 Okay, so while I'm like trying to get comfortable in DC, why don't you introduce yourselves? Hi, my name is Gayoung and I'm coming from Korea. Currently I'm working at Facebook as a solutions architect for a workplace. Her place is connecting the people in the workplace to communicate well. Nice to see you. Hi, I'm Clara. I'm actually a graduate of the previous batch of the workshop and I'm currently working as a junior software developer after I graduated from the workshop. Hi, my name is Suyuan. I'm the co-founder of an on-demand tech talent platform called Momo Central. Yeah, so today the topic of our discussion is really the skills that you need to navigate and succeed in tech industry. As you have already noticed that the panelists have very diverse and different backgrounds, some technical, some not technical, the rest have CS degrees but they're not software engineers even though Suyuan can code. It's still coding now too right? Yeah, it's still coding. So as we start the discussion, do start thinking about questions that you're curious to find out from the experiences because not every day that you have a panel like that in front of you. Okay, so I think you give a brief introduction of your, like I mentioned that you have a CS degree, you have a CS degree, you don't have a CS degree. Clara, what were you doing before? I don't want to enjoy talking about this. I was actually running my own fashion business online for about four to five years before I got tired of the industry and when the tech ladies boot camp application came about, I decided that, okay, this is the catalyst, I should just try and apply for it. And haven't looked back since. So Suyuan, what were you doing before starting Momo Central? Oh, yeah, I've done like five field startups before. But if you're a background, I used to work as a graphic designer in a design agency and we were designing things for like Sony, LG, everyone. But my frustration came from every time I came up with this great, or rather I thought it was great campaign idea, the project manager would take it to the tech team and the tech team would say, no, this is not possible within the timeline of budget or this is just impossible to do. And if you hit that 90% of the time, you get like, is this really for real? Like 90% of my ideas just got thrown out like that. So I thought like, you know what, I'm just going to do a Commuter Science degree and stay for real myself so that I can build it myself anyway. And it turns out that they were lying most of the time. And I was like, this stuff wasn't that hard, you know. So that's how I went to CS. Then I did an internship at Apple as software engineer. I joined a 24-hour coding competition and somehow ended up getting top four over there. Then I did a field augmented reality startup, you know, in the day where iPad 2 didn't even have a camera. And a bunch of other field startups before, yeah, more central. What about you, Guy? You have a long history of Microsoft. Yeah, I studied computer science and I started as a college hire from Microsoft Korea. So I've been there for around seven years. Mostly I do sales and technical pre-sales engineer jobs and from the client windows to the security, identity, cloud-based services system and maybe Office 365 or Surface. So I do a bunch of the stuff. Okay, so Guy, you have a CS degree but you decided not to pursue a software engineer role. What was going through your mind? Did you take CS degree thinking, knowing that you want to pursue a software engineering role or did you pursue it knowing that you don't want a software engineering role? So I decided to study about computer science because I want to work in Disney. In my young age, I was watching the Disney animation all day long and I want to be in the part of that production. So I asked people how I can be in work Disney and people asked me to learn how to draw but I do not have any single talent on drawing. So I found that computer graphics, probably I need to learn about the programming and I start to learn programming since middle school, like 10 teenagers and I didn't find anything difficult at the time. So I pursued that studying about computer science and I also have a lot of interesting about the movies and society and musicals. So I keep my communication skills well but I found at the same time that computer graphic designers or computer programmers having some trouble between communication as you see. So I found that my talent is somewhere else but I understand how to code and how to build a code and I could be the one in the middle. So that's why I pursued as a pre-sales engineer instead of the building a program. But I do love the job and I believe this is my way and you guys can find another chance when you learn the programming instead of being a programmer. Yeah, so just add on another question for Gayoung. So you were in Korea, you were in Microsoft Korea for seven years and six months ago you moved to Singapore. So could you tell me more about how is it like in Korea being a woman in tech? Okay, in Korea being, yeah. How is it like in Korea? So since when I was in high school I mean the 10% of the entire group as a female and yeah, even in high school and university and Microsoft and even now I'm the only one within our team. So I try to keep my focus on the work because I'm trying to be a perfectionist but at the same time I keep myself confident and compared to Microsoft and Facebook the culture is totally different. Microsoft is like a forties, like my parents ages. Sorry to say that but I do love my favorite works and they grow me up like a parent and now I'm in the Facebook which is like teenagers. Everyone wants to play hard and work hard. So I believe that culture aspects, the company is totally different and I found Singapore is much diverse and they support their female worker as well compared to Korea. So I believe I have a great movement to hear. Okay, let's change shift to more about being a software engineer. So I'm curious to, you are a software developer yourself and you have seen a lot of software developers and in part of your company. So the question is, is a CS degree important to become a software engineer? Alright, so to give you guys some background on our platform right now we actually go around the world and find the best and most reliable developers and designers to join our platform as freelancers. Our aim is to make the most transparent and reliable freelancer platform out there for tech talent. So me and my co-founder, CTO Jason who actually does the bedding is standing right there behind with the cameras taking photos of me but hi. So