Discovering Open source, working @Microsoft + learning on the job: Nelly Kiboi - Part 1
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Lovely. So we are very lucky to have the wonderful Nelly join us today. Nelly, how are you doing? I'm good. It's my first time being on a podcast, so I'm a bit nervous, but very. Lucky to have your debut with us. Exactly. Yeah, I'm excited to be here.
No, we're excited to have you. I'm so, so excited. So can you tell us a bit about yourself? Yeah. Well, I moved to the U.K. around seven years now from Kenya, originally in Kenya, grew up in Kenya. So I moved here to start working at American Express during their graduate school program, which you were there before.
And I stayed there for around five years and up until late last year when I moved now to Microsoft, where I am right now. And I've been working there for now eight months. Yeah. Oh. Congratulations on the new role. So what were you doing?
Amex and what are you doing now? Microsoft. When I was at American Express, I had very varied roles within the five years. So I started off before that. When I was in Kenya, I used to work in a bank and I was doing Android programing. When I moved to American Express.
I started off as a web developer and it was more Fullstack and it was more around helping building a website to help customers refine other customers. The two Amex products that after I moved to a different team to do more, helping develop developers within the company. So it was more developer focused role doing more open source work. So we're building a micro frontend that was and is still running most of Amex website. Then after a while I decided I needed a change and move towards a more DevOps focused role. And the reason why I did that is like I've really enjoyed helping developers become faster as they build product, especially because I noticed that most people, most developers just like doing the programing.
But if you don't fix like how you take it all the way to production, then it becomes like the product never reaches your customers. And I realized, like I really enjoyed that segment of just speeding up the development process and making it a great developer experience. So I started to pivot away from doing more like programing type of work, and I started looking into the last product I encountered was GitHub actions. So I did a lot of that type of work building. The pipelines are on that and then later on in my role was helping the team.
Like, this was my last role. It was more infrastructure based, more architectural role, helping a team improve their development practices, but frontend all the way to looking at the pipelines and how did they do that? And they were running on Azure at that time and that's how, yeah, I got myself into Microsoft. So it was kind of like a top, a pillar just kept on growing from there. Like, I'll find something new, find it interesting and decide to venture into that field.
So now it's the my current role at Microsoft involves helping software vendors, we call them ISV, and who sell through Azure and startups make the Azure experience better. So main aim is usually to collect feedback from startups and software vendors because they're usually on the edge bringing stuff. Yeah, so most of the time they come to us with we've really tried this different options, but there's something wrong that either the documentation or and we capture that feedback. So some of it could involve adding a new feature or creating new documentation or even looking at how they're doing the current processes and we feed that back to that specific product teams in the work and then the ones who now use that information to build products and improve that product. So it's been an exciting role as like a lot of change considering I was used to being behind the scenes. Now I'm more talking everyday to customers that use our products.
Yeah, fantastic. It really sounds like you've done a lot. You've seen at all sides of technology. You tried a few different roles.
I'm really excited to talk to you about the open source stuff. But first of all, I want to do the industry Insight in five. So I believe you're going to talk about cloud because that's your specialty for the moment right now.
So if you can give us like a five minute insight into what that is like as an industry. I would say it's huge. I think when I was looking at Azure itself and the product it has had, it has over 200 different products. So I probably know maybe 2% of that and not on an expert level, just like keep on growing.
And I think one of the things why I like what I like about where I walk right now is the fact that it's encouraged not to know things because it gives you the opportunity to find out. These are the areas that I don't know and this is what I'm going to be working on. So I would say like especially around cloud technologies, Kubernetes, the container technology, that's a huge thing that is helping, especially software companies and startups as they scale and grow. To be able to do that in such an efficient manner, I think it's it's a complicated technology. Even I am still learning about it.
And I feel like it's it's an area that will keep on growing because there's an ecosystem around that particular area. And I feel like with the with new technologies like Chad Djibouti, which I'm sure everyone is not talking about it, I hope you guys have used it. I love it.
