WWCode CONNECT 2019
WWCode CONNECT 2019 is a developer conference organized by Women Who Code to bring speakers and attendees together to share their technical expertise and inspirational stories of how they have succeeded in the industry. Experts in various fields including blockchain, cyber security, data science, machine learning, and front end development gathered together and truly connect as a group with attendees by sharing experience and empower each other by sharing knowledge.
The all-day conference was jam packed with educational tech talks, hands-on workshops, inspirational keynotes, and around-the-clock networking opportunities. I loved that there are many talks for each technical topic so depending on which track you’re on, you can easily plan your conference agenda and get the most out of your time.
I was so fortunate to be sponsored to attend the conference by TIBCO, a Gold Sponsor at the WWCode CONNECT 2019 conference and a provider of integration, analytics and event-processing software. As someone who recently made the career switch from product management to software engineering, there was no better way to spend a Saturday than with other women who are also passionate about sharing their own experiences and learnings with each other.
Keynote — Alaina Percival, CEO of Women Who Code
- At over 180,000 members worldwide, Women Who Code has collaborated with over 700 companies and sponsored $275,000 in tickets for members to attend conferences.
- Women Who Code is changing the face of tech, creating a more inclusive and diverse industry, and helping women to connect with professional opportunities that propel them into positions of power.
Scaling Inclusion — Candice Morgan, Head of Inclusion and Diversity, Pinterest
- In 2013, Tracey Chou, a software engineer and entrepreneur at Pinterest wrote a Medium post asking the tech world what was the percentage of female engineers at major tech companies in the Bay Area. Since then, Pinterest has made it a mission to improve diversity and inclusion in not just its own organization but also for the users.
- As part of the initiative, Pinterest worked on making search a more inclusive experience because inclusion is about both employees and users.
- Users can now filter search results based on skin tone range as opposed to being presented with images featuring a default skin color.
- Diversity is about both employees and users.
- To find the underrepresented population we need to change how we hire which traditionally has been through relationships and a few schools.
Tara Hernandez — Engineering manager, Google Cloud Platform
- Tara Hernandez shared her journey as a developer from being at a work place where she was told “you are good but we can’t pay you more because you’re already at the highest of the pay scale” to finding an organization where her talent is genuinely appreciated.
- The higher you go the more impact you have on hiring and culture.
I owe it to the industry to give back all the mentorship…healthy internet and tech isn’t about women acting like men. It’s about women being in the industry. — Tara Hernandez
Disrupting More Than Payments — Panel Discussion
- Disruption is aided by strong mentorship and the courage to challenge the status quo.
- Dream big and take small actions to achieve that goal; think ahead and pave the way for yourself
- To those who feel stuck in an unhealthy workplace: If you can afford to walk away from the assholes, don’t stay for a second longer
- How do you recruit into a not as sexy industry like finance ? People are generally excited about solving problems so bring awareness to problems and how they’re being solved to younger generation.
Scaling Software Development: Teams & Codebase — Tutti Quintella, Software Engineer, Mercari
- Three factors to consider when scaling the codebase:
- System design
- Model view controller: Controller gets requests from View to trigger behavior in Model
- First advice: Keep skinny controllers fat models
- Second advice: pull logic out of component into a module. Fat components can be hard to read, find logic, hard to unit test. Fat components can have too many specific details, making it hard to reuse.
2. Code style guide: Inconsistent coding style makes development difficult especially as the team gets bigger
3. Best practices:
- Single responsibility principles: a class/method/component should have only one responsibility.
- Keep your code dry. Don’t repeat yourself.
- Boy scout rule — leave the camp ground clean so that your teammates can easily understand your code.
- QA is important so you can have confidence in making changes without breaking things. Ideal testing coverage is debatable but consensus is you need to have tests. Tools like New Relic can help developers monitor real-time issues.
- Use tools like new relic to monitor real-time issues and automated code reviews and testings can ensure PRs with failed tests are not pushed.
- Additionally, lack of boundaries and roles lead to big problems in organizations. Teams should define tasks that everyone should do and have the manager assign other tasks to eliminate confusion.
Keeping the Funds Safe: Application Security Meets Cryptocurrency — Zassmin Montres de Oca, Application Security Engineer, Coinbase
- Bitcoin is essentially a network of nodes operating on a protocol. Blockchain is publicly sourced data. Digital wallets have public and private keys where transactions are signed using the keys and the protocol verifies it.
Exchange apps manage these transactions but what can go wrong?
- Due to the price fluctuation and speed of transactions, problems such as data integrity caused by overdrawn accounts and denial of service can happen.
- Sequential processing can ensure accounts don’t get overdrawn.
- Personally Identifiable Information (PII) of both banks and individuals could also be compromised. It is essential for digital transactions to be guided by law and regulatory requirements; data classification requires knowing the customer.
Leadership and The Mechanical Bull — Cheryl Contee, CEO and Co-Founder, Do Big Things
- Focus on acquiring leadership skills because they are needed now more than ever.
Listen more than you talk. — Cheryl Contee
- Didn’t know which one of her original ideas would take off. Things you’re interested in now msg seem disconnected to others but don’t listen to them. Share your ideas talk about the ideas bc that’s how you will recruit your team, validate your concept and find investor
Pinterest Evolution — Peter Nichols, Head of Core Product Engineering, Pinterest
- Pinterest is all about how to include the best possible ideas in making decisions. Not to make some people speak louder.
- More diverse teams outperform less diverse teams. Diversity alone isn’t enough, we need inclusion too. It’s also not just a nice thing to do, it’s a huge miss if you’re not doing it.
No one ever asked me how I’m able to balance career and family. — Peter Nichols
- Hitting diversity goals in hiring isn’t done when hiring. It’s done before hiring takes place through having objective job description, bigger candidate pool, and sometimes ensure there is at least one minority candidate for some roles.
- Inclusion tip for managers: just listen, not making some speak louder.
If you’re not at a company that tries to listen and work on inclusion and diversity, maybe the company doesn’t deserve you. — Peter Nichols
Thank you to Women Who Code and @Pinterest for bringing the WWCode CONNECT 2019 possible! I met so many wonderful women who were beyond brilliant. It was such an amazing event to experience the passion and talent in person through meeting and talking with the speakers, sponsors and attendees.
To anyone who feels that there are not enough female technologist role models, the WWCode CONNECT Conference is your must-go to see for yourself that there are plenty of technical female engineers in the industry around the world.
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