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'Computing is a field where you can very quickly make a huge contribution," says Telle Whitney, president of the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology (ABI, www.anitaborg.org). One of ABI's missions is to get the word out to young women about the exciting work in computer science and software engineering. "We need to change the image, to let young women know that this is not a job where you are stuck in front of a computer screen all day," Whitney says.
According to the U.S. Department of Labor, eight out of the ten fastest growing industries have an IT component. That means many career paths for software engineering and CS majors, including program management and product development.
Bureau of Labor Statistics charts show that the percentage of women in the workforce pursuing math and CS careers rose to almost 40 percent in the 80s and early 90s, but then dropped to 28 percent by 2002. Whitney is concerned that the requirement to declare a major prior to entering many schools may have caused the enrollment of women in CS programs to drop. "Women seem to enter the field sideways," she says. "I started off in theater." She's encouraged, though, by recent anecdotal evidence of a renewed upward trend.
Peer support can be key, Whitney says. She urges women in technology to reach out to others like themselves. "New-grad women are trying so hard to fit in, to be their best, that they may not be aware of the resources available."
Many companies offer networking groups and mentoring or leadership programs for career advancement. National organizations and events also promote women in technology. ABI, for instance, co-sponsors the Grace Hopper Conference of Women in Computing (www.gracehopper.org), designed to highlight the research and career interests of women in computing. "Once we get folks there, they get
really excited," Whitney says with a smile.
The new-grad women featured in this article tell us what makes their jobs exciting.
SPSS' Celeste Hofer tests software
Celeste Hofer is an associate QA analyst at the Rochester, MN site of SPSS Inc. SPSS (Chicago, IL) is a developer of statistical analysis software products. Following careers as a registered nurse and a stay-at-home mom of four, Hofer has finally fulfilled her dream of working in computer science. "I've wanted to do this for a long time and it's great to add this chapter to my life," she says.
Hofer returned to the job market as a part-time worker in the finance area of a local company. The computerized financial systems rekindled her interest in CS and, with her husband's encouragement and support, she left her job to go back to school. "It took some adjusting and we all had to make sacrifices," she says.
Hofer earned her bachelors in CIS from Winona State University (Winona, MN) in 2005. At her satellite campus in Rochester, MN only seven of the twenty-eight students in one of her classes were born in the U.S., and most of her classmates were beyond the traditional student age. "We had people from Asia and Africa, and refugees with Sudanese and Somali heritage," she says.
A campus visit by SPSS in 2005 led Hofer to a QA internship with the company and ultimately permanent employment. She liked SPSS' size and found the corporate climate a good fit for her. "The focus here is on getting the work done. We're not 'meeting-ed' to death," she says.
Hofer is involved with test planning, test case development, and the execution of test cases for her company's products, which are used for predictive analysis, data mining, statistical analysis, business intelligence and data analysis. The job requires knowledge of software testing methods and computer languages, an ability to prioritize and problem-solving skills. "I look for bugs in the software and then recreate how they were found," she says.
Hofer looks forward to going to work each day and plans to continue doing so for a long time. She may pursue her masters degree after her kids are on their own. "I see myself as a role model for my daughter, who takes math and science
seriously," she says.
Jennifer Singer supports billing at EchoStar Communications
Jennifer Singer is an analyst/developer at EchoStar Communications Corp (Englewood, CO). She provides high-level technical support for the billing application software of DISHNetwork, the TV satellite service. The billing system is used to set up new customers, add services and keep track of all transactions for more than 12 million subscribers.
Singer's job requires basic programming knowledge, billing knowledge and multitasking ability. She helps the customer service reps and first-level support team resolve customers' problems. "I'm the only female on my eight-member team," she says. "I love being a geek."
She and the other techs each juggle as many as thirty issues a day. They try to help the CSRs to resolve a customer's problem in one call. "We have to keep customers happy, since they're what drive our revenue," she says.
Singer is surprised to find herself in this field. She started out as an accounting major, but found it "really boring." A computer course taken as an elective in her sophomore year of college captured her interest. "I loved building something and seeing what it could do."
