CodeHer #4 Anna Collins
From Bootcamp Student to Frontend Developer at Holaluz
Female computer scientists, techies, developers and programmers. Mavericks who have been quietly changing the world before programming was even a thing. ‘Keep calm and keep on testing’ the voices told them, as yes, they coded too. In this 5-part series, we take a look at 3 ‘Godmothers of Tech’ from the past and 2 of our Codeworks students, past and present.
Discount for Women
Another step we’ve taken is our discount: we offer 10% off course fees for women at our Barcelona Bootcamp. Until we’re teaching both male and female students, in a healthy 50/50 split, we have work to do, positively discriminating towards female applicants.
First, we’ve shone a light on three women from the past, and now we’re back in the present and feeling the power of now with current coder Anna Collins. Here she is, left:
We’ve been following Anna in her impressively speedy coding journey. Back in February, she shared her experiences with coding and teaching here. Over 6 months later, she’s joined the fair energy revolution working at Hola Luz.
Let’s jump back a bit. So Anna, why did you get into code?
I was fed up with teaching and I don’t like standing up in front of people so much! A year and a half ago, a girl at work told me about coding bootcamps. I started teaching myself Javascript a month before Codeworks so that helped with the interview process. I enjoyed Javascript and instantly knew I wanted to get a job as a programmer.
‘’I was prepared to give up my whole life for a while. I took it pretty seriously.’’
A lot of people say to me that they want to learn to code too. I’m not sure they realise how much work is involved, I’ve had to work hard to learn so much in a short space of time.
Tell us about life after Codeworks. How did you get your job at Holaluz?
At Codeworks I was pretty busy with coding, so I had a short break for before Holaluz started.
‘’It took two or three weeks from graduating at Codeworks, to then working, so it was fast.’’
Holaluz came to the hiring day, along with Glovo, Softtonic and others. I met the CTO and front-end lead. I had a chat with them, and sent them a follow up email. They gave me a coding challenge, I did it in one day and sent it back. They then asked me to meet the rest of the team, so I came for a coffee and a chat with them.
We heard you had coffee with the CEO?
I was then invited back to meet the CEO. Everyone HolaLuz hires meets the CEO which is a nice part of the hiring process. Later that week, I got an offer.
Why did you want to work at Holaluz?
I knew it was a big company and green electricity is an interesting sector. They were also migrating to a new framework Vue.js which I wanted to learn. I’ve learnt a lot of CSS and HTML on the job too. Almost everybody is Spanish at Holaluz, and I wanted that.
So you had more than programming languages to learn?
It’s tough sometimes, but good for my Spanish. A lot of people speak Catalan. I’m having classes at the moment at Holaluz to learn Catalan too!
What has been your biggest challenge in the role?
Working on such large-scale projects was a jump from working on smaller apps at Codeworks. There are some big jobs on the go, but fixing little bugs I get to see the whole project. Sometimes I find it hard, I think it’s also a confidence thing but I’m working on it. I really like the variety of jobs I get to work on and working with the designers too.
Tell us here a bit about life as a web developer
We use scrum and work in two-week sprints. At the start of two weeks, we look at the backlog of tasks and get a sense of everything that needs doing and set a list of tasks that we will complete in the current sprint. Using an application, Jira, everyone can see what everyone is doing. We have a product owner who keeps us on track.
How does the day-to-day team get through the job?
We have 2 ‘dailies’ a day, one in the morning and one before lunch. A daily is when the team stands up and updates on their progress whilst aproduct owner moves the tasks around on Jira. I work on the front- end, I found there was more junior jobs for front-end. Javascript is great for front-end roles so it’s a good choice for your first job after Codeworks.
In the front-end team, there are 3 guys and me and we work really closely with three designers, who are women too. There are only 3 developers who are women. It doesn’t bother me too much,
I don’t see myself as a woman in tech really, I see myself as a person in tech.
Two of my colleagues are really involved in Barcelona’s Women Who Code, which is great.
What does an average day look like?
An average day is pretty nice, I can start anytime before the stand up at 10 am. Some days I come in at 8 am, some days at 10 am. I’m training for a triathlon at the moment and that takes up a lot of time. Sometimes I run in the evening too.
I often train at 7:30 am, then I get to work to have a shower ready to start the day at 9 am. I check my emails, Jira and Slack, eat my breakfast and have a cup of Yorkshire Tea at work. At 10 am I go to the ‘daily’, or ‘stand up’, as we call it. Lunch is after the second daily, at 1 pm.
Then some days we’ll do some mob programming where we go into a meeting room and on a large screen, program together. Every two weeks on Friday we do a sprint retrospective where we look at any issues from the sprint. I like working with designers and I’m learning a lot about how a whole web team works, as well as just javascript.
And Thursday is yoga, with Holaluz staff.
Where do you get your drive?
I like coding, so it comes naturally.
If I decide I’m going to do something, I go for it. I was determined. That said, I really don’t think I could have done it alone without Codeworks. It would have taken forever, I wouldn’t have known what to learn.
I was confident I could earn back any loss of earnings during the course, and I am doing.
What is it you like about coding process?
I enjoy working in a team. It’s much calmer than teaching a class full of children.I’m using my brain in a new way. Stand-ups in Spanish can be quite difficult sometimes, I’m learning both Spanish and broader digital skills, so I’m being challenged in all directions.
What advice would you give to women interesting in applying to Codeworks ?
There’s so much free information out there, just start teaching yourself to get a feel for it. Don’t let it scare you. Coding doesn’t need to be something unknown! Get used to learning one thing at a time, go for it and be patient.
You can’t learn how to code everything at once, no one knows everything.
Why do you think there is such a big gender gap in the tech scene?
Lack of awareness. I don’t think most women know what the job is. I didn’t really know myself. Then I started researching things I could get in to. Quite a lot of guys are into video games, which gets them into computers in general. Schools and governments need to start exposing children to coding basics at a younger age.
I did a maths degree in Manchester, and you didn’t do any coding at all, we didn’t even use computers. Maths is kind of like code, it’s a logical way of thinking. You can work out an answer, and I like understanding how things work. Seeing and writing functions came naturally.
What can we do to close this gap?
We should teach more code in schools from Primary school age.
What made you want to stay in Barcelona after bootcamp?
This is my home and I’ve lived here for over 6 years. I’ve done a lot of travelling and had a fair bit of life experience before the course. I just didn’t know the detail and hadn’t giving coding a go. I didn’t know how accessible all the information was.
So, what’s next?
Learning Catalan. Triathlon in October, some people from Holaluz are doing it too. Work-wise I’d maybe like to start a side project, it’s been six months now since I started at Holaluz and I’m ready for a new challenge.
Next up #CodeHer5:
For the next installment in our CodeHers series, we’ll be meeting a Codemaker of today.
She’s a student and big thinker: Nathalia Rus. We’re interested in all her coding thoughts and creativity. Watch this space.
