Chimers Chime In: Being a (woman) engineer at Chime

We recently hosted a panel of women engineers at Chime, where seven women Chimers Chimed In about their paths to becoming developers, the value of their different backgrounds, which skills women bring to the table, the challenges they face, and the great work they do at Chime.

Here’s a look at what they had to say.

Meet the panelists

The many paths to engineering

There’s no one path to any career, and the women of our panel proved that to be true for engineering. For Joyce, the road was more linear: She studied computer science at university, mostly out of a hatred of writing essays. “I decided to try CS because I didn’t want to study math or the humanities, but it ended up being really interesting — I loved it,” she explains. Upon graduating, she taught English in Korea for a year and a half before getting a software engineering internship. “I really loved working as a software engineer, so here I am!” she says.

Shaylene, on the other hand, had a much more unconventional path to engineering and tech. “I was kicked out of high school for having terrible grades,” she says. “Eventually, I re-enrolled and managed somehow to graduate on time.” She then went to community college and got into UC Berkeley, “Of all schools,” she says. But she didn’t study computer science — she hated math — and instead pursued a major in media studies. With an interest in PR and social media, she worked as a marketing coordinator at a small startup, where she owned all customer communication and CRM platforms. “That’s how I developed the skills necessary to run CRM from an engineering standpoint and get to my role today,” she says.

And Jillian, who went to music school, got into tech to support her music habits and help to pay bills. After graduating with her music degree, she enrolled in a coding bootcamp to learn more technical skills and support her career as a professional musician. “There’s no one way to engineering or tech — my journey was long and winding,” she says.

How our identity impacts how we work

In addition to our paths to our careers, our identity contributes hugely to how we approach our work. “Being a woman in tech has helped me develop deep self-awareness of how my perspective affects my approach to work,” says Jillian. “I’m always conscious of how women might be perceived in the workplace and I work to navigate that and bring my best self to work in spite of it. Keeping this perspective has made me resilient and contributed to my complex identity as a POC woman and helped me think about how I can use it to my advantage at work.”

Beverly echoes Jillian’s sentiment: “As a woman in tech, I’ve experienced biases at work and adjusted as a result,” she explains. “I scrutinize my work more and prepare myself much more rigorously for presentations, for example,” she adds. She’s realized the importance of removing bias, not just for women and how we approach our work, but for teams to do better work and create a more collaborative environment where all contributions are valued equally.

For Melody, her identity as a woman has impacted her work because of the stereotypes around women and emotions. “I wear my heart on my sleeve — if I’m disappointed or having a hard day, you’ll see it on my face,” she says.

“I’m not afraid to be emotional, despite the stereotypes about women and our emotions — I actually think showing my emotions makes me better at my work. There are arguably two sides to the coin of being transparent with our emotions: on one side, we can get labeled as ‘emotional’ or perceived as weaker than our male counterparts, and on the other side, we foster trust more easily and build relationships with the people around us because of our emotional transparency. I believe the latter has helped me be a better colleague.”

The challenges of being a woman in the field

“Often, when I tell someone that I’m an engineer, they’ll ask me what it’s like to be a woman in the field,” says Joyce. “Sometimes, it feels like it’s an identity that’s been forced upon me — instead of people asking about the work I do or my interests, the conversation centers around me being a minority in tech,” she adds. “I chose this career, not to be a minority within the field, but because it’s something I wanted to do.”

Joyce’s experience isn’t isolated — other women on the panel echoed her sentiment. “Everyone has their own experience, but as women in engineering, we’re expected to have a generic experience that represents every woman in the role, when in fact, as this panel has shown, we all have very different perspectives.”

For Sophia, being a woman in engineering has felt isolating at times — usually during social events in the early days with her teams, not in their day-to-day work. “Honestly, happy hours are the most challenging for me — not meetings,” she says. “Having a different cultural background and being a woman means sometimes it’s hard for me to participate in social conversations or understand context,” she says.

What’s more, Sophia has experienced what many cite to be a huge challenge at work: Impostor syndrome. “I don’t have a PhD, whereas many folks in data science do — I felt early on in my career that I didn’t understand why I’d been hired into the roles I had,” she explains. “I never felt I was qualified for the jobs I got. When I brought this up with my mentor the first time, I was told that I had a ton of potential and was well qualified for the job — now, I know they were right. I’ve learned so much from my colleagues, whether they’ve had PhDs or not — impostor syndrome has become a way for me to challenge myself, instead of feeling left behind.”

The soft skills that helped us get ahead

“My ability to make friends has actually really helped me at work,” says Jillian. “Developing and building relationships has become essential to my career growth. The ability to build rapport with people involves investing in them as humans, and doing so facilitates feedback — and therefore, growth of the individual and the team. Building relationships also makes our working environment more comfortable, transparent, and enjoyable.”

Melody, who was an art major in college, never knew how important her art degree would be in her career as an engineer. “So much of analytics, engineering, and data science is about how well you present your ideas and make the other person truly understand your point of view,” she says. “In my art degree, I was constantly pitching my artwork and building the communication and visualization skills that have helped me immensely in my career as an engineer.”

There are many ways the women engineers at Chime got to where they are today, and so much that they bring to our team. Their unique experiences, perspectives, and skills contribute to the success of our organization and the growth of their individual careers. We’re grateful for all of these women for sharing their stories with us.

Interested in joining the team and sharing your story? Check out our open positions on our Careers page.