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
What made you decide to work in tech? Working in tech happened pretty organically, and was born from several interests I had as a child. Science fiction and video games were popular family pastimes and cultivated my interest in technology early on. My grandmother was the first in the family to get a computer, and whenever we visited, I would lock myself in her bedroom to draw characters in Microsoft Paint based on the stories I wrote in WordPerfect. Once I left New York City and went away to school,
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
Tell us about yourself and what you do? My name is Chandra Arthur, and I’m the founder and Chief Friending Officer at Friendish. The app is designed to eliminate the bias in friend finding that hopes to dismantle the shallow dating app dynamic for Millennials and Gen Z. How was your experience on Planet of the Apps. Planet of the Apps was crazy amazing! The show was my first experience of doing anything of that magnitude, and I honestly felt superly blessed to be selected. There were so many great
During an entrepreneurship talk, in Prof Darragh’s class while at Booth School of Business, I listened to Andrew Mason talk about ‘The Point.’ This was 2009 and Andrew talked about signing people up to collectively fight for or contribute to causes and initiatives that they cared about. Sort of a mass protest platform for the digital age. Andrew had amassed a list of do-gooders and would unleash it on all the necessary causes. It was similar to Change.org and had been started around the same time. Even if it was
What are you doing and how did you get into your current career? I’m working on the Growth Team as a Customer Success Director for Peg, a company that has built a suite of software for marketers to search, message, and collaborate with social influencers. It’s something that I love, and it took a bit of serendipity. Networking with friends (and friends of friends) and being honest with myself about what I needed from my next role was the key. After a grueling interview process, I landed what I would
“If you can’t fly then run if you can’t run then walk if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.” Dr. King Year: Spring 2016 Location: San Francisco Mood: Defeated I was a year into founding my company, Blastchat. Blastchat is a social messaging app, and unlike other messaging apps that focus on one to one messaging (WhatsApp — Facebook Messenger — Kik), we focus on one to many messaging. The value proposition for the sender is that people who want to
My mother always told me growing up that “If you want something done well, do it yourself.” I write stories about founders & investors from diverse backgrounds to address the lack of tech inclusion across the globe. The 15 entrepreneurs featured in this article embody Gandhi’s quote, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” Rather than complaining while sitting on the sidelines, they have taken accountability and started on the journey to build something bigger than themselves, a startup. Funding from investors by no means is a
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,
How would you describe what you do and what you work on? What I work on is called Squire. Squire is a backend platform for small businesses primarily focusing on the male grooming space first. We provide software for CRM, booking management, analytics, and POS [point of sales] systems. So, we offer the full range of tools. So, is there any customer facing side to it? Yes. So, in addition to having our backend management system, we do have a consumer-facing product to coincide with our backend management system. We
