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 😊

Quick question, does anyone have any experience with APK files?

I'm trying to sideload one onto my android burner phone for testing but it's just not allowing me to load. Keep getting 'APK parse error'.

Anyone done any dev work for android apps?

@MaryQueenofSocks

Couple of things you can try and apologies if you’ve already tried:

Make sure Developer mode is enabled on your device;

Enable permissions to install apps from unknown sources;

Try downloading directly from your CI/CD (e.g Bitrise), I can’t seem to side load other than directly from Bitrise to my test device.

Is your device running Android 13?

I've done 1 & 2 but I haven't tried Bitrise, good call!

Android 12 but will update to 13 as well.

Thank you!

Great answer, thanks. It's rare to see people who have stayed so long at one place.
I've spent the past few years working with vendors and have a new request/uncover a new bug every time we meet. Maybe because we are a large org and there are so many use cases I have to drill down to the detail and always manage to find holes.
I love new feature requests from forward thinking people! As in real techies who know what they're doing and suggest something that will actually improve the product.
I don't like features that are the opposite (like Security guys asking for a button that outputs an Excel sheet for everything because they CBA to write a bit of Python to parse it)...

*also nothing against Security guys - that was just to show it's not management reports but technical information that they want

Our customer feature requests are very varied, from sensible enhancements to things that aren't really possible or would be a heck of a lot of work and limited usefulness. Sometimes they do require interpretation and we can do something better than what they ask for.

It can be difficult when we've got expert users wanting all sorts of knobs and whistles and lots of detail but also some who want to push one button and get a simple answer.

Love feature requests - from anyone, always, even the blatantly nonsensical ones - in general. To me, they mean people engage with the product.

That doesn't mean I support (or approve, when I'm in the position to) them all. Some of my proudest moments have been instances of me successfully arguing why things should not be included in the best interests of - in my case - the very clients who came up with them. Example: "happy to implement if you insist - I'm just wondering: why do you want to pay my firm money for it; it has a negative business case!"

I'm a lot more concerned about stakeholders who never have requests or even complaints during a new development. They're inevitably the ones whose boss turns up three days before go-live and tries to veto the whole affair on the grounds of how disproportionately miserable this will make Mr/Ms Never Turned Up Nor Said Anything Ever.

I love complainers and the opinionated. I know what their thing is and that's something which is manageable.

EDIT: pointless edit just to test out the apparently new edit feature MN never used to have ... now THAT was a very sensible feature request!

Ooh, I've just stumbled across this thread too.

I'm a tech support lead for learning platforms in the NHS. Forever amazes me how I ended up in this role as my background is customer service rather than technical but I guess user support crosses between the two. I've learnt recently that I know more tech wise than I thought, being married to a dev probably helps though!

I've work in sw dev all my career. Degree, Msc and PhD but never went down the academic route, always industry. I've been fortunate enough to work for good companies, at good times, and it's been a great career. However, I'm in my later 50s now and wonder how much longer I can keep up with it? All the people I'm working with are 20s, 30s and a few 40s. But there's a lot of positives about that too.

There is a still a huge gender imbalance, but lots of opportunities for women as a result.

Product manager here, my users are kids so they have the most crazy feature requests and never run out of ideas! Plus, they get very excited when they tell you about a bug and I love congratulating a kid when they find one they beam with pride. My previous job was a nightmare in that we had big clients who all wanted a new feature when they bought the SaaS - I'd have to make this crappy feature just to get the sale and then the product was this weird mix of odd features that didn't make sense as a whole. Not good.

That sounds amazing MrsJamin
I am so bored of my clients and want yours instead.

I am an IT product manager too in a very boring sector.

You need to change product then. I hsve to genuinely care in the benefit my product gives it's users otherwise I hsve no motivation to do a good job! Tbh sometimes I dream of the money I'd make looking after gambling products though!

Which magazines/websites are best for keeping abreast of tech please?

I find The Register good for 'generalist/big news' but you really want to pick more specific ones depending on your skillset. What's your job role?

Thank you, I’m applying for front end/web dev roles.

Started coding in lockdown for fun when I was furloughed and bored, did a bootcamp off the government but dh got cancer at the end and I took care of him at home until he died so now I have a 10m career break on my cv.

