In Her Own Words: Confidence is so essential to career success
By: Karen Kauffman, Girls Who Code Alumni and Software Engineer at Adobe
Girls Who Code was my first exposure to computer programming, and I felt a connection with the business world instantly. I participated in the 2014 Summer Immersion Program at eBay. eBay provided such a positive environment for the 20 of us to learn technical skills in a true industry atmosphere, and participating in the Summer Immersion Program made it easy to envision an exciting career working in tech.
Since graduating from the Summer Immersion Program in 2014, I have maintained a close relationship with Girls Who Code. I was invited to speak at the eBay opening ceremony for the 2015 Summer Immersion Program.
Today, I work full time for Adobe as a software engineer and enjoy using any chance I get to further causes that make the world a more equitable place. As a software engineer, it’s expected I write a lot of code — but I certainly spend a lot of time on other activities, including involvement on social responsibility teams and playing pickup sports on the Adobe basketball court.
I was hired by Adobe my first year in college, so I had the privilege of spending all three summers during my undergrad working for the same company. My roles have evolved a bit between summers, but I have felt extremely well supported by both managers and the rest of my coworkers. I also served as a mentor for a Girls Who Code student at Adobe during each of my internships.
Working in tech is really fun. The stereotypes about Silicon Valley culture are relatively accurate — I really do play foosball after lunch every day and massive TV screens will stream interesting events ranging from technical talks to live World Cup games. Young women in tech certainly are a minority, but it’s an issue that has received lots of attention and strong communities have formed as a result. I had a ton of fun in college with the people I met in our campus Women in Software club and look forward to getting involved in similar organizations here in the Bay Area.
Confidence is so essential to career success, but a lot of people, women in particular, suffer from impostor syndrome. I remember looking around the room at Cal Poly’s college of engineering welcome during our freshman orientation and thinking “I’m not smart enough to be here.” I continued to have doubts throughout my freshman year, when a lot of the required coursework was challenging and not particularly interesting. Fortunately the whole college experience got a lot more stimulating over time and I try to encourage younger students to stick with computer science even if they don’t feel captivated from day 1. It was absolutely worth it and I now have very positive recollections of the whole journey — with technical skills, it’s hard not be excited about all the opportunities that await us in the future.
Karen Kauffman is a recent graduate of Cal Poly SLO where she studied computer science and statistics. She works at Adobe as a Software Engineer in the Bay Area. She participated in the 2014 Summer Immersion Program at eBay.
