 on the second day. I'm sure you guys are totally jumped in to go out and enjoy the rest of the evening, but I appreciate you taking time to come tonight. I'm Teresa Martini, and I'm going to, the title is Director to Intern Changing Careers as a Single Mom, but really the core of what I'll be talking about is humility and audacity and facing things in our lives that feel impossible and sitting with the discomfort of that. So let's get started. I work with OMARA Health and we support people with preventing chronic disease, so the majority of our participants might be in situations where they're prediabetic or have heart disease, and we provide a program for that. But before I got to this place in my life, I guess the other big piece about this talk is, this isn't a tech talk or a how-to, this is more of a story and the journey that I've been on for a while now. And so I'm going to start at the beginning when I was a Florida Gator. Any Gator fans in the audience? No. Lily's like, no, none. So I was a Gator. But I didn't get an engineering degree as a Gator. I got a degree in anthropology, but can't really get much of a job with a degree in anthropology or an aspiring degree in anthropology. So I ended up working at the Northeast Regional Data Center on campus and began learning HTML. And this was back when HTML was called Wilbur. It was HTML 3.2. And this was in 1997, and websites looked like this. And this was the good shit. And so I started my career then, and then over the next couple of years learning HTML, standard generalized market language. In 1999, I started learning cold fusion back when it was a layer of cold fusion. And I learned that by just poking over somebody's shoulder on another team and being like, that's really cool. What are you doing? That seems way better than what we're doing with these static HTML templates. And they were like, yeah, come on, come learn with us. And so I went and joined another team and started moving my way up. And so I did that for a couple of years. I did cold fusion and spectra and started working my way into Java. And then the 2001 bubble burst. And mind you, this whole time in my head, I'm thinking, why the fuck are these people paying me so much money to do this? I don't have a degree in it. It's not my background. And the imposter syndrome was really deep. I was always the only woman on my team. I never met another woman engineer. So this is amazing to me. And so when the bubble burst, and I knew all kinds of senior engineers who knew Java fully, weren't just starting to learn it, and they couldn't get work because work was so slim. I was like, well, you know, oh, this is also sorry, just jumping ahead a little bit. So to give you a context, if you were young enough that you weren't around back then, employment declined by about 17% loss of 85,000 jobs. And so if you look at this, 97 is when I got started. And then the peak went up. And then 2001 is when the bubble burst on this graph. And so I figured until things pick up, you know, until I get another gig, I'm going to go volunteer with domestic violence agency. It's in town. It was in San Francisco at the time. And so I started volunteering, and then they were like, oh, we really need someone to fill this position. Would you mind just working for us for a little bit? I know that's not your career. You've got one more experience. Just for a little bit. I was like, nah, sure. It's like glorified volunteering because that's about how much you got paid. But the thing is, is this is how they were tracking data. It was agonizing for me. I wanted to cry. I may have cried at seeing how awful the situation was in the nonprofit sector and their tech capacity. They had this shelter that I was working at had a dial up modem, like that kind of dial up modem on one computer. That's all they had for the whole company. And so none of the social workers had computers to track data for clients. Everything was written on paper. And like literally, they had someone in a van driving between the different locations to pick up these binders and transport them and then do more of this business, sorry, that business on the paper. And it was painful. So I wrote grants and I got them computers and I built them a VPN and I built them a server and I built them a website. And it's in three languages because they have a lot of clients who speak different languages. And I did all that and it felt really good. And I got paid shit. But it felt really good. And I felt like I was making a really big difference. And then the getting paid shit thing became a little bit of a problem because I became a mom. I decided to adopt my son June 2008. And if I hadn't done that work, I would have had a hard time adopting him because I learned a lot in my work that has made me a better mom. But he was a big part of my daily life. Obviously as mom and was coming with me to work, this is me carrying him during the walk against rape because I worked for women against rape. But then things started settling with me being a mom. And this whole time I've gotten the back of my head like this, I'm still going back to programming. I just not yet, not yet. And so then after things settled with being a mom, I started getting this seed planted of an idea that I was going to take that step and go back, maybe go to grad school, maybe do something to really solidify those skills and get back on track. Because I got a little rusty with time. And I continued volunteering on the side and building websites on the side for a bunch of different nonprofits. But they weren't, I wasn't doing engineering and I wasn't building dynamic websites because they couldn't maintain them. So I was just building static HTML and teaching them how to do them on their own. So I'm like making that step starting to think about it again. And then I had my daughter. So now I'm still a single mom and I've got two kids. And boy is that getting paid shit part starting to bite me in