
Women in Tech: International Women’s Day Conference 2020
Below is an article originally written by SoftwareONE Blog Editorial Team, and published on March 06, 2020. Go to SoftwareONE's page on PowerToFly to see their open positions and learn more.
As demographics in the workforce shift and global markets emerge, diversity gets closer to becoming a business necessity rather than a stat that companies use to show they are embracing change and differences in their employees. Companies are realizing that diversity in the workforce encourages and fosters innovation, enhances consumer understanding, provides richer brainstorming, and overall better decision making.
According to a report on diversity in high tech from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), "Ensuring a sufficient supply of workers with the appropriate skills and credentials and addressing the lack of diversity among high tech workers have become central public policy concerns." The report also states that "the industries and occupations associated with 'high tech' are rapidly evolving." While this is true, there is still a significant gap with men employing 64 percent of the high tech sector and women employing only 36 percent. And of the executive's category, about 80 percent are men and 20 percent are women.
How to Grow Your Diversity
According to the Marie Wiese Women Talk Tech Report 2020, women make up over 61 percent of the workforce in North America. This number is up 14 percent since 2010 and continues to rise. However, as previously stated, women currently make up only a little over one third of the technology sector, but there are ways that organizations can and are working to grow diversity.
In order to continue growing gender diversity, organizations must address change in the following areas:
- Recruiting Processes – focus on how companies craft job descriptions, express qualifications, and look for talent
- Mentorship and Sponsorship – provide support, mentors, and sponsors that will help women build their careers
- Workplace Environment – focus on how a company works and behaves, specifically how they treat 80% of women who are primary caregivers and workplace flexibility
- Pay Equity – change the way companies use pay grids
WiT at SoftwareONE
We know that diversity is essential to the success of our company. In 2016, three of our leaders took it upon themselves to spearhead the Women in Technology (WiT) initiative for SoftwareONE in North America. Since then, the initiative has grown into a six woman strong team who work to empower women in the company with sponsorship, education, experiences, and best practices.
The vision for WiT at SoftwareONE is to make our company an excellent place for women to work and where women have strong representation in senior leadership. The following quotes offer unique insight about WiT and how employees at SoftwareONE view this initiative:
Courtney Reynolds - Learning and Development Manager: "I've been involved in women's leadership initiatives throughout my entire career, however last December when my daughter was born it instilled an even greater sense of passion and purpose in me. I'm more forward focused. Now when I see inequalities, I want to drive change so that by the time she enters the workforce she sees herself well represented at every level of leadership. If she decides someday that she wants to be a CEO or President, I want her to have all of the support and access she'll need to get there."
Courtney furthermore emphasizes that the initiative works to include men in their efforts: "I'm also inspired every time one of my male colleagues asks curious questions about WiT or truly wants to listen and learn about women's stories and experiences. Something many men don't realize is that initiatives like WiT count on them and their support! We love and respect our male colleagues and we really want them to be involved in our work alongside us."
Lindsay Cicenas – Business Development Manager: "I am currently serving my 2nd year on the Women In Technology Board at SoftwareONE. My role on the board is to assist with our events that are both locally and nationally supported by the board. I also assist with our speaker track with planning presenters and topics along with the rest of the Wit Board."
"With the WiT board at SoftwareONE only being about four years "young," I feel we have made progress in not only recognizing our gap regarding women in leadership roles, but have initiated focus within SoftwareONE on inclusion & diversity across all of our people. It's all about finding the right person for the job, but with that it's bringing diversified candidates to the table and choosing the best one for the position out of that pool. Being a global company, I feel it's very important to not only celebrate and acknowledge women in IT, but diversity as a whole."
Kevin Osterman – Vice President of Customer Operations: "We've discussed WiT many times within the Business Operations Leadership Team to strategize how we can best support from a senior leadership perspective. It's important to lead by example ensuring we include a robust and diverse candidate pool when hiring, being present at WiT sponsored events, and a willingness to have open discussions, while challenging the status quo"
"If I am being honest, my impression of WiT has not always been clear. It took some very passionate conversations with some of the excellent women leaders at SoftwareONE for me to begin to understand their mission. While we still have a long way to go, we have made great progress because of their passion and resolve."
Sherry Song – Business Development Representative: "It has been over 17 years since I have been involved in the technology sector starting from the time I began studying electrical engineering in university. Over the years, I have witnessed and experienced tremendous improvement in the treatment of female workers within the industry. Women are now much more readily accepted and valued in comparison to a decade ago."
