Show Notes: extras.show/57

The post Brunch with Brent: Heather Ellsworth | Jupiter Extras 57 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Holly is a software engineer at BlackLocus, a big data analyzer for Home Depot. She discusses her journey into technology that started in college & took a big detour.

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Show Notes:

• Holly Gibson (@hollyglot) | Twitter
• Women Who Code ATX (@wwcodeatx) | Twitter
• SSD Cloud Hosting – Linode
• BlackLocus
• Women Who Code Austin (Austin, TX) – Meetup
• Welcome | Women Who Code

Transcription:

ANGELA: This is Women’s Tech Radio.
PAIGE: A show on the Jupiter Broadcasting Network, interviewing interesting women in technology. Exploring their roles and how they’re successful in technology careers. I’m Paige.
ANGELA: And I’m Angela.
PAIGE:: So Angela, today we are going to talk to Holly Gibson. She is a programer for BlackLocus. Yes, it was awesome, which apparently has a reference to black hole, which is bad ass. Anyway, she is working kind of on data science and she went through boot camp and she does all sorts of cool things. And we talk about all of them.
ANGELA: Yes. It’s a very good interview that we are going to get into as soon as I mention that you can support this show. If you’re listening week after week and you like the content and you would like to help in some way, you can go to Patreaon.com/today. It is how the whole network of Jupiter Broadcasting is funded, but specifically, when you subscribe you are helping out Women’s Tech Radio as well. Patreon.com/today.
PAIGE: And we get started with today’s interview by asking Holly what she’s up to in tech today.
HOLLY: I’m a software engineer at BlackLocus. It’s a subsidiary of Home Depot and they do data science for Home Depot. They do a lot of web scraping and track all of Home Depot’s product catalog and their competitor’s prices so that they can price their products accurately. So lots of big data.
ANGELA: That’s really cool, because in a previous episode we were discussing that, was it Sears that needed a total IT aspect to it.
PAIGE: Yeah.
ANGELA: And so now this is similar. BlackLocus, you said?
HOLLY: Yes.
ANGELA: Yeah, for Home Depot.
HOLLY: Uh, Locus means place. They’re kind of like the black hole of the internet. They’re sucking in everything.
ANGELA: Wow.
PAIGE: I like that. That’s really cool.
ANGELA: Yeah, it is.
PAIGE: So we were essentially touching on the idea that at this point all companies are become tech companies.
ANGELA: Yeah.
HOLLY: Yes. Yes. Home Depot acquired them three years ago. They had become a client and immediately started negotiating to buy them, because their tool was so awesome.
PAIGE: Awesome. So you do data science, which I think of as kind of like a magical unicorn at this point, because no one is quite willing to nail down what that means in the tech sphere, so can you enlighten me?
HOLLY: Sure. I’m more on the software engineer side so I”m not writing the fancy algorithms that the data science people are. We’re working in Python and Java and Javascript to consume the data and wrap it and make it beautiful so that an average person can look at it and understand what it means.
PAIGE: Okay. So you write tools in Python and Javascript and stuff and then you take what they’ve done and make it so that someone like me can get their head around it?
HOLLY: Yes.
PAIGE: Very cool. What’s your favorite piece of that stack?
HOLLY: I really like all of it still. I”m a generalist engineer. I’m, you know, full stack as they say, but generalist. I dabble in a little bit of everything. I came out of a boot camp two years ago and my first job was working at an education startup doing everything from supporting the IT for the office to managing the serve and the databases, doing the front end and the back end. So I really like all of it. Mainly I like solving problems. So just let me solve problems. Let me use logic and my brain and I’m happy.
PAIGE: So, boot camp, is that the way that you got into the technology field?
HOLLY: Sort of. It was a reboot. I studied Javascript and databases in college and I took over the college website and I managed it for five years. And i really enjoyed it, but I was a one woman team and solo. So it was very lonely. I didn’t have any mentors at that time. You know, web applications were just coming out and it was before Facebook, so that’s how old I am. So people were just figuring stuff out and so I didn’t know how much I knew. I thought, I’m just a beginner. I don’t know very much. I’ve done this for five years. This is fun, but now I”m going to go try a bunch of other stuff. So I sold antiques on Ebay. I managed a restaurant. I did summer camps for kids with disabilities. And then two years ago I found out about a boot camp here in Austin, Texas, where I live, and my husband I signed up to do it together. It was a three-month program over the summer. The hardest thing I’ve ever done, but got through it and really enjoyed having teachers I could ask questions from, classmates along side of me. We were learning together. Building actual applications and projects. It was a really, really great experience.
PAIGE: What do you think was the major difference between studying at a university level and being in the boot camp. Maybe, was it the timeliness of it? Where the internet has grown so much and we have so much more to work with and so many more resources, or more like the way that the instruction was done? What was the real standout to you that made it stick this time around and didn’t last time?
HOLLY: The way the instruction was done. I think sometimes universities are behind the ball so the technology I was learning in school was already a couple years old. I went to a very small school and the classes were really little. Most of them I was by myself so the professor would hand me a text book and say go read this. Which was great, I was learning, but having the hands on experience of the boot camp really resonated with me. I’m a mechanical person. I like building. I like learning by projects. So it cemented the theory much more in my brain when I was actually doing stuff.
PAIGE: That makes total sense. So you mentioned in talking about your university that it was really confusing to you to tell what the next steps were and understanding how much you knew. Do you think that was — and then you mentioned a lack of mentors. Do you think that those two are kind of related and how have you tackled that this time around?
HOLLY: Sure. Yeah. The program that I studied in school wasn’t a traditional computer science program. It was a degree in Theology and they had just added web design, because they thought, well people might want websites. So I took all the classes, because I actually thought theology was boring. So I loved the web design and I wanted a job afterwards, and i didn’t want to be a minister. So the web design seemed like a good route to go, but then I, you know, after I had built some sites and when I was thinking about leaving the university, I wasn’t sure how to go about that, because I didn’t have computer science degree on my resume. I didn’t know anybody in computer science. All I knew is I liked web design and I had built some stuff, but I wasn’t sure how to translate that into getting a different job. And so I kind of just gave up and went and did other stuff where I knew I could sale myself in marketing, graphic design, and stuff. Since going through the boot camp, it was great because they had relationships with local companies. They recommended we go to meetups, that we looked for mentors, that we meet people in the local tech scene. And so immediately in the boot camp we started as a class going to different meetups. Going to the Javascripts meetup. Going to the Rails meetup. And then I was really lucky to go to a Women Who Code meetup that had just started here in Austin at our bootcamp. They had the first night there and I went and it was an informational meeting and I said how can I help? And the women said how would you like to run Austin Women Who Code. So-
