Character Decoding: An Interview with Mia Mollie of 99designs

We interview JuniorDevs to show the world their awesomeness. First off the ranks is Mia Mollie, a Junior Developer at 99designs. 👩‍💻

Why did you get into technology?

I’ve always loved language, and I initially planned on working as a translator. I ended up studying Computational Linguistics with French as a way of learning more about language but avoiding the long boring essays of an Arts degree. I bumbled along feeling very out of place coaxing my windows machine into doing things it really didn’t want to while classmates were happily whizzing along on the command line. Computational linguistics is the intersection of machine and natural languages, which is as broad as it sounds; from machine translation to speech synthesis and everything in between. Although it was supposed to be a means to an end, I enjoyed the technical aspects of my degree as much as the linguistic elements. I enjoyed applying technical solutions to real world problems. It’s satisfying, creative, constructive.

How did you get into development?

After my undergrad, I wanted to get back into languages so I moved to Edinburgh to do a Masters in Translation. Tech had its grip on me by that stage though so my dissertation topic involved machine translation. I had a module on localisation for web and that got me interested in web things specifically. I realised what had been missing for me with coding in Uni was something more visible and tangible–most of our projects had involved something compiling and printing a one liner to the console. I started teaching myself a bit of CSS and JS in my free time for fun. All coding is creative, but being a Dev means you can be involved with UX, copywriting, design, animation, accessibility, cryptography, as well as modeling real world problems. Every problem is different, you can never be bored.

How did you go from study into your first role as a Dev?

I came to Australia after finishing a Masters in Translation studies but there wasn’t much chance of getting that kind of work with French in Oz. Instead I applied for all kinds of tech jobs and really struggled, I even got rejected from unpaid internships (maybe fairly since my C.V. tried to make a two month internship and a little bit of freelancing look like work experience). I comforted myself that it was just my visa status that kept the rejections coming in, but I’m sure other people can empathise when job requirements for recent Grad positions are a minimum 2+ years of industry experience plus working knowledge of ALL THE THINGS.

Tell us about your experience at 99designs so far?

I’ve been here for almost two months and it’s been amazing. The people here are really genuine and enthusiastic, they are passionate about the work they do and it’s infectious. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere that I’m not learning, and feeling challenged, and at 99designs they hit this perfect balance of making you feel supported while pushing you just a bit out of your comfort zone.

What’s been a hurdle that you have had to overcome since starting work as a Developer?

Self confidence, I’ve wanted to quit a million times. Being comfortable with not knowing things is pretty tough. But being a dev is not about knowing everything, your job is to be good at figuring things out as they come up. And that’s overwhelming sometimes. Not shying away from a task because I assumed I couldn’t do it has been a big win lately.

What technology stack do you work with primarily?

PHP backend with a mixture of React, flightJS and Twig templates. It’s a pretty big codebase.. Up until now I had only been involved with front end work, but 99designs values generalists so everyone is expected to know a bit about everything and I think that’s great. I appreciate gaining the knowledge to see how all the bits of the puzzle fit together.

What’s been the biggest challenge you’ve faced in this industry?

The recent scandals in well known tech companies have made it hard not to worry about tech being an unwelcoming place for women. I can happily say, I don’t feel like I have ever been treated unfairly, or made to feel any less competent than my colleagues. But I have had recruiters tell me I would make a great diversity hire — as if gender is the only thing that makes a person diverse, as if I would want to be hired based on my gender and not on my merit. And when I tell people what I do the response is often “oh really?” It’s a tiny, seemingly harmless comment but after a while it gets under your skin; what is it that makes my career a surprise and should I be questioning myself too?

What’s been an epic win for you lately?

This morning I had to get myself out of a tricky Git pickle. For about 15min I was sweating thinking I had lost a day of work — even though everything had been on a branch committed it had just disappeared! It was touch and go pasting stack overflow suggestions into the command line and hoping for the best. But I managed to recover the work and by the end of the day I had completed both backend and front end work for a (tiny) new feature.

How has being in the tech industry changed your life?

People think I will know why their WiFi is broken? It’s definitely improved my self confidence, helped me to slow down and break down a problem even when at first it seems unmanageable.

Technology is infamous for being a rapidly changing industry, how do you handled this?

Whether it’s changing requirements or jumping on board the latest greatest framework, there is certainly a lot of change going on. I would be lying if I said it hasn’t frustrated me, but changing functionality or refactoring code is part of the job and always a learning opportunity. I think it’s a good lesson to learn not to be precious about the code you’ve written and at the same time recognise when it’s important to push back, to trust your judgment of what changes are valuable.

What does your dream workplace look like?

I’m there already! Feeling safe and supported, doing interesting, challenged working with a bunch of passionate, inspiring people.

Thank you for chatting Mia! An awesome journey so far and so much more to come. Please show your appreciation for Mia with claps below and look out for our next interview in the Character Decoding series! Thanks for reading, cheers, from the JuniorDev crew.