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Sewvandi Promodya Wickramasinghe
Sewvandi Promodya Wickramasinghe

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Nevertheless, Sewvandi Coded in 2022πŸŽ™

I had an incredible chance to conduct a podcast together with Arshad Zakeriya, a DevOps Consultant and AWS Community Builder.

This was my first podcast, and I talked about Women Who Code.πŸŽ™

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Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3paKiFB
Anchor: https://bit.ly/2Z2v4qU
Apple Podcast: https://apple.co/3aM1E3d
Google Podcast: https://bit.ly/3AQcOi0

Here's a quick rundown of what was discussed in the episode. β˜•οΈ

How my life turn into the field of technology.

How did this thing begin?

  • What limitations do girls face when it comes to choosing a career in technology
  • Why does society believe that boys are more skilled of technical tasks than girls?
  • What sort of knowledge level did I have when I choose software engineering bachelors?
    • My first ambition is not to become a software engineer. [ It was to be a doctor πŸ™‚ ]
    • Basically, I'm just familiar with O/L Information Technology.
    • Because of the chaos that occurred in 2017 against private medical schools, I felt compelled to choose SE.
  • I had a lot of competition with my batch-mates because of the knowledge gap that we had.
  • University syllabus content is not enough.
  • I chose open source volunteering to expand my knowledge, satisfy my curiosity, and get involved in the development side of things.

How did open source volunteering become my favourite hobby?

  • My very first event participation was in 2018(In my first year) and it was about google crowdsource organised by SLIIT FOSS.
  • I never imagined I'd be on the board of SLIIT FOSS that day.
  • From year 2 onwards, I became a volunteer in my university's open-source communities.
  • And stepped into the local communities of Sri Lanka.
  • I have to admit that the first impression that I got from was the best impression I had.
  • I had some days where I had to lie to my parents in order to volunteer for an overnight hackathon.
  • Many days I didn't even have my parents' permission to join my volunteer events or any other extra activities / competitions. It was so heartbreaking to say that they were just concentrating on my semester grades. Usually, they don't pay much heed to my other achievements.
  • Volunteering helps me to improve my public speaking skills.
  • Volunteering makes it possible me to expand my knowledge of development.
  • Volunteering has given me the confidence to say yes to any challenge.
  • Volunteering made me to meet people in my industry who were a good fit for me.
  • Keeping up with the tech communities are more enjoyable than I thought.
  • My volunteering experiences are really paid off. It led me to multiple opportunities that I could never imagine.


I continue to code because…

  • It has a combination of all the things I like imagination, critical thinking, technology, social interaction, learning, and regular challenges.
  • I enjoy helping other girls and guiding them that there is no reason to be afraid of coding.
  • Being a girl doesn't mean that they can't get jobs from IT industry.
  • I can stay up to date on new technologies and compete in coding competitions.

I want to brag about...

  • When I decided to switch jobs, I had to do my best to make an extra effort on the coding challenge and the interview.
  • I initiated first female open source community (SLIIT Women In FOSS) at my university because I wanted to see an improvement in female contributions to development.
  • It wasn't a straightforward road to find the courage to complete all the projects because the content was getting more and more challenging.

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