anyway he vets, I vet as well a lot of coders and designers before they allowed to join our platform. What we found is CS degree is not a prerequisite like 95% of the people who apply to us fail and even with the CS degree they still fail but we've also found people who were math school teachers from some remote part of say the US or Indonesia who were self taught coders, learned purely online and they ended up being one of the top coders on our platform and they were doing excellent work for like Silicon Valley clients so they're not exactly bad, you know they're actually really good to be able to do that. I don't think a CS degree is important but what's important I think is learning how to solve problems what we call algorithmic thinking. So what we found is no matter what language you start off with or know as long as your algorithmic thinking is strong and you know how to read documentation and you just keep going at all the bugs you eventually become a really good coder. So having that algorithmic thinking. That worked. So do you think that's the single most important quality that separates good engineers from the not so good engineers? No but I mean there's one important quality but I think the rest is also communication and work attitude like if you're just the follower kind and not the proactive thinker who go and seek out better solutions then I think you'll be left behind because that's also another trait that differentiates the senior developers from the juniors. Juniors you know I give them a task they'll just do what they know to get it done but a senior will start thinking about the age cases what is this scenario that we didn't think about happens you know I should write a code to handle it or I should proactively think I know how to write this code this way to solve this problem but is there a way for me to do it more efficiently? You know so that's the difference between senior and junior. So how do you learn to be an engineer for people who are the good software engineers who did not have a CS degree how did that become? You can't, you can't, tech ladies, you can't. Oh success story right here. I would say as you work like go and get jobs out there try to get yourself paired with a senior developer who will constantly do code reviews and give you feedback about your code so at the start you might write code this way it solves the problem but may not be the most efficient and if you're paired with a senior developer he may be able to do a code review and say hey you use this method but have you thought of using another method and then after that you go and Google what's this other method he's talking about ah okay I learned something new and let me try it right now So how do you find a senior engineer, unicorn person? Oh there's one bald head guy sitting right there he's one of the sitters If you guys are going to a tech job if you can try, well even in the interview I think you have the right to ask for the sake of your own career and learning what's their work style inside there will they pair you with a senior developer will they do constant code reviews or feedback sessions and I think if you ask those questions in an interview it shows the interviewer like oh this girl is really interested in improving herself not just doing the job and I think that matters because then you'll start thinking maybe I should really pair her with a senior person or find Michael yeah yeah Michael is at Singapore Power so I heard they do pair programming over there oh they do mock programming yeah that's a fancy term for a lot of pairs I don't understand what it means I don't really understand either Michael do you guys give one senior developer to one junior developer as a buddy system so try to find out if your future potential company has a buddy system because what you want is to improve yourself very fast because if you join the company without that and I'm not saying you will never improve on your own but there won't be someone to tell you hey do you think of this method because you would have never known I think this method exists you know okay I think what Surya mentioned is really super helpful for someone who already have an existing level of programming skills so someone who is trying to get level 1 to level 2 so let's change gear to Clara level 0 yeah 0 to 1 is actually the most important part right how do you get started from a degree in building fashion, fashion entrepreneur to really become an intern first before you become a converted as a junior role and one interesting tidbit about Clara is that before we first crossed paths two years before she joined the Tech Ladies Bootcamp I only recently found out on Facebook when they had on this day notification I found a photo of her sitting in a corner at one of the Rails Girls workshop that I was helping out in organizing so Clara you have tried programming on and off before the bootcamp so share with us you know how did you get started what are some of the challenges you face getting from 0 to 1 so as Alexa mentioned for years I was actually trying to pick up programming on my own because it was an interest of mine but I found it really difficult even through attending events like the one she mentioned to get any form of structured learning so if I had questions or whatever I would have people help me at events but when I go home and look at my code and I don't understand anything there is very little help to be found I don't even know how to ask the correct questions to Google so yeah, Googling has a very big skill to have yeah so during the bootcamp it was actually really helpful because we were assigned a mentor who we would meet weekly and we would track the mentor would track our progress and tell us how we can improve what we can do so it's a very structured form of learning and it was very helpful to have someone there along with their teammates to work on a project together and I learnt a lot from the process compared to trying to learn programming on my own so what are some of the resources that you were looking at before joining a bootcamp? the usual Code School Guide but they weren't very helpful in explaining things that were not basic one resource that I found really helpful was an online book written by Michael Hartle called Rails Tutorial I think and the book is actually online available for free and it's due to the process of creating an app from zero to deployment a very simple one but it was very helpful in helping me learn how to do it even though I didn't fully understand everything that was going on yeah so how what was the most difficult part of you I think getting an internship