Women Who Build — Jill Magsaysay
An interview with Jill Magsaysay of our Denver Build Center
This is the third in our series about Women Who Build (WW_B) — an internal Slalom Build community focused on recruiting and retaining the best technical talent and dispensing with the idea that tech is non-inclusive. With a mission “to engage, inspire, and encourage every Slalom woman to achieve her full and unique potential”, WW_B is supporting female technologists across the organization, and throughout their careers. For our last profile, check out this interview.
Meet Jill Magsaysay, a Solution Architect from our Denver Build Center.
Where did your career start?
After finishing my education and Indiana University, I kicked off my career at Kronos in Indianapolis as a software implementation consultant, creating custom software implementations and writing logical expressions in Excel spreadsheets. I was super bored. I realized very quickly that I should be writing software full-time not only to feed my engineering mindset, but also challenge myself through complex problem solving. Shortly after that decision, I moved to Colorado and kicked off my career as a software engineer at Wall Street On Demand, now IHS Markit. At WSOD, I had the opportunity to build custom stock, quotes, and research tech for financial institutions including: Wells Fargo, Commonwealth Securities, National Bank of Australia, Royal Bank of Canada, and Fidelity.
What drew you to the tech industry?
Legos.. kind of. As a kid, I would try to find the best way to build a Lego wall that my older brother wouldn’t be able to tear down easily. As computers and the internet started becoming popular, I found ways to translate my love for building things into the tech space. Whether it was opening the terminal and learning how to open directories from a command, or opening up a computer tower and replacing components, I had a genuine curiosity for the building blocks of tech and how I could make them better. In high school, I decided to take a QBasic course and immediately fell in love with software. I knew I needed to pursue a computer science degree. It’s ironic that my love for building things landed me a job at a _build center.
What was a high-impact event in your career that’s shaped who you are today?
Having the strength to leave a highly toxic workplace. I previously worked at a startup that had an astounding amount of issues, most of which stemmed from poor leadership and lack of accountability. I LOVED the work I was doing, but the environment was horrible to work in. There was always some sort of finger pointing going on, whether it was he-said/she-said argument, or someone throwing someone else under the bus, it was TOXIC. It was extremely difficult to leave, as I was offered to take a leadership position with awesome benefits, stock, and even higher salary, not to mention the work was extremely rewarding and challenging — something I crave. After taking a step back, I realized I had gained 15 pounds, I was working 80 hours a week, and I myself was feeding into the contagious negativity. I realized I had to take a step back and take care of myself. After this experience, I learned what companies I want to work for and the type of behaviors I need to promote exude as a professional. I had a major attitude shift after working at this company and am able to bring positivity and fresh energy into every day. We spend so much of our lives at work, and there is no point in wasting your time somewhere you are not happy.
What brings you joy in your work?
Writing really complex algorithms and mentoring/teaching.
Because I’m a giant nerd, algorithm design is one of my hobbies… seriously, my fiancé and I are both engineers and definitely have date nights around algo design. It really feels great to solve complex problems and warms my nerdy little heart.
Being an educator is a craft. The ability to talk through problems through analogies, diagrams, industry terminology, etc. all come from years of practice in the industry. Mentoring is something I have always loved and enjoyed. It’s so much fun to watch your peers grow, especially when you are even a small part of that growth. I’ve had many mentors in my career, and I love to continually give back to early career to senior engineers.
What brought you to Slalom?
The community and endless opportunities. I was in a pattern of working at small-medium size companies for the majority of my career and I wanted to dive back into the open ocean. I wanted to grow my network with really smart people that really care about people. Luckily my core values as a person very closely align with Slalom’s value system.
What’s the vibe of your market?
Working at _build is exciting, challenging, and rewarding. We have really complex problems to solve across many interesting clients. Not only do we have exposure to interesting problems in our 40 hours, but we also have hackathons to keep us engaged with cutting edge tech in the tech space. _build is also full of incredibly smart and talented people. I’ve never worked at a place where everyone is a cheerleader who will go out of their way to elevate the people around them. It’s an overwhelming sense of community that you can rely and fall back on.
If you were Queen for a day — what are the top 5 things you’d do with that power?
- Host one of the many Royal Garden Parties, but instead of inviting the wealthy, choose 8,000 individuals that are positively impacting society and their community
- Visit a division of the Armed Forces so I could hug and thank as many soldiers as I could for their dedication and service to the country.
- Robin Hood the crap out of the wealthy, i.e. force self and other affluent individuals pay taxes
- Arm wrestle the pope for funsies.
- Try to make as many new queen memes as possible
Jill is one of many inspiring women that Slalom Build is proud to have as part of the team. We’ll be bringing more stories from these exceptional individuals as we continue in our series of Women Who Build.
