Punch Card Night at the Computer History Museum

I love the computer history museum in Mountain View. If you get a chance to go there, do it. There is so much to see and it is really super interesting.

On Wednesday they had a Punch Card night. It was ridiculously fun. Photo time!!!!!

Punching in my name

Look Ma! I'm punching cards!! 

Our punch cards 

A print out in the punch card room 

Sweet old men were running the demo

Flashy lights

Where the cards come flashing in to be processed

The IBM 1401 printed us each these cool banners. And yes, 

sometimes the machine reads the card wrong. On the plus side,

I have a really cool new name: AVA ST 16H5!

Inside the museum 

Lidar mapping 

Why yes, we did spend a lot of time trying to locate a TARDIS on Google Earth.

Left to Right: Ezekiel, Eric, John, Linds, and my HB buddy Amy!

We left it there in the hopes of confusing the next person.

Wellness Day: A Massage, A Farmer's Market, and Purple Spit

Wellllllllll, it's been a while and I wrote this a couple months ago but forgot to post it. But it's fun, so I am sharing now. In July we had Wellness Day at SurveyMonkey. I walked into the office to find these enormous balloon sculptures:

The morning involved veggie/fruit juices from a juice cafe and circuit training on the roof. There was free biometric testing, which I opted not to do because I avoid unnecessary needles. There was also spin class taught by my engineering manager, which I also opted not to do because I avoid unnecessary biking.

Lunch was from Lyfe Kitchen and it was super yummy. Probably the best food I've had at SM so far. There was a presentation about sports medicine and physical therapy from a dude at One Medical. 

The afternoon was my favorite. First, there was the chair massage. SurveyMonkey sponsors my membership at Massage Envy, and they asked Massage Envy to come in to do 15-minute chair massages. My masseuse was Christine, and she was just amazing. I didn't have to tell her where to put pressure or how much. She found the knots, knew just how to attack them, and even said, "You get headaches, don't you?" as she worked on my neck. I was like, "Yep! And you are working that spot that always kills me when I have a migraine!" 

Then there was the farmer's market on our rooftop deck. I thought it would just be one stand or something. But it was more like 7 stands, with produce and local honey and locally made snack foods and desserts. I bought plums, cherry tomatoes, and mulberries!  Side note: I had never had mulberries before. Brushing my teeth that night I found that I had immensely purple spit. Also, they gave us some awesome swag for our farmer's market experience.

And while I am sharing photos and talking about fruit, I might as well add this picture of the awesome fruit I had for a morning snack today courtesy of The Monkey.

If it sounds like I am bragging about SurveyMonkey, that's because I am. After a long post-college career search, working my ass off at Hackbright, and the incredibly stressful job search that I somehow managed to drudge through, I am really proud of finding my home at SurveyMonkey. Most of all, I am really excited to be yet another "success story" of Hackbright and to hopefully show that it actually can be done! 

As I have previously mentioned, I plan to write a post (or several) on my job search and how I got through it alive. I especially want to write about it to hopefully help other HB alums who are still job searching and wondering what is wrong with them and why can't they get an offer and why is everyone else getting offers and should I just join a convent and be done with it?? (spoiler alert: no)

On an unrelated topic, I have to throw in this hilarious picture I found on twitter for those of my friends who have used Chrome/Mozilla Dev Tools. For my non-developer friends, just right click on your browser window and click "Inspect Element" for a secret window into the world of front end development.

My Little Pony and Salary Negotiation

I have been meaning to write this post for some time. During Hackbright we did a salary negotiation workshop, in which they explained some of the reasons many women do not negotiate, gave examples of negotiation conversations, and had us act out simulated negotiations with our classmates in order to become more comfortable with the idea.

When I got my offer from SurveyMonkey, I was really quite happy with it. It was generous on its own, and furthermore came with some really fantastic benefits/perks as well as a potential annual bonus. But I knew the ghost of Liz Howard would haunt me to my dying day if I didn't at least try.

The next day, although I knew I was planning to negotiate my salary, I was not really thinking about it that morning as I got dressed. A reasonable person might have worn something that projected power and a sense of seriousness. I, without thinking, put on my Ponyville Public Library tshirt with a picture of Twilight Sparkle among some books. I love that shirt but it doesn't exactly scream "I am a professional, and please take me more seriously."