I actually love I should be the ambassador. I use it every day. Yeah. We actually want a hackathon using it. Yeah.
Oh, yeah. So that like. The software that powers that and enables that to run is the cloud technology. And I'm sure you've all seen like recently, it's usually it's getting into a level where it's like maximum then is a maximum number of people that are using it.
So you might not be able to use it. And that's why now you need to get more cloud to support that type of infrastructure. And the more it starts processing more complex stuff like now with the introduction of it to being and being used much more widely, I feel like it would enable the cloud to grow much.
The cloud technologies will continue growing faster to enable that. And as well as you know now, especially like you've mentioned, building something with it, I think that's the next step and it's a great thing that we're talking about open source because something like open AI, which is available for anyone to start using, feel like I'm not 100% sure. So maybe part of which have to pay. That's a way that you can start contributing without really having to pay for like a full fledged access to it.
Yeah. Yeah, that's fantastic. And I'd love to know, like, how would you describe the cloud to someone who has no experience in technology? Like, it's kind of like looking into various different tech roles that they want to do. How would you describe the cloud and like the roles in that to them? Okay, that's a really good question.
I feel like I would start off by saying it's it's what's running everything that we now use in technology that's just from a basic level in terms of career options within this field. Hmm. That's a really good point because my career has been quite interesting, so I've never really looked at if you're a beginner, where do you start from? Actually, I think cloud is one of the areas where there's so much resources in terms of certifications that you can get through to. I'll speak about Microsoft.
I know there's an Azure fundamentals that you can start doing right now and the way it has been created. Yes, you definitely need to know a little bit about technology, but it talks about the fundamentals. So I'd say those are like really great places to start and then you can branch out because there's cloud engineering and then there's like the DevOps, and then within DevOps there's ICD. So there's like the continuous integration, which is a different like that's like daily development, building the application.
And then you have the deployment part, which is the continuous deployments and all those are different technologies in between each of them. Um, so my if I look at my career and give advice based on that, I would say start off with something that you can start using right now. So for example, when I started off it was more like GitHub actions, something I used daily and a way for me to learn.
And then from there I branched out to now understand better what are containers, How can I start using this? How can I make my current workforces better? But that's from a perspective of right now. But for beginners, I'll say the best ways to start doing research around cloud and try and do one of the certification. That's a really nice way. You don't have to do the exams, but you can just look at the training because all the cloud providers have some sort of like really big training resources, especially for beginners. Yeah. I think that's such a helpful piece of advice because it can be overwhelming.
Like you said, cloud is a lot of things, so if you start googling, what is cloud and how do I get into it? There's like so many different pathways, right? So starting with the fundamentals is a great way to do it and will have the resources that you recommended in the show notes as well. All right. Lovely. And also, you've you've delved into so many different tech roles. Yeah. Which is incredibly impressive. I don't think I know anyone who's on as many tech roles. Zerbe But there can be a tendency for us to put pressure on ourselves to know everything when we're in that role.
But because you've been able to move so much, how would you advise those people about learning on the job? Because you must have learned the while you're in it, right? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel like I'm still learning on how to navigate that. And I feel sometimes it can, especially in setting rules. Like for a long time I feel like the industry has always been like you can specialize and become really good at one thing and then everyone knows you about for that particular thing.
But my perspective has been different because I'm really like I like trying out different things. And especially if you're in the frontend world, it's very much we know frontend JavaScript frameworks, how many commands, all of it. So I would say that because of because of the changing nature of technology, you have to be always open to learning something new. And I would say one of the key things that I've been learning recently and for the past couple of years is that active led me not just building that as a skill. It's in itself.
I feel like a lot of people assume that it's something that, okay, there's all this new stuff and I don't know where to start from, and I think I'll share that one or I'll show a link. Does this really nice article where someone talks about how how to learn media and it starts off by just acknowledging that you don't know something. And I think it helps because you now you can just write down what you don't know.