"What I especially appreciate from being part of the SoftwareONE family is that the mentality of welcoming diversity is built into our company's DNA. From the leadership team to front line workers, the entire company recognizes and nurtures its female employees, priming them for success, and constantly seeking ways to better support them."
International Women's Day Conference 2020
SoftwareONE is proud to have been leader sponsor of this year's International Women's Day Conference, hosted by the WiT Network, as a Leader Sponsor. We headed to the conference with representation from Hadassa Lutz, a Technology Services Practice Leader at SoftwareONE. Hadassa has over 15 years of experience in the technology field and has proven herself as a strategic leader. At the conference, she will speak on "Stepping Out From Behind Your Own Shadow." This session discussed how women who experience paralyzing self-doubt - that leads to anxiety, burnout, and increased unhappiness - can learn how to step out from behind their own shadows and overcome fears in the workplace and in life.
Want To Build Partnerships In Remote Environments? Follow These Tips!
💎 Partnerships in remote environments is one of the most important aspects to construct in a company. Watch the video to the end to get good tips on how to do it successfully.
📼Wondering how to create partnerships in remote environments? Play this video to get three top tips that will help you to achieve it. You'll hear from Olga Shvets, HR Business Partner, and Viktoriia Litvinchuk, People Team Operations at Unstoppable Domains, who will explain the essentials of this process.
📼How to build partnerships in remote environments? Tip #1: Communicate Effectively. Communication is the key to enabling your remote team to be successful. Choose the channel that works best. For this, chat with your employees and see what they use to communicate, that's how you find the best solution. Also, make sure your team is on board with your internal tools and they know what, how, and where they need to use them.
📼A requisite for building partnerships in remote environments is Tip #2: Show appreciation. Appreciation is shown through your actions. Let your employees know that you value everything they do for the company. Create a special gratitude channel where everyone can share their appreciation for their colleagues for some contribution. Celebrate some wins, promotions, and everything that is important for the company. If you appreciate the employees, employees do the same for the company.
Create Partnerships In Remote Environments Using Trust - Tip #3: Give Honest Feedback
Use engagement surveys! They are a quick and effective way to receive honest feedback from your team and you can see what's working well and what needs to be improved. Your main priority is to create spaces where managers and employees can share honest, relevant feedback.
📨 Are you interested in joining Unstoppable Domains? They have open positions! To learn more, click here.
Get to Know Olga Shvets
If you are interested in a career at Unstoppable Domains, you can connect with Olga on LinkedIn. Don’t forget to mention this video!
More About Unstoppable Domains
Unstoppable Domains is bringing user-controlled identity to 3 billion+ internet users by issuing domain names on the blockchain. These domains allow users to replace cryptocurrency addresses with human-readable names, host decentralized websites, and much more.
By selling these domains direct to consumers for a one-time fee, the company is making a product that will change cryptocurrency and shape the future of the decentralized web by providing users control over their identity and data.
Careers in Web Development: Which One's For You?
We all have our favorite websites– the ones we frequent, bookmark, and recommend to others. You might even enjoy some website features so much that you’ve found yourself wondering why they aren’t more popular. Or maybe you’ve experienced times where you were frustrated with a website and wished you could add features or even design your own!
If you’ve ever found yourself intrigued at the prospect of designing and developing your own websites, then a career as a web developer might be just for you!
As a web developer you would be responsible for coding, designing, optimizing, and maintaining websites. Today, there are over 1.7 billion websites in the world and, in turn, the demand for web developers is on the rise. In order to figure out what kind of web development work best suits you let’s start with an introduction to the three main roles in web development that you can choose from.
The Three Types of Web Development Jobs
Front-End Web Development: The Creative Side
Think of front-end development as the décor of a house. The color scheme, furniture, manicured lawns, and overall aesthetic. In terms of a website, front-end development is laser-focused on the appearance of a website and its presentation on different devices. If you’re considering a role in front-end development, it’s important to learn programming languages such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. These three languages go hand-in-hand. HTML allows you to create user interface elements, CSS helps you with stylistic elements, and JavaScript allows you to incorporate online tools and connect your website to back-end functions.
In addition to programming skills, front-end developers need to be detail oriented, creative, willing to keep up with the latest trends in web development, cyber security conscious, and geared toward user-friendly designs. The median salary for a front-end developer can reach well into the $90,000 to $100,000 range.
Back-End Web Development: The Logical Counterpart
While a house can be beautifully decorated, it’s incomplete without a solid foundation and efficient infrastructure. Similarly, a well-designed website depends on logical and functional code to power the features of that website. Back-end web development is code-heavy and focused on the specifics of how a website works. If you enjoy the analytical challenge of creating the behind-the-scenes code that powers a website, then back-end development is for you.
