Womenintech Part 1: Becoming An IT Employee

My name is Miriam Grainer, I’m 24 years old and I live in Graz. I’m an information management student at FH Joanneum and started working for the company Infralovers. This is the 1st blog post of the blog post series ‘Women in IT’. The next posts are about my daily life in the field of IT and what I’m working on.

And you believe you can do that?

A month ago I was looking for an IT job to improve my skills and to learn something new besides my education at university. When I finally found one, I was very enthusiastic about it. I told a study colleague that I have found a job in IT, but he looked just puzzled and said with a very serious voice: “And you believe you can do that?!”.

At this moment, I was speechless. For a second I had some doubts, just because a random guy said this. But then I just thought: Ok man, we’re both studying the same subject…and honestly, my grades are much better than yours. So why is it so unlikely for me to find a job? Because I’m a woman and I want to work in IT, which is mostly white men-dominated? (for further information follow the link: 1) Where do you live, in the 18th century? If I wouldn’t like to work in IT, I wouldn’t study information management. His statement triggered something in me that made me a little bit angry.

Finally, I left it at that and never told him what I really thought, because actually I never mind what other people say or think. I just go my own way and one week later I started working as an IT employee.

On the way to work, on my first day, I was a little bit nervous. Again, the words “And you believe you can do that?!” were in my head all day long. But after the first two weeks, this doubts completely swept away. If you work in a team that supports you, especially by learning something new, and helps you to get to know all the things they work on, you really hit the jackpot. In this team, I do have this feeling already.

The first week I got used to the technologies and methods they are working with, so that I had a good overview of what they are doing and what I’m going to do. In the second week, the work has reached a plateau and I felt like it was the most normal thing to work in IT. Furthermore, my boss had the idea that I should be a speaker at an event, which takes place in the future. I just thought, ok, apparently he believes in me and hopefully is not going to dismiss me in the next time.

My conclusion of the last month, after searching for a job, being insulted and walking around with many doubts, is: Never let affect you by statements of others. Go your own way and believe in what you can.

Take your chance and do what makes you happy. For me it was definitely the right choice. As you can see, I’m sitting here, working for this company and finally writing my own blog.