And from that it just reduces the amount of work you need to do because you can now really go down into the details. I want to learn how to write JavaScript. You need test. You start from that, right? And then what do you know? You know JavaScript, right? So you also acknowledge that you know a lot as well, and then you just give yourself grace, do some research, find a community, find people who can mentor you. And I think for me that has been quite useful, especially finding mentors, people who are already in the industry and they know how things work because they've learned a lot and also learning from others. And I find like learning from others can be like, you know, working with other people, working in projects and open source is a great way.
And the other thing I would say is also teaching others. I find it quite fulfilling and it reinforces what I'm learning. Suddenly start off with finding out what you don't know.
And then by the time you finish, teach someone and it, it makes it sticky. Yeah, it. Does. It does. Especially when people ask you questions and it can reaffirm the fact that you actually know it. I remember when I was teaching for code for schools, people would ask questions and like, Oh, I actually do know this. It helped to have like me thinking, Oh, like, who am I to teach to a white girl? She knows she know all the facts that you know all the things that at least I'm. Yeah.
And you know, accomplishing something even like I feel like you can see I want to learn Kubernetes, but it's such a huge ecosystem. Why not just start with something small? Like, I want to understand what a container is. And then from there, that can be maybe take you two weeks to understand roughly. And then after two weeks, you've accomplished that. Yeah, it's a journey. And I feel like sometimes making it such a like I need to learn to in one week is just.
You know, those littles have got to go like in 2023, let's get rid of these kind of clickbait titles. Yeah. They've got to go. Yeah. But one thing that I've been advised on, especially at the beginning of my career, was to use open source projects to practice and learn new technologies. Can you walk us through like what open source is? Yeah, So I would say open source is sharing anything and being able to allow others to use it, modify it and be able to like contribute to it as well. I think in recent times especially, it's become important to define open source and wider scale other than just sharing source code, because I think initially when it's I think when I was doing some research and it's been like more than 20 years since the word open source launched, and I think initially when it started off, it was more focused on source code itself, but now it's more focused around sharing anything. And the reason why I define it, though, is also helps new people coming to the industry.
So I define it in various ways, in such a way that it's it can be like sharing something on Twitter or sharing and someone else is able to share their comments, exchanging ideas. StackOverflow or what we know in technology most of the time is something using a tool like GitHub and versioning. And so that you can see the history, you can exchange ideas, you can build on top of others. And I think one more key thing I need to mention is licensing. Now it's become quite complex.
If you don't put a license in your even your own personal projects, first of all, because of what we do within our companies need to check like your contracts. What does it say about software that you build, especially if you build it in your personal GitHub repo is are there do you might need to license that to like, let's say a famous license is like a MIT. So that's something else that's very important. If we decide to come into open source software and build your own thing, that's where you would start from that. That's something important to think about.
It's no longer more like just put software that makes sure it has a license so that it can be used by others and people can feel comfortable modifying it. It sounds like open source has been like quite a big part of your journey and a big part of how you've learned and grown as well. And I think something really important that you touched on is like. We. As a collective, as a as an industry, technology industry, we need to make open source a little bit more accessible to the newbies.
How do you think that what are your thoughts and feelings about how easy it is to get into open source? Because I know for me I'm struggling, I've struggled and it can be a little bit off putting because it's quite intimidating. Like, how do I start? So yeah, really keen to hear about your thoughts on that. Yeah, that's a really good point because I never knew about open source. I only found out about it through a program called Rails Cons, some of code.
I'm not sure if it's still running, but it was a program run by community within Rails and Ruby and they would this was while I was in Kenya. So they would offer like a stipend and introduce you to a project and then get your mentor within that project and get you an issue that you can walk on. So that was the first time I started off, and I started off with my friend. So we were two of us.
It was kind of like a group. Yeah. And I feel like that was a really great way to get us into Open Source. And there's still programs like that that are running. One other program I go to after I finish that because I got exposed to open source. That was our chichi, and that was when I did not like my first big open source contribution.
