I've been learning how to code since 2013, started earning money from coding in 2015, and started working full-time in 2017. These are some key pieces of advice from what I've learned that I want to share.
Some of these are pretty generic and can apply to anyone in my field. It's really important to me to increase the representation of Latina software engineers in the workplace, so other pieces of advice are more personal in that sense.
Damn it, just ask
I had put in the work. Luna, my precious Corgi, had attended 10 classes for Agility 2. By the time she got to her ninth class, she had mastered all the obstacles needed to graduate. But to my dismay, the trainer still hadn't let me know she was ready for Agility 3. She had graduated from Agility 1 pretty quickly, so I thought it would be the same here. In her 10th class, the trainer mentioned at the end to remember to let them know at the beginning of class if you were interested in testing your dog for graduation. In the 11th class, I made sure to let the trainer know and lo and behold, Luna passed with flying colors and moved on to Agility 3.
What is the lesson here? It turns out I just needed to ask and make my goals known.
Early in your career (if you're lucky), you may be promoted relatively quickly and have people give you plenty of advice. At some point, though, you need to learn how to advocate for yourself.
If you think you're ready for the next level in your career, ask your manager if they think you're ready. If they don't, ask them why not.
Either way, you need to learn to ask for things, even if it may initially make you feel uncomfortable.
For the love of GitHub, write it down
Whether it's the brag sheet or the proof you need to show yourself that you're not getting promoted no matter how much you try, you need to learn to write things down to be able to reference them later.
Some examples of when it's useful to jot things down:
- when your manager gives you feedback, positive or negative
- when your manager tells you what you need to do to get to the next level
- details of a project you worked on and what impact it had
Understand the cost of paying it forward
This might be a spicy take 🌶 but I truly am not interested in having Latina engineers be the diversity poster child for their tech company.
If you are just starting your software engineering career, you must focus on developing your technical skill set and avoid putting yourself in a situation where you're putting a lot of extra time and effort into things outside your main scope of work.
Coming from someone who did a lot of this type of work outside of my main responsibilities for a long time, it's important to understand the cost of paying it forward to the next generation and to evaluate whether you're at a point in your career where you can pay it forward.
When you're ready, the communities on our resources page are a great place to start.