9 Tips to Build a Satisfying Career in Tech from CDW’s Beth Hill
Beth Hill knows it’s strange that she likes yard work.
But she does.
“I love gardening, I love planting flowers, I love mowing the grass,” she says, laughing. The Senior Manager of Professional Services at IT solution company CDW even has a friendly competition with her neighbors about who has the greenest, thickest yard.
But Beth has always been a fan of hard work, and she recognizes the importance of putting in the effort to build something worthwhile, whether that’s a beautiful lawn for her wife and daughter to play on or a satisfying career in tech.
We sat down with Beth to hear about how she’s worked to find and nurture the right professional opportunities for her, and what advice she has for others who want to build a career they’re proud of.
Getting Started
Beth grew up in a small town, and her high school curriculum didn’t include exposure to computer science. She did like the hard sciences, so when she got to college, she pursued a biology degree.
“I graduated and thought, ‘What in the world am I going to do with this?’ Feel free to quote that,” Beth tells us, laughing again. She started looking for jobs, and a family member referred her to Best Buy, where she got an offer as a salesperson after successfully “selling” the hiring manager a stapler.
As it turns out, Beth was great at talking to people and helping them solve their problems. She was promoted from home theater salesperson to supervisor of computer sales, which required her to learn about a whole new type of technology.
“I enjoyed it so much that I then decided to go back and pursue a two-year degree in computer science,” she says.
Beth learned about CDW at a career fair. The company was hiring for their Associate Consulting Engineer program, which would allow her to use her people skills while also helping her apply and build on her technical understanding.
She was hired, and quickly became a full Consulting Engineer. Along the way, Beth continued to identify what she liked doing and what she was good at, which included mentoring and training others on her team. That set her up well to go for a technical lead position when it opened up.
“I knew I wasn’t the most technical, but I knew to position myself and say, ‘Here’s why I think I’m the best person for this role,’” says Beth.
That positioning paid off, thanks to Beth’s thoughtful approach. And now we’ve asked her to share that approach with you.
9 Tips for Finding and Earning Career Opportunities
As Beth has grown from that first promotion to technical lead to her current Senior Manager role, she’s followed a version of the same approach:
- Make sure your organization believes in supporting employee growth. Companies that show up at career fairs are companies that are willing to invest in brand-new, green college grads. That’s a good indicator that they’ll have space for you to keep growing, says Beth. “Companies that are willing to invest in you from the start, those are the types of companies you should say, ‘Yes, I want to work for them.’”
- Identify your strengths and interests. Beth knew she wanted to go down the technical lead route because she loved working with other engineers. Start by figuring out what you want to do more of, and then look for roles or careers that align.
- Be strategic: see all the possible ins. Beth knew she was never going to be the most technical, but she also knew she could distinguish herself via a long-term strength: her hard work. “I decided to step up to a new challenge. There was a whole new technology within our Microsoft solution space that no one else had been delivering on yet. So I went and learned it and became the best at that, and created all the documentation and collateral to be able to present it to customers and deliver on it,” recounts Beth. “That helped me position myself well for the next role, because we really needed people who could show others how to do that sort of engagement with our customers.”
- See your manager as a resource. As a manager herself now, Beth knows she can help her direct reports get their dream role a lot more easily if she knows what exactly that dream role is. “Ask your manager, ‘Where do you see my strengths that maybe I don’t see?’” she says.
- Ask to shadow people in the role you’re interested in. “The more you can ask questions about the role, the more you’ll know whether or not that role is the right role for you—and the better prepared you’ll be going into an interview,” says Beth. She provides some questions to start with:
- What do they enjoy about their job?
- What skill sets do they need to possess to be in that position?
- What are the challenges that they face every day?
- What does the future look like in their eyes for that type of role?
- Offer your expertise. If you’ve identified the role you want, see what you can do about getting hands-on experience in it right away. “Ask, ‘Hey manager, I’m noticing you’re really busy right now. What can I take off your plate to be able to assist you and give you some breathing room?’ By doing that, you’re stepping into the role, and you can later say it’s an example of something you’ve already done that’s required for the role,” says Beth.
