Bio Major → Software Engineer @ Slack! Interview with Serry Park

Below is an interview with Serry Park. Serry graduated from Wellesley in 2016 as a biology major, joined Horizons upon graduation and went on to land a software engineering gig at Slack. Congrats Serry!

Why did you get interested in software engineering?

Unlike a lot of people that pursue software engineering, I did not start coding at an absurdly young age or get introduced to CS in high school. I only recently hopped on the software engineering bandwagon! Believe it or not, I had my heart set on becoming a doctor for almost the entirety of my college career. I had even completed all of my requirements and all that was left for me to do was to take the MCAT and send out my applications.

It wasn’t until the end of my senior fall that I decided to give my parents a heart attack and drop medicine to pursue software engineering. Up until then, I had dedicated a lot of my energy to microbiology research and was first introduced to CS in the lab, where I was taught to process, align, and analyze microbial DNA sequences with different software. I took my first few CS courses in the fall of my senior year [2 credits worth] and fell in love with the immense implications of CS ranging from performing strong statistical analyses to tackling intractable problems. One thing led to another and found myself in Philadelphia with Horizons to broaden my software engineering *horizons*.

Why did you choose Horizons?

I chose Horizons largely because they not only teach the fundamentals of software engineering but also provide opportunities for real world experience at tech startups and companies. That was especially appealing to me because it allowed me to place myself in a fast-paced environment where I could both learn the necessary skills to become an engineer and also get a chance to work as one. Ultimately, my experience at Horizons was crucial in helping me figure out if software engineering something I really wanted to pursue as a career.

How did Horizons help you in getting a job?

As I mentioned earlier, Horizons offers the chance to do real contract work for real tech companies. That kind of opportunity is invaluable for someone who, like me, has discovered a passion for software engineering but lacks experience. I think my contract work over the summer really prepared me for the working in software engineering roles and made my resume (which is speckled mainly with microbiology-related research work) more relevant to those roles. The teachers at Horizons also conducted one-on-one mock interviews with me and shared personalized tips on how to improve, something that costs a lot if you pay someone to do one with you online. They also help you tweak your resume for the types of roles that you are looking for. This was something I really benefitted from because I had never created resumes for anything outside of academic research at that point!

Some companies are starting to stray away from the traditional 45min technical phone interviews and instead migrate towards take-home projects, which are more reflective of the kind of day-to-day work you would be doing at those companies. I found that Horizons was really instrumental in prepping me for these kinds of assignments particularly because the Horizons curriculum was very project-based. By the time I was handed these take home assignments during the interview process, I felt comfortable and confident in my ability to complete them.

Where are you going to be working?

I have accepted my dream offer with Slack, a start-up located in the best city in the world, San Francisco. Needless to say, I am very humbled and excited for the opportunity to work for such an incredible company and be surrounded by such diverse talent. I chose Slack for two major reasons: (1) I used Slack heavily over the summer at Horizons (and really enjoyed it — custom emojis for the win !!) and (2) I genuinely loved every person I met while I interviewed there. For someone who graduated from a small, liberal arts “women’s” college, joining a company that valued diversity so much was extremely important to me. Slack is a place where I know I will experience great personal and professional growth and I cannot wait to start contributing to a product that is so widely used

Thank you for reading.

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Horizons finds promising young people around the world and gives them the advantages they need to launch successful careers in tech. If you interested in joining, sign up for an information session here.