the ass at this point. And so this is 2011. And she also is coming with me to work. She came with me to work for eight months. I carried her and wore her. My colleagues carried her. And she was our outreach materials, our marketing person. And so then 13 years later, after my, you know, after a little while, it will pick up. 13 years later, I'm having dinner with a friend of mine. And she says, hey, have you heard of boot camps? My friends started this really cool boot camp where you go and it's like 18 weeks and you learn how to be a software engineer and then you get hired afterwards. And people make like $8,500,000. I know someone who made $125,000 out the gate. It's like, that sounds like bullshit. And it sounded kind of crazy to me, but I looked into it a little bit. And so then I read on the website, you know, most people spending 12 hours a day, six days a week, and the place was like, that also sounds like bullshit as a single parent. That's really, that sounds impossible, right? And then I look at the cost. And this is basically what I thought of all of it. And this is impossible. It's insane. There's no way I can budget it. There's no way I can justify that much time away from my kids. There's just no way. Like everything's just no way. But I'm stubborn. I'm really stubborn. And so I decided what would it be like to sit with that impossibility, that sense of impossibility, and that I can't do it. And what would it be like to just try and take time and be calculated about it and try to make it work and find the money and find the community and resources. And so I jumped. And I decided to quit my job. December of 2014, I applied to Dev Boot Camp. And in January, I was accepted. And I resigned from my job. I decided I wasn't going to do the halfway, I'm going to work part time and do, they have a period that's called phase zero for nine weeks where you're working remotely. And most people work, still keep working their jobs until then. And I was just like, no. Because I knew that in order for me to be successful, I wasn't going to be able to do the commitment that everyone else is going to be able to do on site where they're most of my cohort basically lived at Dev Boot Camp. Don't tell anyone because you're not supposed to sleep there, but people do. And I couldn't. I had to leave every day and I had to go home and still take care of my kids. But so February, I got started. There were a lot of risks involved around like couldn't do the full hours, not guaranteed a job offer. And going back to my previous career would have been possible because I was the director and I had a lot of respect in the community. But it would have been a conversation for sure. Like why did you have this gaping hole in your resume? Oh, I was trying to change careers, but decided to come back. People in the nonprofit sector are very concerned about long-term commitment of their staff. And so that would have looked really bad. So a lot of risk involved. And so self-care was a huge thing for me during this process. It was really important that, and part of that self-care was setting those boundaries and saying, you know, no, I'm going to go home at six o'clock. I'm going to read my children their bedtime stories. I'm going to tuck them in at night. And then I'm going to keep going. But I'm also not going to stay up all night long coding. I'm going to cut it off at 10 o'clock because I write shitty code when I'm tired. And I actually write pretty good code pretty fast when I'm well rested. So what I would be knacking my head against for two hours at night, late at night, I'd do in five minutes the next morning. So that was part of my self-care process. And I asked a million questions, a million. I can't even fathom the amount of questions that I asked because if I tried to pretend that I knew shit, I would get nowhere. And if I just put myself out there and kept asking and asking and exposing my ignorance a million times a day, I would make progress. And I also felt like it was really critical for me to be a mentor because even though I knew nothing, I knew a little bit more than the people coming behind me. And so every phase of the boot camp, I was mentoring someone else. And when I finished the boot camp, I became a mentor at Hackathon. And I taught classes at Woman Who Code, I think, was the way I taught it. And kept teaching people. And rockets. So one of the other strategies that really helped me be successful was they had, they have all these coding challenges in the boot camps, right? And so you're supposed to go through and do all of them. Well, that was impossible. I simply did not have the time. And so I would just jump straight to the hardest thing that they had. And I would just dig in deep with that. And it served me really well. And it was so fun. And so staying really closely connected to my sense of joy around coding and not letting it be this painful process was also a really big part of me being able to be successful with it. And I was all about celebrating my failures because I knew when I was failing, I had some shit to learn. And it was amazing. And so anytime I couldn't get a test to pass, or any time that I didn't know the answer, I was just like, yes! I've hit a place where I can move through and I've identified it. And now I can learn and overcome and then hit the next failure. And it's going to be beautiful. And so, yeah, if you're ever in a situation where everyone around you is having success and they're high-fiving each other, I totally encourage you to turn around to the people you're failing with and high-five them and be like, yes, we're failing. And we are going to get through it and learn. So celebrate that learning process. So I finished our boot camp. And this was June 2015, which I don't know if the last speaker is here, but the last speaker was talking about when the Supreme Court decision was handed down for gay marriage rights that happened that weekend. It was amazing, so