'For Women' Groups Helped me Break into the World of Tech
But at which point is it time to step out my comfort zone?
I was heading towards my 30th Birthday and decided it was about time I started to follow my passion, and begin to break into the world of tech, by learning to code
Better late than never, right?
Having had a pretty poor experience in the past, with the usual comments i.e 'Women's brains are wired differently, development is not for you' - I naturally leant towards joining a Women's only coding bootcamp, and that is where I found SheCodes.
Joining SheCodes Bootcamp
> Women currently hold 25% of coding jobs and earn 30% less money than men. SheCodes is here to help bridge the gender gap in the tech programming industry by providing knowledge that is becoming necessary in today’s increasingly technological job market
The SheCodes community had over 65K talented women to connect with. I met some inspiring females in my local area and felt more empowered than ever after completing courses in HTML, CSS, Vanilla JS and React.
You can check out my WeatherApp here, and my Dictionary here.
Attending My First Hackathon
6 months on, feeling supported, and having spoken to some female friends about how to test my skills - I took part in my first ever Hackthon!
The Winter Athena Hackathon was hosted by ShowCode.
> Our virtual hackathon, dedicated to women and non-binary people in tech, is back for a winter edition!
I teamed up with 4x women, from the UK, HongKong, America and France. Guess what.... we won!!
Inspiring Women on Twitter
Don't get me wrong, Twitter can have its dark places. When I started to gain followers in the Dev space, I also received unsolicited DMs from men.... you know the drill 'are you single?', 'hi - beautiful', 'you don't need to learn to code when you are this pretty'.
But, choosing to focus on the positive - I have been blessed to connect with so many talented women in tech via Twitter! Sharing resources, DMing for support, linking to job openings etc etc...
Discord Groups
If you are part of the Twitter Dev community, you will know all too well who the lovely @ewainy is. Emma set up a UK Group on Discord; it opened my eyes to how welcoming Developers are and the fact I perhaps feel comfortable enough to start attending more mixed events.
I am a huge advocate for joining women only groups at the start of tech careers and very grateful for the confidence and support my experiences/connections have given me.
I think fear of being questioned or confronted enough that it would force me off the path in the early days of my coding journey, was what pushed me to join these groups initially. But it is coming on a year now, and thankfully I do feel the perspective is changing - those types of comments (from my experience at least) have been in the minority.
Time to take my coding journey further, take a step out my comfort zone and embrace the big wide world.
See you out there, Zoë