Singer earned her BS in business administration with an emphasis in IS from the University of Colorado (Boulder, CO) in December 2002, when the market for programmers was rather bleak. It took her almost a year to get her first job in technology, as a computer resource technician at Sierra Middle School (Parker, CO). As the only tech in a school with more than 200 computers, she provided hardware, software and networking support. "I created a Web page that became the gateway for teachers to communicate with parents and students," she says proudly.
In 2004 Singer joined CSG Systems as a field support engineer, but she wanted more challenge, advancement opportunity and communication with people. Her experience installing billing software for customers and providing CRM support helped her land the job at EchoStar in 2006. "I love the social interaction here, sharing knowledge with my teammates," she says.
Singer is now pursuing a masters in IS at the University of Denver (Denver, CO) with the help of EchoStar's tuition assistance program. Advancement will come through a formal career ladder program at the company. "The company is so huge that I can potentially stay here for my entire career," she says.
Singer advises other women in computing to have confidence in their skills and to ask for what they want. "I've gotten every job I've asked for," she says.
GE Healthcare rotations challenge Adetola Olubi
Adetola Olubi is in the information management leadership program at GE Healthcare (Waukesha, WI). She is one of thirty-five people selected for this two-year rotational program that aims to build future leaders. She will do four six-month rotations in areas that contribute to her career development. "It's very rigorous. You have to ramp up very quickly and you're constantly learning," she says.
In Olubi's current rotation she is a project leader in service sales, implementing a more efficient and centralized way to track new business opportunities, craft quotes and generate contracts. She's building her negotiation and interpersonal skills, and serving as the liaison between the client and service, sales or development people. "My engineering and IT background helps me translate the customer's needs into a design requirement," she says.
Olubi started college at DePaul University (Chicago, IL) in liberal arts, but switched to CS after a lab in circuit analysis intrigued her. When she realized that her passion was engineering, she transferred to the University of Illinois (Chicago, IL), where she earned her BSEE in 2005.
She comes from a family of medical doctors. "My father wanted me to be a doctor, but he's satisfied that I'm working in the healthcare industry," she says. "I like the impact our products have on the quality of people's lives."
She initially connected with GE Healthcare through a campus job fair sponsored by NSBE, and went on to complete three internships and two co-ops with the company. She's currently a member of the GE Women's Network, a forum that speeds professional development by providing information on topics of interest to working women and linking them with women from other GE businesses.
Olubi loves to travel and was drawn to the company's global presence. She's Nigerian and has lived on three continents. She is fluent in English, French and Yoruba. "I feel that my diverse background helps me understand and value the differences each person brings to the table," she says.
Angela Cheung learns leadership skills at Intuit
Angela Cheung is also in a rotational leadership development program. She's an associate in the QuickBooks group at financial software and services company Intuit (Mountain View, CA). Associates in the program work in different functions and groups so that both they and management can find the best fit. "It usually takes ten or more years to learn the ins and outs of a company, but we're getting all that in two," she says.
Each class of ten to twelve associates starts out with three months in an Intuit customer contact center, learning about the company's customers, products and support resources. Then each one is assigned four high-priority rotational projects in four different areas of the business. The projects go from conception to execution in six months. "You get used to getting up to speed quickly and hitting the ground running," Cheung says.
Cheung has a patent filed and pending as a result of a solution she developed during her software engineering rotation. In her marketing rotation she helped launch a tool that helped convert 8,000 customers to Intuit, generating millions of dollars in revenue for the company. So far she likes product management the best because "It utilizes my engineering skills but also involves interfacing with customers."
The program is only two years old; Cheung's group is the first to participate. Senior leadership looks to the associates for recommendations on enhancing the program and for insight on how to apply it across the organization. And Cheung says she's continually learning from senior leaders' feedback.
Cheung graduated from the University of California-Berkeley in 2004 with a BS in EE and CS as well as a BS in business administration. She got to see how different companies work in two summer internships, one in product management at Yahoo! Personals and one with Pacific Gas & Electric in account services. "I chose those internships because they provided a mix of engineering and business," she says.