weekend to celebrate. And so interviewing was this whole nether place, right, because I had gone through this program and I had needed to get on my feet. And interviewing in the tech industry had changed dramatically from when I was in it before. Before, you would just get hired on this contractor, basically. And it was a temporary contract. And if it went well, you'd get hired on full time. And if it didn't, you'd move on. And it was kind of a mutual thing. And there was no whiteboarding ever. And so this really awesome strategy that I had in my head was I would bring the whole weight of feeding and housing my children to the interview in my head. It was great. I was so stressed that I couldn't think about anything. People would ask me these basic questions and information was absolutely in my head. And I could not get it out. And then there were times when I actually had managed to get it out. And there was this one guy. He had a stack of papers, right? And he throws it on the table and says, you're amazing. And goes on and on about how amazing I am. They didn't hire me. And so I started to get also this feeling that my assessment of situations was warped. And I would think the things were going well and they weren't. And so it just went into this really back to this space of determination but feeling a little starting to lose hope. And so I was in this place of often like when I was losing hope that weight of taking care of my children became heavier. And this happened in my mind all the time. And so what I did was I needed to turn back to community. I needed to stay rooted. This is my cohort that I went through WCAMP with. And I turned back to them and was just like, y'all, I'm struggling. I'm not just struggling. I'm struggling emotionally. I'm getting, I'm spiraling. I need to get grounded and I need help. So I started checking in with a group of people weekly. And they were phenomenal in supporting me. And then soon after that I got this awesome breakthrough. I got an interview with Omada. And this was the interview. And it was the most amazing interview ever. We paired for the day on a story that was in the backlog. And that went into production that day. And it was just so much fun. It was a pleasure to work with them on this story. And it was like, even if I don't get the job, that was just a really reaffirming experience of just getting to code with people. And I had met Lily through Railsbridge and she connected me with the interview. And I began being a software engineering intern with them. And so that was September 2015. And again, lots of risk. I turned down a couple of full-time positions with other companies to take this internship. And it was banking on the notion that this team is amazing and this company is doing amazing work and going to learn so much more as an intern in this program with mentorship and guidance and pairing than I will going into this full-time position with this other company where their mentorships seemed a little more shaky and maybe not as solid as Omada's was. But again, not guaranteed a job, didn't have health benefits, was still taking more risks. And so I asked again a million questions. What does this give us? Like, why are you doing this this way? You know, I hear what you're saying, but I have no idea what you're saying, what it means on a more fundamental level. Like, you're going through a process, sure, I hear you, but what does the underlying code mean? I noticed this thing breaks the build randomly. Is there another way we could approach this? Haven't tested a situation like this before? What do I need to consider? Like, these are all, you know, it's just a consistent pattern that I've had in my life of exposing ignorance and in order to move forward at a more rapid pace. And you write the most scalable, well-tested object oriented software in the world said nobody ever, because that's not my goal that would be ridiculous for me to ever expect. But it's one of those things where like, you want, you want to hear that. But it's letting go of that ego and letting go of your expectations and accepting that really the best compliment I could have ever gotten from the team was that you asked the best questions of any intern we've ever had. Because that means that I'm going in the right direction. And there was a solo project that I did during this internship where, so the team pairs and we have an agile process. Does anyone not know what those two things mean? Awesome. So with a solo project, you go off on your own. You're not pairing for a month. And again, I went through this, a similar kind of feeling that I was getting during the interviewing process where I was feeling isolated and alone and disconnected from the team. So I decided to start pairing like soloing next to a pair. The pair would be here and I'd be like just sitting near them. And I implemented my strategies that I needed to feel connected and be able to feel like I was part of the team and learned so much during that month. And then it was time to come back to pairing. And as a junior developer, it's so easy when you're pairing to just let the other person drive all the time because they're fast and they know what's going on. And they don't have any questions, not nearly as many questions as I do. And so my co-worker had this amazing idea. She brought me some toys. She was like give these to people you're pairing with. And so that way they would step back and would keep their hands busy while I was able to take the initiative to step forward and drive. And this is how I feel about my team. They're a really, really incredible team. Is my thing not showing? How long has it been not showing? I'm like looking at this screen and seeing, awesome. Can you fix that while I do this? All right. Oh, thanks. You guys are great. Cool. Well, I really love my team. This is a really great picture of them. And we're all celebrating together. And maybe you'll get to see it. And no, I can't