I was working on a project called My Force and they build financial tools excuse me, financial tools for, for like financial institutions in, in countries where like, let's see where I was in Kenya, where like institutions that cannot afford to get expensive financial software. So it helps my needs, like let's say you have like a local women's group which are saving. So they can use that software for free, not paid for. So through programs like outreach, I was able to even find out about a project like that and start contributing to that. The Android application.
And I feel like programs like those really help because you have someone a mentor within the project itself who's helping you contribute and start off initially and you can reach out to them in with questions. But that's not to say like, let's see now, for example, if you're trying to contribute to software and you're not using any of those programs and as you mentioned, it's a very daunting task. And I would say it is because sometimes it needs like let's if you're doing it on GitHub, it needs a like can you tell us on how to use Git, right? Yeah, but I feel like GitHub is doing a lot. Walk a walk around that to help. Like with codes pieces where you can be able to edit without having. Yeah.
Some of it's kind of like just accessing the code itself and adding onto that, but it's in terms of contributing in general even up to now, unless you find a community that let's say has a code of conduct and you know someone, I think it's much more easier to contribute that way. And you feel welcome to ask any type of question like and that's can be difficult. Um, so I usually feel like it's up to maintainers and his large communities right now that are forming around, you know, supporting maintainers to be able to create that and also having organizations, open source organizations that your work is to make sure there's standards around open source stuff. So it's welcoming.
And one of the things is like ensuring that it's a welcoming community because the way it works, like open source, is that somebody contributes to it and eventually they become such an active contributor that they become a maintainer. It's, it's like a lifecycle. So if you don't welcome new people to the community, first of all, it's not being used and then there's no maintenance of the product and you know, we're not doing, not benefiting from it anymore and that's an important aspect of it. Yeah, so many questions.
Can we cut? Yeah, yeah. Sorry. I feel like I sometimes I tangent off and I forget. Like, no, it's all gold is also gold is still the question was about how to contribute for the first time and getting into it and you gave a lot of great answers essentially finding a community and making sure that you've got support because I think that is something that's really important, is being able to ask questions.
I think a lot of the time when you're looking just Googling open source projects, I can commit, I can contribute to. It's not always clear how you reach out to those people. So I know as well with October 1st, last year was the first time they allowed non code contributions to count towards a Yeah. So people could contribute by. You know.
Helping edit documentation, designing things. It wasn't just for people that had coding experience. So things like that I think will make a big difference. Yeah, and it makes a lot more welcoming.
You know, sometimes even at hackathons, people like, Oh, not coders, I can't go to a hackathon, but little things like saying like, you can still contribute, like you don't have to be a coder to be able to build stuff or make a difference. And documentation is something that is normally the bane of all developers experience. I work with back engineers you don't like to document? Yeah, even frontend engineers who don't like to read the documentation look like when I sent I get the API. What? What do I need to do? Let me know.
Let's look and see. We just always have a front end was versus backend was. Yeah.
But yeah. No, I think it's a really good point. I think there are a lot of projects that would be so grateful to have people be like, I can help make this documentation clearer. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah.
And I feel like that's why some, some projects nowadays, they always have like a contribution, but empty file. Mm hmm. Is a fast place, I would say for anyone who wants to contribute should go there to see how they could start contributing. But as you said, I think the fact that open source now is welcoming people to contribute other than source code, you can do other forms of contribution like creating a list and then sharing that when you build your website, just put it out in public. If you're making like a fun project, put it out in public.
That's what I see and that's the beginning of open source contribution you can share like cooking list and, and even up to now, I think pieces have become quite popular. Sometimes I'm not into being right now, but when I'm interviewing, what I usually do is I do this thing where I search interview questions, GitHub or system design questions GitHub, and you'll find like there's so much resources, people just putting out their like a list of questions you can ask for an interview in an interview it can specific to an industry and there's also the like projects that are awesome and it's like a list of different types of things. So like you can find an example is GitHub actions, GitHub actions a list of awesome GitHub actions. Wow, a list of awesome frontend projects or so you can also build your own and communities form around that because that just like a place where you can go to find a lot of information.
