Partner Series: /dev/color and Intuit — A Chat with Samantha Bretous

We’re continuing our series that highlights some of the work and conversations we have with our wonderful partners who are committed to joining us in changing tech for good. Today, we’re sharing our conversation with Samantha Bretous, a Senior Software Engineer at Intuit Mailchimp, as she talks about her career path, life at Intuit, and her /dev/color community.

The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.

Hi Samantha, great to speak with you today. To kick things off: How did you get into tech? What made you want to be a technologist?

I was a maker from a very young age. I would draw on my mom’s walls, and make forts in the kitchen. Overall, I always had a passion for making things, which first led me into theater design. I was incredibly passionate about theater design leading up to college, and from there while pursuing my degree, I started posting my artwork online.

The big thing at the time was to put your portfolio online, so other people could see it, but I had no idea how to do that. So, I ended up taking a web design course in college, and for me, that’s when I fell in love with coding and designing websites.

It still took me a while to really get into the field because, of course, life gets in the way. I was just out of college and I had to make money. I worked a few odd jobs in my life. Right out of college, I landed a full-time job as a construction estimator in New York City. I absolutely hated that job.

From there, I decided I was going to actually really try to dive into coding. I quit my job and went to a full-time boot camp for nine months. After leaving the bootcamp, I spent about five months searching for the right fit, and found myself at Major League Soccer. While there, I was able to make one of the largest React Native Web applications at the time, and served as the project lead of the scores page.

That’s incredible! How did you end up heading to Mailchimp?

About a year into my career, a recruiter reached out to me to come interview for Mailchimp (which has since been acquired by Intuit).

How was that transition for you? Did you enjoy making that move?

I really enjoyed Mailchimp’s interview process. I think it’s a little different than the processes at a lot of companies — some make you take time tests or make you feel uncomfortable by pairing you with other engineers that you don’t know — but Mailchimp has you code your own adventure style of interview.

They ask, would you like to be paired with someone? Would you rather take a home test? Maybe you’d like to discuss a project you already worked on? Anything works. And I really enjoyed that experience compared to other jobs.

As you think about your job history, is there any advice that you would give to people who might be in another industry looking to break into tech? For example, how would you advise approaching the application and interview process?

I would say that the interview process is going to hurt. You are going to cry. You are going to start doubting your skills. You are going to think you are never going to break into tech. Having emotional support is huge, because career transitioning like this isn’t easy. But if you keep applying to jobs and building your skill set, you eventually will get a job in tech. You’ve got this, so just keep going.

In addition to working at Mailchimp, you’re a /dev/color member. Can you talk a bit about how you came to join and your experience here?

Yeah! I’ve been a part of /dev/color for four years now. I heard about it while in my bootcamp, but couldn’t apply until I had one year of experience. After that one year at MLS, I applied, and I was able to join a squad.

Over my four years, I’ve been in a few different squads. I started out in person with a squad for a year and a half before the pandemic hit. I actually still take vacations with some of my original squad members because we were able to build a genuine relationship with each other. The small groups and the amount of time we get to spend together is really impactful.

Was there any good advice you heard from squad members that helped you in your career?

I think one big thing I learned is how important it is that you support each other. For example, when you’re new in tech, you won’t understand how much money you can and should make until you speak to somebody else. It’s important to share your experience.

Talk about pain points you have when you have that community because somebody else is also going through the same experiences as you are, and if you don’t speak about it, no one’s going to know.

How do you find community at work beyond /dev/color?

Intuit has a wider network of Black engineers to jump into, and that’s been great. I’m part of this internal Slack channel where all the Black female engineers are able to meet once a month and we have the opportunity to talk about our work. So not only do I have /dev/color where I can talk about things that are currently happening to me in my work, but I have this other resource. The balance of the two groups has been helpful.

What is your favorite project that you’ve worked on while at Mailchimp?

So my favorite project was the left navigation, which was the biggest project that I worked on. We went from being a top navigation site to a left navigation site, and being able to lead that project early in my career has really shaped my growth. I had a lot of leadership skills to catch up on in a very short amount of time, and that project really helped to push me there.

That’s great! Fun question: What’s your favorite coding language?

JavaScript all day! I will not choose anything else. No one could force me to do anything else.

That’s amazing. What’s one website feature that is either a part of Mailchimp or another company that you can’t help, but stop and say, “that is a well-designed feature”?

So, I didn’t see this feature in person, but I like to tell people this story. I went to AfroTech and one of the presenters talked about a feature in the Uber app. It was designed to make things more accessible so that deaf people could let their riders know that they’re deaf before a passenger got in the car. This way the passengers knew the driver was not ignoring them.

They later realized that a lot of people who didn’t speak English as a first language, started using this feature too. It goes to show, when you design for a small group of users, you can actually cast a larger net than you know about.

That’s so cool! What do you like to do outside of tech?

My favorite thing right now is to travel. I think the pandemic has really expanded my view of life and how I value work-life balance. I’ve been able to travel to different countries and I really enjoy meeting different people from different walks of life.

Work-life balance is huge. Thank you so much for speaking with us Samantha!

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Intuit is the global financial technology platform that powers prosperity for the people and communities they serve. With more than 100 million customers worldwide using TurboTax, Credit Karma, QuickBooks, and Mailchimp, Intuit believes that everyone should have the opportunity to prosper.

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/dev/color is home for Black software engineers, technologists, and leaders, providing a place to start and stay in the tech industry. We center Blackness, the Black experience, and Black excellence as a necessary workforce equity strategy. As we provide the framework and mechanisms for our members to hold one another accountable to ambitious goals, we’re committed to being an accountability partner in the greater industry. We encourage employers to walk the walk with us in deconstructing inequitable racialized systems and behaviors, in order to #ChangeTechForGood.