A Career in Software Engineering

I gave this talk at St Marys School for Girls in Pretoria. The audience was primarily school girls with an interest in Software Engineering.

1. A C A R E E R I N S O F T WA R E E N G I N E E R I N G R E B E C C A F R A N K S
2. Source: #WOCinTech
3. It is not just code…
4. Source: Google
5. W H O A M I ? Rebecca Franks Android Engineering Lead at Dynamic Visual Technologies Google Developer Expert for Android and the Internet of Things
6. W H AT D I D I S T U D Y ? • BSc (Hons) Information Technology in 2012 • 3 years to obtain BSc Information Technology • 1 year to obtain Honours in Information Technology
7. I M P O R TA N T FA C T S • I didn’t do Computer Science in High School. • I arrived at University with no knowledge of programming. • I’m still learning every day.
9. D AY T O D AY
10. C O D I N G Source: #WOCinTech
11. C O L L A B O R AT I O N Source: #WOCinTech
12. P R O D U C T D E V E L O P M E N T Source: #WOCinTech
13. P R O T O T Y P I N G
14. Kenya USA Switzerland Germany P U B L I C S P E A K I N G
15. T R AV E L
16. W H Y D O I L O V E I T ?
17. Y O U A R E N E V E R F I N I S H E D L E A R N I N G Source: #WOCinTech
18. T H E D E V E L O P M E N T C O M M U N I T Y.
19. B E I N G A B L E T O G I V E B A C K
20. AT T E N D I N G E V E N T S
21. Source: Google
22. C H A R A C T E R I S T I C S & I N T E R E S T S R E Q U I R E D • You love solving problems • You enjoy learning • Determined • Enthusiastic • Curious • Team player • Interested in Technology and building software that benefits people
23. R E S O U R C E S F O R G E T T I N G S TA R T E D • Learn to Code: code.org • Code Academy: www.codecademy.com
24. W H AT I D I D N ’ T K N O W B A C K T H E N • No one knows everything. • There are many different aspects to SE other than programming. • I would enjoy it so much and thrive in an environment that I battled with at first. • Team work and collaboration is one of the keys to building a successful product
25. C A R E E R PAT H S I N S O F T WA R E Product Owner Test Analyst Business Analyst Software Engineer User Interface Designer User Experience Designer Source: #WOCinTech
26. F I E L D S O F S O F T WA R E E N G I N E E R I N G Mobile (Android / iOS) Web (Chrome, Firefox etc) Internet of Things Operations (DevOps) Security Architecture Virtual Reality / Augmented Reality Artificial Intelligence Machine Learning Accessibility Cloud Database Game Programming
27. M A N Y D I F F E R E N T L A N G U A G E S Java Swift Kotlin Erlang Typescript Go Javascript C# C++ Elm CoffeeScript Dart Python PHP
28. P R O M O T I O N PAT H Every company is different Chief Technology Officer Team Lead Architect Intermediate Software Engineer Graduate Software Engineer Junior Software Engineer Engineering Manager Senior Software Engineer Tech Lead
29. D I F F I C U LT I E S F O R W O M E N I N T E C H • It is a male dominated industry • The job is no different for women (ie you don’t need physical strength) • Women often perform A LOT better than men when studying IT. • Plenty of efforts to change the ratio - Google Women TechMakers, GirlCode, Women who code, Pyladies, Hackbright, PinkIT ZA
32. Source: Google
33. If I could go back in time and change my career, Would I?
34. No. I love it.❤
35. T H A N K Y O U Rebecca Franks Android Engineering Lead Google Developer Expert Twitter: @riggaroo hello@riggaroo.co.za