useful when I finally became an Outreachy Intern, and in the other experiences listed above. I wrote extensively about my Outreachy Internship experience. You can find the links to all my Outreachy blog posts in the think about your audience post (I will try to create time to write extensively about other experiences too).
This journey has been one of discovery - how I don't need to compete with any male or injure myself to prove any point to anyone. Instead, I have learned to channel all that energy into helping myself and others regardless of gender. Participating in open-source communities/activities was one of the things helpful to discarding such a competition mindset. Well, about the "injure myself" part... We all know that developers/engineers are guilty of not sleeping or getting enough rest sometimes (I guess we are all working on that... aren't we? 😂). I got to find out that as great as people say my writing skills are, I am not so great when speaking - my failed talk at the #WomenWhoCode frontend chat show in October 2021 is proof of this. But I'm working on it. I did this short presentation on #100daysofGADS as a Program Assistant that people said they thought was cool... I am hoping to share a very huge success in speaking one day.
Every experience counts, even the non-tech-related ones
For me, every experience counts even if they are not tech-related. I remember saying this to an Outreachy applicant who was thinking it is impossible to write a good essay in 200 words or less:
...Outreachy's essay is similar to writing a song. You have so much to convey to people in just 4 lines. You can tell a full story in less than 100 words. And it will still be very understandable, deep, and probably catchy depending on how you write it...
His initial application essay got accepted 🥳 in the end. I also briefly shared in one of my Outreachy blog posts that the knowledge of shapes on the guitar was helpful in a very tasking code-splitting task. The later part of this tweet I wrote not too long ago explains my tech life better:
Final words
There is a lot to still work on and achieve, but then, I have learned to celebrate my wins so far (however small or big they may be). I am grateful to everyone who supported me, contributed to my growth, gave me a chance, or believed in me at one point or the other: Family, mentors, employers, the learning communities, developer communities, and the open-source communities I have been part of. I didn't have time to compose this blog post as I would love to, but I hope this will suffice.
To Mary, and anyone who needs to hear (or read 😉) this:
- You don't have to compete with anyone/gender or do more than your health allows you to prove that "you can do it" or are relevant.
- You are good enough to be here (in tech), don't let past or current discouragement get in the way of your success. Nothing is too small to be part of your tech experience, even the non-tech-related ones.
Apart from my personal blog, you can find more content I have written on Code Collabo's blog. Find me on github, twitter and/or linkedIn.