Women in Tech 🌐

Series: career chat

My career role model recently is my manager🦹‍♀️, a woman leader almost the age of my grandma. She originally comes from life science (PhD) and later became an IT expert. She now works as project director anddd IT tech lead… at the same time, in the biggest french corporation across all sectors. Imagine, a female tech lead in developer team full of dudes, showing up wearing twinkling earrings. How cool is that !?😎

Growing up, we heard :

“Coding and Tech re too technical, too “dry”, not for women. You should opt for more social, female-friendly stuffs”

“Women shouldn’t be entrusted as leaders because their decisions are emotion-based”

“Men’s brains can neatly organize thoughts in little drawers, while women’s brains are … mixed up” (the famous theory of Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus)

To be fair, those ideas might describe the average. Maybe even many cases. But definitely not all.

And that’s where women in tech quietly — and confidently — prove it wrong.

I’m one of those who went against the stereotype. I didn’t start in IT at all. I graduated as a food engineer. Coding wasn’t part of the plan. But curiosity and lots of stubbornness led me to teach myself coding, system configuration.

A year ago, I wrote a post about job options for food science graduates, and listed out many options but none of it is in IT. Simply because I didn’t believe that it’s possible.

Yet today, I’m working in system configuration in lab process for the world leaders in the dairy and energy sectors. I’m still a junior member of the developer team, but I’m in. And honestly, convincing myself to get in is the hardest part (and still I’m cheering myself up during the process).

I’m not a genius. Far from it. My tech journey during the last 2 years got many ups and downs, self-doubt.

There re moments I felt so young and small in male-dominated tech conferences (well I’m literally an asian tiny haha).

There are team photos when I looked super alient as the only tiny asian girl in male-dominated developer team, and surrounded by native French speakers in 👽. Yes, I’m not just the only-Asian but the only-foreigner in the whole 4-flour campus, and the whole site of a french coporation haha.

There are countless times I felt suck in language expression not being able to fully explain my ideas💩. Well I’ve studied French for 3 years but probably not enough yet.

Still, I chose to stay, because:

I see how valuable interdisciplinary expertise is in this AI era🎯. Companies are investing heavily in digitalizing their processes. And they’re not just looking for pure IT profiles — they’re looking for people who understand both the industry and technology. Not just those who can code, but also those who understand their process to adapt the system into business needs.

Why I’m writing this? First, to cheer myself up for the journey that I dared to choose and got this far 😎.

Second, for young girls standing where I stood 2 years ago — those who dare to dream about tech but hesitate. Our original expertises in university trainings won’t be wasted. Our background is not a weakness if we find the right intersection between your domain and IT/Tech. Till then, we’d become the sought-after talents in this age of tech.

My leader nailed it. I can do it, and still striving everyday. And yes — you surely can too ✨.