A visit to Intuit's campus sold her on the company after she got to see the corporate culture in action. "Intuit has a great open-door policy. Senior leadership is always willing to talk to you," she says.
Kelly M applies her technical knowledge at the CIA
Kelly M is an applications manager with the CIA (Washington, DC). Her full name can't be used because of the national security nature of her job. She manages two small teams, one that maintains a database and another that does software development. She guides design, development, implementation and maintenance of applications, databases and websites used throughout the agency. "What we do enables employees to perform their jobs," she says.
M says her job requires a lot of technical knowledge, creativity and problem-solving skills. Communication is also central to her position, which involves keeping senior management up to date on her teams' progress and relaying information from senior management to team members. "I have to ensure that everyone is on the same page," she says.
M's BSCS is from Xavier University (Cincinnati, OH). She started her major in math and changed to CS when she took a course with an engaging professor and did well. She graduated in 2000 and immediately entered grad school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which was ranked high for its CS program and was her professor's alma mater. She earned her MSCS there in 2002.
After graduation M moved to Maryland, where her fiancé was living and working. She jokingly told her friends that she was going to work for the CIA. Then, while surfing the Web one day, she ended up on the CIA site and noticed openings for people with CS degrees. She submitted her application and waited to hear back. "Until I happened on the website, I didn't know this was a real option," she says.
She took a position as a software engineer for Northrop Grumman for about a year and a half, then started at the CIA as an applications developer in 2004. She was promoted to applications manager a year later. "I was excited about working on leading-edge technology, but it was the 'cool factor' of the CIA that hooked me," she says.
M has taken project management and communications classes offered at the CIA to help her transition from development to management. She wants to work overseas, but she's not yet sure exactly what job or where that's going to be. "I want to experience a new culture," she says.
M is encouraged that the number of women in technology appears to be growing, and is pleased to note that she has at least one woman software developer on each of her project teams. She advises others not to be afraid to try something outside their comfort zones. "I was the only female in my CS class," she says.
She also recommends that new grads build a support network to help them make the hard decisions and take the right risks. She maintains contact with her two CS professors at Xavier, one of whom was extremely supportive and has served as a role model to her. "She even drove me to a conference in Chicago so that I could present a paper," M says.
Of her many accomplishments M is most proud that she was able to convince her work mentor to walk the Disney World marathon for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society this past January. "That was an exhilarating experience," she says.
DCS Corp's Kristina Thomas develops mission planning applications
Kristina Thomas is a software developer at DCS Corp (Lexington Park, MD), an engineering and management services contractor that specializes in military combat systems. She's working on a contract with the U.S. Department of Defense, developing software for a mission planning application. The application provides components that let a pilot select the most effective weaponry for a specific delivery condition. "We help pilots determine if what they've chosen will work and what the outcome will be," she says.
Thomas works with a team of developers, including fellow DCS Corp employees, the client's employees and other contractors. Her job involves analyzing, designing, implementing and testing the application. "People think that if you're a programmer you work on your own, but I interact with members of my team all day," she says, "For this job you need good interpersonal skills in addition to technical and problem-solving skills."
Thomas earned her BSCS with a business and math minor from Virginia Tech (Blacksburg, VA) in 2005. She was planning to work back home in New York, but not many companies from that area post jobs on the school's internal job posting boards. It was the project that brought her to DCS. "Working on government contracts wasn't something I had thought about until I interviewed for this job, but now that I'm here I love it," she says. "I'm happy that what I'm doing makes an impact."
Thomas' mom teaches math and her dad teaches science, so Thomas was exposed early on to facts, figures and formulas. She has been interested in science and technology since middle school, and took a few pre-engineering and CS classes in high school. In her freshman year of college she looked into several engineering specialties, but opted for CS.
As a senior at Virginia Tech, Thomas participated in a program that matches seniors with freshmen engineering majors. These student mentors serve as resources for academic issues, assist in skills development, and act as a sounding board for new thoughts and ideas. Thomas was assigned five female engineering students. "I told them they would have no life for four years," she said, "but it's worth it in the long run."
