Women Who Code

I recently presented a talk on serverless to the Women Who Code community held at the Versent Sydney office. Women Who Code is an international non-profit organisation dedicated to inspiring more women to pursue a career in technology.

My talk was an intersection between two passions of mine – new technologies improving the way we work and creating an equal workplace.

One of the reasons I love (and thrive) in this industry is because of the rapid rate at which technology changes; it challenges me on a daily basis and creates new learning opportunities, and if we’re not learning, then we’re not growing.

On the other hand, being a minority in tech, I am familiar with the subtle, and not so subtle bias within this industry. I want to create a world where women aspiring to be engineers aren’t faced with hurdles that our male peers do not experience.

According to the Women in Tech: The Facts report, women represent 25% of the technology workforce today, and that number dwindles even further to 15% for women in technical roles. In fact, these numbers have been declining since 1991. Besides the social implications this has, we’re negatively affecting the products we’re building. By coming from different backgrounds, we’re ensuring that our products are more reflective of the people using those products.

Initiatives such as Women Who Code are crucial to creating a diverse and inclusive industry because they provide a safe space and support network for people who share similar experiences.

There’s power in knowing you don’t have to tackle challenges alone.

Events like these are also a great way to learn about new technologies through workshops and talks – past events have taught attendees about Blockchain, Scala, R and Android development.

After two months of organising, planning and lots of support from my colleagues, I presented my serverless talk to the Women Who Code community. It felt empowering to share my learnings amongst so many awesome women in the room, and to have it so well received.

To quote an attendee of the night, “Laura was able to break down the pros and cons of using serverless architectures into very simple terms. I left the talk excited to try out my own lambda, because her demo made it look simple and intuitive to use”.

By everyone, not just women, getting involved in communities like Women Who Code, we can create a culture shift which challenges the hurdles that are holding women in tech back.

Thank you to Versent for hosting the event and for fostering a culture that is supportive, encouraging, and not afraid to ask, ‘how can we do better?’.

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There has been a lot of buzz around serverless architecture within the past few years, yet there are many definitions as to what it really means, making it difficult to know where to get started. If you’re interested in learning more about serverless, you can find my presentation slides here.

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Laura Brandon

LinkedIn‍

Laura is a software engineer at Versent developing APIs and microservices for clients around Sydney. Currently based in Australia, she has worked across New Zealand and Singapore working in biometrics and full stack development.

Besides spending too much of her time rewatching past seasons of RuPaul’s Drag Race and perfecting her mojito recipe, she enjoys diving and encouraging increased diversity within tech.

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