- Sell yourself and sell your vision. Once you’ve created a solid case for yourself, figure out how you’re going to deliver it to your manager or to other senior leaders. “Ask yourself what you’ve done to move into this new role, and remember it’s got to be more than doing the same that everyone else has done,” she says. “Share your vision and mission for the role or the team. How are you going to make the team better? What differences are you going to bring to that role to make it better than what it was yesterday?”
- Leverage internal affinity groups. Beth joined CDW’s Women’s Opportunity Network early in her career there. “It’s a great way to build your network and get to know your coworkers,” she says. She ended up joining a committee, and being in that smaller group gave her even more opportunities to learn from her peers. “I heard stories about how these women have grown, what challenges they faced, how they overcame those hurdles. That opportunity to network with other women really helped shape who I wanted to be and who I was going to be,” says Beth.
- Pay it forward. Beth loves that she could email anyone at CDW—even VPs with chock-full calendars—and ask for mentorship, and that they’d respond and happily make the time. She encourages people to offer their help and assistance to others when they can, as well as to approach others with an initial sense of empathy. “Assume good intent, be empathetic, and be kind, and you’ll be in a good position,” she says.
Are you in the market for a company you can grow with? Check out CDW’s open roles!
6 Tips for Making the Most of Mentorship
A Conversation with Neena Naidu, Director of Software Engineering at Autodesk
Neena Naidu's favorite metaphor for understanding the importance of different perspectives comes from medicine.
"If a doctor recommends a big surgery to you, you go and look at different surgeons and get different feedback, right?" she says. "You don't just take the one thing that somebody said. You're investing time and money. In a similar way, [with your career], find a couple of people to run your situation by and ask for different opinions, because those are different options, and you'll see which fits best with the way you want to go."
Neena is currently a Director of Software Engineering at Autodesk, and she credits her long and successful career in software in part to the many mentors that have guided her along the way.
We sat down with her to hear about how she sought out those relationships, what they've taught her, and how she seeks to pay them forward now—as well as what tips she has for other underrepresented talent in tech looking to make the most out of mentorship.
Finding Her Ambition and Embracing Growth
When she was growing up, Neena wasn't obsessed with a particular subject or career. She didn't even really like school all that much, though her parents would have loved it if she did.
"I had this happy-go-lucky time," she explains of her high school years. When it came to college majors, she knew she wanted hers to be in some kind of engineering, but by the time she got around to signing up, she had missed some of the selection tests for several engineering majors.
"Computer science was still open, so that's why I studied that!" says Neena, smiling.
But while she chose her major by default, she soon grew to love it—and to recognize how powerful it could be to be inspired by peers and mentors along the way.
"There was a pivotal point between finishing 12th grade and my first bachelor's where my mindset shifted to learning more," Neena explains. "I wasn't focused, and then I met people who were going to the U.S. to study." Her peers inspired her to take the GRE and apply to do a master's in the U.S.
She wasn't shocked when she got in, but she thinks some people back home probably were. "I was a very social kid growing up, and I think it comes as a surprise to a lot of the folks that I've known through my childhood that I'm doing what I'm doing," Neena says. "But things can change in life, and it's never too late to do what you want to do."
Embracing Mentorship as a Tool to Build a Career
Studying in the U.S. was one thing. Figuring out how to work here long-term was another. Neena knew that she would need to rely on building relationships in order to secure her career path. She started by reaching out to her U.S. counterparts at the company she'd worked at in India before moving to the States for her master's and by talking to the counselors at her university.
"I started asking, 'Are there any opportunities for me?'" remembers Neena. "And through that process, I was able to find an internship."
That wasn't a new muscle for Neena, who had talked to her manager in India about wanting to leave the company even when others wouldn't have breathed a word to their supervisor for fear of being fired. "He had created an environment as a leader where it was clear that people have choices, people have passions, and it's okay if they want to pursue those passions," she says. "We'd formed a relationship and it felt natural to open up and talk to him about what I wanted to be and what I wanted to do."