It was after I had scheduled a meeting with the HR person to negotiate my salary that I noticed this incongruence. At first, I got really nervous and embarrassed and I considered postponing my meeting. But I really wanted to get this over with.

I decided I would just embrace it. Yeah, I thought, I'm just going to be me! I power posed and thought about how Twilight Sparkle and her books were empowering and I felt pretty good walking into the meeting.

But somehow my confidence refused to enter that conference room. I felt very stupid and selfish and greedy and ungrateful and all the other things you aren't supposed to feel because salary negotiation is a totally normal and standard thing and because men do it all the time without hesitation.

I don't want to go into too much detail because I feel like a bad role model to future HB students. But here are some conclusions I drew from the experience:
1. I should have done a role-play with a friend to practice my lines and to get more comfortable.
2. SurveyMonkey did not rescind their offer or tell me I was a bad person for negotiating.
3. I did not die. And more importantly, I did not cry.

I do not recommend wearing an MLP shirt to your future salary negotiation meetings. But I do recommend power posing and possibly having a drawing of a pony in your pocket for emotional support.

Banana Piano and Becoming a Real Monkey

Fruity Music

First thing's first: I set up a banana piano at work on Monday. There is an empty desk behind me and I had just bought a Makey Makey from the Maker Faire last weekend and it just seemed natural for me to do this. For those unfamiliar with Makey Makey, it is a kit built on top of an arduino that allows you to create simple circuits with anything conductive (such as a human, a banana, or a bowl of water). You plug the Makey Makey into your computer and the circuits are programmed to activate your space bar and your arrow keys. So if you had a game of tetris open on your computer and you had the Makey Makey hooked up to a bunch of carrots, you could play tetris by touching the carrot that corresponds to the key you want to press.

Anyway, they suggested a banana piano, and they have a sweet little webpage that allows you to play five notes on a piano using the space bar and the arrow keys. So it is basically ready to go. I taped down a big strip of tin foil and hooked that up to the Makey Makey, and then I hooked up five bananas to the Makey Makey. So by putting one hand on the tin foil and using the other hand to tap the bananas, you complete the circuit and it plays a note.

I sent out an email saying that I had set up a piano made of bananas and that anyone who wanted to try it should stop by my desk. That was a really fun way to meet some people I hadn't talked to before. One person came over and said, "I'm going to have to start taking your emails at face value." I asked him to clarify and he added, "I thought you were using some lingo that I wasn't familiar with. I didn't realize you meant an actual piano made of actual bananas."

There are other things I want to do with the Makey Makey (at home, not at work), like play Adventure Ponies with bowls of water and make a piano out of five separate humans (each one being a different note). I heard one guy had his dogs sit on tin foil and he petted them to make music, but I haven't been able to make that work with our dogs yet. I have to play around a bit with their conductivity - like get them slightly wet or something. I'm a terrible dog mom.

An Offer I Couldn't Refuse

In other news, and almost as important as the banana piano, I got a full time offer from SurveyMonkey this week and I just signed my offer letter yesterday!!!!!!!!!!!! I am a real Monkey now!!!!!!!!! It was a match made in heaven. SurveyMonkey has been a really great place for me and I was really really really hoping for a full time offer.

This really is a dream come true. So I was very surprised that, much like when I got my acceptance letter to Hackbright, I felt a wave of inexplicable panic when I got my offer from SurveyMonkey. It doesn't make any sense at all. I have gotten very positive feedback from everyone I work with, I've accomplished a lot on my project in the last two months, and I love working there. But still, I keep getting hit with rushes of panic that I can't do this, that I am going to fail. The weirdest part is that this is by far the most panic I have felt since I started at SurveyMonkey, largely to the credit of my manager, my mentor, and my teammates who have been really supportive from the beginning. The good news is that I know this nonsensical panic is temporary because I have experienced it before and because I know I am right where I am supposed to be.

