The Women of Koolicar
Special thanks to Catherine Elliott for the editing and proofreading.
You’ve heard it before; there is a lack of diversity in the tech industry. Women, LGBTQ2+ and people of colour are underrepresented in the startup world and tech giants. In Stack Overflow’s 2017 survey, only 7.6% of respondents identified as women, compared to 5.8% in 2016 . In 2014, only 15% of Facebook’s tech force were women, only to reach 19% in 2017. While we might feel like there is a wind of change in the industry, we have a lot more work ahead of us to do. In the US, the number of women graduating from computer science degrees has declined by 19% over the past 20 years. Tech has been the only STEM sector where women participation has decreased. And this is just looking at one angle of diversity; racial diversity numbers, especially in terms of African American representation, are much worse.
Why does it matter?
I won’t delve into the plethora of reasons as to why diversity is essential for company success- it’s been proven again and again, that a diverse team is better at problem solving than an homogeneous group. Diverse companies are also more profitable and have a higher ROI. Last but not least, diverse teams help design products for a larger and more, you’ve guessed it, diverse audience. At Koolicar, we are not building a carsharing rental app for caucasian millennial men-our audience is extremely diverse and we need to bear this in mind when we are servicing drivers & car owners from 20 to 80 years old, both men and women of differing ethnicities.
Joining Koolicar
I started working at Koolicar in October 2017. When I was first contacted by their recruiter, I was eager to know more about the product. Carsharing and smart mobility has been an interest of mine for a long time, and I’ve been an avid user of all four carsharing services (Car2Go, Communauto, Auto-Mobile & Turo) on offer in Montreal since 2013. Even if I was keen to work on a carsharing app, I was a bit unsure about making the move. Having heard about the “brogrammer” culture of several startups, I was concerned that Koolicar would fall into that category. I began researching the team on Linkedin, and I was pleasantly surprised to notice that a few women were developers, another one held the title of Product Owner and various were directors in Paris. I suddenly felt much less intimidated. And I’m not the only one that had the same reflex- my colleague Maryna that I will introduce later, told me she accepted the job offer at Koolicar because she too noticed we had more women in the tech workforce.
Gender Diversity in Koolicar
After accepting the proposal at Koolicar and joining the team, I was further surprised upon knowing the statistics. Today, 29% of Koolicar & OpenFleet’s tech workforce are women. If we only focus on the feature teams of Koolicar, which are directly involved in the development of what our final users (drivers & car owners) will interact with, the numbers are even more striking: 45% are women. Granted, it’s not 50% (yet!) , but compared to Facebook’s 19%, we are definitely on the right path!
How does that impact our dynamic? Well for one, it means that a woman is present in every tech meeting. Every week, tech teams meet according to skill set in order to discuss new features and provide an estimation to the Product Owners. Android & iOS developers discuss mobile app features, whereas front & back-end web developers regroup the next day to discuss full-stack development & API evolutions. Which means that a diverse group of thinkers are involved in planning, conceptualizing, iterating and improving our product, one meeting at a time.
Meet the women techmakers of Koolicar
So who are that 29% exactly? Without further ado, allow me to introduce you to some of the exceptional women I work with at Koolicar.
Clémence Lelong, Senior Back-End Ruby Developer
Not only do we have a higher rate of women in our tech workforce than most, our lead engineer is… a woman! Clémence has more than 10 years of experience as a developer and holds a Masters in Computer Science. She used to work at Sonder (previously Flatbook) and joined Koolicar in March 2017. Clémence is the brain behind a well needed architectural change and has pushed our teams to start using React.js as our front-end framework as well as recentering our back-end devs towards a more API focused development. She is currently part of the feature team focused on the car owner’s experience.
Mélanie Lecomte, Front-End Developer
Mélanie has been part of the Koolicar team for more than 4 years now! She used to work in Montreal as a front-end developer and Scrum Master, but returned to France last year and now works remotely. Mélanie studied in audiovisual, web and multimedia. She rapidly developed an interest for web development, especially front-end integration and user experience design. Always eager to learn, she recently jumped on the React.js bandwagon with the help and guidance of Clémence. She is currently part of the feature team focused on the drivers experience and her personal objective is to give our users the best navigation experience possible on desktop, tablets and mobile.
Maryna Kalachova, Software QA Analyst
Maryna recently joined us in December. She arrived from Ukraine, not speaking a word of French and without any work experience in the software world. She used to work in editing and publishing. How did she get here, a few years later, tracking bugs and improving the quality of our product? Maryna went back to school and graduated from Concordia in Computer Science in 2016, worked as a freelancer, built her own Android app and tested apps on Applause to gain skills in quality assurance testing, all while learning French. Needless to say we were impressed by her resilience and self-starter attitude. Maryna is now responsible for testing all new features developed by both the Owners & Drivers teams of Koolicar.
Emilie Epaminondas, Product Owner — OpenFleet
Emilie has been part of the Koolicar & OpenFleet adventure for almost two years now. She’s a Computer Science graduate and has also studied in management, making her the ideal candidate to lead our OpenFleet tech team. Emilie started as an R&D Engineer at Koolicar and participated in the development of our keyless exchange solution, which is now being used in both our products: Koolicar (peer-to-peer carsharing) & OpenFleet (business fleet carsharing). Emilie then accepted the challenging role of Product Owner of our B2B service. In her day to day, Emilie acts as the bridge between business & tech — she has to translate business needs into technical requirements for clients both in France and in Canada and align both teams towards a common goal: product success.
Holly Le Heux, Android Developer
Holly joined us in October 2017. Originally from New Zealand, Holly graduated as a Natural Resources engineer and previously worked as a Geotechnical Engineer. She arrived in Montreal in February 2016 and worked on different projects. Moving from one end of the globe to another wasn’t enough of a challenge, so she learned Android development from scratch, online and with the help of fellow programmers at ‘coffee and code’ events held by Les Pitonneux in Montreal. It wasn’t long before Holly started participating in successful projects, such as the development of the Android app Feed Me, known as the “Tinder for Restaurants”. She is now part of the Owners Experience team as an Android developer.
Eléonore Kuentz, Product Owner — Koolicar
As I’ve mentioned before, I joined Koolicar in October 2017 as a Product Owner. I’ve explained my transition from International Business development to agile software development in a previous article on Medium that you can read here. After more than 2 years at Engagement Labs, I thought it was time for me to challenge myself again and jump into a whole new learning environment. I wanted to learn more about mobile app development, work in a bigger team and switch from B2B to B2C product development. Koolicar provided me with just that and much more- I get to work on a product that I believe will change the way we view car ownership. I am now responsible for leading the team of developers that ensure our Koolicar drivers have the best experience we can offer.
Closing note
The tech industry doesn’t have the best publicity when it comes to diversity and the role women hold in software development! This article has hopefully dispelled some concerns and shed light on the issue at hand by providing you with an insider perspective of our industry. If you think that you will not find a work environment in the tech industry where you get to grow in strategic roles, we, the women of Koolicar, hope to prove you wrong!
PS: Yep. We are hiring :)
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