PAIGE: The same thing happened to me.
ANGELA: Wow.
HOLLY: Yeah.
PAIGE: Yeah, not kidding.
HOLLY: So I took it over and now two years later we have 1,200 members and it’s been awesome. So that’s really been a great avenue for me to meet other women in tech, to find mentors. But what i tell the women in my group is go to the meetups. If you see someone talking intelligently about something and you want to know more, go ask them questions. They could turn into a mentor. Like I mentioned, my first job was at an education startup by myself. So again, that’s like a one woman team and I knew I needed help. And I knew where to go. So I went to the meetups. I met some people and I was like can you help me? Explain this code. I”m not understanding this. You know, I’m all by myself. And I said, yeah, let’s meet for coffee. And I said I”ll buy you coffee. I’ll buy you tacos, whatever you want. So one guy, we started meeting weekly for about four months and he explained code to me and design patterns and different things, and really got me over the first hump in my job. And since then I’ve been kind of networking through his friends and going, so do you know of someone who knows this, and someone who knows that. And just finding where the holes are in my knowledge and who can help me with those. There’s lots of online classes and blogs and videos and those are great. I learn mostly sitting with someone in pair programming and so I’ll read books and I will look up blogs. My best source of learning is from an actual physical person. So I really do like meeting. I write. Now I’m learning Haskell and functional programing so I meet weekly with my mentor, who came through my first mentor. And it’s great, because he has a master’s in Computer Science and he’s been doing this for 15 years and I can ask so many questions. I have this wealth of knowledge in that brain.
PAIGE: So did you find it with these mentors, were they resistant to the idea of being an official mentor or were they welcoming? How did you get over the fear of asking them for that relationship?
ANGELA: Or do they know that they’re your mentor?
PAIGE: Yeah, also that.
HOLLY: That’s a funny question. Yeah, a lot of them don’t like the label mentor, but they’re getting used to it. Most of them have been fascinated to teach a woman how to program, because some of them haven’t worked as often with a woman in programming. And I”m fine with being a social experiment for them.
PAIGE: You’re their token female programmer friend.
HOLLY: Yes. And I’m fine. If they want to explain things and teach me, that’s fine. I just make sure that it’s someone i connect with, you know, on a personality level. I’m not going to work with someone who’s going to speak down to me, you know, or be a programmer. And the guys I work with have been very nice and very supportive and want to start a mentorship program for Women Who Code so that they can get more women into tech. First of all, I didn’t say will you be my mentor. I would just say will you explain some code to me. And then if they’re willing to meet, then I”ll ask do you ever mentor people. And if they’re like, no I, I don’t and I’m not sure what that means, I’ll say well I’m learning this, would you mind explaining stuff with me. Could you work with me on a weekly or a bi-weekly, bi-monthly basis. What would fit in your schedule. So far, the people I’ve met, have said oh yeah I can meet with you weekly. I”ll buy them coffee. I make sure that I’m thanking them in some way. And they have all been really casual and nice about it. And I do the same. You know, I meet with women from my Women Who Code group. We have a Sunday morning ladies coding brunch and we code every Sunday morning. And I explain things to them that my mentors are teaching me. I think it’s important that people keep giving and raising up the people below them.
PAIGE: That was totally going to be my question for you and you answered it. Do you mentor as well? That’s very awesome that you do. I love that it’s a brunch.
ANGELA: Yeah.
PAIGE: That’s perfect. It’s just perfect. Very cool. So you go from like mentor first dating. Like, can you explain this thing to me? And then if it goes well you ask for more.
HOLLY: Yes.
PAIGE: So you filled out our awesome guest form and you mentioned this and I just have to ask about it, that you rebuilt a server from a remote cabin in Finland?
HOLLY: Yeah. So, last summer our server was hacked while I was on a two-week vacation in Finland. My mother-in-law is Finnish and she has a cabin on a lake. A lot of people do there. They have saunas and cabins and stuff. And so we were on — I was on the train with my husband and they have WiFI. Finland is, you know, great tech country. You know, that’s where Linux came from and Angry Birds and everything. So there’s WiFi on the train and I was checking my email and I saw that our server had been quarantined and over the next week I got to rebuild our server. I got a hotspot from the only electronic store in the village and had about three hours of sleep a night for a week.
PAIGE: Wow, that’s crazy. I do love that though about the modern world. It’s like you can be anywhere and do what we do.
HOLLY: Yeah. I was Facetiming with my boss. There was an eight hour difference and it would be 3:00 in the morning for her, but I was awake and telling her what I had fixed, where the progress was. And what happened is our app had been built by a backend team in Siberia and they had forgot to put a firewall on our elasticsearch engine, it has an open facing port and it didn’t have a firewall and a robot got installed and was DDosing other servers.
PAIGE: Oh man. That’s not fun.
HOLLY: No, but I got it fixed and that actually, that experience really made me feel like I can do this, because up to that point I’d been at that job straight out of the boot camp nine months. And it was nine months of being terrified. Do I know what I’m doing? I’m all by myself. You know, even with my mentor you have fear and sometimes the imposter syndrome and you can make things bigger than they really are in your head, because you’re not sure what’s going to happen. This is a whole new experience. You don’t know what’s coming down the road. And the unknown is more scary than the known. Well the worst thing that can happen to you is having your server hacked. But once I got through that I was like I can do anything. I’m not afraid anymore. I can solve anything.
PAIGE: Totally. So I can’t imagine that you went through that much ops during boot camp. At least with the boot camps I’ve been exposed to and know about, they don’t do a ton of server stuff. How did you dive into that? Was that something you brought from before or were you just kind of teaching yourself on the fly to fix this thing?
