Career Nav 29: Career Progression, From Start to Transition and Beyond #careerguidance
thank you my name is Tammy and I am a quality engineer for security system company um a little bit about me I have over 20 plus years of experience in information technology which ranges from um being a teacher being a web developer working in data analytics and currently working in quality engineering so what about you de Paulie hi Tammy nice to meet you my name is deepali hello everyone good evening good afternoon good morning depends on where you are watching us um on this podcast currently I work as a product owner for a company called Ping Identity which basically provides Federal identity management and self-hosted identity access management IAM solutions to web identities and single sign-on Solutions um so that's pretty much about me um I am really excited and um stoked to be chatting here with Tammy today uh it's going to be a really good conversation and we will be talking about Tech Career progression uh from start to transition and Beyond which I think a lot of people might be interested in listening about so okay uh Tammy um can you tell us about how did you get started in your career sure so I got started in my career um which began back at um in University when I was attending University my major basically was accounting because I loved it a whole lot I liked numbers um but as I was actually taking the classes I was not doing too well basically I was failing the classes so while I was at the University I was also working at the help desk and one of the one of the people had asked me was like um why don't you take a class in it because I mentioned to him that I was not doing too well in accounting but so he mentioned why don't you just take the class in it and see how that goes I was reluctant I was like uh I'm not sure um but then I was like okay one class probably shouldn't hurt so I took the class I didn't do too well so I went back to accounting still didn't do too well so I was like let me give it a shot again let me see if I can try it one more time so I tried taking a computer class one more time and I believe in me like an A or B and from that point on it was like I went on ahead and took all the classes and information technology um and then I still kept my minor in accounting so that's how my Tech Career actually began from University and then once I had graduated I found a job as a teacher you know teaching computer class and then working on database for that company so that's how mine actually began but what about Judy poly how did you actually get started in Tech yourself so I think the challenges are pretty much um the challenges which you face in any job that you are doing um in tech industry the challenges are basically because the tech is always evolving you always have to keep up with the pace with the new technologies so you have to be willing to keep learning if you want to grow um so that's one challenge um so you have to spend some time uh other than your work uh to just you know keep up with the Technologies and Tech stack and stuff like that so that's one challenge um another challenge could be planning your and owning your own career which I think a lot of us don't do in terms of figuring out what you want to do short term versus long term and then having to have you know directions in that sense so that's something it's not a challenge but something to keep in mind always um when you're working in the tech industry um yeah and uh there will be challenges in every step in your career um I think um you should be just open for them because um challenges means that you are growing and it also gives me um a satisfaction that I am I can so solve those challenges and uh as a product owner I think I have challenges every every I would not say every other day but uh it's just full of challenges because of the the thick industry right it's just High based environment you have to keep up with your um your peer and um how the market is doing in general so you have to do a lot of Market studies and and stuff like that right so um I like solving challenges so yeah um yeah there are a lot of challenges I just keep talking about it but to just short this answer is that you should be up for challenges and if this is something and tech industry is full of challenges so um uh it'll give you a lot of challenges as long as you're up for it so the poly that leads to another question what were some of the other challenges you face when moving to a different country okay yeah right that's very interesting um when we talk about moving environments like even moving from one company to the company would have its own challenges right the first main challenge would be the uncertainty that it might or will bring to you right so moving from countries it's like uh because I have been born and raised in India um and I have spent like quite a bit of time there because I graduated and I was working and then uh after working for a while I moved to Canada so it had a set of challenges in terms of personally professionally um yeah so you are not you know like you are obviously very comfortable because the first challenge would be you won't be close to your family so um you know like if you you have to do everything on your own um there won't be people to help you out um you know you just call your friends and family and they're always there to help you out that's not gonna happen and also you will have to you know like in terms of professionally you'll have to adjust to the culture and how people work in that particular environment um so I was working like in the South Asian environment and now I'm all working in the North American style so that so adaptation learning and how we do things here oh all those challenges but yeah so it brings a lot of uncertainty um but then it's also a sign of you are growing it's also aligned with your growth so if you want to grow I think yeah and then don't be scared of challenges life will have its own challenges depending on where you are and what you do right so um tell me okay let me ask you this question so what challenges like did you face when you were getting started in a career oh wow well after I graduated even though I mentioned earlier that I did find a job it took me a while to find a job um especially in you know the I.T film um so that was one of the challenges I faced and then the second challenge that I also faced was that that I thought that I couldn't do it I know