Neena now considers that manager to be her first work mentor, and she learned a couple key lessons from him:
- Pressure can be managed. "Looking at a mentor and seeing how they behave under pressure, it's almost like a parent, right? You watch people, you learn something from them," says Neena, who says she benefited from watching her manager never really lose his cool, even in very tense moments.
- Always ask for the next connection. Neena isn't naturally shy, and her first helpful mentorship relationship inspired her to pursue the next ones. "I'd question my supervisor and managers saying, 'Hey, who would you recommend? I'm looking at doing X, Y, and Z,' and they'd think through their network and say, 'Okay, this person has done something similar, maybe you should connect with him or her.'"
Finding Her Next Challenge at Autodesk
The lessons that had helped Neena land her first internship in the States also helped her turn it into her first full time role. And what she learned at that job—both about work itself as well as about what she wanted to pursue more of—helped her find her next few roles. She's been a technical program manager, a senior software engineer, a business analyst, and a consultant working with big clients like Cisco and Disney, among other things, always looking for opportunities to work directly with technologists, to deliver projects that meet user needs, and to keep learning.
During COVID, Neena got to thinking about what she wanted next in her career, and she realized she wanted a chance to be more strategic and to manage a bigger book of business. She reached out to her mentors and coaches and started fielding opportunities—including one from Autodesk.
"Learning about the role, it was an opportunity to create my own team, to set a precedent for that process, and to take in the existing culture and influence it," she says. "It really was very exciting for me. I like to do things a bit out of the box, to work with different people and find the best solution. Especially at a people-paced organization where I can be who I am and still learn and grow in my new role."
Passing It On: 6 Tips on Mentorship
Even when she was pursuing it, Neena didn't always recognize mentorship as such a powerful force in her life. "I probably didn't have a name for it early on," she says. "I was just finding myself in situations where I needed some feedback, and I'd find a colleague or a friend. Soon enough, that became a necessary part of my own voice."
Neena remembers working for a woman—her manager's manager at the time—who shared with Neena that mentors had been pivotal to her own career journey. "From then, I knew it was a constant thing that I had to put time and energy into," says Neena.
But formalizing how she sought out advice didn't really change the mechanics of doing it. There's no one right way to be a mentee, says Neena, who adds that sometimes she'll check in with mentors every six months and other times every two weeks.
"I do think it's the mentee's responsibility to reach out to the mentor. I always take it as an active responsibility on my part," she says.
If you're ready to make the most of mentorship in your career, Neena recommends the following:
- Get clear on the rules of engagement. Are conversations confidential? What topics are off-limits, if any?
- Define the agenda ahead of time. There are different types of mentors: ones from whom you want to extract information and ones who are just there to listen. Ones who are ready to help problem solve and ones who are there to set a strategy with you. What kind of relationship is this? If it changes often, what's on the agenda for this specific meeting?
- Don't bite off more than you can chew. Now that she's a mentor herself, Neena doesn't take on more than 3-5 regular mentees at a given time, though she's always open for one-off conversations on specific subjects. On the mentee side, looking for multiple mentors is a good idea, but don't over-commit to more relationships than you can successfully manage. Do keep in mind that some relationships will come to a natural end. "It's okay to circulate through mentors," says Neena.
- Be strategic. When looking for a mentor, Neena suggests an exercise. Start by writing down your goals, then identify the gaps you have that would keep you from getting there. With those gaps, look for people with influence in your organization who could help coach you on filling them.
- Don't feel guilty. Making an ask of a busy person can feel stressful. But leaders want to help, says Neena. "If you reach out to five people, four of them will probably say, 'Sure, of course, I can find 15 minutes to talk to you,'" says Neena, who adds that making the request personal, like by highlighting shared backgrounds, goes a long way.
- Embrace its impact. "We all have the tendency to get stuck in our own mindsets," says Neena. "A mentor can be a great change agent for you. And mentorship isn't always just for career building—it's for your own personal growth as well."