HOLLY: Everything I learned on the job. We used Linode so they did have some documentation. I knew the services that we used so I knew how to install them and set them up. Thankfully we used New Relic as a monitoring tool so I could see what processes were running and see that elasticsearch had a crazy amount of data being processed, because it was DdoSing other stuff. So having the right tools I think is also really important and thankfully the team in Siberia, even though they forgot the firewall, did set up New Relic and we have now — that company I had, after I came back we switched over to Herope so we didn’t have to worry about security anymore, but I still kept New Relic because I said I need to be able to see the different processes. I need to know the health of our application and what’s going on. I Googled a lot.
PAIGE: Right.
ANGELA: Yeah.
HOLLY: And Linode did have a brief document on how to deal with a quarantined server what tools to install to scan your files and make sure they weren’t corrupted. But mainly it was just me solving this big riddle of what happened, what’s going on, and how do I fix it.
PAIGE: That’s how I do things. You kind of dive in and start Googling.
ANGELA: Uh-huh.
HOLLY: Google knows.
PAIGE: How did you get to the point where you could kind of know what to Google? I’ve had that question from a lot of ladies as I start to mentor them or they come into Women Who Code and they’re like, well I don’t even know what to ask. Was a lot of that — where did that happen for you or did that happen for you?
HOLLY: Sure. That was one thing that I really appreciated from the boot camp. They worked with us on how do you Google. In the beginning the teachers would say oh well just Google it and I said I don’t know what to Google. Like what? What terms? Like if I’m trying to solve this how do I Google? Like what’s the tech speak. And so having them work with us a few times, then you started to get comfortable with realizing, okay these are the terms I need to search and is this bringing a result on Stack Overflow. Then I’m probably searching the right thing. You know, if I’m getting results for tech forums then, you just keep doing it and if it’s not returning the right thing, then switching out some terms and just trial and error.
PAIGE: Uh-huh.
HOLLY: Really helped. And time. As you do it more often and often then you’re going to start to know what are the key terms to search and it will get easier.
PAIGE: It is definitely a practiced skill, I would say, personally.
ANGELA: So I wanted to ask about your Ebay selling and you mentioned already a little bit that you were selling antiques.
HOLLY: Uh-huh.
ANGELA: So how did you even — did you get into Ebay when it was super — I think it was like ‘99 or 2000 that it really-
PAIGE: Yeah, right about then.
ANGELA: Became popular. When did you get into it and why?
HOLLY: 2009 is when I got into it, because my mother-in-law is a power seller. Her whole job is selling on Ebay. She had been doing it since ‘96. So after I left the university and I was looking at other things to do, she said well I can teach you a skill that you can use all the time, no matter what job you’re at. And so she showed me how to set up a store, so again, mentoring is so important.
ANGELA: Yes.
HOLLY: And she showed me how to take good pictures. She bought me a light box so that I could place the items in the light box and take quality photos and a scale so I could say how heavy the things were for jewelry. The different things that people want to know in the description of antique stuff. So having her as a resource was really great. And then also where to find the stuff. We went to a lot of estate sales and since my mother-in-law had been doing this for about 14 years she knew what kind of brands to look for and how to find good deals and we would buy box lots and sift through the stuff and she knew what could be sold by itself. What could be sold as an assortment. Having her as a mentor was great and it was fun. I never made enough money at it, because it’s something you have to really work at full time to build up enough inventory.
ANGELA: Yeah.
HOLLY: But my mother-in-law does it and she makes a good income and loves it.
PAIGE: Great.
ANGELA: I actually just went to a garage sale recently and it’s people that I actually know and they buy storage units that are unpaid and it’s just the luck of the draw. Everybody bids on it, whoever is the highest gets it. And then they have a garage sale. It’s a really interesting model, but a lot of work. A lot of footwork, but interesting.
HOLLY: A lot of footwork. So if you like that stuff, great. I was like man I don’t want to do this. This is taking me hours to make a few dollars.
ANGELA: Right. Right.
HOLLY: So I want to go work in an industry where I can make a nice amount of money for just an hour of work.
ANGELA: Yeah. If you’re passionate about finding really unique antiques or something I could see it being a fun thing to do on the side, but yeah, definitely not-
HOLLY: Definitely fun on the side.
ANGELA: A primary thing.
HOLLY: I got my furniture through an estate sale and so it’s nice to have that resource.
PAIGE: It’s amazing how, like, the skills we accumulate over a lifetime and how they affect everything.
ANGELA: Yes. Yes, definitely.
HOLLY: Yeah, it actually came back to be a benefit, because I judged at a Paypal Ebay Hackathon here in Austin and I got to say yeah I’m an Ebay seller.
PAIGE: Yeah, there you go. It’s always interesting. So one last question before we go. I wanted to know, since you mentioned it kind of before, like what tools do you use on a daily basis to do the work that you’re doing now? You said you’re in Python and Javascript, but what’s on your laptop kind of a thing?
HOLLY: Sure. The text editor I use is Sublime Text. I really like it. I have installed a bunch of different packages that help me work with the code. I use Mac, Macbook so I use iTerm as my terminal. I’m running in a virtual environment for Python using VIrtual ENBS and, let’s see, for (indiscernible) testing we like to use Gulp or Karma. We are using Elasticsearch and Redis for our search engine. The whole team is on HipChat and then Slack if HipChat breaks.
ANGELA: NIce to have an alternative.
HOLLY: Yes. And we have a lot of fun making our own little GIFs to have emoticons. I would say those are the main tools that I’m using. We use AWS for our servers and our fancy ops guys do all of our builds at Debian packages so builds have to be done on a Linux machine, but most of the team is on Macbooks.
ANGELA: Thank you for listening to this episode of Women’s Tech Radio. Remember, you can find the full transcript of the show over at JupiterBroadcasting.com in the show notes. You can also catch us on Twitter, @HetyWTR or email us, WTR@JupiterBroadcasting.com
PAIGE: You can also find us and subscribe on any podcasting network of your choice, including iTunes. Or check us out on YouTube if you are not a podcast person or have a friend who’s not a podcast person. Please feel free to recommend us. You can also email us directly if you have comments, feedback, or people you’d like to hear on the show’ we’d love to hear about it. Our email is WTR@JupiterBroadcasting.com Thanks so much for listening.

