July 30, 2024

Interview: Dishanta Kpatrick’s Unique Path From Self-Taught Coder To Front-End Engineer At Intuit Mailchimp

Intuit is hiring on POCIT.

Dishanta Kpatrick is a Full Stack Software Engineer at Intuit Mailchimp with an unconventional career journey. When she’s not at work, she’s learning to roller skate, renovating her house, and finishing her Cybersecurity degree at Kennesaw State University.

Dishanta first discovered her computing talent in high school but explored other paths before returning to it in 2012. She taught herself web design and development online, starting in Intuit’s tech support team and working her way up to an engineer. Now, she balances her job with her final semesters of college.

In this interview, Dishanta reflects on her nonlinear career path, the merits of apprenticeships, and the joys of Black community at Intuit Mailchimp. 

How did you first discover your talent in tech?

In high school, I took my first computer course with a lady named Miss Smith; she was the leader of the 4-H club. We were just learning small stuff like HTML and CSS. I guess she saw something in me, and she asked me to do the website for the 4-H club. When I did it, she secretly entered me into a county competition, and she told me, “You’re good at this. You need to pursue this as a career.” At the time, I wasn’t very receptive to it because I was in band, and I thought I was going to  go to school and be a band director or songwriter or something like that. 

I was teaching myself how to code. I started building little things here and there, like little pages, widgets, and stuff like that.

Fast forward to college acceptances, I was accepted into 15 schools or so. I had a lot of partial scholarships, but I didn’t have any full scholarships, and most of the colleges I was accepted to were out of state. My mom would not let me take out any student loans to go to college. So, I tried to go to a state school that was cheaper. I ended up hating that so I entered the workforce early.

Over the course of the next few years, I started and stopped college a couple of times until I finally got to a point where I was a little bit more stable with my job situation. During that time, I was teaching myself how to code. I started building little things here and there, like little pages, widgets, and stuff like that. From then on, I knew I really wanted to get into tech, and I thought [Miss Smith] might be right. Let me go and pursue this as a career. 

How did your career develop from that point?

I was looking for a new job when I came across Intuit Mailchimp with my mom. I saw on their website that they were training people in Atlanta to be on their tech support team. Once I got hired, they taught us the basics of API, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, because we had to learn how to troubleshoot HTML email. So, a little bit after that, I tried to chart my path to tech. I was still teaching myself, but I realized I needed something more. So, I ended up going to a full-stack web developers boot camp at Georgia Tech. Over six months, they taught me everything that I needed to know. 

After that, I was applying for jobs. I started to get discouraged because I had been trying to get into tech for a long time. I’d been teaching myself, I went to this boot camp, and I thought that having [that qualification] would help me. I was getting interviews but I didn’t get any offers, so I just decided to get more serious about school. 

From there, I went back to school to study cybersecurity. That’s the degree that I’m almost finished with now. Not even a year later, an apprenticeship program was launched at Mailchimp. I almost didn’t apply because I was so discouraged. I put my application in at the last minute, and I ended up getting in. Out of 40 or 50 people that applied, only five of us made it into the apprenticeship, and four of us became full-time engineers. That’s how I got into engineering, and I’ve been there ever since. 

What were some of the barriers that stopped you from considering tech as a viable career initially?

I was young, and I didn’t really have the foresight to know what my life would be like. Watching my mom in corporate America all those years, I felt like certain things would restrict me. I thought I wouldn’t be able to have as much free time and that if I worked more rigid jobs, there wouldn’t be enough room for creativity or enough energy left once I got off work. Even towards my mid to late 20s, when I started taking tech seriously as a career, I didn’t necessarily see myself working as a software engineer. I saw myself working more as a web developer who maybe had their own creative agency, building websites for small businesses or something like that. I didn’t even really truly consider it as a path because I didn’t really see anybody else doing it.

What does your current role as a full-stack engineer entail? 

I was hired as a full-stack engineer, but right now, I’m doing mostly front-end work. I work on the reporting and analytics side for Mailchimp. Basically, we build some of the charts and tools that clients see in the report section. We have features like Marketing Dashboard and Audience Analytics, where marketers can go in and see how their audiences are performing over time. They can see which campaigns do well and which ones don’t. We have SMS features now, too; those are the type of things that I build.

What’s the most challenging thing about your current job?

