Women in Tech @ RoboRana
IT has been a strictly male world for many years, and recent numbers suggest only 20% of tech jobs are held by women. Luckily, times are changing and big players such as DELL and Salesforce are taking steps to attract more female employees. Smaller tech companies, such as RoboRana, are following suit as they increase their efforts to appeal to young women in tech.
Polina and Sofie, both RPA engineers at RoboRana, had very different ideas of what they wanted to be when they grew up. Polina already fell in love with IT when she was just five years old, but Sofie took a roundabout way through nanophysics to arrive at the same destination. Now, their shared enthusiasm for RPA technology is almost contagious.
“What attracted me to RPA was the business logic behind the technology”, Polina says. “Coming up with new and creative processes to streamline the businesses of our customers is the best part of my job. I have a big impact on how a lot of companies do their business and I can make a real difference with my coding.”
Sofie also enjoys the ways IT and business interact in her job as RPA engineer. “It is a great motivator to see how your codes and processes really help your customers with their projects. This makes building innovative and automated processes a rewarding part of my job, and the variation in customers and assignments at RoboRana keeps my work engaging.”
They both chose a career in a predominantly male environment, but this has never bothered Polina or Sofie in their work. “We have become used to working in a man’s world”, says Sofie, “because the circumstances are the same compared to when we were studying IT. The amount of male and female students was typically unbalanced, but I never had the feeling we got treated differently as women.”
Polina agrees: “We are part of a new generation in which more and more girls choose a career in IT. This was already clear during my studies, but we still have a long way to go.” At RoboRana she immediately fitted in with the rest of the team: “This was my first job and the most important thing for me was to work with a friendly and supportive team. If you have issues at work, there is always someone you can turn to for help.”
RoboRana invests continuously in the development of their employees and Sofie is very happy with their approach: “The company inspires us to keep learning new techniques and technologies. At the moment I’m following a course in machine learning and all my colleagues are eager to hear what I have learned. This way we contribute our new knowledge to the company as well.”
Polina and Sofie are glad they chose a job in IT and want to inspire more women to take the leap. Polina: “I would say they have to follow their heart, rather than choose a career in IT because we need extra women in the field, or because they are more likely to get a job.”
Both women succeeded as RPA engineers on their own merit and wouldn’t want it any other way: “We would never want to be treated with extra care because we are women in a man’s world. We are where we are because we had the qualities to get here and not because we happen to be women.”
