I’m a Software Engineer at Microsoft. I work on an incubation team that works to build experiences using software and hardware prototypes to define the next generation of Windows Devices and experiences. Previously at Microsoft, I was in a rotational program for college new hires where I got to try out two other roles. First, I was a Service Engineer working on two factor authentication with a focus on accessibility and usability. Second, I was a User Researcher for XBOX User Research on the Platform team. I went to a liberal arts college called Goucher College where I made my own major in Human Computer Interaction.
I believe that having a liberal arts degree has helped me in the technology sector, and hope that soon companies realize the power of a liberal arts degree.
Oldest comments (74)
As a former humanities major, this is a great story. How was the transition from liberal arts to CS? Did the shift in thinking take long or was it something you just got right away?
Hi!
I actually took CS courses in college. I think how it was taught made the transition easier. I can't tell you how to reverse a binary tree, but I can read just about any computer program that is put in front of me.
So to answer, the transition was easy and yet hard. Easy, because anything can be put in a liberal arts perspective; Hard, because I don't have quite the same amount of technical gritty knowledge.
(I really hope I answered your question)
You did! That's pretty great. Thank you.
What courses did you self-assign for your major?! Which ones prepared you to be an engineer?
I also made my own major...but it's not nearly as cool sounding as Human Computer Interaction.
I had to choose all of my classes actually!
The ones that prepared me most to be an engineer I actually took in Scotland when I studied abroad. There I took a course about the Internet which was like 2 courses put together, it was half front-end and half back-end.
But to be honest, I don't think any one class prepared me to be an engineer. I think having experiences with internships helped more. I don't think any college course has a class where if you screw up, you can make a company lose millions of dollars.
Any fun nuggets from those two courses about "the Internet" ? Was it a technical course or more historical?
I recently read The Victorian Internet which is about the advent of the telegraph. And Ben has recommended Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet as a similar book on the origins of the internet.
Just curious if you encountered anything in those courses that might be fun/surprising to the rest of us.
It was technical. I did take a super interesting course in college about the theory of computing. An ex buddhist monk taught it. There was a lot of questions about life that came up.
what kind of internships did you have?
Two software engineering internships. I was one of two "non-mainstream" college students accepted.
I also want to say that the courses that I think taught me the most were the ones that had nothing to do with Engineering. I took some strange classes, I took Jazz Band every semester (I played the saxophone), and I took English classes. I think that is what makes liberal arts so cool.
Every college has the same Intro to CS class,for the most part, the difference between Liberal Arts and other colleges is I have a wider swath of knowledge, and those at other schools have a much more focused band of knowledge. I think Liberal Arts works for people who know what interests them, and they want the best way to apply it. Once again, I am not discrediting technical degrees. I think if you know what you want to study and you know your life plan, go that way.
What are the different challenges in incubating hardware v. software prototypes?
I would think that iterating is much slower with hardware? have modeling programs and/or 3-d printers helped narrow that gap? Would love to hear more about your experiences in building these new products.
As a fellow liberal arts grad (and English major, at that!), thanks for doing this AMA!
Hi!
So I only do software prototyping. The hardware prototypers are amazing. I wish I knew more about hardware.
I wish I had a better answer!
Hello Julie, thanks for doing this AMA! As a fellow non-CS-degreed software engineer (BFA in Illustration, lol), I have some questions for you about culture and learning.
Before I got into tech, I was working in some decidedly different fields (local government, graphic design, etc), and the culture shock for me coming into a startup was pretty notable. What did you do before you came to Microsoft? Is the tech business culture something that you were immersed in before starting your job, or was it new to you?
Another question I have - does the impostor syndrome ever really go away? :)
Thanks again for your time! This is awesome :D
Hi Anna!
I was actually in college! I graduated and got a job at Microsoft. I had some idea about the tech culture, I had two internships previously at Intel, and my dad worked at Microsoft over 20 years ago (no nepotism). I do think that Microsoft made it easy and was very welcoming, thus making the shock of culture change easier.
Impostor Syndrome never goes away! I wish! Especially with a Liberal Arts degree, it always creeps up. Some days are better than others, but I think knowing that it is okay to be an impostor, keeps me going. What I mean by that is, I bring a perspective that none of my teammates have, and that is why I am here. I am technically able, but I also have a different view.