Hackbright Alums: Superwomen of Tech and Friendship

In light of Ashley McNamara's recent post about her Hackbright experience, there has been a long discussion on the alumni listserv about the founders, the instructors, and the students of Hackbright to date. To my knowledge, there are about 140 Hackbright alums, and many of us use the listserv to share job opportunities, programming resources, events, career advice, and emotional support, among other things.

Many of the alums, myself included, were very sad to hear that Ashley did not have a positive experience at Hackbright. I know she is not alone - Hackbright is not for everyone, and unfortunately some people do not do well in that environment. Later in this post I will highlight what I think makes a person a good fit for Hackbright, which will hopefully help prospective students make informed decisions.

My experience was incredible, as you know if you have read my previous posts. It is hard to describe just how much I learned there - both as a programmer and as a person. My classmates were fiercely smart, caring, determined, and hysterically funny. I saw them master an insane amount of learning material, build phenomenal projects, and climb mountains of self-doubt like a bunch of badasses.

My post-Hackbright job search was really, really tough, but I never could have done it without my Hackbright education and the support of my classmates and Hackbright mentors. Nearly everyone in my class has jobs now, and those who don't are either really picky (which I think is a good thing) or don't interview well (which may affect how long their job search takes, but not how successful they will be at their job when they find the right one).

I am so glad that SurveyMonkey really gets Hackbright. They understand that any given Hackbright Alum probably has little experience but knows the fundamentals, learns quickly, is extremely smart, knows how to communicate, refuses to give up, and isn't afraid to ask questions. Not every company understands this, and the job search can feel really demoralizing when you come up against a company who dismisses you right away for not having a computer science degree. But more and more companies are starting to realize how incredible these women are and how worthwhile it is to invest in them as junior developers.

In addition, our community sticks together and helps each other out. As one alum said, "Help will always be given at Hackbright to those who ask for it." And on that note, here are some qualities that I think made my classmates and me successful at Hackbright:

• Passion for problem-solving: Sometimes I do sudoku, kakuro, hashi, or kenken puzzles in bed to relax before I go to sleep. Not everyone is into that kind of puzzle, but most of my classmates got a thrill from breaking down a problem and solving it. In fact, most of them were really stubborn and would refuse to give up on any kind of logic puzzle because they knew they could solve it and they desperately wanted to.
• Desire to help others: When someone was struggling, I did my best to help. Whether it was an emotional struggle or a struggle to understand a concept. A lot of the time, in the process of explaining something to someone, I learned the concept better. Many times I discovered that I didn't understand a concept as well as I thought I did, and was able to work through it with a classmate or instructor. Reaching out to my peers also created a very meaningful bonding experience with my classmates, without whom I could never have gotten through Hackbright.
• Willingness to ask others for help: I had to be vulnerable with my classmates, my instructors, and my mentors in order to get the help I needed. There were times when I felt so lost that I wasn't sure where to begin. I forced myself to ask questions - stupid questions, questions that had already been asked before, followup questions when I had just asked a question seconds ago. This doesn't come naturally to me, but I was able to force myself to do it. I still use this skill now and I don't think I could be a successful developer without it.
• Open mind:  My mind used to be so closed off that it took me years to even give programming a try. But once I finally discovered how much I loved to code, I realized that I needed to be more open to possibility. I tried not to go into Hackbright with a lot of preconceived notions; I did my best to face each new frontier with an open mind, and I was pleasantly surprised many times. For example, I was blown away by how much I loved hacking hardware at a large women's hackathon put on by Hackbright early in our program. 
• Fightiness: I'm sure there is an actual English word for this, but I like to color outside the lines now and then. Hackbright was an invaluable launch pad for me, but I had to fight for my success. They are a powerful set of resources, but they couldn't make me learn or make me get a job. I had to take ownership of my education, pour sweat and blood into my project, and get back on that damn horse many, many times throughout my job search. And that horse kicked me in the face on the daily.

To be clear, you don't have to be a warrior princess in order to succeed at Hackbright. In fact, I was like a frightened puppy right before Hackbright started. You do need to be able to, with a lot of support, take your education and career into your own hands. But the best part of Hackbright was that I didn't have to go it alone. My mentors, my instructors, my classmates, and the alums are all valuable resources on whom I continue to rely almost every day. 

Hackbright changes a lot from one class to the next, and I don't know what its future holds. But I had an amazing time there and I now have a lifelong bond with this incredible community.

