This post was initially published by Abstract! It highlights the career achievements and thoughts of Senior Front End Engineer Andrew McCloud. What personal passions bring you to Abstract? Design communities! I’ve been installing/building software for managing communities of designers since I was in high school. Shoutout phpBB, celerondude, Pixel2Life! In 2010, I attempted to create something similar to Abstract called Pixelcloud, inspired by Facebook’s internal design collaboration tool. What’s one childhood lesson that you still carry with you to this day? I can usually avoid the pain of finding out something on my
From the day I realized I was destined to be a coder, I knew I was going to be an underrepresented group in more ways than one. It started to hit me in the few classes I took throughout grade school, but I didn’t realize how much of a minority I was until college. I’m lucky that for the most part, I have been able to fit in with my other software engineering peers. But there is still a lot that I have realized about being the only woman of
Two years ago, I decided to radically change my career from nonprofit STEM education to software engineering. I had no background in coding, outside of a single programming class in 7th grade and a little HTML when I was a teenager. I entered a coding bootcamp, Ada Developers Academy, in January 2018 and had full-time software engineering offers from two of Seattle’s tech giants in December of the same year. Being a nontraditional Black female software engineer, preparing for the interview process began as a terrifying and mysterious endeavor. Through much
When Justina Sanchez first began working at TÜV SÜD 15 years ago, her role had absolutely nothing to do with engineering. She began her career as an entry-level administrative assistant, with no exposure to what an engineering path would look like. During her few years at TÜV SÜD, however, Justina found herself surrounded by engineers constantly testing and certifying products before they shipped to ensure consumer safety. Intrigued by the constant experimentation process going on around her, she felt drawn to learn more. “[The engineering team] would get to do
TL;DR — This isn’t a self-promotional post about landing a job. It’s about embracing failure and hard lessons as a necessary part of the process in making a lofty dream become a reality. These days when people ask me how I’m doing, I would often ask if they’ve seen “The Pursuit of Happyness” because life for me is like the movie (mainly the ending). Through the pursuit of my own “happiness” — I learned valuable lessons in making a dream become a reality. Imagine celebrating your birthday with family and
Originally posted here via Wogrammer. Jette Hernandez is one of the toughest coders you’ve ever met. As a former collegiate athlete, yoga instructor, and personal trainer, Jette is well-versed in the strength and tenacity required to reach one’s peak potential. This competitive spirit proved useful for Jette when she steered her career in an unlikely and unexpected direction. While working at the registration table of a tech event to earn extra money, Jette was intrigued by the job descriptions she saw on the attendee name badges (mostly belonging to men).
Movin’ to the Music Looking back 5 years, I feel like I’ve failed many times over when I made the decision to leave a job in finance to pursue a music career in NYC. My job in finance entailed me informing my team of technological developments disrupting the banking industry, testing their new mobile app, and researching cybersecurity standards. After a while, I didn’t find my job to be as fulfilling or challenging as I thought it would be, but I stuck it through until one day I received a unique opportunity
Junior software engineers from under-represented groups should feel ok focusing on their technical work. I recently got my first software engineering job. As someone from an under-represented group in tech, I’m constantly reminded of the inequalities in access to the web development industry. Of 80 developers in my department, I am one of few women, one of two mothers and I may be the only black woman (the department doesn’t track data on this yet). This balance feels wrong to me. It feels unjust. I don’t understand why this job,