Hey Jag!
My college allowed me to make my own major, basically what I had to do was:
1) Write up a long paper about why my major was important and why one major would not fulfill what I wanted to learn
2) Show research of other colleges with HCI programs and then show how I could supplement it
3) Find my courses for the rest of the three years of college and list why each one would apply to my major.
4) Find a professor in each department to be an advisor
Then after all of that, I submitted it and it had to be reviewed by some people. It was great, and definitely not something for everyone.
When & how did you realize that's what you wanted to do?
They wouldn't let me major in Cognitive Science and double in Computer Science, so I proved them wrong. :)
But to be honest, I still don't know what I want to do. I just do things that I think are interesting and sound exciting to me.
When did you come up with "Human Computer Interaction"? Was it heading into university or during? Were you already sort of on that path before making it explicit or was this a path you envisioned ahead of time?
It was while I was at my college. I wanted to study Cognitive Science, but to study that, I had to create an interdisciplinary major. I decided to take a CS class my freshman year because I thought about a double major. I found out that you could not double major with an interdisciplinary, so I had to come up with a way to combine everything.
At first I thought I was going to do Artificial Intelligence as my major, but I couldn't find enough courses, so I went with HCI.
What does that "Human Computer Interaction" comprise of? Who is chiefly in charge of thinking about these sorts of concerns in an engineering team?
I like to think that Human Computer Interaction is taking into account the fact that our products are being used by other people. I feel that it is the coding of a great user experience that is inclusive.
I wish that someone was in charge of this on an engineering team. I think it usually falls to a Project Manager. I wish that more engineers thought about it, but it doesn't always happen.
I recall reading a pretty interesting anecdote about how Google's project at Stanford, which arguably was one of the most important engineering projects in the history the world, was kind of scoffed at because it was "soft computing", e.g. the part where the human interacts with the machine. It seems like their peers thought that anything that the humans touched with was for non-hardcore engineers to work on.
I think the opinion has shifted away from this extreme a bit. Anyway, do you have any thoughts on this anecdote or have you experienced this sort of thing?
It's funny you say this. I looked at going to a big tech school, and Computer Science was their "softest" major.
I think some companies are working on making more inclusive and diverse work forces which helps a lot. When an engineer makes a product they make it so that it works for them (left or right handed, etc.). Having a more diverse workplace gives more eyes on a product from different backgrounds.
Hey Julie, do you find that creating your own major helped you navigate through tech and the tech industry more easily than if you had followed a more traditional engineering or liberal arts degree?
Hey Andy!
I think creating my own major has made me resilient and makes me try unique stuff. I like to think that I have forged my own path here at Microsoft, and that making my own major helped me to realize that I don't need to take what is given to me as the only answer.
what would be your advice to other liberal arts grads who want to follow your path?
Know that a lot of companies will reject you, and that is on them.
Network your ass off, because connections make finding jobs a lot easier.
Always ask questions.
This is a great advice. Thank you!
Absolutely. The hardest part is just staying positive through it all. Just know that there are people out there who are willing to take a chance on you.
What sort of take-aways from each rotational experience influenced your ultimate decisions on your career path?
My first rotation was in IT and was very technical. I enjoyed the work, but I realized security was not for me. My second rotation was completely nontechnical. I thought trying both sides would help me. Also, each role I had help me expand my network and find things that I was interested in. I found that from the two, although the nontechnical role was really cool, I missed coding. The second role also showed me that I had an area of interest, I just needed to find the technical side to it.
I am a networking fiend, so any chance I get to do that is a win for me.
Hi Julie! Thanks for answering questions with us today! I also have a liberal arts degree and am wondering since you made your own major, what are some ways that you've explained to companies, perhaps at an interview, the benefit of having a liberal arts degree and how that sets you apart?
Hi!
This is one of my favorite things to talk about.
I believe that my education gives me an openness to learn, and more experiences. I actually wrote about this....
Here is the quote from the article: (medium.com/@jhubs/the-other-divers...)
"I am a technical individual with a foundation in the liberal arts and I am proud of that. To build successful products, you need diverse teams, but if your entire team is made up of graduates from X’s computer science program, how diverse is your team actually? They all went through the same classes, and were taught to think the same when it comes to solving problems. Is that really a diverse team?"