it sounds like kind of like interesting like yes I went to school for it but my only challenge was I had a hard time finding a job but once I found a job I was like can I really do this can it really teach these students will they really know or see through me that I'm I'm like cannot teach them you know computer class well they also see through me at the job that I'm working at now and I'm capable of doing databasing even though I went to school for it so those were some of the challenges I faced internally but I'm glad that I also had my family there with me you know to talk to them about you know some of the challenges that I was facing um and such and they would you know let me know or say Hey you know it's going to be all right just keep on working at it you know you're you're straight out of college and you know things are going to happen like this so just keep at it so that was some of my challenges just trying to you know keep it going keep it focused and you know and just just keep on working right uh for me starting in Tech like I basically did my bachelor's in electronic engineering and then when I was doing that I realized that this is not what I want to do uh during my bachelor everything it was quite I mean not late but it's not the right time to realize that's not what you want to do but somehow I managed to get through my bachelor's and then I I took a one year uh Gap because I really wanted to revisit and see what I want to do um that was I think one of the best decision that I made of you know taking one year of Gap and uh thinking what I want to do and then computers is always something that I have been always interested in um so from electronic engineering I uh all so I wanted to do computers Masters in computers but their challenge there is that uh you have to give exams and you have to be Co you need to be qualified to get to into a good good engineering college so I had to do some preparations uh those are like a usual engineering preparations that you do for any engineering uh uh college so I took advantage of that one year um and um um there's some preparations gave some exams to certain universities that I was targeting and wanted to do my Master's in uh luckily I got through in one of the university and that's how I get into computers and yeah from there it's I just because I wanted to do computers so I just love uh doing it and then it was I think um very obvious path going forward to get into Tech uh from computers yeah that's how I get it I got into Tech yeah pretty easy yes so um Tammy um use I think you said that you are doing quality engineering work in your bio so what made you interested in quality engineering roles specifically well what made me interested in it is the fact that it's um it's pretty much similar in my opinion well it's similar to what I was going for in accounting it's kind of like more structured some things are structured I'll put it that way where it's structured you have to go find issues and you know track them down or even if you don't you know then you still can be able to say it's okay but I think part of what made me interested in it as I mentioned earlier was that you find these issues you report it you write out the steps you write out the processes you go through reproducing it you talk to the you know the developers and see if it's okay to write these things so to me that's what had actually made me interested but again it also made me interested when it was kind of like how can I say introduced to me in a way where it wasn't like forced I was doing it gradually on each job that I was working on about five about six years six or seven years ago um gradually I didn't realize I was doing quality engineering like she would say do test cases and then my next job is like oh can you just test this so it was like gradually coming on but I didn't realize that I was beginning to like it that was also another thing as well that made me interested um in doing that so it was just gradually you know came through just in increments each job that I had to do the testing so that was also another thing as well that made me interested and then the last job that I had was mainly some part manual testing and automation which really made me interested in understanding how to do more manual testing as well as automation with it so yeah that's cool like you were already exposed to um the profile that you took later on which is which is great right correct yeah so that makes me wonder um do you have any tips for people or women looking into move into quality engineer or become a quality engineer sure I agree with you I mean I for this portion here it goes in two directions or several directions let me put it this way Nepali so if you are just starting out um as a quality engineering you have no experience one of the things that um I find is if you're looking for a job and you're unable to is to do volunteer like I'm volunteering for this open source project that has um a section where you can be able to you know work with quality engineering if you are looking for a job now if you're in your job like I was this is another thing if you're in your job already and you're trying to transition um another thing you can do is um similar to what I did was little by little um like hey can I check this out for you or can I test this for you um and that's how it actually starts um by just you know doing several testing for people and then you get more and then you get more um so those are some of the tips that I would um suggest if you're looking into getting into quality engineering but the same thing for you too devali what actually Drew you into cyber security and identity management um so it again it's the same thing like um it was Auto transition like it happened for you in QA role so for me uh when I was working with a company called CA Technologies I was already exposed to some of these terminal knowledge terminal knowledge Technologies uh sorry about that so basically uh it's like for IAM and access management stuff uh like how you authorize um so there are some protocols like oyd CWS trust and uh saml and stuff like that so I was already exposed to those uh Concepts um and that just drew my attention more to it so I wanted to learn more about it and then the company that I was working for bought by some other company so there were some some location changes happening so I was looking for um uh looking for a move somewhere else so that I can I don't have to tell my