see anything, so I'm a little lost. Oh, and so soon after, in January, I got hired on permanently as a software engineer with Omada. Yeah. It was a very, very exciting and hard one. Still not showing. But I must keep looking through because it helps me know where I'm going. And now I'm part of this much larger, amazing team of about 40 or 50 engineers. I don't know. Maybe I'm making shit up. Around 40. Yeah. Lily's one of the amazing engineers on my team. And my kids and I celebrated. And it's funny because I asked my son, if you could describe what I went through with changing my career to somebody, what would you say? And he was like, you're really stressed out, mom. And, and that's kind of one of the, I think they bore the brunt of that process. I might still go blank. And I'm still ignorant. And I just want to encourage you to, when you hit a point where you feel like you can't do something to just, I really love Ms. Frizzle. I don't know. You guys like the magic school bus. It's a pretty awesome show. You should watch it even without children. There we go. So I just want to encourage you to take chances and get messy. And I still want to show you a picture of my awesome team. There, there. And that's, that's it. You guys have any questions for me? You know, one thing that Omada and Daboo Camp both did that made a world of difference for me was being flexible with my time. So for example, most of the team leaves at six and I leave at 4.45. I also get in earlier than anybody else. Usually when I get in, the only people there are the chief architect and the CEO. And so allowing me to, to do that, it means I solo a lot in the mornings. But it's really great for me to be able to do that because I can sit there. I can pick up a story and I can dig into the code and read so that when my pair comes in, I'm more able to just kind of jump in. And then Omada also has great health benefits for kids. Like it's actually not that expensive for me to ensure my children, which is great. In the nonprofit sector, I always had to pay full, like, full price for me because it was really expensive to ensure them. So there was that. I'm sure you guys do lots of other things. Oh, I mean the team's just really supportive of their times when I, I'm struggling with something at home and I can talk to my colleagues and team members about what's going on and get their support. And they're not just like, oh my God, she's talking about her children again. And there's actually, I'm not the only parents on the team. There are two other parents that are on my direct team. So there's a lot of empathy. So there's a few questions in there. So I'm going to hit them one at a time. So one, you asked about the salary and how true I felt that to be. I was within, I got hired out of the, within the range that they said to expect. I think the people who, that's, it means that you sneeze it. Okay, cool. If I sneeze it, come back back. So the higher range where my friend was like, I know people who've been hired on at 125. Usually those are people that already have tech backgrounds, maybe in a different aspect of it, like UX or design or something. And they're kind of expanding their school set, but aren't brand new to it. So yeah, otherwise you asked a bunch of questions. What were the other questions? The time commitment for the program. Yeah, people went way beyond the time commitment that they said to make. I couldn't do it. So I just, I did not do the time commitment that they tell you you need to. And I told them ahead of time, like, this is what I can do. Can I come through the program? And they're like, you can try, like me as well, like we're not going to stop you. But it's going to be hard. You talked about the imposter syndrome. What helped you get through that? I'm feeling that like right now. Yeah. Imposter syndrome is a bitch. So I don't think I got through it the first time. I think I succumbed to it and I left. And I didn't put the amount of effort that I could have to keep going. And I think part of it was because I was really inspired by what I was distracting myself with. And that felt really powerful to me and healing in a lot of ways. But part of it was also because I was like, oh, well, there are all these people I know who are way more awesome than I am, who have been hired on and or who can't get work. So I wasn't trying as hard as I probably could have. But then this time I think this time I just said fuck it. This time I said I really kept the mentality of I love this. This is something that I was really passionate about and had so much fun doing. And I remember my colleagues back then and they didn't know anything either. Like they were learning as they went to and a lot of them had CS degrees. But I feel like there are a wide range of skills that you need to be an engineer. And some people are seriously lacking in being able to interact with people. And that makes you a really bad engineer. And then there are some people who may not have the fastest typing and the ability to very quickly come to a solution about a problem. But you have the ability to look at the bigger picture and think about the team as a whole in ways that maybe someone else can't. And I think you just have to really appreciate yourself for your skills that you have and recognize that code is code and you can learn it. And it's hard and everybody struggles. Everyone hits their head against stuff. I have senior engineers on my team right now that sometimes take a couple of days to figure out a solution to a problem because it's complex. And so do I. And that's okay. And just keep asking a lot of questions. I know if that answered your question. Really quickly. I've been doing this for almost 20 years and I still start with that. They made me the manager of my team. And I think part of it is each thing that you pick up is a new challenge or new ticket. You don't know how you're going to solve it until you solve it. And you just have to