was a pretty good step in the industry but having said that I think we all know that the journey is only 1% oh so Facebook to say that Facebook we are just saying the journey is only 1% done so we are never done done it's always a continuous process so Clara what are some of the challenges that you what are some of the things that are challenges that you face for me personally it was a severe lack of knowledge because I only entered the tech industry very recently and through pretty like ad hoc manner I didn't go through like competing school or anything so when let's say like she was mentioning the senior engineers when I explain things to me sometimes I don't even understand what they are talking about like 50% they are using jargon that I'm supposed to know but I have no idea what they are saying so how I responded to that was just to ask a lot a lot of questions and I'm pretty sure I was just not familiarity because I just keep asking questions that appear like dumb yeah because I have no knowledge but yeah having we have a body system at work and it's very helpful to have a mentor to always be there to answer your questions so you say that you know learning how to Google asking a lot of questions these are sort of like the skills that you highly recommend a lot of perseverance so what was the toughest time that you have in your transition in my transition for me from the bootcamp to actual working stage because during the bootcamp we built an app and that app was fairly simple compared to what we actually did at work so I really struggled to grapple with what was going on for like even like the first month just reading the code and understanding how everything relates to each other was very confusing to me but like I said just persevere and ask a lot of questions alright so for now let's take a short break does anyone have any questions right now oh sure it's ReelsTutorial.org I'm very afraid I'm giving you the wrong info I think it's ReelsTutorial.org so the book is called Ruby on Reels Tutorial I think by something generic sounds like something generic just go ReelsTutorial.com or .org and then there will be so they'll try to force you to buy the printed book but if you look on the left somewhere there's a blue link read online for free break on that and go through that oh this is a record but of course support the authors but there's no time for free reading there we can ask Michael to cut it out like there's section someone else has another question go for it I had a question really around hiring so I worked really hard but in tech space and you know there's a lot of questions coming up very recently around how do you hire better so how do we actually find people who are good at these jobs instead of taking in anyone who can take their own software to you so do you guys have any suggestions about anything you want to share? so for our platform we have a five step evaluation process the moment they sign on we don't even look at their resume they have to do an online co-test that's automatically generated for them if they pass that then we go to a video interview where we test their communication skills and then in that video interview we do a live co-test on the spot to make sure this is the guy who did that online co-test there's lots of scammers out there who get their friends to help them and after that we may give them a project test and then a task test so as a HR company I don't know if you want to spend so much time going through it because a lot of people will drop off at the first stage of midway but those who do get through everything actually turns out to be pretty good I'm sure you're building a pipeline in this law so can you just share your experience or how many people actually get through so that you have enough of a catalog well I mean for us it's more like we just keep growing 25% of the people fail but having said that part of that 95% could have just given up because they don't want to spend so much time going through everything sometimes the first stage itself you know because we ask like algorithmic questions sometimes so if you guys want to don't try now but after the bootcamp I don't want to demoralize you guys so early in the bootcamp you want to try out a website you can just click join as a talent and it will immediately generate an online test then you can try you can even use that as an educational material yeah so any other questions that people want to talk about okay lady at the back I guess in a way it was quite lucky because my mentor during the bootcamp midway through the bootcamp he told me he would prescribe me a series of tests and if I passed then I would get an internship with this company and as for the next part of the question how I transitioned from intern to junior I honestly don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know I honestly don't know same company it's within the same company so after 3 months they offered me a junior position which I accepted I'm not sure why they accepted so yeah okay so any any further questions okay this is my question so I think we talked a lot more about how do you the skills that you need to really enter the industry what are some of the skills that you need to navigate in the industry so maybe we can start from Munkayong you are not a software engineer but you are currently now in Solutions Architect where you talk to developers a lot at the same time you have to think on the business use case it's a very interesting balance between tech and also soft skills a little bit so how do you make sure that it's up to date how do you up to date how do you keep yourself what are the things that you need what are some skills that you need to be able to succeed in your role I think I'm lucky that I'm exposed to a lot of different customers who wants to know more about the industry and the technologies and especially Facebook has to be honest I found a lot of the good information from fbay from Facebook which is a developer conference and build from Microsoft which is developer conference and also the IO which is Google conference those three conference is top three and if you are looking for another architecture side or cloud based side you can see the sales force and also Avalon is the most important things you need to watch this kind of conference keynote will give you the ideas where you can go pursue and what's next because technology will never stop and you never know everything so I don't want to keep myself up to date every day because I'm not a super hardcore computer scientist so I just want to keep myself to know about what's the terminology and where is the trend