If you're a girl, is it worth going to the developers. My experience

If you are a girl and you think to go to college to study as a programmer or start looking for your first job as a developer, but hesitate, this article is for you. Also, perhaps, my story will help and managers to weigh the pros and cons when hiring candidates. So, let's start, pros, cons, pitfalls.

A warning

If you are not interested in reading about me, then I recommend skipping the next few sections.

School

I will begin, perhaps, from school. By character, I am a techie, not a humanist, so algebra and geometry were relatively easy, but Russian or English, I thought, was too boring. I'm far from brilliant, but rather middling. By the end of the eleventh class in my brain there was absolutely no understanding where to go next. Actually, like most of my classmates. In most cases, parents decide, and I am no exception. My mother thought that since I didn’t grab stars from the sky, I’m also very dear to the teacher's college. And that, reliable, always in demand.
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HEI

In high school, I was disappointed: the same classes, desks, teachers, calls. I was not only taught what to do: combinatorics, topologies, and theory of series, but not how to teach children, and with practice it turned out to be somehow tough. I do not want to say that they did not try to teach us, they tried because of knowledge and capabilities. Who scored for study more than forty percent of the time, flew. Of the four groups of our direction for release, only one remained. I was among the top five graduates of the group.

Writing a diploma and gos is a separate story. On the defense of one student, the commission found something about fractals in the diploma, and asked him what it was about, he could not say anything about it. Released Students didn’t even bother to write spurs on the state, they ended up with someone. The girls from the secretariat then went and distributed them with the right answers. If there was bribery, I knew nothing about it.

Another of the drawbacks - strict attendance tracking, for it could deduct. But in high school, I met with programming. They taught Java, suddenly, because they still learn Basic in school. Now it's fun to remember, after drawing the flowcharts, we moved on to writing code on paper, and then reprinted it on a computer. We started a class, and everything else was already written inside, and we didn’t have any understanding what a class was. Just first you need to write some code so that your program can work, formality, not more.

The program also included a review of C (after Java, where there are more different methods, like no hands), C ++, Lisp and Assembler.

Outside of the program, at the time of the end, I had some knowledge of HTML, CSS, PHP.

School work

I understood that there was nothing to think about, to go to the development, with my level, so I’m on one path to school. At the time of 2008, at school, as a novice specialist, I was paid ridiculous money, somewhere around 7,000, this is in Moscow, and in small towns, teachers had such a salary.

In general, everything is sad, there is neither material nor moral satisfaction. They pay little, students are not interested in learning, try to hang out as soon as possible, so you feel like a taskmaster for a penny.

Living with my parents, I managed to save something, I could have described a bunch of tearful stories about the life of a hungry teacher who was trying to make money in different ways, but I don’t want to. For a person like me, work at school and daily “public speaking” were hard. At the same time, I was tormented by boredom, every year

same. You tell what the calculus system is, how to transfer from one to another, what information is, how to make presentations. At the same time, the prospect of lack of money to old age oppressed. I tried to read something on the fly, something to typeset, I had accumulated a certain amount to pay for programming courses. Since I already had the initial knowledge, I was looking for something that was not from scratch. I chose two courses, second and third level, they cost me three and a half salaries. Also managed to find a couple of orders for creating sites. In general, from senior courses, I did not lose hope of becoming a programmer.

Goodbye, school

It seems there is a higher education (practically technical), a couple of works are also available, even an additional diploma of courses. Real development experience is not available, and this is a fat minus, as well as the fact that you are a girl. In general, with the age of girls everything is difficult. Either too young, now “you will marry and give birth to a child”, then “with a small child, you will often take sick leave,” it’s too old.

Women in such professions as an accountant, a doctor, a salesman, and some others are not uncommon, but if you are looking for a programming job, then the fact that you are a woman is rather a minus than a plus. Although, I once heard that a friend of an acquaintance was looking for a girl programmer, said: "Even if she doesn’t know how, but let it be, at least to dilute a purely male company."

I tried to get a job as a 1C programmer, just at this time a bunch of different little companies with wild staff turnover opened up. When there is no experience, there is no particular choice. Usually there you or the boyfriend do not look, here is your book on accounting, and here's a week for you, learn it, take the test, and then we'll talk. If you do not pass, here's another week for you, did not pass the test the second time, then excuse me. After teaching four days, I said to myself: “Thank you, no, this is not for me.” When there is no experience, then you should shove the crown far away, walk and walk through interviews, do test tasks.

At that time, there was a flourishing of various cms, but I did not know how to write websites, and I felt like a black sheep.

