This is what a developer looks like
Lola likes reading and wearing dad hats. But above all, Lola loves coding. She loves it so much that she has made it her passion, and ultimately, her job.
Lola studied translation, linguistics and literature at university. She then worked as a freelance translator for a while, and ended up working in marketing, which she didn’t really enjoy. One day, she decided to learn to code. As two of her friends had done Le Wagon and loved it, she quit her job and joined the next Paris batch.
Her studying at Le Wagon was just the beginning of her coding journey. As she had almost finished the bootcamp, one of her teachers asked her if she would like to become a Teaching Assistant. She immediately said yes.
I have been working in the tech space for 4 years, so I’m used to seeing few women around, especially in technical teams. When I joined Le Wagon a few weeks ago, I immediately noticed amazing and passionate women developers around me. Not being a developer myself (though I have already considered it), I asked them how they felt about coding, and why they thought so few women were interested in it.
So I asked Lola what she loved about coding. Her answer is compelling 😍
“When you code, especially as a beginner, and you chew on a tricky problem and finally untangle it, you’ll encounter the most incredible feeling of catharsis — suddenly, everything lights up, everything falls into place. It makes you so happy and proud, even if no one will ever notice but you. You can easily become addicted to that shot of endorphin.
As an intellectual exercise, coding constantly challenges you and makes you question what you think you know and what you think you can do. It keeps you humble and stimulates you at the same time.”
Beautiful, isn’t it? And besides being beautiful, it makes the perfect intro to a very important point.
Coding has nothing to do with gender
It may well be that you related to what Lola depicted above. You may have told yourself “wow, this seems fantastic, this stuff was made for me. I need to start coding right away”. And maybe you didn’t. What I’m certain about is that it has nothing to do with your being a 👨🎓 or a 👩🎓.
To make sure that I got it right, I asked other girls what they loved about coding. Girls working at Le Wagon: developers, teachers, teaching assistants.
This is what Sandrine, developer and teacher at Le Wagon, told me.
“I love coding for a ton of different reasons: I love the fact that I can work on a problem and see immediate results — positive or negative. It requires you to dive deep into a problem, there is no room for bullshit or half-assed solutions.
“I also love the continuous learning that programming requires. No matter what you set yourself up to do — fix a bug, implement a new gem, learn a new programming language — you are learning all the time.”
The challenge is also what Cecile, part-time Le Wagon teacher, part-time freelance developer, enjoys in her job: “being a developer means being constantly challenged, every day”. There is something else that she is fond of: bringing to life projects that she cares about.
“What I love about web development is that you can bring your expertise to every sector that you like. I used to work for an e-commerce fashion website, then for an auction platform, now I work with Fizzer, an awesome app created by two Le Wagon alumni. I can help bring to life all the projects I believe in.”
Intellectual challenge ✅ Constant learning ✅ Daily victories ✅ Are these especially male or female stuff?
Karine used to be a designer. She did Le Wagon, and now, she is a full-time developer, teacher and co-founder of web agency Poulpe.
“As a designer, I was afraid to spend so much time in front of a black screen. But in the end, I loved it. I type lines of code and I directly see the results in my browser! I can finally create my designer portfolio the way I want. When I did Le Wagon, I thought I would just add a skill to my skillset, but I actually completely changed jobs.”
Freedom ✅ Creativity ✅ Empowerment ✅ Again, especially male or female stuff?
Back to reality
At Le Wagon, bringing more women to code is a real challenge. Slowly but surely, we’re getting there, some cities being more successful than others in that matter 😬
Coding should appeal to girls and boys equally, right? But the reality is quite different.
Of course, these figures are biased: percentages vary from batch to batch. For instance, Barcelona has had 27% female students since it launched, and this latest batch is not representative of the city’s diversity efforts. But on the whole, among the latest Le Wagon batches across the world — and throughout Le Wagon’s history — women have represented 25% of the students on average. We could be satisfied by this figure. After all, it is still higher than the average percentage of women in many companies’ tech teams.
We receive more and more applications from women, but there are still too few of them. We feel sorry that so few women feel like coding is for them. We feel sorry that so few women have the opportunity to use this very empowering and fulfilling tool that is web development 💥
Why, or why?
If coding is a matter of “hard work, drive, self-confidence and a hunger for learning” (I took that from Sandrine), then why is the field lacking women? And why do we associate the word “developer” to a grumpy guy instead of a smiling girl? 💃
For Alice, developer and teacher at Le Wagon Berlin, many women don’t even think that coding could be a choice for them. It seems that the good old developer image is deeply rooted in our collective unconscious.
“We have to get rid of this myth of the lonely hacker. There are a lot of myths that need to be deconstructed when it comes to tech and programming, it’ll help bring more diversity. The only reason I see why there are not enough women is simply the fact that women are not even considering it. There is a huge need for popularization.”
But hey! Alice also thinks that this pattern is quickly evolving, and that it is partly due to the nature of the profession: “On the technological side, we constantly need to evolve, so on the social side that happens as well. Change can be very, very fast.”
💪💪💪
So, close your eyes and tell me: what does a developer look like now?