Im going to apply for agency work back in healthcare so recruiters don’t think I’m lazy or unemployable or prone to just stopping work randomly.

New to this thread - I've been in a variety of tech roles inc IT graduate scheme. Technology has given me the most varied and challenging career I could wish for, including management, team leadership, and roles varying from Business Analyst, Knowledge and Information Management, and just moving into a new Change Management role. All the roles I've done are compatible to each other in terms of skill set which means I've been able to be a chameleon when applying for new opportunities.

Business Analysis and Change Management are two sides of the same coin.

Knowledge and Information management need good analysis skills, with change management thrown in where org improvements are needed

I studied Artificial Intelligence as part of my IT Degree before the days of ChatGPT, when Google started the trend (and indeed the demand) for semantic search, so real world users with no tech skills could ask questions in every day language. Microsoft has hit the nail on the head and set the tone with "Co-pilot" - not least of all the social psychology of human in the driving seat, AI the enabler not the master.

I'm currently working in an Agile delivery team enhancing an existing IT system for my part of a large Government department where our specific organisational requirements are somewhat different (but compatible) so it involves running a pilot for our users, identifying priority requirements, adding to a sprint and then doing a soft launch to get end user sign-off and take that to management for final go-live endorsement. A healthy layer of change management to land it in the business with the right culture and behaviour to sustain the change. A few speed bumps along the way but it's heading in the right direction, and exciting to be driving forward beneficial features and enhancements for our staff.

as a woman in IT, once you can tough it out and gain respect, there are significant career advantages because we undoubtedly have the edge in terms of emotional and social intelligence.

@FormerlyPathologicallyHappy I really enjoy LifeHacker as it has tech but all sorts of life hacks for work and life.

https://lifehacker.com/tech

I've just thought of a new requirement for the MN Edit function - once a BA, always a BA

the ability for the end-user to see the edit highlighted to avoid them wasting time searching for it

I changed 1 word in my edit, but for a user to notice the edit in the "updated" version is like looking for a needle in a haystack! In business terms that's wasted time and resource that should be eliminated (Lean thinking 👍)

@MNHQ if you're reading this, I'm on an iPad using Chrome browser. Only half-joking.

I'm sorry for your loss and what you've been through,@FormerlyPathologicallyHappy . Perhaps there are people on this thread who are involved in recruitment/ looking at applications who can advise on that career break. I'd have thought it would be possible to explicitly mention the reason for it in the cv or covering letter, and frankly any employer who held it against you wouldn't be one I'd want to work for!

Yes @FormerlyPathologicallyHappy - you could simply include a line like "After taking care of a family member at end of life, I'm now looking forward to getting back to work and the opportunity etc etc etc." Part of me thinks you shouldn't have to be this open, but if you felt comfortable doing so it clarifies things straight away and any sane hiring manager won't hold it against you.

@FormerlyPathologicallyHappy and I too am sorry for your loss.

Thank you, I have thought of putting a covering letter with future applications because career break is vague but you don’t really want to put bereavement on your CV.

Other people off my bootcamp have jobs now so I will keep on trying till I get one too

Sorry for your loss @FormerlyPathologicallyHappy . Good luck with your job search.

I find podcasts are great for keeping up to date with your specific field. For FE, https://shoptalkshow.com/ is great and I sometimes listen to Frontend Happy Hour.

The other IT resource that I enjoy is the BCS magazine that I receive as a member. It always has some useful articles to then research into further.

@FormerlyPathologicallyHappy explaining a career gap is often best to do in a covering letter, so it keeps that level of detail off your CV. Or as a minimum if you need to explain dates on your CV, I would find "date from > date to : career break for family care" to be a perfectly acceptable approach as a recruiter. If your skill match is reasonably strong to be sifted into a campaign, it shouldn't affect your chances of an interview. In the Civil Service your CV would need to match the required skills and experience list, aligned to the Grade being recruited for.

Thank you for the suggestions for keeping up to date.

I will use your line @donkra on my CV.

No one in my family codes and I’ve found if you do show people your code they start off being really enthusiastic but it tails off after a while.