Women in Tech

[MaryQueenofSocks]

As promised, a new women in Tech thread!

This is a space to talk about our industry, celebrate our successes without apology and moan about anything we want to!

We can swap stories, ideas or just shoot the breeze.

Guidelines for this thread:

We are supportive
We encourage each other
We celebrate each other
No judgement on what we earn or what we want to earn/achieve.
If we are working mothers, then no judgement.
If we are child free, no judgement.
Ignore any derailing or goady posts

If anyone wants to add to the above list then feel free.

Come on in, grab a virtual coffee and park yourself on a comfy sofa 😊

I work with a lot of people your age (and older!). Experience is definitely a plus, but you need to target the correct thing.
All our domain knowledge experts are people like you, decades of experience. Things like resilience, security. Newbies may quick at learning shiny new things but rarely can they build apps, or even systems that can withstand a battering.

For someone with your experience full stack is a strange thing to specialise in. It's what the boot camps train people to do and is 'sexy'. Literally everyone wants to be one.

A lot of large enterprises will value your .NET experience and knowledge of the windows ecosystem from there you can branch out into other infrastructure. Alternatively you can become an application architect, consultant etc it's endless. Focus on backend for complex systems which might suit you better as frontend is a whole different ball game.

We're finding a real lack of people who know how things work. We need people who have knowledge, not just information if that makes sense. The instinct and ability to connect things is honed by experience...

I'm never quite sure what is and isn't meant by 'tech'....I've been a software developer all my working life (since 1985!), but it's scientific software (fortran then C++, proprietary data pipelining software...). There's a lot of machine learning applications nowadays so I might have to learn enough Python to get by.

Wfh since 1995 plus a couple of years around 1990; most of my team is on the west coast but there are people all round the globe.

Hi everyone, I've read this thread from the beginning, and it's great to be here and learn more about you all.

I'm in my late 40s and a bit different to most of you in that I am in education. I am Head of School of Computer Science at a university. There are not many of us female heads around. It's always a little bit of a surprise when the men in the room learn you are the head, you can see it in their faces.

I've always been in tech, having embarked on my degree in Computer Science in the early 90s.

I like my job, but I would like to move into industry in the next few years as I journey towards retiring. Education generally doesn't pay, and I feel I have earned my dues and would like to pursue a higher income before I stop working (or I'll never be able to stop working).

At least your School is nice and marketable, @RockGirl :)

Hi all.

Super excited to see this thread.
I wonder if I could take some advice please, and to ask if my plan sounds ok/any pointers.

I'd love to get into Data Analytics. It turns out that on reading about the role, it seems to be what I've kind of done as a hobby since i was a child (please don't judge me 😅) I just didn't know it was a career!! Degree level in healthcare, with Maths and Science A-levels.

Currently in healthcare, and I could make the leap (or at least try to) at any point but I wondered what I can do to bolster my application.

I have been looking about and currently no apprenticeship or entry level (I guess I'd be lucky to secure that though) within 1 hour of home (we live in a bit of a void economically!). This just wouldn't work as a family, so I will bide my time until something closer might come up/we move. I have taken onboard the reasoning making entry level WFH unlikely, and that makes a lot of sense.

In the meantime - are paid for 'bootcamps' worthwhile - datacamp/codefinity etc worthwhile? (some are £000s). Or, as I glean from the job adverts, would just learning some R/Python/SQL myself be better/a good way to go about things?

I have some knowledge of JS and related frameworks (so the coding part should come fairly naturally), and have worked in research for healthcare (collecting and providing data but then handing it to the Uni). A heap of generic stuff like comms, teamwork, managing time, talking and negotiating with stakeholders etc.

Thanks in advance.

I generally do not rate boot camps.

If you have the capacity I would recommend an MSc to pivot into that area.

Are there decent sized employers in your area you could target that are likely to employ data teams/analysts, @Diplo? Because even an MSc is not going to help all that much if there are no potential employers in striking distance.

Have you thought about asking your current employer to support you on the Level 4 Data apprenticeship? Virtually no organisation spends its whole apprenticeship levy pot so it would effectively be free to them, although they would have to commit to supporting it and giving you some work time/allowing you to do some work based data projects.

Hi @Diplo I'm not a huge fan of the boot camps, as a hiring manager every time I advertise any role I'm spammed by CVs coming out of boot camps because part of what they guarantee in the package is introductions/a job.

They are expensive and you are not going to gain 'experience' from them although you will get an expedited introduction to the topic area you choose. They are very fast paced so you need to be someone who can learn in that kind of environment with a full day of theory then homework that night to put it into practice.

When conducting interviews I spoke to a lot of people who were able to recite textbook theory but not understand how they would put it into practice, so candidates were only suitable for the absolute entry level positions. For example, could recite the steps to conducting a risk assessment but when asked how they would walk into an established operation and engage with a variety of very busy people to get them to identify the risks and work collaboratively to determine a remediation, they blanked.

If you go into it with your eyes open, understanding that what you will gain is a good grounding in the theory, opportunities to figure out whether the topic is something you want to pursue and the possibility of an entry level role in that area, then great. If you go in expecting to come out of it ready for a £50k a year WFH role (what some of them promise) then you may end up disappointed.

Thanks @CyberCritical and @donkra for these insights
I think sadly (although I'd love to start Uni again!) an MSc is probably off the cards for the time being.
Thank you for the 'other side' of the bootcamps - their advertising is certainly quite convincing!
If I was to study a bit by myself (I've really enjoyed eg codecademy in the past for JS/react etc) then bide my time til a level 4 apprenticeship, would that be a reasonable plan?