Honestly, I don’t even think the coding aspect is the most challenging part of my role. Because I’ve been on a climb for a long time, the biggest challenge has been staying focused on my goals. Surprisingly, it’s not the technical side, but it’s more so trying to keep myself motivated and staying on track.

As a Black woman, what’s been your experience of the tech industry and how is the culture at Intuit Mailchimp specifically?

At Intuit Mailchimp, we’re a little bit spoiled because we’re in Atlanta, and in Atlanta, you can pretty much sneeze and see a wealthy Black person, a Black celebrity, or an African American celebrity. You can sneeze and see 100 of us in tech, so the representation is certainly there. For Mailchimp, specifically, we have a huge ERG (Employee Resource Group). There’s a bunch of engineers, people of color in tech, African Americans in tech, and Black people in tech from all across the diaspora. So there’s an abundance of representation for us, and honestly there’s an abundance of support too. 

[I’m] a Black woman, my manager was Black and nonbinary, their manager was a Black woman, their manager was a Black woman, and their manager was a Black woman. That’s almost unheard of.

Last year was a really good time for me specifically because I’m an individual contributor, a Black woman, my manager was Black and nonbinary, their manager was a Black woman, their manager was a Black woman, and their manager was a Black woman. That’s almost unheard of. I was really happy and pretty proud of my position. I’ve been at this company for seven years, so I can’t really comment on the industry overall, but in my experience, when I’ve gone to tech conferences like AFROTECH and RenderATL, I’ve also seen a ton of representation. However, I know that a lot of my peers can’t always necessarily say the same thing. The representation isn’t always there. But right now, I think I’m in a pretty good position.


What kind of support did you find valuable while progressing your career?

When I was an apprentice, I had a technical mentor who is now my manager, and I also had a career mentor. My technical mentor taught me how to approach my projects, helped me challenge my assumptions, and let me know whether or not I was going in the right direction with my thought processes. They helped me expand my thinking. One big thing they’re telling me now is it’s important to have visibility in an organization. They had a lot of good advice for helping me get started out as an engineer.

My career mentor helped me advocate for myself. She’s actually the Senior Director of Engineering here. It’s been really valuable having people who represent me, showing me the ropes and saying, “Hey, this is where I used to be, these are all the possible paths, and you don’t have to necessarily do what I did, but you do have options. And this is how you can get to where you want to be.” Learning how to chart my career path and see what’s possible for me has been really helpful. My team is pretty helpful, too. I’m on my second engineering team, and this team has a lot of really heavy-hitting engineers. These people are really smart. And just being able to learn from them every day and have that support is really important.

Has any part of your career path so far surprised you?

Since I had spent so much time learning on my own, when I first started my apprenticeship, I realized that I knew a lot more than I thought I did. Getting through that apprenticeship was a lot easier than I expected it to be. And I was able to kind of get through my whole first two years on what I already knew; a lot of that was surprising. Now, my role is catching up to my knowledge or experience, and I’m having to do what I should have done in my apprenticeship. It’s kind of like I skipped a grade in high school. So that really did surprise me.

When you were teaching yourself, what kind of resources did you lean on?

The very first book I read to learn how to code was John Duckett’s book for HTML and CSS. That guy is amazing. I used to be on YouTube really heavily, watching videos by Traversy Media, Free Code Camp and Fun Fun Function. I would binge watch that stuff, “YouTube University” is great for everything.

Do you have any advice for people of color or other Black women who are looking to take a non-traditional route into tech?

I’m partial to apprenticeships because I think they’re great. You can save money on boot camps because they’re going to supply that for you. So basically everything that you would have done on your own, you’re going to do in a job, and then you’re going to be trained at the job for how to do the job. So that is my number one thing, but I do recognize that they may not always be accessible to everybody.

[T]each yourself as much as you can, the resources are there. Build that portfolio and then go find the work, it’s there.

I think creative agencies are also a really great way to break into tech, small businesses, or even freelancing and working for yourself doing just the basics: HTML, CSS, JavaScript. There are a lot of small businesses that need help with their websites and things like that. Every little bit of experience counts. 

Another potential strategy is to target businesses that aren’t in tech, as they may have a lot less competition in terms of getting that first entry-level role. The biggest thing is to teach yourself as much as you can, the resources are there. Build that portfolio and then go find the work, it’s there.

To learn more about Intuit and their career opportunities, visit their site.

Memuna Konteh

Memuna Konteh is a journalist and multidisciplinary writer who specializes in the intersections of identity culture and politics.