Transcribed by Carrie Cotter | Transcription@cotterville.net

The post Not a Bro-grammer | WTR 42 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Elizabeth cofounded WWC NYC and is a front end engineer. She discusses her path as a millennial/youngling in the technology field.

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Show Notes:

• Elizabeth Ferrao (@MusingMurmurs) | Twitter
• Welcome | Women Who Code
• Google for Education: Computer Science Summer Institute
• TimeInc.com Official Website|home
• The Good Wife – CBS.com
• Learn to code | Codecademy

Transcription:

ANGELA: This is Women’s Tech Radio.
PAIGE: A show on the Jupiter Broadcasting Network, interviewing interesting women in technology. Exploring their roles and how they’re successful in technology careers. I’m Paige.
ANGELA: And I’m Angela.
PAIGE:: So, Angela, today we’re going to dive into an awesome interview with Elizabeth, who self-identifies as a millennial youngling and talk about her career, her transition, what she thinks about coming up in a culture where tech was okay and all sorts of different juicy topics.
ANGELA: And before we get into the interview, I’d like to mention that you can support Women’s Tech Radio by going to patreon.com/jupitersignal. You can subscribe for as little as $3.00 a month and support this awesome content. Go to patreon.com/jupitersignal.
PAIGE: And we got started our interview by asking Elizabeth what she’s up to in technology these days.
ELIZABETH: I am a software engineer, and I was previously at a corporate company that did all the media stuff, and now I’m looking for new opportunities.
PAIGE: Awesome. So what side of software engineering are you into?
ELIZABETH: Which of the cornucopia? I do mostly front-end software engineering, so lots of HTML CSS, mostly JavaScript, a lot of frameworks where I hope to do many more.
PAIGE: How do you feel about the exploding front-end framework–I would almost call it a problem. It seems like every day there’s a new one and everyone wants to jump on the new hotness.
ELIZABETH: Yeah, I started in technology about three years ago, and I remember I was, you know, the common I’m just entering into the industry problem is which framework do you start out with? And I thought Python. Python back then was–that was the jam. And it’s not to say it’s not now, but now everything is in JavaScript, so you can work in front end and back end, and I don’t need to learn another language and its intricacies, so I’m going to say JavaScript is the best. That’s a 2015 opinion. I reserve to change.
PAIGE: I’m going to hold you to that in five years, all right? I’m an advocate the same way. I run a JavaScript jam night, I guess, every week for Women Who Code, and the reason that I chose JavaScript is because it is so agnostic in the stack. Like you really can’t go from node all the way out to front end basic JavaScript and jQuery and angular. It’s a great choice for a first language, although it’s not as pretty or as easy to read as like a Revere or Python. It’s so practical.
ELIZABETH: It is. And there are so many things that are happening with it. The New York City JavaScript community has just exploded over the past year. There is Brooklyn JS and there’s a plethora of meetups that are just focused on JavaScript. And what is it–there’s all these fancy type of developers coming up, so there is the note–if you just practice note JS, there is a node JS engineer where I’ve seen a copious amount of job openings for.
PAIGE: Yeah, it’s really starting to blow up. It’s interesting because everybody is like we want a five year experience node JS engineer. I’m like, are you sure you understand what you’re asking for there? Like time traveling node engineers?
ELIZABETH: Well, it’s all open source, so they’ll finagle those dates.
PAIGE: Right? That’s very cool. So you mentioned that you’ve only been doing this for three years. So how did you get into it? Tell me about your journey there.
ELIZABETH: Yeah, I’m a self-proclaimed Youngling. And about three years ago, I got accepted into a program for Google and so Google flew me out there for three weeks and talked to me about computer science and it was called Google’s Computer Science Summer Seminar. So like their version of incorporating all the students into what they do and into the application. And so it was Google. It was an amazing experience, my first time out in Mountain View, if not California, and I was just enamored with technology afterwards, as you would be, with so many pretty colors and all those octobikes. So that was the original start. And then I went into college for computer science, and unfortunately, college for me wasn’t the best experience. It wasn’t the right environment or the culture, and I think that just has to do more with the school that I chose and I didn’t know what I wanted out of a college. So it was a very unfulfilling experience. But then I dropped out about a year and a half ago, and I joined Time Inc. as an intern. That was a really good experience being involved in corporate and being involved in the media. Again, total 180s from what I had ever experienced in the past. And after I was an intern, I was on boarded full-time working as a mobile developer and then a developer evangelist and then just like a general software engineer. So I’ve gone through a couple of iterations there. And now I’ve got a little bit of time to relax, which is so well needed. I’m currently binging on The Good Wife and haven’t binged on a show in a while now, so I’m really happy to just kick back this weekend.
PAIGE: Sounds like you’ve been through the gamut of tech already so quickly. So it sounds like you’ve touched on a lot of different things. What was kind of like the hardest part for you stepping into that tech culture as a–what did you call yourself–a youngling I think?
