I have been a software developer for four years now. I have worked across two countries, two industries, and several teams. I have had good experiences and uncomfortable ones. I have learned things the hard way that I wish someone had told me before I started.
This is not a post about how difficult it is to be a woman in tech. It is a post about what I actually wish I had known. Some of it is practical. Some of it is about mindset. All of it is true.
You will have to prove yourself more than once
Not just when you join a new company. Not just when you join a new team. Repeatedly, in small ways, in the same rooms with the same people. This surprised me. I thought once I had demonstrated what I could do, that would be it.
It is not it. You keep demonstrating. And eventually you realise that the solution is not to prove yourself harder. It is to stop needing the validation in order to do good work. That shift is genuinely freeing, even if it takes time to get there.
Your instincts about the code are probably right
Early in my career I would second guess myself constantly. I would notice something that felt wrong in a design or a piece of code, wonder if I was missing something, and stay quiet. Then someone else would raise the same concern and it would turn out I had been right.
This happened enough times that I started paying attention. My instincts were not wrong. I was just not trusting them.
Now when something feels off I say so. I frame it as a question if I am not certain. But I say it. The number of times that has turned out to be useful versus the number of times I have been wrong is not even close.
The room being uncomfortable does not mean you are in the wrong room
I spent a lot of time early in my career interpreting discomfort as a signal that I did not belong somewhere. A meeting where I was the only woman. A technical discussion where I felt out of my depth. A networking event where I did not know anyone.
The discomfort was real. But it was not evidence of anything except that I was somewhere new and unfamiliar. Those are almost always the rooms worth being in.
Find your people early
I found communities of other women in tech later than I should have. When I finally did, through GirlCode and Reed Women in Technology, I realised how much energy I had been spending that I did not need to spend. Energy on wondering if my experience was normal. Energy on navigating things alone that other people had already figured out.
Having a community does not solve the structural problems. But it does mean you are not solving them alone. That matters more than I expected.
You do not have to be the most technical person in the room
I used to think that the way to be taken seriously was to know more than everyone else. To have the answer before anyone asked the question. To never be caught not knowing something.
That is exhausting and also not how good engineering works. Good engineering is collaborative. The best engineers I have worked with are the ones who ask clear questions, listen carefully, and change their minds when they get better information. None of that requires knowing everything.
Share your work
I kept quiet about things I was building and learning for longer than I should have. I thought I needed to be more experienced before I had anything worth sharing. I thought sharing would look like showing off.
It does not. Sharing what you are learning is how you connect with other people who are learning the same things. It is how you find out you are not alone in the problems you are solving. It is also, honestly, how you get better at what you do, because articulating something forces you to actually understand it.
I started writing and open sourcing projects this year and I wish I had started earlier.
The career is long
This sounds obvious but I did not really believe it early on. I was in a hurry. I wanted to be further along than I was. I compared myself to people at different stages and felt behind.
Four years in, I can see how much has changed. Not just in what I know but in how I think. The engineers I respect most did not get there quickly. They got there consistently. Showing up, learning, building things, making mistakes, doing it again.
You have more time than you think. Use it to build things properly rather than fast.
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