So I think that's other elements that people don't think about when you think about open source, but you can also do, Yeah, that. Sounds great and it's a great way to also stand out in applications. I don't know if this is a vicious rumor that I've heard, and I've heard that people are like, I'm very active in open source. Communities can land roles through their contributions. Is that true? Is it false? Mythbusters? Yeah. I see. It's true.
And I feel like one of the reasons why I got my job at American Express was because of opinions. What I did initially, I think it helped expose myself and my profile out there. And I would say even now, it works. Especially if you start contributing to a project, They're going to see you as someone who is, you know, dedicated and for you to dedicate more time, it might mean, you know, joining that group. So that's one way of getting a job.
I have also seen in the industry there's a tendency to say experience with open source work as one of the requirements, like in job applications. Okay. But I am a bit like not 100% like supporting it.
I seed from a perspective of learning how to work with others. You know, contributing back. It's a great thing.
But also I there's so many factors as to why people of contribute to open source. And if your day to day work like right now my day to day work allows me to contribute to work actually on open, active, open source projects or just open source is part of my work. So my contribution will show that I'm doing something on GitHub. But if you are, let's say you've, you have like you like it's closed source, right? I used to work for a financial institution.
Lot of software is you can't see what I'm doing every day so that people who are like that, like they probably don't have anything on GitHub, probably they don't want to share. But I don't think you should judge someone with that because there was a tendency around that They even saw a thing where someone had set up like an automation that would commit every single. Thing you can, you can as well. So you can decide. Oh yeah, that's a metric that I want someone to do. Someone just do that every single day.
And I'm just like, okay, 365 days of open source contribution. Oh my God. Yeah. That's the thing. I see at the end of like a calendar year, years, people sharing their contributions.
Yeah. Last year. Right. But yeah, that is such a hack. Let me know how to do that. And you're going to see all the green squares, and I've heard that's it. Because we don't have any green squares that anybody else can see because we're contributing to close the software.
Yeah. Yeah. And another organization like they gave us an account that we can use all personal accounts and so you would never see like that, like the month I'm contributing. So that's a question I have for you is like you were doing this in parallel to working full time at points.
How did you balance that? How did you have the motivation to do outside of that and the time? Yeah. That's a good point. When I moved here, I was doing actually active opensource contribution. Then it was difficult because I had to get to do it after work. I finish work and then start off with it.
And I would say at that time was I didn't have a lot going on for me like after work, so it was fine. But now, I don't know, like over the weekends I just want to relax, you know, it's difficult and I feel like that's, that's way if you get into open source, I feel like it's just you have to think beyond, you know, why you contributed to this. Are you passionate about it? And I feel like that pushes you to contribute more. But I'm also a big advocate of, you know, taking the time to rest. So that was my life.
Yeah. Was Yeah, it's important. That's an important aspect and that's why I feel like if you can't contribute up in other ways, you can do it, you know? And that could be like GitHub nowadays has a feature called sponsorship. You can sponsor someone if you're using a software, you can cause out there a lot of the open source software. People leave it because they these like, you know, you have cost of living right now. You can be writing software for free even if millions of people are consuming it, unless like there's a way to sustain it, it's sometimes it's difficult.
So a lot of companies do like especially, um, big companies who use it. Some, some of them will like paid give money to the project to make it sustainable. But it's, it's, it's difficult sometimes using open source workers like full time from what I've seen happening in the industries that a lot of times the open source has two models They'll have the model where it's anyone can use that software and then they'll have this model where it's like because you'll find some projects have like funded issues.
So if you're a big company and you want your issue to be solved faster, they have now like the paid like you pay the maintainers. Oh, okay, we're talking money now. Well, that's it. Because if you have those big companies using this free software, it's kind of exploitative if you're not contributing back in some way.
Yeah, And like. That's the important part. If you are using open source and in the way it's you're going to generate money with it, it's always good to look back and go back and contribute to open source software. And that could also be just paying and that's being part of the ecosystem itself. Yeah, so that's another way of thinking of it about it.