ELIZABETH: A youngling, a millennial. The hardest part, I think it’s very easy, especially when you’re young, and especially when you don’t know something about the subject to be like oh, yeah, you know what? I’ll just apply the–all these TED talks say that if you do a hundred hours in it, you’ll be 80 percent of the way there, or like there are a couple of stats on that. And I think with technology, it’s really easy to fool yourself, especially when you haven’t delved into its guts, that to fool yourself into convincing yourself that you’re quite good at it. It’s like hey, it’s only going to take a hundred hours to learn JavaScript, isn’t that the dream?
ANGELA: That’s really interesting, because over confidence isn’t the thing that I really think that women have in the tech field, but I can totally see where you’re coming from with that.
ELIZABETH: Yeah, every time I think about learning a different language, I’m like oh, you know what? I’ll just spend ten hours on Codecademy or delve into a framework, and I’ll understand like 80 percent of it. And unfortunately, that’s never worked. But I think probably it’s more to fool myself into just getting started, and then those ten hours become 100 which becomes 1,000, and then I’m an engineer that says oh, I can do this thing, but I also know that I can’t do–there’s so much more to this field, right? You know what you don’t know.
PAIGE: Right. That is the eternal problem is that the more you know, the more you know you don’t know. I actually, I think it is interesting, though. I think as the programming journey goes on, that 80 percent in ten hours really does start to happen. But it only happens if you’ve delved in deep enough somewhere where like you really understand the concepts behind what you’re doing as opposed to just how to do it. You know when I pick up a new framework now, I know the things to look for, I know how to look for like how are we handling flow, how are we handling IO, all of these different things and I can just really research like how that framework does it or how that language does it, and it really does–I do get that 80 percent in ten hours, but then that last 20 percent is like 10,000 hours.
ELIZABETH: And I haven’t gotten my 10,000 hours of programming yet, so I still don’t know what to look for as a junior programmer, so I falsely say to myself that I can do something very quickly, and I’m still getting there.
PAIGE: It was given wise advice to me when I first started working in tech was take your gut instinct for how long something is going to take, and then if you feel really, really confident that it’s going to take that long, multiply by three. And if you feel kind of confident that that’s how long it’s going to take, probably multiply by five.
ANGELA: Just keep multiplying it–
PAIGE: Yeah, especially, as much as we don’t have overconfidence in like the things that we can do, I think a lot of times humans are really good at being over confident with how fast we can do things, especially as computer geeks because we’re like, we’re so in such a fast culture or fast thing. Like the computer is fast, I must be fast. Like everything is quick.
ELIZABETH: You know what? I was having a really big problem with estimation of projects and I would be like oh, you know what, I’ll complete this in two days and it would end up taking ten days. So my just general rule of thumb is exactly that. Just multiply whatever my estimation is by five, and then I’m hoping for the day hopefully in the next couple of years that it will actually be my estimation.
PAIGE: Yeah, I have to say that I don’t think even for myself that I could do good estimations until I stepped back from programming and did a bunch of project management where I had to really sit down and break down things and charge people for things and like, oh, now I really kind of get it. So it wasn’t so much that my skill caught up in programming as my skill caught up in estimation. That was interesting.
ANGELA: Right. Interesting.
ELIZABETH: That’s really interesting that it would have to–the inclusion of a different field, if not a different industry entirely, what makes you understand this like archaic estimation tools.
PAIGE: Yeah, and I think–I don’t know–it’s like I love my journey and I love talking to a lot of people like you who have had kind of non-traditional tech journeys, because I think we do bring skills to the table that are that kind of cross over skills. Like the reason I know estimations is more for my time in Geek Squad or whatever doing those sorts of tasks. I have a better understanding of that, or like the fact that I run a volunteer group is actually why I can do project management. It’s not from tech. Your cross over skills are as important, if not more important.
ELIZABETH: You know, Paige, as you’re saying this, I told you beforehand, I just moderated a panel on Tuesday, and the panel’s title was Non Traditional Paths Through Technology. And it was focused on these four women that had different expectations, if not different career ambitions and just found themselves in technology. And one of them is working as a researcher, and another is delving into hardware. A third is organizing [indiscernible] center. So like these different paths into technology, the technology doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re a software engineer. And so, it was, as you’re speaking to this nontraditional root, I’m also a huge believer that you don’t just need to go to boot camp and learn all the things. You can become a research–what is it– like so many UX research positions nowadays that are open? Yeah, so that whole concept of you don’t just need to make like a total jump, a total 180. You can use your skills from whatever other lifetimes and you’re actually going to be a lot more valuable than if you had just started fresh.
