It’s no secret that our industry has no shortage of challenges when it comes to diversity and inclusion in the workplace. So if diversity matters to you, how do you find the companies that actually live and breathe it? We talked to Engineering Manager Leighton Wallace about his experience as a black man in tech, why diverse teams make better decisions, and how to find a company that actually puts in the work to create an inclusive environment. What do you do at Lever? I joined over three years ago
Lauren Reeves received her Computer Science Engineering degree from the University of Michigan. She currently resides in Oakland and works at BlackRock on various technologies as a software engineer. Being very passionate about engaging more minorities in STEM fields, in her spare time Lauren serves on panels, speaks at conferences, writes a blog, teaches coding, and boxes. This article was originally published here by Women of Silicon Valley When did you know that you wanted to work in tech? I heard my first calling to tech when I was pretty
Originally published by Wogrammer here. For Kishau Rogers, a love of technology starts with understanding the problems it can enable her to solve. “I like the impact. I need technology to have some meaning behind the use.” Drawn to the field of computer science while a college student at Virginia Commonwealth University, Kishau took her first job as a programmer when she was a junior in college and has been building software ever since. “I worked primarily in the research, health, and social service space, using tech to create solutions to
This article was originally posted here by Wogrammer. When Olivia Horace started high school, she intended on becoming an explosives technician. While it’s hard to beat the appeal of blowing stuff up, an inspirational high school teacher helped her discover she had a talent for computer programming and she turned her interests to software engineering. She found the world of programming purely by chance. Oliva was supposed to be in a woodworking class but was placed into a computer science class instead. At first, she hated it, but once she
In May 2018, Twitter officially released the Account Activity API to help developers build solutions that enable businesses to create better customer engagement experiences on its platform. On the team of engineers that worked on the API is Babatunde Fashola, a Nigerian software engineer that has worked at Twitter for the past three years building products now used by millions of people around the world. Many Nigerians may recognize the Twitter software engineer’s name as that of the former Lagos state governor and current Minister of Power, Works, and Housing.
Netflix is hiring on pocitjobs.com In his career of more than 13 years, Chris Cochran has witnessed how the cybersecurity industry has changed and gained in popularity. Now, as a threat intelligence lead for Netflix, he is on the frontline of innovation, dealing with threat issues that no one has encountered before. Speaking at a high school event, Chris Cochran tells the story of the Bangladesh cyber heist. A group of North Koreans allegedly used the Swift financial system to defraud the US Federal Bank account of Bangladesh Bank of
Tell us about your personal passions! I’m incredibly passionate about increasing diversity in tech and making sure minorities are equipped with the proper skills to excel in the space. Over the last ten years, I’ve only had the privilege of working with a handful of minorities. Diversity and inclusivity in tech is a problem, and we can no longer blame it on the hiring pipeline. We have to be intentional and create a space that works for everyone. What’s one childhood lesson that you still carry with you to this
BetterUp is hiring on pocitjobs.com Long before working for IBM and BetterUp, Bryan Hickerson initially hesitated to pursue a career in programming. “Computer science has a reputation for being very difficult,” Bryan says, “having impostor syndrome, I thought that maybe I wasn’t good enough to do that.” In the 1990s as a young Black American, Bryan couldn’t find a role model in the tech industry he could aspire to. It was his father, a systems administrator at Boeing, who encouraged Bryan’s interest in computers and programming. “We actually built my first
Originally published here via Wogrammer Nettrice Gaskins’ technology journey began in a seemingly unlikely place: an arts high school in Louisville, KY. “I was on a visual arts track. During my junior year, a teacher who taught pottery decided she wanted to teach computer graphics. So she recruited students in their senior year who needed to take an elective. Initially, I was not interested in computer graphics, but she opened up a new area of interest for me, and that work is what got me into college.” Nettrice’s winning computer
Originally posted by Wogrammer. Victoria Chávez’s teenage rebellion was taking computer science as an elective in high school. Her mother and grandmother had immigrated from Guatemala to Chicago for a better life for Victoria and had no idea what computer science was, but they noticed that people working with computers on television did not look like Victoria. They were hoping she might become a doctor. But Victoria was “blown away by all the cool things [she] could do through programming and by the sequential thinking and amazing problem solving it
