10 Questions with Angela Taylor
Software Engineer at Google
Angela Bernice Ellington Taylor is a Software Engineer at Google. She has been at Google for 8 years and started off working in People Operations, where she spent time on the People Analytics and Compensation teams before transferring to become an engineer on the Google My Business team. She is originally from Arkansas and moved to Illinois to attend Northwestern University, where she received a BA in Communication Studies. She moved to the Bay Area in 2009 to start her career at Google.
- When did you know you wanted to be in tech?
I actually entered the tech industry before I consciously decided that I wanted to be part of it. Being raised in a small, rural town in Arkansas, the tech industry wasn’t on my radar growing up. Even after I left Arkansas and went to school in Illinois, I still didn’t give much thought to tech. I entered the industry by chance, really. During my junior year of college I was hunting for a summer internship and a friend of mine forwarded me an email about a communications internship at Google.
It was 2007, so Google was already a household name by that point, but I was still so clueless about the tech industry that I didn’t even know to be excited about the opportunity. In 2008, when I received an offer from Google for a summer internship, I initially considered passing on it. I had a competing offer at Sony Pictures where I’d get to help with communications and marketing for one of their summer blockbusters and that sounded more appealing at the time. In the end, the position at Google paid more, which won me over. After starting at Google, I was still more enamored with all the wonderful perks than I was with the tech industry as a whole.
It wasn’t until I came back to Google as a full-time employee in 2009 that I started paying more attention to all the game-changing things the company was doing with technology. That was when I really decided that this was an industry that I needed to be part of.
2. Who’s been a role model you look up to?
When I was younger, my whole world revolved around my big sister. Even though we’re only 18 months apart, I was one of those typical little sisters who constantly followed behind her. I wanted to do everything she did, go all the places she went, and even wear all the clothes she wore. I literally wanted to be her because she was this radiant social butterfly who had a talent for quickly developing rapport with people. I considered myself to be an awkward child who didn’t know how to interact well with others, so I tended to avoid social interactions. I used to run and hide in my closet with a lamp and a book whenever the doorbell would ring, because the doorbell meant company was coming over. I hadn’t yet learned how to cope with being a true introvert, but over the years, I learned to mimic my sister enough to at least fake having social skills.
“I used to run and hide in the closet with a lamp and a book whenever the doorbell would ring… I hadn’t yet learned how to cope with being a true introvert.”
3. Where’s your hometown?
Lonoke, Arkansas. Home of the mighty Jackrabbits! It’s a rural town of only about 4,000 people, but my parents thought even that was too much of a crowd, so they built a house about 8 miles from town to have more space and solitude. I grew up in the country, and I was a true country gal. I’m talking about walking barefoot through grass up to your knees, swimming in the ditch after a good rain, shucking corn on the back porch kind of country gal. I started to dial back my southern accent after I left Arkansas, but if you catch me on the phone with my parents (who I still call every day), you’ll likely hear a few “y’all”s and a slight southern drawl.
4. What’s a challenge that you’ve faced?
I lived a pretty sheltered life growing up, so moving away from home and being exposed to the vastness of the world was a struggle for me. I kept up appearances on the outside, but internally, I struggled with realizing that the world is made up of a lot of different people who live their lives in very different ways than the way I was raised.
Growing up, everyone around me was Christian, heterosexual, and had pretty conservative views on the way the world should work. Once I got to college, I was exposed to so many other religions, sexual orientations, and more liberal ways of viewing the world. I soaked it all up like a sponge and while I appreciated how my mind was expanding to see the world from these different perspectives, it was all a bit overwhelming.
“Once I got to college, I was exposed to so many other religions, sexual orientations, and more liberal ways of viewing the world… I struggled to reconcile what I was taught was the “right” way to live with how all these new amazing people were living, which also seemed right to me.”
I struggled to reconcile what I was taught was the “right” way to live with how all these new amazing people were living, which also seemed right to me. Why couldn’t we all be right without saying that someone else was wrong? This internal struggle stayed with me for years and part of it is still with me to this day. I’ve come to the conclusion that the most important thing is to just show love to every person as they are and the rest will figure itself out.
5. Describe a time you were proud of yourself.
Becoming a Software Engineer at Google is my proudest moment to date. I grew up not knowing that software engineering was even a job that existed. I majored in Communication Studies with a double minor in English and Film & Media Studies, and topped it off with a Certificate in Creative Writing for the Media. It doesn’t get much more non-technical than that. All my summer internships were in the Communications field and when I joined Google full-time in 2009, I started in People Operations.
In June 2011, I discovered programming and absolutely fell in love with it. After some research, I discovered that coding was part of software engineering and I decided then and there that Software Engineer was my new dream job. So for years, I dedicated my evenings to taking Computer Science classes, which involved many late nights of watching lectures, struggling through homework, studying for exams, and still needing to muster up enough energy to do my full-time job the next day.
“For years, I dedicated my evenings to taking Computer Science classes, which involved many late night of watching lectures, struggling through homework, studying for exams, and still needing to muster up enough energy to do my full-time job the next day.”
The more progress I made in my classes, the further away I felt from my goal, as I realized how much there is to learn within CS. Still, I continued to chip away at the classes and picked up some technical projects along the way, both at Google and in my personal time. Slowly but surely, I felt my skills steadily improve and my confidence in myself increase. My confidence never quite reached a peak (I’m still waiting for that to happen), so I never felt fully ready to take the next step.
Even so, in May of this year, I finally took the leap and applied for a transfer to a Software Engineer role at Google and my transfer was approved. The entire journey took nearly 6 years to complete. There were days where I didn’t think I’d make it, but thanks to a lot of prayer and amazingly supportive people who kept telling me that I could do it, I was able to push through the tough times, ignore my inner doubt, and make it to this point. I’m definitely proud of this accomplishment.
6. What’s been on your mind a lot lately?
Self-care. Like many people, I have a habit of going, going, going, non-stop until I’ve burned myself out. Even after I hit that point, I still continue to push myself to keep going. I used to think that if I wasn’t actively doing something, I wasn’t being productive, so I always prioritized productivity over my own well-being. That way of life isn’t sustainable and I’ve realized that my well-being can’t be an afterthought anymore, so I’m starting to take a more an active interest in self-care and learning how to be kind to myself.
7. Favorite food?
It’s hard to pick a single favorite food, so I’ll give a favorite category: breakfast foods. I could have breakfast for dinner any day.
8. Mac or PC?
PC.
9. If you could try another job for a day, what would it be?
Actress. This was my first dream job, and I heavily pursued it all through high school (drama club, summer theatre camps, acting classes, the works).
10. If you could give your 18-year-old self a piece of advice, what would it be?
Slow down. You have the rest of your life to be an adult, so enjoy being a teenager.
