What’s it like to be a software engineer at Liv Up?
Two years ago, I started my career as a Software Engineer, I was graduating in Materials Engineering and during my internship program in a multinational company I realized that the work didn’t suit me. Every day I had a terrible feeling that my work didn’t matter and my career was a waste of time.
My first action to change my situation was starting an HTML and CSS online course. At that time I had no idea about technology and my only experience with programming was the logic classes in the first year in the University. Sometimes I had to watch over and over again the same fifteen minutes class but it was fine after all I was starting and learning something new.
Every little progress mattered and was celebrated. For example, I recorded a video of my first web page and sent it to everyone like it was the best thing in the world. And it was!! It represented my new ability to build things and solve problems, even if the problem was creating a Stranger Things static website.
After that, I started a course at Senai in São Paulo and quit my demotivating job. Everything was fine until I started to take consciousness about a gender problem in my new area. I was used to the gender gap in my university, but it wasn’t so terrifying as it is in technology careers.
What challenges have you faced during the transition of your career?
I wasn’t thinking about difficulties at the beginning of my career shift, but It showed to be much harder than I could ever imagine.
My first challenge was to accept that everyone could teach me things because I did know almost nothing about programming. I never imagined that career shifts could be a humility lesson but realizing this really changed my perspective and helped me learn faster and better.
Some moments were really demotivating and I used to be affected very much by these days until I started to write in a small notepad every time I noticed some progress in my learning process. Reading the notes on a bad day helped me feel less like a fraud and more like a software developer.
I said that before, but the gender gap still scares me and the girl’s tech groups really helped me to feel part of this technology world and to find other women with the very same problems.
I think most of these problems come from the male environment. Recurrent mansplaining and mansterrupting always made me feel the dumbest person in the room and for a long time, I felt insecure to talk in meetings, especially about technical subjects. What helped me improve my communication in these situations was receiving feedback from my mentors and being encouraged by them to give my opinions.
What was your first impressions at Liv Up?
In November of 2018, I was looking for a job and even though Liv Up had a great fit with my personal principles and career aspirations I had never thought about applying to a job interview. I didn’t feel good enough for working with such an amazing product, but, thanks to the recruiting web platforms, I was found, selected for an interview and approved!
After accepting the proposal I discovered that I would be the first girl to be part of the tech team and it was really freezing. In my first month, I was always afraid of making mistakes, of people discovering that I was a fraud (hello, impostor syndrome) and felt really insecure about my importance in the team and all the insecure thoughts that you could imagine.
But Liv Up culture showed me that we really value one by one and in a few months I was feeling more confident, secure and receiving all support for improving my abilities and knowledge even in a tech workplace with low diversity.
I also discovered that it’s possible to have a food company based in technology systems, which was kind of surprising even for me. We’re a direct-to-consumer company, so it’s kind of obvious that we have an e-commerce, but there are many more systems that help with inventory management, recipes development, delivery operations, product releases and more. I’m proud to say that we built them all over these three years.
What do you see in Liv Up as a differential?
For us at Liv Up it’s very important to do the right thing in the right way. We know the importance of diverse environments, so to increase diversity in the tech team we’re doing some nice initiatives like meetups for girls tech communities and focusing on girls profiles for interviews. We also started a diversity and inclusion guild to organize special meetings with the tech team and talk about these topics.
Besides that, we have a great product with enormous growth potential and it’s really awesome to be part of its construction. I’m really excited to build my career here and to keep being part of our stunning growth.
What keeps you working at Liv Up?
At Liv Up I discovered the meaning of being a software engineer instead of a developer. I have opportunities to go beyond the boundaries of my role and try new things every day.
In January, I started as a front end and after eleven months I improved my front end skills and I’m also going deeper in mobile development and learning a bit about agile fundamentals.
The best part is that I learned a lot working in relevant projects, with amazing teams, receiving mentoring and feedback which helped me to improve and stay motivated. That’s why I stay at Liv Up and feel motivated to do my best for the company growth.