location so here comes the pink identity uh which I came across is working on and solving the similar issues in the identity and access management um and we always know these data breaches and stuff like that happening every day with every company so um on a surface level we know things happen but I also wanted to go into deep detail to understand how we can build softwares a more secure and robust enough um uh to help with digitalization process because I think that's the world where it's going to and especially after code would be all learned that it's become very crucial part of the world now um so yeah so just wanted to learn more about the process so why not join a company images which is working um towards solving that issue so that made me join I am so it seems like you have um recently transitioned from the engineering into product management can you talk a little bit more about that process uh yes so um that is uh recently from like few years whenever I have been having my conversation with my manager about the long-term plan and how I want to do um uh so product is something I always wanted to try out um and especially being a QA because you are working with eyu bikes you are also working with product you also work with engineering so you are like in this in this layer which is connected with all these um uh domains so you get exposure and so that actually helped me understand the product more and I also wanted to see how uh more close to the customer basically how our customer using the product and um what else we can do to help the solve the problem so why not just talk to the customer myself uh so that's when yeah I moved to product I think there's one more point which is worth highlighting here like if someone is um uh looking uh to do a similar move not from engineering to product it could be vice versa from Broadway engineering or from somewhere else perhaps right um how do you go about it so um it should be I would say supported by the leaders that you're working and we should have an open environment like luckily I got that open environment so my company is also supporter of the fact that um if you should be working or solving a problem that interests you the most um so they don't want to work on something which doesn't interest you that much and you want to build your career somewhere else so they were always being supportive of that so that made my uh move easier and also if uh you are someone who is looking uh for a change um start doing and learning more more about the domain uh being a QA got me that exposure to learn more about the product and how it is um so yeah start doing more research on that start having conversation with the manager and as an organization we should have an open and supportive culture where people can grow irrespective of what they have been doing for uh for the past few years I tell you agree with that as such my previous company always used to say that my manager always is important to understand she would say that it's important to understand the domain or the have domain knowledge about the product so that you can be able to understand the customers the users that you're actually working with she always encouraged us to just understand the domain and such so that's the key that's the key yeah very important is there any product dummy that you have for our audience or women working in technology um there are several um but I'll name a couple of them one of the pro tips that I find is just keep learning keep practicing um the main thing is as I mentioned earlier just to keep learning um whether it's through going to conferences or going to meetups or if you're taking like udemy or any classes like that um just keep on learning um and surround yourself by people who are you know there to support you on your journey in technology um so what about you um depali what is your pro tip I agree with whatever you you just give just I'll just add on top of that is one thing that I always believe in is that we as women I think most of the people we are very comfortable we just want to be comfortable so uh keep that in mind be comfortable with uncomfortable situations because that is when you grow push yourself and yeah if you're in technology you have to keep learning so yeah as you said keep learning and and find a mentor if you can that would just help in everything that's so true find a mentor they definitely do help and such so yeah that is correct cool um now as we wrap up uh any final thoughts coming that you wanna uh share with our audience uh the only final thought that I have is that um if you want to you can reach me um on Twitter um at DC Tech sister um so that's where I can be found at and if you wanted to follow me that would be great um where I'm definitely talk more about software testing and um post things about different events and things like that so what about you Nepali what are your final thoughts um so my final thoughts would be yes definitely feel free to reach out I think with the podcast we'll be sharing all the my Twitter handle and my LinkedIn profile so you can feel free to ask me questions there about transitioning or you just want to chat I'm pretty open to that and I do support uh initiatives like what women who code is doing basically um helping women um you know like excel in Tech Career and Technology roles and I think we all need support so I'm I just want to tell you that I'm there so feel free to ask me any questions if you have on Twitter or LinkedIn you are most welcome uh with that uh I think we will almost at the time and we will wrap up um thank you so much Tammy for being here and chatting with me and thank you to Nepali for the same here I've learned so much about your transitioning as well so it was very very um insightful and very interesting to know about your journey I'm glad I wish you all the best and keep it moving thank you so much and you too you are an inspiration because doing and trying all these various role is not easy no it's not and that's one thing too for um definite it's okay you know at first I was like I should stay in one row but it's like yeah it's okay I was in web web development teaching data analytics so you know in a variety of fields to get those experiences so yeah it definitely was helpful right cool thanks for thanks for being here thanks for sharing your experience with us and our audience thank you so much time okay thank you nice talking to you bye-bye take care [Music]
2023-01-29 00:09