So open Source was at the beginning of your journey and it was the whole reason. Well, one of the one of the reasons why you landed a job at Amex, what was that transition like? So when you got that offer saying, okay, we're going to move you to what? Burgess Hill Yeah. What was one for your mind and what was that transition like? I think when I got the initially when, um, so this someone who was working at Amex at that time reached out to me on LinkedIn. I this was 2015. First of all, I thought, Oh my God, this is a hacker. What? You know? And I think until when I talked to the in person who runs the graduate scheme program, that's when I realized it was like a there was a process that was happening.
So I did didn't interview, got accepted. But then you have like because I'm moving to a different country, there's a work permit process that happens. So that took maybe roughly four months to go through that. And during that process, I wasn't I, I never it never really occurred to me the change that I was making.
I think I was so excited. Yeah. High life. I just I actually grew up in like a small farm in a village in Kenya. So the transition in my life and in my career was just a huge right.
So I think I was just very excited. I didn't think twice about the the opportunity, didn't think about like, what the impact would be. So I moved here in January, which is winter. And it's been I'm trying to get out of here in January. I am so. Sorry. And in Kenya at that time, it was summer, so it was just so huge change.
Yeah, straightaway. Yeah. And I think once I got here, I found another black woman was also joining Maureen shout out. So awesome. Maureen, you were a letter.
She had lived in this country for a while. She has family here, so she was able to help me settle in. But beyond that, it was, I would say was difficult. You know, the I think everything was just new.
Even just the transport system itself used to stress me out using Google Maps like it was just like, well, speaking, I think the way I pronounce things and in my Kenya English accent was different from how people. So I'd had to I would have to like getting meetings at work. I'd have to repeat them once, twice.
And I felt that very wasn't. It struck my confidence because I was like, Oh, maybe someone doesn't, you know, then I'll just keep quiet. And even beyond that, you know, being in a place where I didn't have family here, I was making friends.
But I grew up in a very everyone around me was very it was black. Yeah. I was just not used to a completely new culture and being so different from everyone else. I think my education, I didn't study in this country, so it was just very, very new. And so, uh, so scary.
Um, I was excited about the job though, and I'm glad that I had the open source work I was working on because it really centered me in terms of understanding why and what I'm doing, and also the fact that I was also learning it at my job at that time. And I got a really amazing boss called Alex Shout out Alex. Yeah, it's you.
And I think having those in the community that I was able to start building that morning, Derek It was just like a really nice way of me to settle in and see like there were times when even two years later, I would just be crying, just, you know, using family. Because now people are moving on with their lives, you know, in Kenya and I'm here. And sometimes things would just get really like difficult with work with, you know, just day to day living.
But you don't have that like community that I grew up with. Yeah. The Carter family. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And also work was just like, you know, I used to be an android engineer and I really loved it. And then now to transition into a role, there was an opportunity at that point to continue with the Android engineering. Well, it was more the open source was doing that for me. I, I feel like I was put in a place where I did not like doing web work, web development.
FOSTER But then I think I just I needed to I didn't want work to be, like, unstable for me. So I decided let me just take it as an opportunity to learn something new. And even if it means learning how to integrate around me.
So I felt like work was no longer like a thing that I used to. I'd just go to work and then come back home because I just needed I wanted to find something stable, settle settling as an individual within the UK. And then I can now look what am I doing at work, which eventually worked out because I was able to take that time to figure out what I wanted to do. And if you ask a lot of people from back then when they met me, I was used to be very quiet and I think I was just like a. Really. Quiet girl.
And I think after a while and taking my time, my confidence started to build up and it took a lot of, you know, being able to build a confidence in myself and finding communities that's way like business groups. Well, I think affinity groups like the we had like Women in Tech, I, I mixed those were like my communities where I'd be able to meet people, talk to them, you know, and I, I found this to be such a solid way to get to integrate in a community. And I feel like if you asked me the question, would you want to do that again? I'd say yes, because I think I grew as an individual in a way that I cannot describe and I always, always recommend to anyone change, like take yourself out from the environment of comfort the way you will.
