Aliaa Abdelrahman

Writing for Engineers

10/02/2019

                                                 Women in Software Engineering:

                                                  A brief about Nazmin Khardoia’s life

“There are not many women in computer science field, so when you get an internship or a job you have to kind of push for yourself.” These was the inspiring words of Nazmin Kharodia who works as a software Engineer at the Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS company) at the headquarter located in New York City. I got to know Ms. Nazmin through a friend in my statistics class and that was her cousin, so I contacted her through email then she replied to my email and kindly gave me her phone number to meet up at her workplace. In our informational interview, Ms. Nazmin was constantly emphasizing that being a woman working in computer science field requires a lot of confidence to prove yourself in your profession. Specifically, she was more focused on talking about being a female software engineer which requires much more effort to build confidence and consistency. The reason is because of the lack of women involved in technology fields, a lot of them do not have the expected strong mindset and most likely they think they do not know enough. I actually could feel what Ms. Nazmin said because the majority of people working in technology fields are men. So, being a female among 99 percent of males puts us under pressure and makes us doubt our confidence and knowledge, not because we do not know but it is just a pressure. During our conversation, I observed that Ms. Nazmin is very enthusiastic and ambitious about her profession, she also loves what she is doing which made her feel very confident.

According to Ms. Nazmin, she graduated from the University of Rochester in 2014 with a Bachelor’s degree in computer science. She mentioned that she did not plan to study computer science, however, she was stumbled into a computer science class that she was taking in Rochester. Since that she really liked it, thus she decided to study computer science because it was challenging and it was something different to her. Her strengths are problem solving and building up programs, which both are the main skills a software engineer would need to have. By taking that class, it motivated her to keep going and learn more about computer science. Subsequently, she had done only one internship during her junior year which was in summer 2013, she got her internship through a job fair in the university.

She did the internship with the UBS company and she had great experiences working with them. Ms. Nazmin considers her biggest achievement in college is graduating and being hired by UBS immediately after her graduation. The internship she had with the UBS company made her path shorter to get the job.

Surprisingly, Ms. Nazmin got her first job which is also her current job through her internship. The UBS company liked her then they decided to hire her after graduation. She was very happy that she started her career instantly after she has earned her Bachelor’s. Ms. Nazmin was able to do very well in her technical and behavior interview, therefore that helped her to stand out from the other applicants. She was a perfect fit for the position because she had economics background, in addition to the internship she had with the company before, so obviously that made her path much easier. She is being working with the UBS company for 5 years so far and she obtained a lot of experiences. Ms. Nazmin learned a lot about many other new technologies, working with big teams and delivering on projects. She works with many varieties of people in the company technical and non-technical. Ms. Nazmin has to write codes all the time but she is not required to write that much unless there is code release. She usually sends emails that explain the aspects of the code she had done including emails for the gathering requirements for projects, so it varies and it depends on what she is assigned to do. The projects also depend on what the task is, occasionally it takes longer time to finish big tasks and shorter time for small task. Her position requires teamwork, they have to estimate how long that specific project will take them to finish and based on their estimation they group divide the task. Furthermore, there are some paperwork they write when they release their code into production, other than that they do not really write a lot.

Ms. Nazmin usually receives daily stand up calls which take her an hour to finish the call otherwise there it is not that many. She has meetings a few times a week it also takes an hour for each meeting. Presentations are not often done, it depends on what the company asks them to do. The only time she had to do a lot of presentations and trainings was when she first started working, but when it comes to a day to day job she is not required to do any presentations. Whenever Ms. Nazmin is assigned to do any project the person who assigns the projects always gives her the sources where she must go and come out with final result by referring to those sources and requirements. Most of the time she does not need to be connected on weekends and evenings to get work done depending on her work. Ms. Nazmin finds that reading coding books is boring. Yet she is interested to read other books such as fiction, poetry, and non-fiction. Her favorite book is Harry Potter because she likes the idiom of the way it is written which keeps her hooked in the fantasy world.

Ms. Nazmin advices anyone who is planning to become a software engineer or work in computer science field to be confident enough. She specifically brought women into focus because she has seen many women who are not confident and they think that they do not know what they are doing. She also advised to get as many internships as you can because it will help you a lot to learn a lot. She emphasized to be ready for interviews, push yourself forward and be consistent. Additionally, practicing problem solving in Hacherrank and Leecode websites, particularly practice algorithms and data structures because they are the core of programming and it is always brought up in interviews. As a software engineer, the most important technical skill you must have is coding, you have to be very good at is coding and understanding the implementation of your code is really essential. The reason is because in interviews they ask you questions about algorithms and data structures, you will be asked to write the code in any programming language you preferer. Moreover, you will be asked to explain each piece of code you write and the reason of writing it in that specific way because they want to know your thoughts process every time you answer the question, instead of just writing your code without explaining the steps and the implementation of your results.

In the closing question of the interview, Ms. Nazmin had mentioned that the starting salary of a software engineer in New York City is about 80k-90k as first job. To summarize the main points of the interview, the soft skills you need to have as a software engineer is self-confidence and consistency. The essential technical skills you must have is coding and problem solving, at least you have to be aware of one programming language. Internships and practices are the lights of your career path, internships will help you to learn and gain experiences. Practices will prepare you for interviews, it will make you an excellent coder, and problem solver. Take advantage of every opportunity and apply to all jobs and internships you see, especially if you are a female because there are not a lot of women out there and that increases the opportunity for you. As a woman software engineer you have to be confident enough, enthusiastic about your profession, know your strengths and work on them for improvement.