Hackbright Girl Geek Dinner #3 Video

Find Michael and me:


Yay for more Hackbright alumni! They are in the midst of interviewing, so good luck!

Phone Losing Process

Phone losing process:

• get frazzled from crazy work problems
• arrive late to a meeting and think you left your phone on your desk
• run around putting out fires
• get back to your desk and realize the phone is not there
• look everywhere you've been
• have a coworker call it
• email coworkers with a link to an iPhone case that your beat-up version once resembled
• ask at the front desk
• go home later than usual and sad
• narrow the loss down to between 3 and 3:30 PM, when you made a bathroom visit
• text your own phone repeatedly
• let your husband disable your account
• have trouble sleeping because you're worried about not having your alarm
• constantly go to pull out your phone for something and realize it's not there
• ask again on your way in to work and write down your info, and give the security guard a weird look when he asks you to put down your number . . . you put down your email address
• use voice.google.com to text your husband and get messages (hallelujah for Google Voice!)
• put a "lost iPhone" sign with your husband's phone number on the bathroom door
• corner the janitor and find out that he'd seen it but wasn't sure what to do, so he took a photo of it with his phone . . . not useful
• shake your head in disbelief and sadness the rest of the day

(Did you notice that? Once again, in this world of darkness, Google is the light. Still <3 br="" google="">

Meet My Mentee Melanie

I am so proud of my Hackbright mentee, Melanie Warrick. She has been working really hard and every time I meet with her or exchange emails with her, I marvel at how smart she is and how much she has picked up in such a short time. Whoever snags her as an employee is one lucky person. Here's the bio she wrote for Hackbright Career Day:

After getting my MBA from GWU, I worked for 12+ years in management consulting for companies like Accenture and Alvarez & Marsal. I focused on improving efficiency and enhancing customer experience through project management and business analytics with companies ranging from start-ups to Fortune 500. Last year, a major life event helped me take stock. What makes life worth living are the challenges that drive me to grow and learn. I've always been interested in technology, but I perceived barriers to entry when I was younger. I am keenly aware of how pervasive technology is in our lives and its exponential growth. Thus, I realized recently that I want to take on the challenge to learn how to speak its language, build things and solve problems with what I can build. Hackbright gave me the opportunity to test my interests, and proved my insatiable desire to learn "all the things." My career goal is to continue growing software engineering skills and exploring interests in data analytics and machine learning.

Her final project at Hackbright is a weather app called "Sun Finder." Basically, Sun Finder helps you figure out where you can find the sun in San Francisco. She worked with APIs from Weather Underground and Forecast.io for weather data and Google Places & Maps for search functionality and map results. Some of the technologies she used include Python, Flask (including Login and WTForms), SQL, SQLAlchemy, Postgres, Javascript, Twitter Bootstrap, and jQuery. Here she is demoing her app to previous Hackbright students at Hackbright Alumnight:




It's crazy that she'll be graduating this week--how time flies [when you're not the one doing a bootcamp, ha]! She is going to go so far, and I can't wait to watch her spring into the tech world. I'm very happy to be her reference and connect her with anyone who wants connecting.

Congratulations for making it through Hackbright, Melanie!

P.S. More people should try out being a mentor--it's really rewarding!

My First Three Months as a Web Developer

I passed up my three-month mark as a paid techie at Get Satisfaction two weeks ago. Do you know what that means?

1. I got this fancy envelope from Hackbright:




There was money inside. A lot of money. Refunded tuition money for working three months at a partner company. Wedding money.


2. It's time for an update about working as a web developer.

Overall, Get Satisfaction has been a great place to be.

Every day, I marvel at how surrounded I am by talented, smart people who can collaborate well. Every day, I also spend at least a couple of hours staring at my screen trying to figure things out. Sometimes my questions are so general that I can't really share them with anyone, like, "How do I use PostgresQL?" and other times, all I need is for someone to spot that one ridiculous missing bracket (or to tell me to just paste the code into Sublime Text 2 so I can line them up!). I've loved learning about CNAMEs, SSL certs, and single-sign-on, and each time a light bulb turns on, I love that our platform allows me to post about what I've learned in our community to build up our customers' available and searchable knowledge base.
 
I also am so appreciative of pretty flexible schedule that allows me to go to doctor appointments and run errands without feeling guilty. It's fun to see ideas develop as we work on our new platform, and it's nice that everyone's opinions are valued.

And listen to how cool this is--last week, our CEO, Wendy Lea, invited all the female employees to her home. (Do I ever admire Wendy--when she speaks, I want to take notes, and often I do. Sometimes I even tweet what she says.) We mingled and snacked as we marveled at her view of the ocean and the sunset, then Wendy started a discussion about being women leaders in tech.  The discussion was positive and helpful, and I think we all feel really united from that evening spent together.

Like anyone else, sometimes I get annoyed or frustrated by questions or tasks. Sometimes, my brain is fried and it would honestly be better if I just went home (sometimes I go, sometimes I don't). Occasionally I get discouraged when I think about losing my Python skills before they were ever really strong, and there are still so many technologies I want to learn that I don't use at work, so I try to do a bit of hacking on the weekends.

I've been a Firefox fan for years, but Firebug just has not been enough and Chrome has become my hero for development purposes. It was amazing to realize this week that I have learned enough to help my mentee with some front-end development. Hurray!

So there's your update.