A few months ago, I received an email that often appears in my inbox. Its usually along the lines of “I’m a college student very interested in getting into tech, but I don’t study computer science, what do I do?”. I don’t consider myself the vanguard of all the necessary knowledge to answer such questions, but I do my best to answer based on my limited experience. Such is the frequency of these emails; I thought it would be smart just to make it into a blog post. That way I can
I am a Black, queer transmasculine person seeking to pursue a career in web development. I want to be able to build platforms to bring people together and make resources more accessible, especially for marginalized communities. I’ve spent most of my working life at non-profit organizations that empower girls and women; advocate for homeless and at-opportunity LGBTQIA youth; and create safer, more inclusive spaces. Three years ago, I stumbled into the tech world through a gig economy platform; one of my jobs was assembling product for an IoT startup. I
We’re hearing of Mark Zuckerberg’s possible interest in running for president. We refer to Elon by his first name. Bill Gates is the richest man in the world. And every college kid dreams of becoming a tech billionaire. There’s a certain ‘hollywoodization’ of entrepreneurship. It’s also much easier to start a business. Throw up a website using one of the many templates out there, host it on Amazon Web Services or GoDaddy, find a pain you think exists and go about trying to solve it. In some cases, folk even
I am a 22-year-old woman in tech currently working as a Junior Data Engineer. Two months ago, I worked in a customer service role, and I was very fortunate to be offered this role as a secondment. I am now almost halfway through my secondment, working with a great team of people. I am learning about programming in Python and SQL and solving problems within Big Data. My life was completely different three months ago, and I am here to share my story with you. My background Just three months
Writing code is not the only way to break into Tech. However, you can get paid to write in Tech. I work with engineers daily and trust me, if it wasn’t for us tech writers, a lot of the websites and apps you use every day would be a tad difficult to use and understand. So you may be asking, what does a tech writer do anyway? So glad you asked. The short version – we write instructions. The slightly more interesting version, we tell people what to do. Ok,
An article by Abadesi Osunsade [also featured in episode 61], a London-based entrepreneur of Hustle Crew. I don’t consider myself particularly risk-loving, but as the company’s priorities had changed, so too had my role. I deliberated the decision over a period of a week or so with friends and family and on a sunny May day in the Berlin office, I video-called my line manager and handed in my resignation. Sure, my colleagues thought I was crazy, but deep down inside in that moment in time… I realized the only person’s whose thoughts
I recently took the opportunity to head down to NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California to see the arrival of Juno from behind the scenes. I was there as a social media ambassador with a group of other thought leaders to share in NASA’s next big moment of space exploration. While I was there, I met people I would not otherwise meet; the scientists who had an active part in designing the instruments on Juno, the project managers who drove the mission forward and even the Assistant Director for
If you base your next career transition on what I like to call “shiny career articles”, all you need to do is polish your resume, ace the interview, and get hired. So, when I needed to make a career transition, I thought that it would be easy. Almost four years later, I’ve learned better. Unlike the standard career advice that you get from “experts”, we all know that the job market can be messy and complicated (and sometimes petty, but that’s another issue). Despite that, we shouldn’t feel overwhelmed or
While reading through Rovelli’s “Seven Brief Lessons on Physics”, (a great read if you’re searching for your next book, by the way), there was a story of the rivalry between Einstein and Bohr that resonated with me. There was a quote that captured the essence of what fueled both men’s success. “When Einstein died, his greatest rival, Bohr, found for him words of moving admiration. When a few years later Bohr in turn died, someone took a photograph of the blackboard in his study. There’s a drawing on it. A