PAIGE: Yeah, we’re actually talked to a couple guests where they’ve been in companies that are tech companies and they’ve transitioned to development inside the company. So if you’re interested in technology and you’re not sure if development is for you, there are a lot of other roles–everything from community evangelists, data research, like all of these different things depending on the kind of background you have. It could be a bridge, and then you can get exposed to the culture. And then once you’re inside the company, especially a lot of companies these days are looking for internal growth because training and hiring in places is expensive. Yeah, they want to grow the ones they have a lot.
ELIZABETH: Yeah, oh my gosh. I’m such a big believer in like advocating for talent as well as keeping your talent, and if they would like to try something, that’s such an awesome way to expose them to a different culture or different industry as well as keep them within the company and attain those skill sets.
PAIGE: So as a millennial and kind of the up and coming generation in that stuff, what do you think it takes for a company to take you? Because one of the biggest problems that we’re having in technology that I’m seeing and I’m really trying to really react to is that we’re getting a lot women in technology, but we’re losing them just as fast, which is hard. So what would it take for a company to keep you hooked?
ELIZABETH: Actually, the Women Who Code New York City network just had its first conference a couple of, if not a month ago, and we were focusing on women approaching, if not at mid-career. And so, I’m sure you know, the statistic is that 57 percent of women in technology that are at mid-career leave the industry. And so it’s just this awful problem of, even the women that we are attracting into technology are leaving, and yet we’re just packing more into the funnel and not thinking about how to keep them. For millennials, I would have to say, what a difficult question that is because myself, I’m so, I’m like, I’m like constantly chasing after different butterflies. And so, whichever one is the prettier one, that’s the one I’m going to go to. Also, we have this kind of awful structure nowadays that if another company offers me a promotion, even if I have the same skillset, I am able, I am in the opportunity and position to take it because of how booming the technology industry is. So I think that’s the way most people are getting to manager, VP, CEO, founder levels without having “paid their dues” myself included, absolutely.
ANGELA: So I think part of what Paige wanted to know was, what is pretty? Is it the job, is it the company, is it the benefits? Is it the type of management style, culture? What is pretty to you? Or is it just better than what you currently have and it could be any of the above?
ELIZABETH: I was kind of spoiled in the sense that I had an amazing mentor to guided me at Time, Inc. And then fantastically, I had another couple of mentors that also joined that group. So I’m a core believer that a mentor is one of the things that is going to keep me at a company that would just keep me grounded. Another thing that I think is very important is, so now that you’re able to think three months down the line with your mentor, well, any little intricacies as well as micro aggressions that you happen to come across, any problems that you have that is natural in any job, you should be able to rant to someone about. And so, if there is no person near you that you have been introduced to that is at your skill level, that is at your experience level, that is probably at your age level as well, I’m going to call that person an informal rant partner. Like if there is not someone for you to rant to, and if there is not someone to guide you towards your goals, that’s probably not going to be a company that you’re able to vent as well as grow in.
ANGELA: Yeah, a buddy system.
ELIZABETH: A buddy system, yep.
PAIGE: I love that of all the things you could have said, you said people. I think that that’s really important, and I think it’s extra important to our generation, your generation–I’m a little older, it’s okay.
ANGELA: Just a couple years.
PAIGE: I would definitely not identify as a millennial, but that’s okay.
ANGELA: Who I? I don’t think I would either.
PAIGE: So the mentorship, and it’s actually some of the feedback that I’ve been giving and getting with a lot of the women’s groups that I’m working with with trying to figure out this retention problem is like how do we mentor and why, especially do we have such resistance. And I should ask this–why do we have such resistance in women for mentoring? And Elizabeth, were any of your mentors women?
ELIZABETH: All three were.
PAIGE: Awesome.
ELIZABETH: Yeah, I have been, I don’t want to use the word blessed, but I’ve been very fortunate to have one mentor that was absolutely phenomenal and then she introduced me to two others that were also like amazing and very, I don’t want to say high up the chain, but it was a different experience. It was a different experience that I had ever seen before. They weren’t software engineers, they were managers if not higher.
PAIGE: Yeah, and that is definitely something is I think looking outside your role can be very fulfilling. It might not be what you need as like a code mentor, but I think in some ways those are easier to–you can kind of poke any developer and be like hey, can you answer this question? And most developers are pretty cool with answering questions. But like getting that mentorship relationship is, I don’t know, it can be outside your field and that’s okay.
ELIZABETH: I’m also going to say that you can’t force it. I’m calling them mentors, but I’m not sure that they know that they’ve been mentors to me. Or like it’s not a oh, you are my mentor, you have to meet me every three months and to talk to me about my goals for one hour. That’s not forcing that sort of relationship.
ANGELA: Sure, but that’s natural. Like my son is in first grade, and he has a student in his current class that was in his last year’s class that he calls his BFF, but that kid, my son is not his BFF. It’s very natural.