Photos of the New Office!

I feel like a tool walking around taking pictures of the office, so please forgive the poor quality of these photos - I tried to take them nonchalantly. Just going to dump them here because I don't have much time to write. Work is going really really well! I love SurveyMonkey!

view from my desk:

New Office and My First Release!

Today was our first day in the new office!! It's a gorgeous building with brand new interior/exterior design, brand new furniture, sit/stand desks for everyone, beautiful conference rooms, game room with ping pong/xbox/air hockey/pool table, and much more. I love my desk! When we arrived this morning, each desk had a pair of SurveyMonkey flip flops with a note that said "We are so flippin' excited to be in our new office and we hope you are too!" I have yet to break in the air hockey table, but I think it'll happen soon.

Also, there is a release this week for the internal tool I'm working on, and it will be my first release! Had my one-on-one meeting with my manager, David, this afternoon and I feel pretty awesome. David is a great manager. I feel like he puts exactly the right amount of pressure on me and I don't even feel like a dumb baby when I ask him really basic questions. He does a very good job of explaining things without condescending.

At the old office, they put me at a desk near my team but not really in the same little circle as the rest of the team. At the new office, since they actually have room for everyone, they put me with my team. So now I get to socialize more with my coworkers, which I really like. And it is also much more organic to communicate/ask questions/collaborate.

Ok, time for bed. Gotta get my sleep if I'm going to monkey around all day. EHH?? [elbows you in the arm]

My Coding Birthday

One year ago today, I reluctantly opened an account on Codecademy.com wondering if maybe this whole programming business that John and Lindsey were so obsessed with was worth a try. That night I had quite a shock: coding was not only fun, but thrilling! I laughed maniacally like an evil scientist every time I watched the words and symbols I wrote come alive.

One year later, I am a Hackbright alum, a contracting monkey of surveys, a teacher of JavaScript, a Woman in Tech, and one happy lady engineer! It took a LOT of help to get where I am, but I bootstrapped my career. I learned a lot, worked my butt off, faced my fears, and beat the odds. I will always keep learning - that is something all software engineers must do. But I intend to do more than just that.

The Women in Tech community is overwhelmingly supportive and giving. But the number of women who are just now discovering how great programming is (and how great they are at programming) is staggering. And they will need just as much support as I did if they are going to bootstrap their careers. I wish I could give every one of them what my instructors, mentors, and classmates gave me during and after Hackbright. I will certainly do as much as I can. More on that to come.

How am I celebrating my coding birthday? In bed, sick. It's ok though. I have a hot pink sherpa blanket, two fuzzy dogs, and a good book to keep me company until John gets home.

Have a good night, everypony!

New Roller Coasters

Unsurprisingly, my first day and a half of looking at actual SurveyMonkey code and trying to figure out how everything worked was a new roller coaster. It went something like this:

1. This is terrifying.
2. It's cool. It will just take a little while to get familiar with their code.
3. Look, curly braces and functions and stuff. I know how to do this. It's cool.
4. It's cool. There are only like 100 files that interact with each other and I have no idea how.
5. OH MY GOD there are like 100 files that interact with each other and I have no idea how!
6. What are all these weird functions that I've never heard of????
7. It's ok. We're just going to google some things and see what we can find out.
8. WHY DOESN'T GOOGLE KNOW WHAT THIS FUNCTION IS???
9. I thought I knew JavaScript, but clearly I don't.
10. I forgot how to computer!!
11. Ok, I will ask my mentor for some help.
12. Wait, you're telling me that a lot of this code is specific to the SurveyMonkey framework?
13. Wait, it would be super weird if I were able to figure this out on my own?
14. Wait, it takes all new people a while to learn the ins and outs of your MVC framework?
15. Oh, that's what that stands for? Oh, that's where that function is coming from?
16. Ok! I can maybe look at the code on my own and understand some things.
17. So what happens if I comment this out?
18. OMG IT RUNS!!!
19. Ok, so why doesn't this section work?
20. I am amazing. Look at me, coding and stuff.
21. WTF? Why doesn't this work?