Over the past year Thomas has been getting up to speed on aircraft technology, a subject that she knew nothing about before she came to DCS. She's also been adjusting to the working world. At school there were no group coding projects and she wasn't allowed to look at anyone else's code. Now she's constantly reviewing other people's codes. "It took me awhile to get used to that," she says.
Thomas wants to work her way into project management and is exploring grad schools. She'll take advantage of the company's tuition reimbursement program to pursue an MBA.
Thomas is surprised by her independence. She's living on her own and has just purchased a townhouse. She urges women entering the field to keep working. "If everything came easy, life would be boring," she says.
Bindu Mukkavilli develops SWIFT testing standards and procedures
Bindu Mukkavilli is an associate test engineer at the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), located in northern Virginia. SWIFT is an international, financial industry-owned cooperative that supplies the messaging services and software used by banks to complete trillions of dollars in financial transactions daily. It serves over 7,500 financial institutions in 200 countries. "Our network and systems make international finance possible," she says.
Mukkavilli works with four other engineers in the product assurance and certification department within the IT ops division. She develops testing standards and procedures and is responsible for testing activities on the system component where messages get logged and stored. "The banks depend on us to ensure that enhanced capabilities are problem free. The system handles sizable money transactions and a mistake could have a major financial impact."
Mukkavilli has always had an interest in science. She got to program games for a CS class in high school and found that she liked the thinking and logic used to solve problems. She followed her sister to George Mason University (GMU, Fairfax, VA) and pursued the same major, CS. "My sister was a big help," she says. "She told me which classes to take and helped with my job search."
As a student Mukkavilli worked in various part-time positions at the university. She was a Web developer/DBA and maintained an online event registration website, tailoring it to the needs of the attendees of each event. She also served as an undergraduate peer assistant (UPA) assigned to more than twenty students. "I graded over fifty project reports and homework sheets weekly," she says. She received the Outstanding UPA award in 2005 for her effectiveness in helping students learn how to solve problems themselves.
A campus job fair led Mukkavilli to SWIFT, where she did an internship the summer before her senior year, automating thousands of test scripts to improve testing routines. She enjoyed the job and the company so much that she went back for a permanent position after graduating from GMU in 2005 with a BSCS and a minor in business and math.
She plans to return to school for her masters, taking advantage of SWIFT's tuition reimbursement program. "If you love making impossible things possible, software development is a great field," she says.
At SWIFT, she notes, minorities are the majority. "Work is work and the end result is all that matters," says Mukkavilli.
Qualcomm's Sireesha Vudatha: intern to full-time employee
Sireesha Vudatha is an engineer in the MediaFLO technologies department at Qualcomm Inc (San Diego, CA), a designer and supplier of code division multiple access (CDMA) chipsets, systems software, and other technologies for wireless communications. "CDMA technology has changed the global face of wireless communications," Vudatha says. The MediaFLO system brings high-quality video and audio programming to consumers' wireless handsets. "It's like watching television on your mobile phone," she explains.
Vudatha works on a team developing tools for test engineers. The tools automate repetitive, time-consuming, tedious tasks that enable the testers to focus more on new-feature and stress testing. "We decreased the time it took to run one test from six or seven hours to twenty minutes," she says proudly.
Automating the tasks also helps reduce manual errors during data collection and processing. Her job requires perseverance and patience in addition to good technical and problem-solving skills. "We help get our products to the customer faster," she says.
When Vudatha's husband got a job in San Diego, she submitted her resume to Qualcomm's online career site. She joined Qualcomm in November 2004 as an interim engineering intern and converted to full-time employee in March 2005. She was attracted to the company because of its interest in new college grads. "Qualcomm is willing to take the risk and offer internships as a way to prove yourself," she says.
Vudatha earned her bachelor of technology in chemical engineering at Osmania University (Hyderabad, India) in 2000. She earned her MSCS in 2003 and another MS in computational chemistry in 2004 at Louisiana Tech University (Ruston, LA). When her professor gave her a CS project that involved solving a chemistry problem, she decided to go for both degrees. "Education in the U.S. offers an opportunity to put what you are learning into practice right away," she notes.
