I have not been writing in my blog for a few months so here I go with my life and professional updates and also a summary about my life before and after SF:
Before SF:
Work a ton in different jobs to pay my living and help my family in Peru while getting stable in USA, work in JPMorgan Chase while finishing school at Ohio State University, travel for a study program in France, Europe backpacking, work at Unilever for an internship in a global team, work for a few months in a logistic company as a supervisor and then realizing that what really matters is to do what you love to do)
March 2012 – July 2013:
Welcome to San Francisco!
Job Hunting: Since I got the chance to move to SF and start fresh. I decided to take a break and dedicate my time to learn, explore the city and find what I really want to do next.
About volunteer activities: I got involved with different organizations to work towards my goal on inspiring and empowering other women to unleash their best potential. Since I moved to SF from Ohio, I was able to get more involved in the tech sector so I was participating with organizations such as Girl Develop It where I started the PairUp session meetup), Women Who Code where I started the Algorithm’s meetup session) and also started and organize the women initiative program at Dev Bootcamp.
End of October 2013:
Dev Bootcamp: Finish a 9 weeks program in a coding school where I learn more about coding through Ruby on Rails and pair programming (I will write another post about my experience, lessons learn and advices)
Nov – February 2014:
About Coding: After finishing DevBootcamp, I spent most of my time working in a ruby on rails project with couple friends while continue learning to code in other languages such as more javascript, ember.js. Every day, all day. I need to confess that I didn’t feel ready to apply for jobs and call myself a software engineer. I don’t know if it was my impostor syndrome but I couldn’t see myself trying to convince to companies that I was ready to be one of their developers unless I feel more confident about my code ( I will write a post dedicated to this topic)
About volunteer activities: Got back to focus on helping Women Who Code, Girl Develop it and attended as a volunteer to different workshops, conferences and activities to help other women who are learning to code.
About Job Application: The couple friends who join me in a personal project after Dev Bootcamp encourage me to apply to Thoughtworks and couple startups (confession: I thought it was not even a chance that I will get through Thoughtworks hiring process) but I was willing to put the effort and work to prepare for it while being honest about who I was, where in my coding skills I was and show all my potential as a coder.
February – April 2014:
About Coding: Java, java, java, java, java, java, java, java, java, java and design on the site (did I said Java?)
About volunteer activities: Same as before
About Job Application: During the month of February, I got couple offers for a developer role from couple startups and Thoughtworks (yes! Thoughtworks). Maybe I should also write a post about my experience interviewing…
It was a hard decision because one of the startups was offering a role for a more front end/design role which I love and Thoughtworks was offering a Software developer consulting role with a whole training program involved which it was ideal for me. In the end, I decided to go for Thoughtworks and start my new adventure as a developer.
April 2014 – August 2014:
About Coding: Thoughtworks has a whole training program in place and I was even able to travel to India for the TWU program which is a 5 intense weeks of work in a simulation client project where I was able to learn to code with TDD, Java and javascript. The best part besides learning a ton, it was to be surrounded with other developers from different parts of the world (the picture above is my favorite, it was taking during my training in India with one of my closes friend Ashwati who is from India Thoughtworks office).
About volunteer activities: Thoughtworks is a company who cares about social and economy justice. As part of the training, we also got a chance to spend a day in a women and kids refugee center in India and learn more about their reality. It was not my typical volunteer work but I thin we were able to bring some smiles to them.
September 2014 – Present
About Coding: I am now working for one of the biggest clients of Thoughtworks in SF. My coding stack is Angular js andJava (of course TDD). So far, it has been a bunch of learning and a lot of emotional ups and downs ( maybe its about dealing with impostor syndrome).
About volunteer activities:
Got back involved with Women Who Code, still running the Algorithm’s and interview prep meetup and some designs for good causes.
Looking forward:
Keep learning, do some design work on the site, start writing more about my experiences so hopefully others can learn from them and developing an MVP for a project that allows women in tech to connect with each other.