The rest was mostly me narrowing in on what part of the code was throwing an error. And then I went home for the weekend. Want to hear something really shocking? At no point this week did I cry or feel like crying. There were times when I was a little panicked or felt kinda stupid, but I didn't have any breakdowns. It's not because I am a good enough programmer that I am past those breakdowns. It's that I have learned that this is hard and I am smart and I have resources. I'm sure there will still be breakdowns, but I don't anticipate them happening regularly anymore. 

Just like I felt at Hackbright, I feel like right now I am exactly where I am supposed to be. 

My First Week So Far

I can hardly put into words how happy I am to be at SurveyMonkey. Here are some reasons in no particular order:

• The people are super nice and I have yet to meet a brogrammer who works here. Everyone is approachable, humble, and helpful.
• They take the monkey theme to a level I am very comfortable with. On top of their employee directory, MonkeyBook, and the plethora of plush monkeys and plush bananas of various sizes stashed in every corner, they also named their conference rooms after fictional monkey characters such as Marcel (Friends) and Mr. Teeny (The Simpsons). Everyone's desk is labeled with a banana name tag, and in my case a "green banana" name tag because I am new (see photo below). But best of all, they name their projects after species of monkeys, such as Howler and Rhesus. 
• The project I'm working on is called Mandrill. I love mandrills. They are the most sexually dimorphic monkey, meaning that the males look very distinct from the females. But the most interesting fact about them, of course, is why their faces are so colorful, which I happily shared with my manager when he asked me what interesting facts I knew about mandrills.

• My mentor Sara is super awesome and amazing and fantastic. She has been checking in with me to make sure I'm not overwhelmed. It's even comforting just knowing that she is nearby, even if I'm not asking for help, because she is like my safety net.
• The project I'm working on seems interesting. I haven't written any code yet, just looked through documentation and specifications. But it seems like it will be doable maybe. Maybe. 
• I discovered the SurveyMonkey freezer. It is full of ice cream. Don't worry, I'm not stuffing myself with treats all day long.

My green banana name tag

Hopefully I can report more this weekend. I am trying to get into the actual code right now so I may or may not have something interesting to share on my next post.

My First Day at SurveyMonkey

Today is my first day as an engineer at SurveyMonkey! When I got to my desk, there was a laptop, monitor, magic mouse, phone, and welcome packet. They set me up with all the accounts I need and everything was super organized!

My manager David is really great. He explains things clearly and non-condescendingly. I'm going to be working on an internal tool that helps the company keep information up to date. Today I'm mostly reading through documentation and getting my development environment set up.

As for the office itself, the people here are really nice and there are stuffed monkeys everywhere, which is exciting to me. I saw a photo of a mandrill and David seemed surprised that I knew what it was called. So I guess I have exposed myself as a primate enthusiast. Also, my mentor Sara works about ten feet away, so that is awesome!

Other pluses: tons of really great snacks and treats, and lunch on Mon/Wed. Today was mediterranean food. Can't wait to get my monkey swag. Going to go figure out how to obtain that.

More soon, I hope!

Learning Objective-C

I think the hardest thing about the job search is that it is almost impossible to learn anything new because I am jumping around doing various things that could make me a stronger candidate. These activities include: improving my HB project, practicing white-boarding, doing code challenges, reviewing concepts I learned but have forgotten because I have been jumping around so much. What's frustrating about these activities is that every company has a different idea of how they would like to measure my potential as a developer, so at any given interview, maybe only one of these prep activities is actually beneficial.

In the mean time, there are so many things I'd like to learn in my spare time because it is a fun challenge, such as making mobile apps, learning more hardware stuff, understanding how memory allocation works, playing with big data, learning fun data visualization stuff, etc. I think I am just really anxious to stop dabbling in so many different things and start learning one particular thing on a deeper level. But I don't feel like I can do that while I am searching for a job.

When I do get a job, I think I will be so heavily immersed in learning that I will feel really challenged and really satisfied with what I am doing. I am really excited to have that. I need to find a great company that supports my love of learning and wants to help me grow as a programmer and a developer. I can't wait to focus on learning rather than on job searching.