Ready to learn more about mentorship at Autodesk? Check out their open roles!
Why Representation Matters: A Conversation with Invesco’s Stephanie J. Larosiliere
Stephanie J. Larosiliere has a career she enjoys in an industry she didn't even know existed when she was a kid—and the resilience to stay in that industry, even when she looks around and doesn't see many people like her in her field.
She has her grandfather to thank for that.
"My family has greatly affected who I am today, and my journey," says Stephanie, whose grandfather emigrated from Haiti to Michigan in the early 1950s to pursue a degree in agronomy, where he was the only Black man in his program. "Nothing I could go through today could come close… this helps to drive me to fight to be represented in spaces where I may not be welcome."
We sat down with Stephanie, whose long career in financial services has led to a role as the Head of Municipal Business Strategies & Development at investment firm Invesco, to talk about her personal and professional journey. Read on to hear why she decided to pursue a career in financial services, and her top piece of advice for other people who aspire to find success in a field they have to navigate on their own.
Paving the Way
Faine Jean-Baptiste, Stephanie's maternal grandfather, and his class at Michigan State University, then Michigan State College, where he ultimately received his degree in Agronomy from what was widely regarded as the best such program in the U.S. Photo circa 1953.
Stephanie's parents were born in Haiti. She is a first-generation American, but thanks to her grandfather, her family already had a history of attending American institutions of higher education. When it came time to decide what she was going to do with her life, Stephanie says she felt she had "no choice but to continue the legacy."
"Being Haitian I've always known that I come from a brave and bold people that established the world's first independent Black republic. Haiti has a very rich history; that history gives us a sense of ownership over our being, over who we are, and that has resonated in the way that Haitian people engage in the world."
Stephanie sees that ownership in her grandfather's story. He came to the U.S. when he was 45, a married father of seven daughters, and was the only Black man in his class. "There was somewhat of an audacity on his part to think that he could leave Haiti and go to Michigan. And why not?" says Stephanie.
Why not, indeed?
Stephanie asked that same question of herself when it came time to plan her own career.
New Possibilities
No one in Stephanie's family knew anything about financial services. She only found out about the industry through the cooperative learning program offered by her New York City high school.
Through the program, she was matched with a company during the summer between her junior and senior years of high school. Stephanie was matched with JP Morgan, and stayed working with them through her senior year, switching off weeks at work and at school.
"As a 16-year-old, I knew you went to the bank to deposit money, and that's it. I'd heard of trading, but I didn't quite connect how that even worked," says Stephanie. She soaked in everything she learned on the job—especially when it came to the incoming class of post-college analysts.
"These were people who were five years older than me. They were not so old that it felt like a far reach. I remember looking at them and saying, 'I want to do what they do,'" says Stephanie.
So she kept working for it. When her manager at JP Morgan asked her to stay on during college, Stephanie withdrew from the out-of-state school she was planning to go to and enrolled in a NYC program so that she could stay employed during undergrad.
"Now that I think about it, I have no idea how I did it, but I worked 40 hours a week and I had a full-time schedule at school," says Stephanie, laughing. "I just ran around the city. I would take early morning classes, go to work, take evening classes, get home at 10, do my homework, and get up and do it again. It's the benefit of being 20 years old. And I would do this all in heels, which is insane to me."
Stephanie's hard work paid off. After finishing school, she was offered a full-time role at the bank. She was proud of what she'd accomplished, but it didn't come easily, and entering the world of full-time work in financial services was a whole new challenge.
"Not only was I a woman, a Black woman, but I was also the child of immigrants," says Stephanie. "I always feel like I don't belong here. I happened to have broken my way through to get here, but I'm not the person that is supposed to be here, based on how this normally goes."
Two things have helped Stephanie deal with those feelings. The first is remembering her grandfather's story.