called board and how do I utilize myself to get into that stream so I suggest to watch the keynote at least it is just only one hour and they spread it out every month what about Surya don't say you are lucky because one of them I used it already what are some of the skills that are important for you to navigate and also succeed in this industry being able to Google seriously I learned everything through Googling most of the time you hit a bug copy the error message into Google and start reading stack overflow how did people solve it see the solution copy it and paste it into your own code that's really how it is so if you end up getting stuck a ton of times it's very normal even the pro coders even the guys you think they are actually get stuck a lot of time and has to Google a lot so the key is to know how to Google and keep Googling and reading patient you'll get better at finding the right terms after a while and you'll get better at copying and pasting answers it's true I just copy and pasting all the time even though I code these days okay awesome is there any last question the question is so really close to your own future how is your typical day at Google how do you feel like you are facing your future or short answer yes yeah I think you will be able to share it's really like 8 hours in front of the computer I don't really know how else to describe my job but you are doing things like reading documentation, writing code or debugging anything that went wrong with your point and like she said Googling and reading back over flows are unsafe yeah it's pretty much like that it really is facing the computer so just to add on for the question could you break down the ratio of your day like how many of it is just reading and understanding how many of it is Googling how much of it is actual creating how much of it is pulling your hair out that is constant actually for me because I am still quite junior I spent a lot of time reading code and trying to understand it first the actual typing is really not that much because you have to understand what is going on you can start typing so I can't really break it down I guess like 70 reading 30 typing do you still code so you still code right yeah I still do and on my facebook I posted a disgruntled picture of myself you know still trying to figure out a bug at like 7am in the morning I had not sleep tonight before just figuring out my bug oh one thing on the there is no shame in copying and pasting solutions because 90% of the time any bug you have experienced or faced someone has faced it as well and they would have shared the solution online so there is no shame in copying and pasting and learning from other people's solution so copy everything um maybe I can add about github or like sample code from the well known pages so like people don't want to run that someone others code before they learn how to read and how to write a code but I do suggest to run the code the sample at first because that will give you the more ideas where I should start and even the environment setting is quite hard when you start it's the beginning so I do suggest the perfect code to run at first so github is like a social network for nerds so people put their they create stuff and they put their codes up for everyone to see so one of the ways to really learn is by studying other people's work that they put online and available for everyone so that's github.com ok so last question so a lot of people here are first time and probably how many of you are engineers developers now ok so the rest are all interested to learn and starting to learn so what is one piece of advice other than perseverance what is one piece of sorry I just stole your answer yeah so it's one piece of advice you will let people like that know people who are trying to learn how to code maybe want to point them to some good resources other than Michael Hartle and perseverance what are some of the words or nuggets of wisdom you want to let them know let's close out the panel discussion with that if you have an interesting company or ad I recommend to find out how do they build before you like choose what language and how do you want to learn because when you have an interest like a word business for me you can deep dive more about that whether it is language whether it's algorithm whether it's UI I do believe that so you can easily find out the information when you are googling for me I guess other than perseverance would be to learn to be patient with yourself because for me I constantly get frustrated with myself when I can't figure problems out then I start feeling like I'm the dumbest person in the world and then my senior and junior counselor and I'm just feeling like a idiot but it's alright when you're learning and just don't beat yourself too much beat yourself up too much when you are learning because you are just tapping up you know can I ask them a question why do you guys want to learn coding just yell out your answer just yell out your answer okay who's here to learn coding to do a startup idea they have only two the rest why you are learning is it cool it's cool yeah it is cool the job is if you look at the job search there's a lot of things going on with the type of industry so on the field right now when I want to personally if there's something that I really want to do maybe you can ask me try something new that would be very rare alright so those of you looking to make career switch coding is just not one category you would have realized there's front end, back end a cool term called full stack so if you're a more visual person the kind who learns from visuals I would suggest going looking into front end development it's good to know the back end but you don't have to be super good at it you know how to write the AI for a chess player you know if you're a visual person there's a lot of jobs in the front end it involves more html and css so for that I really like w3 schools people say it's a terrible resource you know but for me as a beginner if you go w3schools.com they actually teach you the front end part of coding in a very visual way step by step so you could try starting with that yeah so try to decide if you're more of a back end coder or front end coder and focus on that so I think to sum up your 3 of your answers basically is understand what you like what your strengths are find a technology that fits that could be like your dream or something like that whatever how people learn better and while you're doing that don't beat yourself up too much so with that let's wrap up the panel discussion let's give a round of applause to the panel thank you guys