PAIGE: Yeah, and I think informal mentorship is probably a lot more comfortable, especially for women I have found. Men seem to be more comfortable because it’s sort of that like higher work goal relationship that their hormones demand. But we are much more like hey, we are just coffee buddies–and I look up to you so much. That’s been kind of my journey lately is how do we encourage mentorship. Also, I will ask you this question, do you have anyone you’re mentoring?
ELIZABETH: I don’t. I don’t think at this level I have a lot of experience to give, unfortunately. Maybe that’s just like Impostors Syndrome talking.
ANGELA: Yeah, I would say so.
PAIGE: I would totally call you out and say that you should totally be an informal mentor. It sounds like you participate in Women Who Code.
ELIZABETH: I do. I cofounded the New York City Network a year and a half ago, so I’ve also never got in the– no one has ever come up to me and been like let’s–I wanna make our coffee dates more consistent and for my benefit.
PAIGE: I actually kind of fell into the mentor role as I started Women Who Code really in Portland, and in some ways, I kind of pushed it a little bit with some people and it’s been very rewarding for both of us where I just saw some young people with–some young women with very high potential levels and I saw them struggling. I said, you know, hey, let’s talk. And we don’t necessarily have a time table where we talk every x often, but it was definitely me opening the door, because I think there is a lot of fear. And I think this is cross gender. It doesn’t really matter, but there’s a lot of fear of asking for that sort of thing, and I found someone I resonated with and I said you know, let’s do this. Let’s get your career going. Let’s make the moves that you need. So I encourage you to look for someone.
ELIZABETH: I will, and the next time I talk to you–the first time that I come up to Portland, that will be my goal.
PAIGE: Awesome. We will jam. I think that’s a real benefit of being involved in a network like Women Who Code where I do believe a lot that everybody should have a mentor, a peer, and a mentee. It’s a very healthy thing professionally and personally in a lot of ways.
ANGELA: I need to add that to my bucket list I guess.
PAIGE: I have some recommendations of all of those.
ANGELA: I do need to get involved with the Women Who Code and once I can have enough time.
PAIGE: I like to call that magical free time. It’s like a designer who’s also a developer. Magic free time. Awesome, Elizabeth, this has been really fun. I just had probably one more question for you. If you could look back and give yourself, your four year younger self advice, what would you say?
ELIZABETH: You know, Paige, it’s really funny that you say this because I have a 12 year old brother, so that’s actually a question I think about a lot.
ANGELA: How you would help him?
ELIZABETH: Yeah, how I would help him, what would I do better if I was 12 again, what information can I impart onto him and what will he actually understand? And so the one that I keep coming back to is listening to other people and most importantly, having empathy for them and their situation. And it’s really hard I think, it’s really hard to have empathy when you haven’t experienced much, me included, like I don’t think I’ve experienced much of the world, but being exposed to those sorts of different people and understanding what they’re going through makes you a lot more aware of the details that they portray in real life and maybe why they’re acting a little bit weird that day, or how it all adds up into us being like humans and people and really great people. So empathy is going to be my winner answer.
PAIGE: Okay. I like that. I like how broad that is. There was a quote and I was going to look it up, but I couldn’t do it fast enough. Be kind because we all have a great and terrible burden that nobody is aware of kind of thing and I like to move through the world with that. I did have one more question that I thought of that I think was really important, sorry.
ANGELA: And she’s excited about it.
PAIGE: I am. So you’re probably one of the youngest guests that we’ve had on the podcast, and I was wondering if growing up, you felt like you could just do tech like it was no big deal, or if you did still feel that kind of like it’s for boys kind of feel?
ELIZABETH: Paige, I actually went to a science and technical high school.
PAIGE: So you cheated.
ELIZABETH: So it was never a gender thing. It was a, who can get the best grade in the class kind of thing, and therefore, who has to study the most for that. But I didn’t grow up thinking I would be in technology at all. I thought I would–my father was a mechanical engineer, and so I thought I would go to school for mechanical engineering and like work at a job for five to ten years and like switch around, but technology and apparently Google had different other paths.
PAIGE: And computer engineering is still engineering, right?
ELIZABETH: If you say so.
PAIGE: Front-end and stuff. It definitely is different, but it’s the same mental mind path I think. But I am really encourage to hear that you looked at your dad’s career and said I could do that, no problem. I think that gives me a lot of hope for where we’re going.
ELIZABETH: My dad was a serial entrepreneur and a mechanical engineer and like an all-around awesome man, and then my mom has a Ph.D. in pharmacology and like a plethora of other things. So I had no shortage of ambition to look up to.
ANGELA: Thank you for listening to this episode of Women’s Tech Radio. Remember, you can find a full transcript of this show over at jupiterbroadcasting.com in the show notes. You can also go to the contact form at jupiterbroadcasting.com, be sure to select Women’s Tech Radio as the drop down show.
PAIGE: And you can add us on our RSS feed reader, or you can get us on iTunes. If you happen to have us on iTunes, please go ahead and leave us a review. We’d love to hear what you think of the show. You can also find us on Twitter @heywtr. Tweet us and we’d love to hear what you think.