In the short time that Vudatha has been at Qualcomm, she has already received a certificate of appreciation for her contribution to the automation of stability testing. She's also been given an opportunity to be sub lead for her team. She says that she's always been a high achiever: she received gold medal honors (the equivalent of valedictorian status) for having the highest grades in her class at Osmania. Her late grandfather, a college professor, is a continual source of inspiration for her. "His letters always stressed vocabulary and how to get better," she says.
Vudatha has set her sights on becoming a tech lead and will take advantage of online leadership courses and training sessions provided by the company. In 2005 Qualcomm was named one of the best organizations for training by the American Society of Training and Development. "I love the ongoing training Qualcomm provides for its employees," she says.
Sunny Sun improves pharmacy processing for Walgreens
Sunny Sun is a lead programmer analyst in pharmacy benefit management development at Walgreens Health Services, the managed care subsidiary of Walgreens Co (Deerfield, IL). This division offers a pharmacy claims processing service for pharmacies to adjudicate claims in real time. "When the patient comes in to get a prescription filled, the system tells the pharmacist if the patient's drug is covered and what the co-pay is," she explains.
Sun is on a development team that supports the production team for the 24/7 claim adjudication system. She works with business units to define system requirements, conduct system analysis, and then design and code the program. And she deals with challenges like business changes in response to new government regulations. "I had to learn all about Medicare Part D last year to understand the requirements and develop the business logic," she says.
Sun started her career at a company that laid her off after only five months, then joined Walgreens in 2000 as a programmer analyst. She was looking for stability and career opportunity, and Walgreens was always in the news for its aggressive growth plan. "I would pass by the company every day and wish I could work there," she says. Her technical skills and business knowledge helped her land a job after a friend who was a Walgreens employee referred her.
Sun earned her BS in economics at Nankai University (Tianjin, China) in 1997 and her MS in MIS from Northern Illinois University (DeKalb, IL) in 1999. She switched fields because she found economics in the U.S. to be more statistics-oriented than business- or management-oriented, as it was in China. "I like the role IT plays in business and the dynamics of the field," she says.
Sun has been in the workforce seven years now, and she's noticed that new grads tend to have too narrow a focus. "They ignore the business part and forget the big picture," she says.
She stresses the importance of setting goals, beginning with what you need to do each day. "You need to do more than just get the job done. The more you do, the more it benefits your future," she says.
EMC's Ka-Lai Wei works with NAS products
Ka-Lai Wei is a software engineer for EMC (Hopkinton, MA), a provider of products, services and solutions for information management and storage. She works for the South Plainfield, NJ engineering facility of EMC's network attached storage (NAS) division, developing new features for NAS products that help meet the demands of continually increasing volumes of transactions. "Our customers recognize our products for their reliability and stability," she says.
Wei works on a team that has groups of engineers at different locations. Her work involves the development of documents like functional and design specs, code implementation, testing and bug fixing. She needs a general knowledge of engineering concepts, problem-solving and multitasking skills, and the ability to work both independently and with a team. "I always ask the other engineers a lot of questions if I get confused," she says. "I would never risk implementing any uncertainty into our products!"
Wei pursued a program at Polytechnic University (Brooklyn, NY) that enabled her to graduate with both a BS in computer engineering and an MSCS in 2005. During school she worked as an IT intern for a financial firm, did some freelance Web programming, and was a design intern for the New York City Housing Authority.
At EMC new hires are assigned a mentor to help them get up to speed on the work environment and the company's practices and methods. During their first three months they attend classes for part of the day and meet with their mentors at least once a week. Wei says that EMC's products are very complex and it's easy to feel overwhelmed. "It could take months to learn just one product. My mentor helped me organize and understand the information," she says. Wei is in the process of filing her first patent.
Wei sees other female engineers as role models, and feels that "women bring a welcome diversity to a male-dominated field." She notes that CNN recently rated software engineering as the top career in the U.S. However, she cautions people who are considering this field to evaluate their own abilities and passions. "Don't depend on rankings to make your career choice."
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