keep that in mind and kind of just say, you know, effort. Like you say, I'm just going to try. And I almost always figured it out. And if I don't ask for help. So, you know, thank you. But my question was about the boot camp itself. Do you feel like that? Does that give you enough to be able to take on the job that you have now and not be too lost? You know what I mean? Too lost. Too lost. You know, I mean, sometimes you can try to solve a problem. And it's like, gosh, it looks like there's five problems in this one problem. And I'm not sure where even they get start. You know, I don't know. I mean, maybe this is part of my bias for doing it for a long time. Because I think it takes a while to just learn how to solve the problems. But you know, I'm trying to get into my head of how useful are these boost camps? I guess I disagree. I feel like learning how to ask questions, learning how to follow the clues that you see in front of you, reading errors, and paying attention to the details. I don't think it takes that long to learn that. And I feel like it is something you can pick up quickly. I felt like the camp was amazing. I learned how to learn. And I learned how to let go of any ego. And I learned how to be humble and audacious at the same time. And believe in myself. And not see something as too hard to overcome. And like, you know, fairly early on, probably one of the first weeks I was there, they were like, hey, here's where the gems are when you install, when you build rails. This is where the gems are. Go open them. Read the source code. Like just go through and just read thousands of lines of code a day. Read a thousand lines of code a day. Go read a hundred pages, a thousand pages in a book a day. Like just go through and just consume what you can. And eventually you'll see patterns. And that's what code is. A lot of it is just looking for patterns. And how far? I don't want to go over my time. It's 206. I'm over time, aren't I? No? How much time do I have? Five minutes? Thank you. And so, yeah, I feel like that's what the boot camps do. They teach you how to learn. And you can, they pick a language, but you can apply that same process to any language and pick it up. So that's, I feel like what boot campers are really, really good at is just like jumping in and learning something quickly. You had a question. Sure. So you're like, maybe not an expert in engineering, but you're an expert at being a mother. So what's one thing that's easier for you as an engineer because you've been a mother? I would never say I'm an expert at being a mother. Sure. And yeah, no, I feel like, I honestly would never, ever in my life call myself an expert at anything because that would mean that I have hit the end of my learning process and I will never get there on anything because I'm always going to be learning and trying to be a better person. But to your question about what, about parenting has informed me as an engineer, I mean, I think there are a lot of things, I guess being like, it's funny, someone mentioned something about like healthy relationships and how giving people specific positive feedback is actually a strategy for couples that last a long time. I'm single, what do I know? But it's, that's a strategy I've used as a supervisor, because I used to be a director, so I used to have a whole huge team of like 125 people that I supervised. And so that, as a supervisor, as a parent, as a teammate, you know, on my current team, that is something that's always served me very well, giving people very specific and positive feedback, not just like, you're great to pair with, but I really appreciate when you, I really enjoyed how you wrote the test and I made the test pass, so I really enjoyed how you had me write the test and then you made the test pass. And so giving specific, getting really specific about that has been, has served me well. It's one example. I was curious if, in your interview process, if you faced any sort of age discrimination, did you face people asking you about your age or, did you face anything like that? And if so, how did you, how did you address it? I'm not sure if you're assuming that I'm younger old. You look really young, but I know you've got a couple of kids. Yeah, I mean, I guess I am one of the older people on my team. I'm 37. I don't think I faced age discrimination. Maybe I did and I wasn't aware of it. I don't know. I think more than anything, I don't know that it was, I don't know that it was directed discrimination. It's more the process of interviewing right now is not optimal. I think that the process, and actually you were describing it, sir, I don't remember your name. We were talking about this earlier today. He was describing an interview process that his company does, and I went through a similar interview and it was awful. It was the most anxiety-ridden interview I've ever had. I was not able to communicate my knowledge barely at all, because I felt like I was just being hammered and it was more like an interrogation than an interview. One guy literally cut me off. Like every question he would ask me, I would answer and he'd cut me off while I was talking and he'd hammer me with another question, and then as I was answering that one, he'd cut me off and hammer me with the next one, and that's just a really shitty way to interact with people. That's just not very humane or kind. Honestly, I left that interview being like, I don't want to work for your company, even if you make me an offer, because I don't want to work with people who are going to interact with me like that. I don't want to work with team members who might be cutting me off and moving us along in that way. I feel like there are much better ways to be. I would just encourage people to examine your interviewing strategies and what those strategies are serving, like what purpose they're serving, and how they are leading you towards your goals and how you want to build your team. Thank you.