There are two ways for a novice programmer, usually either freelancing or a web studio. I got the second one. If it were not for the dismissal from school, then, probably, she would pass and stay to work as a teacher.

So, cheers, I am a developer, the goal is achieved.

Hurray, I am a developer, the goal is achieved

I perform tasks, they teach me. Here I am stuck even more time than in schools. But gradually, my work has been reduced to working with content and various other garbage, I am a person who is plugging different holes. Why did not leave earlier? Scarecrow unknown new work. During this time, the direction of professional development has changed. I began to actively study JavaScript, which was caused by several reasons. First of all, it’s easier to take girls to the front, they are paid more, and my boyfriend was already working as a developer in a large front-end team. He drew me some curriculum for mastering several topics for which I should report. In response, I received a number of questions on the topic, which caused various subtleties, peculiarities, clarifications. One week of summer vacation I spent on learning the theory, after which a lot of time off from work was spent on study. The next part of my curriculum was writing real things. Like many front-fenders, I wrote sliders, menus, and so on.

The web studio was completely rotten, and I began to look for a new job.

Jared - The Pretender

The guy wrote me a resume, and I was already looking for work as a full-fledged developer. As a result, I had a few suggestions. I chose to work in one large bank, it turned out to be the largest offer at that time. No one suspected my deception, I worked there for more than a year and began to look for a new job.

If you look at my experience, then I had to visit quite a lot of interviews. I never had, like my colleagues, to go to one interview and immediately sent an offer. Sadly, if you and some other candidate were interviewed at about the same level, it’s more likely that they will pick a guy.

Although, in my penultimate work, Tim Lead preferred to take girls. When I joined the company, one front-tender there already worked, she quit, and in her place they found a new one.

In my place, too, found a girl. In my current job, when searching for a candidate, the authorities also said that girls are preferable, they are neater.

Here is another case from life. I wanted to work in a well-known company, I did not have enough determination. An acquaintance said that they had a designer invited to an interview there by a front-end provider. I decided to also send my resume and nothing. After some time, from insider information, I learned that the head of the department takes only men.

Of course, I am partly to blame and zafilili a number of sobses quite stupid because of their insecurity and the fact that tupila. If we consider the time to prepare an answer, then I need more time to think about it than my colleagues or acquaintances.

Somehow I had a great interview, but with the answer we almost three weeks, like they want to think, to see others. I didn’t really want to go there, and therefore didn’t even consider it as an option. The impression was created that you were left in reserve, all of a sudden, nothing better will turn up.

Here is another situation that has left an unpleasant aftertaste. They offered to pass a technical social service to one large company, according to the results everything seems to be normal, we met again, to talk already. After that, she calls me eicharsha and tries to bring down the salary, I was ready to throw off. She offered to pay along with the work that I was doing at the time. I agreed, because the company is more postatus, although it was creaking from the heart, it was painfully badly taken off. Eycharsha was satisfied with my answer and disappeared for a week and a half. Then she called, said that they were all in doubt, and wouldn’t I come for another technical interview. All this has taken about four months, to throw it was somehow a pity, like at the final stage. I agreed, I went through, Eicharsha didn’t hurry to answer again, and then called: “They are ready to offer, but lower than the amount announced earlier.” I refused to work for food. The level of my knowledge has long passed this mark, there is no firm with a well-known name like this, because you can find a less well-known one, but with the salary you want.

Of course, I am sometimes sad that some of my friends who started later and, at times consulted with me, work in better-known companies than me. Although this is not an average hospital. Much indulgence in the gaps of knowledge is given to men, with the expectation that the guy is intelligent and quickly gets involved.

My boyfriend has a higher education, about six girls have studied with him. They decided that programming was fashionable, they paid well and went to study. None of them pulled, for their programs classmates wrote. So in this industry for the beautiful eyes of indulgence can not wait. We need to really work hard to not only be on a par with everyone else, but also to be the best. At the weekends, holidays, vacations, evenings, I try to use my free time to learn something new and improve my level. Of course, it is not always possible, sometimes lazy.

I had the opportunity to interview people. To be honest, in place of Joon, I would prefer the guy to the girl. If you were looking for a middle or seigneur, it would be no difference if it shows decent results.

Somehow they discussed the interview, approximately this dialogue took place between me and the interviewer.
- How is your candidate today? - I asked.
- Today a girl came to us.
- And How?
- I did not like. In fact, I told her more than she told me. Weak, but my colleague fell for it, said that the neckline is deep and it looks like norms.