What My Hackbright Project Taught Me
Today is Career Day. For the uninitiated, Career Day is the day Hackbright students meet the real world — we are demoing our capstone projects and talking to 20-some tech companies that may be hiring.
Over the 4 weeks I had been building my web app, Destination Unknown, I increasingly realized that my project is NOT my meal ticket to gainful employment in tech. My project is about what I care about, how I tell my story, and the way I learn and adapt.
So, on this very special day, after spending 8 hours demoing my app and talking to 20 tech companies, I’d like to spend a few moments reflecting on the mental journey leading to this day, and the one thing my project taught me:
Be patient. Where I am is not where I will be.
During my project time, I had to fight back a constant, unpleasant urge to look over my shoulders at other people’s projects in awe, feel inadequate about my own, and attempt to throw in more features and technologies to make me feel good about myself.
Here was my internal monologue:
“Should I use that trendy new JavaScript framework?”
“What about some fancy machine learning algorithm that can make me look smart?”
“Will my project be more impressive if I use that library, that API, that plugin, that database — anything that sounds cool and obscure and incredibly hard?”
“How to make my test coverage go higher? I want to prance around with my coverage report and show it off!”
Whenever I was about to drift into an extraterritorial orbit full of tech buzzword black holes, a voice came from within:
“What is true ab0ut you, Shijie?”
The truth is, I started my career on the opposite end of high tech, in an environment where risk aversion and meticulous precaution are valued if not celebrated, with colleagues who wore full suits to work every day. Almost every day my lawyer self would advise me against going into programming, but I am doing it anyway.
The truth is, I did not come to programming with any preconceived notion of what I was supposed to know and do. My parents thought software engineering is a dark art to take apart computers and put them back together. Everything I knew about coding, I went out of my way to learn and understand it — googling, reading blogs, taking Coursera classes, asking questions on StackOverflow, and going to meetups. What I knew may be limited, but no one handed it to me; I fought for it.
The truth is, I’m often impatient with my growth. The Type A in me wants to be awesome and building world-class applications, right now. But I am not there yet. So I feel apologetic for not being the person I want to be.
I kept a folder on my computer named “bug_progress,” where I stored three precious screenshots of my project at its nascence. Once in a while, I switch back and forth between two windows — Destination Unknown in its current iteration, and its former infant self — for perspectives.
— Landing Page —
— Search Form —
— Business Discovery Page —
— Additional Goodies —
What a world of difference 4 weeks could make.
It is so easy to compare myself to others and feel like a fraud. It is so hard to remember that I am not like anyone else, and I am stronger and braver than I though I would be.
On the night of Career Day, I’d like to thank my amazing Hackbright thirteeneer ladies, who have accomplished beautiful, powerful, and thoughtful projects within 4 short weeks, who have made me a part of a transcending and collective experience of growth and triumph, and who have instilled in me tremendous faith that my twisty path to software engineering is no longer solitary and scary.
Where we are is not where we will be.
So I urge all women engineers out there, stop apologizing for not being the person we will be, because we will be.
