As the country begins to emerge from the pandemic, indications are that the economy is poised to make a similar rebound. However, a recent New York Times story showed that women continue to lag disproportionately behind men in a return to the workforce. Fortunately, the technology sector offers an increasingly wide range of jobs for those women seeking new challenges and better paying careers.
While February saw an increase in job openings for IT software engineers, a new report by CompTIA showed a much larger jump in the number of tech-familiar jobs added across all industry sectors within the same month. These are not engineering specific roles and can be a terrific entry point for women considering the tech industry.
In a prior column, Disney Streaming product manager Miribel Tran used her own story to hammer home this reality that not all tech jobs require coding skills or a degree in computer science. From marketing to product management to customer service, a wide range of jobs await women in the higher paying tech sector.
Still on the fence? Consider that not everyone in the construction industry knows how to pour a foundation or that not everyone who works for Amtrak can drive a train. Similarly, we must widen the sometime-narrow definition of IT workers as programmers.
From Slinging Espresso to Slack
Jaime DeLanghe was an English major planning for a career in publishing or academics before the 2008 recession forced her to take a job as a barista while she applied to graduate school. Through a friend, she then took a job in customer service at Etsy.
At the time, Etsy was still young and was frequently going down or failing from too much traffic. DeLanghe was able to pick up on patterns in the customer service queue and begin relaying those to customer engineers and designers to develop improved solutions.
Eventually – despite admittedly not knowing a thing about technology or tech companies – her curiosity, analytical skills, and customer service experience from the food industry helped her grow into a role as a product manager for the company. Now DeLanghe is the Director of Product Management at Slack.
Military Veterans Tackling Renewable Energy
Barbara LaBarge joined the Navy after high school with the hopes of becoming a rescue swimmer. An injury forced her to switch military careers and enter aviation quality. After leaving the Navy, she took a quality assurance position with Airborne Earth Science Research at NASA.
Rebecca Boll was an applied mathematics major who joined the Air Force following college, specializing in electronic combat. Later, after leading teams designing weapons and jet engines, she took a job with GE Global Research Center where one of her most inspiring tasks was leading an internal startup bringing edge computing to the industrial sector.
Both women now work at energy storage company Fluence, and neither credits computer science nor coding with jump starting their careers in tech. LaBarge is the Head of Global Safety & Quality for the company, leveraging her past experience to develop and advance company safety and quality standards. She says that other women should first find a subject they are passionate about, then match that to available jobs in the tech sector.
Boll agrees. As Chief Product Officer for Fluence, her passion for technology stems from a desire to have a positive impact on the world and help make renewable energy solutions ubiquitous. She says that assuming tech and coding are synonymous is misleading.
In her experience, tech can include a wide range of other scientific disciplines such as engineering, materials science, aerospace, mathematics, and more. Boll says that having real world experience can also open a lot of doors in the tech field, making past roles in supply chain, manufacturing, product management, and technical writing all highly valuable.
Nontraditional Coding Starts
Of course, coding is still a viable path to a career in tech. But not all programmers are born passionate about computer science. Sometimes, it takes a life experience or push from a mentor to uncover a new path that leads to a career in coding.
Stephanie Louis was studying to become a nurse and held down a job as a receptionist at a software company to help pay for college. During her studies, she realized nursing was not for her. She switched her major to math with a minor in computer science. This led to an internship at the company and an eventual role in release management automating code merging processes. Today, she is the Senior Director of Community and Developer Programs at Pegasystems.
That nudge can also happen earlier in life. Dipti Vachani had never considered a career in tech until a high school teacher recognized potential in her and encouraged her to sign up for a new computer science coding class. She says that even though coding was uncommon in high school at the time, his passion and enthusiasm were infectious, and she soon became hooked on the subject. Her love of creative problem solving through programming has led her to a long and varied career in tech. She is now the Senior Vice President and General Manager of Automotive and IoT Line of Business at Arm.
The Path to Tech
With so many women unemployed or underemployed as a result of the pandemic, the return to normalcy that will happen over the coming months provides a unique opportunity to reset careers or pursue new ones.
To fully capitalize on this recovery and opportunity, women should consider higher paying careers that can help them close the salary gap with male counterparts. Technology jobs are one of the fastest ways to do so.
And as these women profiled above show, there are a myriad number of nontraditional paths to a tech career. All say that curiosity, creativity, and a willingness to network and take risks can open an unexpected door to one of these opportunities.