Girl will compete, completely scare you, which is a great thing. And I think resilience is so important and something that I built during that period of time. And I'm so proud of myself for doing that because eventually I got to the stage where I want to know what for the work that I was doing. Yes, I am. Yeah, yeah. And if I compare myself from when I joined and even getting to the stage, it was a lot of like being able to build myself step by step and using a lot of the community, the people around me and the community even outside.
I'm like putting black females. I knew about it when I used to live in Burgess Hill and used to come all the way to London, So so I days where it was impossible to make it because of their long journey. But those were like really great places to meet people in a community to people who are similar to you, going through the same life experiences. And when you see people do that, it's like seed. It's just like, you know, it encourages you. Yeah. That's inspiring.
And I don't think I ever think that you needed one more sign to jump on that flight and move your sign. I'm out of it. And then I did want to say before we go to part two was I wanted to ask about.
So you said that you were quite shy. And when I was at Amex, Nelly had a reputation and an extremely, extremely good reputation. And I told my manager that I reached out to Nelly to be my mentor, and she was like, Oh, well, she's a very good person to know. So you built up this incredible reputation.
Did you find it challenging to advocate for yourself? How do you feel like you built such an impressive, strong internal brand, considering that you weren't necessarily feeling that confident in yourself at the time, or did that happen over the span of your career? I think it's a really good question because I haven't thought about it, but now that I think about it, it's more like slowly, by slowly, small steps. You know, it would be just being in the team and then building this feature in the in the team and, you know, getting recognition from that. And I feel like those are like stepping stones.
If you look at some of the advice around building a confidence, they usually say like it starts with, you know, small things. Sometimes it can just be making a bed in the morning and then now you know, you've done something, you've dictum, books, box. So I feel like I started off with that doing small things.
And I'd also give myself like, I don't know, the right way to use. Maybe I like extreme goals. Like I'd say I want to be able to speak in a conference, but then I walk backwards. How did do I get there? Yeah, So I would do stuff like that and then finding communities and working with people so that let's see, like a lot of the things I used to do, I always did them with Maureen.
So and again, yeah. So I'd find like a community. So even if I'm not good at something, she'll compliment me and you know, and that is like, you know, it builds up and helps you grow yourself, but also as well as advocating actively for yourself. I do remember there was a time we our team was building a product for moving to actually react from Angular.
Jess And there's this work that we needed to do as part of the bar back in Java Walk and my boss at that time was like, Oh yeah, we're just waiting for this, you know, engineering and different team to finish off the work and start doing it. You know what I did? I started working on. The senior engineer, never left the team and I, I did that. I feel like it's not like my boss didn't it? I think my boss didn't just didn't think that I could do it.
Not that he it was like a negative thing. I don't think he had seen do it. Yeah. And I feel like by putting myself there and doing it, that's how I was able to prove to myself.
And also other people could see. And also another thing was, I'm not sure if you guys know by the Grace Hopper conference. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I submitted my talk that no one told me nearly go submit your talk. I just was like, I have this joke I've been working on and I'm really passionate about it. Let me submit it.
And that's how it got in to it. So I feel like some of these things you have to go out and do some research and also push yourself in, you know, get there and then you get supporters. Well, ask people questions by mentors. Don't be scared. The worst thing someone can say is no.
But I feel like that those are the ways that I've been able to to to put myself out there. And when whenever I feel like, oh, my God, this is so scary. I know I'm in a good place because I'm learning something new. Yeah. Yeah. It's amazing what gaps are up.
So yeah, that's a great place to end. Thank you so much. Thank you.
Stay tuned for part two, where we're going to be speaking to Nelly about her biggest career challenges. Then Amber's favorite section. What's the tech say? Thank you so much.
This week, available on all major podcast platforms.
2023-04-11 22:47