@Diplo to offer the other side of the coin, I work remote and everyone I work with is remote, and some that we take on are new grads, etc. One guy on my team joined at the start of COVID as a new grad, I have never met him in person and he knocks it out the park (data engineer not analyst but principle still applies)
On bootcamps yeah there are loads of them around and they can be crap but I do know a couple of people who have successfully got into software engineering through them. I think that they provide you with structure to your studies, networking with others in the same boat and intros to jobs can be useful. But as noted they can somewhat over promise!

What exactly do you want to do with data analytics? Why not build up an online portfolio of skills, especially if you say you like doing this anyway? This can set you apart from others in the same boat, when hiring for these roles it's always obvious who's actually got original projects they've done themselves rather than standard group projects or similar from degree or bootcamp,etc.

I guess what I'm saying is why not go for it, do some studying either way, put it into practice with a couple of projects and try and get an entry level role?

Just as a contrast, I did a bootcamp in 2018 and for me it was a great foundation (software engineering) and I’m so happy I did it. I chose and paid for it because it seemed to have a great reputation (Makers) and it looked like I’d have a fairly good chance at finding an entry level job afterwards. Not sure what it’s like these days but it was a good route into tech for me.

They seem to have changed a lot in the last 2 years, I think heavily driven by the Government intervention when they killed the arts during Covid so started advertising that ballerinas should 'Get into Cyber' by doing a Gov backed bootcamp.

Some providers have taken advantage of the funding available to shoehorn anyone into a course and over promise on what they can deliver. I'm seeing dozens of CVs every recruitment cycle from people with 20+ years of being a hairdresser/bus driver/chef etc, 12 weeks on a bootcamp and canned statements the providers have given on their experience of identifying vulnerabilities in IT systems and Operational capabilities......

A few have had a genuine interest and easily demonstrate that by talking about what they did in their spare time to develop their knowledge way before they did the bootcamp, work they've done on their home network, interest groups they participate in, can articulate how they want to develop in the industry or what they like about it. Most had never thought about the topic till they were told it would be a good and easy switch to a high paying role.

Hi everyone! Spotted this in Active, how exciting!

I’m 38, Senior PM for a digital agency. We seem to be really pushing IoT projects at the moment which has been interesting.

Been PMing for around 9 years now with a focus on Agile. Really keen to progress to Scrum Master but struggling to make the move tbh. I have my certification but I’m quite fussy when it comes to the right company. Don’t want anything corporate as I don’t think I fit that model.

Watching this thread with interest and any ideas on what to respond with when a client calls you sweetheart?! 🤮

Im curious for those against bootcamps, if someone applied with a science background (PhD and experience) and then bootcamp would that be more welcome, or still not really?

Hi everyone, I’m a senior/lead BA, working on digital transformation and app development for the past four years or so. Trying to move into a digital product owner role but not getting anywhere, partly because the going rate seems to be about 5-10k less than I’m on now. Great to see so many women in tech here.

Unless the science background was actively relevant to the role, I doubt it would make that much difference. It might be helpful for, say, a data analysis role if the PhD had involved data analysis, but not that much because the tools and context will be completely different. PhDs are rarely of much interest in the business world unless the commercial role is in the direct area of the PhD, e.g. it's in pharmacology and you're working commercially in pharmacological research.

It's entirely about how the experience relates to the role. I say this as someone with no qualifications and a very non-linear route to cybersecurity.

At Entry Level I look for people who are analytical, able to make sense of chaos, able to engage with people at all levels, communicate clearly, learn independently, retain and interpret information. I want experience of interpreting a set of standards, applying them to a real life scenario, then using them to create Policies/Procedures, Auditing/quality checking against a set of metrics, Influencing people at all levels, delivery of training/awareness material.....

More experienced roles I start looking for qualifications, direct experience of specific standards/industry best practice that is directly relevant to CyberSecurity.

Unless the science background was actively relevant to the role, I doubt it would make that much difference.

For my niche of scientific software development, entry level is pretty much PhD or postgrad in some sort of computational science... relevant science and coding ability. That's not to say there aren't roles where a more general science background wouldn't be preferable to scientific illiteracy of course!

I think your last paragraph is key.
There are loads of free resources online. CTF's, vulnerable machines, free/cheap e-books. Unlike being a doctor or chemical engineer there's lots of hands-on experience you can build without leaving your home!

Many people don't understand this. They think that finishing the bootcamp syllabus will magically allow them to walk into a highly paid , 9-5 job they can leave at the office. They don't understand the hours of actual 'doing' required...

So true @RedDedRedemption

I put in the hours of learn, do, fail, fix, repeat for years to get to the top of my trade.

Felt like I'm banging my head against a brick wall this week.

Company are bidding for new work, mega compliance requirements which will require new certifications in a really short time frame, like very nearly impossible timeframes. The proposals/acct mgmt/exec people think we're over egging the costs and resource needs, so I've had to explain in excruciatingly simplistic and clear terms (repeatedly) why getting global IT helpdesk/applications support/Dev and DevOps teams who are currently not using ITIL methodology (or anything even close to it) through an ISO20000 certification from start to finish within the next 6 months will be a very big challenge.

But why can't they "just" do that?

You know like "just" building a new data warehouse with no money, no staff trained on the new software, from over 30 source systems, all in 1 month...

Can I join too...project manager a few years out (career break, personal circumstance), now returning

@Ifeelsuchflutterings it's 'just' a few policies though, they can buy one of those packs of templates can't they and fill them in.

Trying to explain that an auditor will talk to people and look at evidence, so giving them a policy that says incident management policy on it is no good if no one is actually following it, and everyone is using a different logging tool, and there are no agreed criteria and no underlying procedures/reporting/objectives.................

If it helps I got asked to drop a multi million pound generating project today to recreate a solution that we already have, but a manager couldn't be bothered to look at...

Because that's a sensible business decision 🙈