Girls in CS Panel
Computer Science Panel Notes
Kathyleen Beveridge
- Qualcomm
- Journey into hightech
- finance degree
- waited quite a while before getting MBA
- “My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humour and some style.” - Maya Angelou
- started at HP
- very burnt out (took a break)
- switched to Qualcomm after taking a 6 month break
- then swithced the Thermo Fisher Scientific (Senior Director in marketing and economics)
- communicate with others
- commercialize products
- supervise marketing operators
- 50 people globally reporting to her
- HP: Create technology that makes life better for everyone, everywhere
- Qualcomm: Inventing the tech the world loves
- Thermo Fisher Scientific: To enable our customers to make the world healthier, cleaner and safer
- all three of them involve helping the world with tech
- helping the consumers and benefiting these consumers
Kris Porter
- Titles
- Software Engineer - SRE
- DevOps
- Infrastructure
- UCLA for electrical enginnering
- first CS class second quarter at UCLA
- failed and retook (got a C in retake)
- stopped programming for 8 years, then became a programmer
- researched at the center for Embedded Networked Sensors
- Jobs
- shops that fixed mac computers
- Data centers that deal with routers
- Job at startup 2010
- email marketing automations
- DevOps
- NBC Universal
- streaming media infrastructure
- Startup at carlsbad
- Qualcomm
- Intro to DevOps
- Continuous learning in hightech
- constantly learning new things
- not bored when working
- learned:
- CCNA training
- Python
- Machine Learning and Deep Learning
Q & A:
- Agile Methodology Experience
- different companies have different definitions of agile
- Qualcomm focused on communication
- short sprints
- one month interavals
- can get certification in agile methodolgy
- Projects with Machine Learning
- learn how to use python libraries
- Keras and TensorFlow
- Data Science used for predicting coming events
- Most important skill in a tech industry
- continuous learning
- learning how to learn
- learning new things everywhere you go (regardless of stats of company) - don’t be concerned about things that you read on the news
- stay resilient
- working with computer systems is fullfilling
- take risks
- only risk is not learning - be adaptive
- dont be afraid to change
- changes in career paths - best technical people listen to requirements and translate it in terms of how the technology can meet the requirements
- communicate
- understand others
- What is the biggest challenges in the tech industry and how to overcome them?
- changes that companies go through
- adapting with the company - interview
- series of timed random tests
- solving problems
- code has to work with these tests
- How does coding help in the buisness industry
- helps with your way of thinking
- looking at a problem, disecting it, and then solving it
- critical thinking
- problem solving
- “walk me through the thinking that brought you to this conclusion”
- helps you think methodically
- Is there anything you are interested in learning or exploring right now?
- learning more about web3
Key Takeaways:
- be flexible and be willing to adapt
- changes will happen and thats okay
- coding isn’t just helpful with stem based jobs
- business and finance use it too
- always continue to learn
- take risks, the only bad risk is not learning
- try new and hard things
Reflection:
I am not personally interested in going into the computer science field but through this panel I was able to see and realize that learning computer science does not only help with high tech jobs. Computer science helps with the way that you think and how your brain analyzes problems. This can be helpful in any of the fields and in day to day life as well.