In honor of Women’s Equality Day and National Webmistress Day, we thought we’d talk to some of the awesome women in our agency about what they bring to and love the most about the world of web–and who has inspired them along the way.
Hannah is an incredible web developer who has been with us at Sweb for 3 1/2 years. As a wife and mother with an eye for details (and a 4th degree blackbelt!), she’s an integral part of making sure our client sites function smoothly. She’s also an incredible teacher, helping our clients understand what she has worked on and how it works.
What do you think women in tech uniquely have to bring to the industry?
Tenacity? Grit? I don’t know, it really depends on the lady, doesn’t it. We can go on all day about fresh ideas and thinking outside the box but qualities like that really depend on individual personality more than anything else. My goal in general is to write great code and learn everything I can. Maybe I am missing the forest for the trees but to me my gender has very little to do with it. That is the very wonderful and powerful thing about jobs in tech, it has very little to do with how you look or what you’re wearing. If you write code that works nobody knows if a woman or a man wrote it. If it’s formatted, commented, efficient, and easy to read even better. Competition can be fierce, people will make assumptions and judgement based on your gender, but nobody can dispute that the website is live, that the form is working, and if the website goes down or the form stops sending I can fix it.
I remember finishing high school and even in college people were always asking me what drew me to build websites, why would I pick that industry. My automatic answer was always “I don’t want to wear makeup or heels, I want to wear jeans every day if I feel like it. I want to have a flexible schedule so I can also be a mom.” From that perspective it is much more about what tech can offer me than what I can bring to tech. All I can bring to tech is the best code I can write and a willingness to learn more.
Who is a woman in tech that you look up to, and why?
Lea Verou. She is a CSS expert that is held in high esteem within the industry. She developed for the W3C (basically God Status) and authored CSS Secrets: Better Solutions to Everyday Web Design Problems. I’m a bit of a fangirl of hers, I follow her on Facebook where she posts relevant articles as well as beautiful and exotic foods. With Lea Verou, I was initially excited to find a female web developer so high in the industry but at this point it is more about knowing she is an expert I can trust to give me the latest, coolest, and most relevant information about my industry, and that really has nothing to do with her gender.
Magaly, our founder and CEO, is an inspiring woman in and of herself, launching a tech company without a tech background. She is the cornerstone of our company and has a fierce can-do attitude and believes in bringing out the best in her team. She is also the mother of two incredible girls, empowering them to have unique experiences and believe in their own strength.
What do you think women in tech uniquely have to bring to the industry?
I think women bring insight, depth and strategy to the tech industry. It is the perfect match between thoughtfulness, logic and taking a wholistic approach on everything. It’s never about us and its always about what is best.
Who is a woman in tech that you look up to, and why?
Sheryl Sandberg is an obvious choice for me. She has had the strength and tenacity to integrate the visionaries ideas into action with total dominating success. She is an inspiration for tech leaders worldwide.
Becca, our front end web project manager, works directly with our clients to ensure that communication is clear, translating their needs and creating the best possible outcome for the final project.
What do you think women in tech uniquely have to bring to the industry?
I think women bring something unique to every industry that was once dominated by men (as I guess everything was at one point). Women have a way of connecting with their clients and really thinking through the whole process – especially considering that a large amount of clients are also women – there is a greater sense of understanding there. I think women have a good eye for details and are great creatively as well.
Who is a woman in tech that you look up to, and why?
Moving into the tech arena has been new to me – but I really respect Cheryl Sandberg of Facebook. Not only her book Lean In – that I know has some controversial parts but is overall really inspiring and motivating to women to stay in the work force and really “Lean in” to opportunities. But I also greatly admire how she has navigated the workplace with kids and as a single mom since her husband tragically passed away. In becoming a single working mom, she wrote a raw blog post on how her perspective on the challenges of single motherhood have drastically changed since writing her book. I think she is a great role model not only her insight on family but also as a very successful figure in tech.
Judy, working at Sweb as our web designer and developer for 5 years, is passionate on how to build the best sites and systems possible. Judy thoroughly loves what she does as well as discovering new ways to streamline processes in order to have clean and concise code. She’s always full of ideas and loves to take ownership of her work and see it through to completion.
What do you think women have to bring to the tech world?
I feel like it’s the same thing. I don’t think being a woman in tech is a big deal. I think there is an absence of women in tech, which is mainly a product cultural stereotypes and bigger things in our society. Those stereotypes have changed over time, and women are certainly more encouraged to go into science and technology now. The spark to become a woman in tech starts when you’re a child, girls and boys are often encouraged to act certain ways, and I think that inherently women are interested in different things.
I’m a learner, and I like to learn new things. And I feel like with the constant changes in tech you’re always going to learn something.
Who has inspired you the most in your career in web development?
There isn’t a particular woman I’ve looked up to, or have been inspired by. I’ve always been a more technical person. I guess that seed was planted by my dad growing up. My dad is super smart and he doesn’t have a degree in college, but he’s a genius person to me. He knows how to do everything. He’s a mechanic by trade, and moved up. He can fix anything; he’s a jack of all trades. I picked up that hands-on, can-do perspective by living with him. He encouraged me, and asked me to come help him with whatever he was working on. And I’ve loved figuring out how things work ever since.
As a predominately female-based company, we are huge advocates for women in tech. If you’re looking for an incredible team to help take your web and mobile presence to the next level, send us an email or give us a call at 210-617-7260.