"Whenever I feel like an outsider, or when someone treats me with less respect than I think they should because of the color of my skin, I think back to him and his bold choice to educate himself in a country that made it clear he was not welcome," she says. "He was so brave to do this and it makes me wonder how much he dealt with as the only Black man in his class. Nothing I could go through today could come close… this helps to drive me to fight to be represented in spaces where I may not be welcome."
The second thing is leaving environments she felt she couldn't change.
Finding a Place to Grow
Stephanie stayed at JP Morgan, and later JPMorgan Chase, for six years. She struggled with figuring out how to take up space, especially when an early manager told her that she was too outspoken. But Stephanie realized that was more of a comment on the manager's leadership skills than it was something for her to deal with. "I have always made it clear that I had a voice. I have value to add. I've made it my business not to let people quiet me and silence me in rooms where I feel like I should be speaking," she says.
When Stephanie realized risk management wasn't for her, she decided to switch to a smaller firm. That was "less of a rat race," she says, but also felt like a fast-path to "a cushy life and a mediocre existence." So she went back into big banks for a job at Goldman.
"My time there molded me and shaped me a lot into the person I am today," she says. But her time there wasn't without its challenges: "There was a hierarchy in place. You know, 'you don't speak before your boss' kind of thing. Although I loved the company, my career path felt unclear, and I knew it was time for a change."
When an opportunity at Invesco came up, Stephanie took it. She hadn't heard of the standalone asset manager, but was interested in the opportunity, particularly in the chance to do something completely new to her: be client-facing. When her boss's role, which required plenty of client interaction, opened up, Stephanie decided to go for it. "I kept thinking that if I have to report to someone new, I'm always going to know that I could've been that person, but because I let fear stand in the way, I'm not," she says. So she overcame that fear and now is both a senior client portfolio manager and head of a team of product managers and client portfolio managers covering the Municipal Bond business.
And she gets to do it in an environment that really works for her.
"Invesco has been extremely supportive of me, and of women in general, having a voice. That's not something that I necessarily had in my previous roles," says Stephanie. "At Invesco, I feel like I have much more ownership of my narrative than I ever had, and that has allowed me to progress in the way that I have in the last decade."
For Others
Looking back on her career, Stephanie has one piece of advice for others who are trying to build a career that fulfills them, especially in places they don't feel welcome: you don't have to have all the answers.
"People assume that I have a very specific vision," she says. "A lot of the time, I just know what I don't want. And by knowing what I don't want, it allows me to see the things that I want. So those things kind of shine a little bit brighter, and help to attract me to the things that make sense for me."
Does Invesco's culture sound intriguing? Check out their open roles!
What a Learning-Focused Engineering Culture Really Looks Like
Insight from Turo's Catherine Patchell
Catherine Patchell likes to learn. Whether it's concert photography or road cycling, she enjoys the challenge of stepping outside of her comfort zone and picking up something new.
And as it turns out, she especially likes sharing those new things with others. She flew her road bike out with her to visit family in Maine, looking to coax a family member or two into joining her on the road. And she's met some great people in the photographer pit at concerts, jostling for position with strangers who turned into friends.
As a senior front-end software engineer at car sharing marketplace Turo, learning new things with peers is a big part of Catherine's job—and the culture at Turo writ large.
We sat down with Catherine to hear more about her career path, what Turo's culture of learning feels like and what specific activities support it, and what her team is looking for (they're hiring!).
Right subject, right people
When Catherine saw that Northeastern University had a dual program in computer science and interactive media, she knew she had to apply.
The east coast native grew up thinking she wanted to work on animated movies, and the chance to study something that was both technical and artistic stood out to her. She chose a mix of art and design classes to complement her computer science curriculum, and while she loved what she was learning, there was an imbalance in the culture and makeup of her classes.
On the computer science side, Catherine says she was one of about 15 women in her whole class.
While overall she had a positive experience in her program, that disparity did sometimes hamper productivity and growth. "I went through some very terrible pairing sessions, where I just felt bad asking questions," Catherine says.