Transcribed by Carrie Cotter | Transcription@cotterville.net

The post Millennials and Mentors | WTR 40 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Liz Abinante began her journey at the age of 12 and is now a software engineer at New Relic! She also funded her way through school by selling knitting patterns!

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• Art Craft Code
• Art Craft Code Github
• Feministy
• Groupon

Full transcription of previous episodes can be found at heywtr.tumblr.com

The post OMG the Internet! | WTR 20 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Alice is a site reliability engineer with New Relic & describes herself as “the digruntled Spock of our age.”

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• Peter Jennison Music

• Pandora

• Alice Goldfuss on Twitter

• Learn To Program
• New Relic
• Coursera
• Rice University

• /r/linux subreddit

• Kenneth Love

• Treehouse

• Treehouse Twitter

• Forrest Norvell

• Rachel Kelly
• PyLadies

The post Alice Goldfuss | WTR 10 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Angela & Paige interview Stephanie Shupe, a software engineer at Lookout discusses how she got started in mobile iOS development & some of the resources she used along the way.

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• Women Who Code
• Mobile Security | Lookout, Inc.
• Eventbrite – Discover Great Events or Create Your Own & Sell Tickets
• Find your people – Meetup
• Ray Wenderlich | Tutorials for iPhone / iOS Developers and Gamers
• Y Combinator

The post Stephanie Shupe | WTR 3 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.