Since this role is more code-heavy, it’s important that you learn numerous programming languages and understand algorithms and data structures. Some languages that are essential to back-end development are Ruby, Python, SQL, and JavaScript. Back-end developers also ensure that users can successfully retrieve and access data. This requires creating and using APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) which act as messengers that relay data related requests. Additionally, developing the code for the inner workings of a website also requires back-end developers to be conscious of the user interface features designed by front-end developers and to internally mitigate potential security risks. Due to the increased technical aspect of this position, back-end developers normally earn higher salaries than front-end developers. The average median salary for this role is around $118,000 per year.
Full-Stack Web Development: A Little Bit of Everything
A full-stack developer is essentially the Jack (or Jill)-of-all-trades in web development. Full-stack developers need to be knowledgeable about both front-end and back-end roles. This does not necessarily imply that you would need to be an expert in both roles, but you should fully understand the different applications and synergies they each imply. In order to work in this position, you will need to know the programming languages used by front-end and back-end developers. In addition to these languages, full-stack developers also specialize in databases, storage, HTTP, REST, and web architecture.
Full-stack developers are often required to act as liaisons between front-end and back-end developers. Full-stack developers need to be both problem solvers and great communicators. The end goal for a full-stack developer is to ensure that the user’s experience is seamless, both on the front-end and on the back-end. In return, you can expect to earn a median salary of $100,000 – $115,000 a year for this role.
Taking the Next Step
Web development is both in-demand and lucrative! All three roles described above contribute to specific aspects of web development and the scope of each one can be customized to the industries and positions you feel best suit you. Regardless of which role you choose, all of them need a foundation in programming.
To gain the programming skills needed in each role, you can enroll in courses or learn independently. Coding bootcamps are a great way to boost your skillset quickly and efficiently.
Click here for some of our highly rated programming bootcamp options! Make sure to check out the discounts available to PowerToFly members.
Want to join the engineering teams at Workiva? Learn more about them!
💎Want to know what engineering teams are like at Workiva? Watch the video to the end to find out!
📼 Engineering teams at Workiva are constantly hiring. Marie Yue, Senior Engineering Manager at the company, tells you what they look for in a candidate and what the dynamics of teamwork are like.
📼 The typical path in the engineering teams at Workiva is that you grow into a senior, and then you move into a lead role. From there, there are a few different tracks that you can take depending on your interest. You can become a staff engineer, an architect, or even an engineering manager. What are you waiting for to apply?
📼In the engineering teams at Workiva every member should feel empowered to do their job effectively. For this, each has to understand how the work they do day to day solves customers’ problems. Managers will always seek to be aware of members’ career path aspirations so that they can look for opportunities and projects to help each person reach the next step in their career.
Engineering Teams At Workiva: A Safe Space
Marie Yue’s team is a safe space for people to make mistakes and ask for help, and each member feels a sense of belonging and inclusion. She wants to make sure that everyone is individually empowered to lead and make decisions. For this, the team has regular meetings where they do fun things like play virtual games or eat lunch together, and they also like to re-review and add to their team working agreement once a quarter.
🧑💼 Are you interested in joining Workiva? They have open positions! To learn more, click here.
Get to Know Marie Yue
If you are interested in a career at Workiva, you can connect with Marie Yue on LinkedIn. Don’t forget to mention this video!
More About Workiva
Workiva was founded to transform the way people manage and report business data with various collaborators, data sources, documents, and spreadsheets. Today, people all over the world use their platform to seamlessly orchestrate data among their systems and applications for transparent and trusted connected reporting and compliance. At Workiva, they are innovative in everything they do—from how they build their software, to how they serve their customers, to how they treat their employees.
Never Done Shining — Introducing the 2022 NIKE, Inc. Internship Program
After two years of remote programming, we’re excited to welcome the 2022 NIKE, Inc. Internship Program back to our U.S. offices this week!
This year’s class of 318 represent the top 1% of 34,000+ applicants from 113 universities – including 10 Hispanic Serving Institutions and five historically Black colleges and universities. And that’s not all! Many of this year’s interns are Division 1 student-athletes, representing Track and Field, Rowing, Soccer, and Volleyball, to name a few.
During the nine-week internship – built around the theme of Never Done Shining – interns will work across Nike, Jordan and Converse taking on meaningful projects for the business areas they’re supporting. We can’t wait to watch this talented, diverse group kick off their Nike journey and shine!
Want to learn more about the program? https://jobs.nike.com/internships
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