When it came time to look for a job, Catherine knew she wanted to stay on the technical side, but to work at a place where she felt like she could really learn and grow. She'd enjoyed the culture while serving as the tech director of a student-run design studio at Northeastern, and was similarly impressed by the culture she saw at Turo while interviewing there.
"The thing that really stood out to me was how welcoming all of the team was," she says. "And even on my technical phone screen, they paired me up with one of the women on the team, so the first touchpoint of talking to engineers at Turo was another woman. At the time, she was the only woman in the satellite office, and hearing that she felt it was such a supportive group of people, it sounded like a place I could flourish."
Though there were certain technical skills Catherine was missing, like a deep knowledge of JavaScript, Turo hired her and set her up to keep learning on the job. "They gave me the chance to dive into a role where I had opportunity and room to grow. From the start, it's been a great environment for me to continue learning," she says.
How Turo's culture works to support learning
The way that work is set up at Turo, says Catherine, supports collaboration and learning from the start. "They give me the space to go in and think about a project or a problem, do some research, collaborate with a more senior engineer and start reviewing," she says. "It's very much a supportive environment that allows me to make the wrong choices from the beginning, see what doesn't work, and explore alternatives."
Alongside a top-down belief in the value of learning, Catherine found certain specific aspects of the way Turo does work to go far in supporting growth. Now, as a founding member of a culture guild that leads learning sessions focused on engineers' interests and knowledge gaps, she's helping to run and evolve those aspects. They include:
- Front-end learning groups. When all the front-end engineers need to learn something new at the same time, like when they needed to pick up React a while ago, they all get together to learn from and with each other. "Everyone tries to help each other learn and make the right architecture decisions for this big platform," she explains. Even if there's not a specific skill everyone is trying to pick up, every Friday afternoon, all front-end engineers gather together to share best practices, unstick each other, and watch tutorials. "We recognize that everyone has different learning styles, so by catering to those different approaches, it helps keep things fresh," she says.
- Thoughtful pair coding. This isn't the pair coding Catherine experienced in college, where mismatched experience levels or personalities sometimes created challenging situations. Turo is careful about who they pair, and they ask the person who has more experience to direct the session verbally, while the less-experienced person types. That way, everyone can participate and the pace is set at the comfort level of the person who's learning.
- Structured code reviews. "There are bad ways and good ways to do code review," says Catherine, "especially in a remote environment where you're not seeing your colleagues and everything is a written form—you can only use emojis so much to communicate friendliness." To get around that, Turo approaches coding as a collective effort, aiming for a code base that is cohesive and can't be easily broken up by author. "That really provides a sense of collective ownership, because we're all writing at the same level. When there's a problem, it's not about who might have written that code, but rather working together to fix it," she says. They also have a very specific process for intaking pull requests with recommendations, best practices documentation, and clear expectations around timing.
- Tech guilds. The front-end team, the back-end team, iOS engineers, Android engineers—each group comes together once or twice a week to talk through new things coming to their platforms, upcoming features and changes, and to support each other. "If you have an idea, you can bring it to the table or add it to the agenda. Whether it's written or verbal, you have a lot of opportunities to share a thought and have a conversation about it."
- A supportive Slack channel. When Catherine gets a random error message or is confused about a project, she immediately jumps into Turo's front-end Slack channel and asks for help. "We have a great culture of allowing people to be vulnerable and ask questions. That's not always the case on engineering teams. One thing that's really important to having a successful environment to allow people to learn is having that space where it's okay to ask questions, and everyone's voice matters," she says.
"Being in an environment where there is healthy discussion and debate, and where people's opinions are respected, really makes for an environment that is conducive to supporting people and learning new things," says Catherine.
What Turo hires for
Recently, Catherine's been expanding beyond specific technical knowledge and learning how to lead technical interviews, since her team is hiring.
But in those interviews, she doesn't have a specific checklist of technical skills she's looking for.
"When we hire at Turo, we don't necessarily require that people know exactly all of the tools that we use every day," she says. "We hire good people who are passionate about building things and are excited about working with an awesome group of people."