Aaaaaaaanyway, to make a short story long, I needed a break from interview prep so I spent all of today learning Objective-C. It's really not much more complicated than Python. JUST KIDDING!!! It's soooo much more complicated than Python. Holy monkey. But I really really want to build an iPhone app and I'm determined to figure it out. For my readers who haven't yet discovered how much fun programming is, here is a simple comparison of Python code and Objective-C code:

Python:
apples = 25
print apples

Objective-C:
NSUInteger apples = @25;
NSLog(@"%lu", apples);

Note that the Objective-C code looks like swearing. Coincidence? I think not. But code school's Objective-C lessons are really fun and I am almost finished with them. When I'm done I'm going to work on a Stanford class on iPhone apps and supposedly you get to build an app after the first few lectures. Yay! For now, I am enjoying feeling like a spy writing secret coded messages. And hopefully soon when I make an extremely simple thing work on my iphone, I will feel like a powerful evil scientist taking over the world. Man, I love programming :)

My Game is Deployed!

My game is now deployed and in a condition such that people could actually play it! There are still many things I want to add someday, but job searching is a full-time job. I plan to continue working on this project once I get settled in somewhere. Please be patient if the game runs slowly. Enjoy!

Play Now!

I Just Like Coding and Please Stop Judging Me

This blog post is for the benefit of no one because anyone reading my blog does not actually have the mindset that I am about to discuss. But I need to rant anyway because I am frustrated with the status quo and it is difficult to keep it from affecting my confidence.

I encountered a guy who claims to be a huge proponent of women in tech but insists that not just anyone can code and some people shouldn't be coding. I told one of my awesome Hackbright friends and she had this reaction:

He clearly thinks that he's above people that just want to try their hand at something they might not be amazing at and he thinks they have no business even ****ing trying and that's elitist and a serious problem in the tech community, and in society at large that he's just perpetuating and it's completely unacceptable 

This conversation was one of many I have had in which someone implied that the problems I want to solve are not ambitious enough, or that having fun while learning to code means that I must not be learning rigorously enough, or that if I'm not coding 20 hours a day I must not be a "real" programmer. It's incredibly insulting and disempowering. And saying that not just anyone can code essentially means that you think there are two kinds of people - those who can code, and those who cannot - and that you are born one way or the other.

For the longest time I didn't want to give programming a try because I thought you had to be a certain type. Obviously there are some people who still think that. But I no longer do. This is really simple: I love programming and I want to learn more.

I enjoy the challenge and I really come alive when I am trying to solve a problem that is within my reach. I don't know whether or not I'll ever do anything super out of the ordinary or become an expert in some really impressive subfield. But I do want to code. Everyday. With awesome people. And keep learning. And have fun. And come home at a reasonable hour. And spend time on non-programmy things when I feel like it. And teach other people. And read books. And go swimming. Nobody is allowed to tell me I'm less of a programmer.

I will not let anyone make me feel small just because they are at a different level, or because they like to take on larger challenges than me, or because they personally prefer to spend more than 80 hours per week coding, or because they see themselves as part of an elite group of which they have decided I'm not a member, or because they have a CS degree, or because they went to an impressive school.

The most important thing to know about me is that I am a good person. In the context of a job, it is also pretty important to know that I am hard-working, collaborative, motivated, enthusiastic, and I have a sense of humor (plus I'm super modest).

It is totally legitimate for people to judge me based on my current programming abilities and how I solve problems in order to decide if they want to work with me or not. There is no need to put a cap on what I can do or tell me what my dearest ambition is. I will be the one who determines what I can and want to do. For now, I am looking forward to finding a great team of people who are passionate, supportive, inspiring, and fun to work with.

[power pose]

I love programming because I like to solve puzzles and when I'm coding I feel like I have superpowers. Let me know if you think you might like to have some superpowers. I would love to share the magic!

I Gradumated and I'm Busy as Hell!

I officially graduated on Friday but we are all still going in to HB every day for the next couple of weeks to practice white-boarding (technical interviews are very different from other kinds of interviews). I am busy as can be and I apologize that I don't have time to blog much. Just posting a few pictures and will try to update as exciting things happen. I have a few interviews scheduled and I am waiting to hear back from a few others. Very excited. Very tired. Love to all!

My diploma (the binary spells "nerd")