Senior, Computer Science, Rutgers · Founder Ladies Storm Hackathons
“I started at Rutgers majoring in Cellular Biology and Neuroscience for pre-med, but I didn’t really enjoy the classes and memorizing endless facts. I wasn’t getting what I needed. Sophomore year, I took an introductory Computer Science class on a whim to try something new. I loved that there are just a few rules that I can reapplied to build so many things. That made more sense to me then memorizing an endless string of facts. I was hooked.”
“I’m the kind of person who dives into things head first. I involved myself with HackRU, and started going to a bunch of hackathons.” At her first hackathon she built the “Douchebag Jar” — based on a joke on the TV show New Girl, using HTML, CSS and the Venmo API. It’s an online version of a “swear jar” where a roommate has to put money in a collective pool if they are caught being a “douchebag”. The funds go to a collective pool to help pay for a common goal like charity or household items. “It was the first time I programmed outside of class and that was really empowering.”
“I really enjoy design patterns — constructing something beautiful and clean that is easy to use.” For fun Amy built and API wrapper for New York Times and Behance. “I needed to know that I could make something from scratch. It was accompanied with a full suite of unit tests. The exercise helped me get a job a Behance, a website that hosts online portfolios for designers. One of the engineers reached out to me because he saw my API wrapper. That made a big difference in my confidence because they chose me to be there based off of a technical body of work.”
At her Behance internship Amy worked on the backend for localization, to support the site in 13 different languages. She also refactored, unit tested, and wrote a logging service for an old image manipulation service that processes all of Behance’s images. “The existing image processing system used an older library. I love making old things beautiful and sensible.”
Amy created the Facebook group Ladies Storm Hackathons, which hosts a collection of technical articles and op-eds from women engineers. “I created this group because I needed more resources from other women as far as networking, technical advice, and job help. The group also evolved into something personally important because it is where I met some of my best friends.” The group now has 2,400 members, both men and women and provides a safe place to ask anything from how to prepare for technical interviews to how to deal with imposter syndrome. Amy recalls a post where “a woman posted about how a professor said she couldn’t make it through computer science. It was really powerful to see a community of women who’ve been through similar experiences reaffirm her in the group.”
Amy’s advice is to focus on cultivating your technical skills. “Women often get pushed away from technical roles into more logistical or organizational positions. While that’s an important skill, you have to give yourself time and room to focus on your technical abilities. I got really burnt out organizing a lot of activities and stretched myself thin. I put learning and schoolwork aside. I decided to spend a semester focusing on coding. Professionally, I now feel much more capable. I don’t feel imposter syndrome because I am confident in my own abilities, and now have a portfolio of work to show for it. I noticed my ability to grasp new topics is much better. Difficult programming topics no longer scare me because I know that I can learn anything.” She also encourages more women to write technical articles and blog posts. “No one knows what you know. Once I started writing technical blog posts, people started to realize ‘Oh hey! She’s got chops’ and they were more willing to help me out to fill out knowledge gaps”.
Amy advises not to hold yourself back from your goals. “I applied for HackNY last year — it matches you up with a startup in NYC and gives you free housing. I actually took my application back because I didn’t have an app project on github. Looking back, I shouldn’t have done that. I put myself down before someone else could say ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Let the application judges make that decision. You don’t have to decide if you are good enough. Just apply.”
Amy will be graduating in December of 2016. For her next summer internship season, she conveyed that she “is definitely not scared for her technical interviews or approaching recruiters. I know that I bring a lot to any team. Give me a challenge and I will run with it.”
