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No Experience Necessary, Or: You Can't Succeed If You Don't Say Yes
- 13. Move to usa
Editor's Notes
- Thank you so much. My name is Perry Eising, and I’m a developer in Portland, Oregon. This is my Mum, Catherine, who was a developer like me.
- This is where my mum came from, Watford, it’s a pretty ugly working class suburb. And there’s my Mum In 1969, in a pretty ugly dress. Growing up, she didn’t receive much of an education, didn’t receive much encouragement.
- 1969 was also the year of the first moon landing (GO SPACE X!), the same year when ARPAnet, the direct forerunner to today’s internet came to be. 1969 was also the year my mom was looking for her first. real. job.
- So my mum and her best friend are sitting at the kitchen table. She’s looking through the ads: she doesn’t want to be a nurse, she doesn’t want to be a secretary. , She comes across an ad that reads:
- Computer operators wanted. No Experience Necessary. How many of you have seen an IBM 360/30? >>> SO, the ad says: Computer operators wanted. No Experience Necessary.
- My mum turns to her friend, and says, ***“What exactly *IS* a computer?” <laughter> Her friend thinks about it, looks at the ad and says, “it doesn’t matter. It says you don’t need experience.” <laughter>
- She went for it. My mum said yes. She took her first step, and was HIRED. … She became a computer operator, maintaining and servicing computers for the Sellotape Company – Britain’s version of Scotch tape.
- …maintaining and servicing computers for the Sellotape Company – Scotch tape of britain. Later she worked for Parker Pen, American Express, and then IBM. She loved it. She was really ambitious and hardworking and eventually became senior operator, then programmer, then lead.
- … then programmer, then lead. Sometimes she’d be debugging by hand into the night – It was so cool to hear her shout with excitement when she found some missing asterisk that was breaking her code. She stuck with it.
- Said yes to other challenges too – she was recruited to join her all male running team and started running half marathons just a year or so later. She inspired me to get into tech, and also to run and race.
- When my mum got sick with breast cancer, running the Race for the Cure helped me feel connected. We had a really complicated relationship, but she was always interested in talking about running, And always very supportive of my career in tech.
- We talked about how difficult it could be to succeed in such a male dominated environment, how hard you have to work to overcome obvious gender bias. But I said yes to that challenge, just like she did.
- And as I moved forward through my life, I never forgot that moment of when she said yes. I thought of it when I decided to immigrate to the states after finding a queer community here through an online forum called TechnoDyke. [*BROOK*WOOT] find me afterwards!
- I thought of it when I said yes to joining Lesbians Who Tech and coming to the summit last year on a whim. I thought of it when our LWT chapter helped me get a scholarship through Intel to one of Portland’s top code schools.
- That Java, JavaScript and Android course was their first all women/trans/genderqueer class. And I thought of it halfway through that class, when I said yes, when the school offered me a job teaching. It was more like “YES”
- These, right here, are MY current students. I now think of that moment, every DAY, when my students say yes to learning a brand new skill. Because many of them, like my mum, came with no experience. NONE.
- I’m there with them. That’s me up there. All of them. I know we need more lesbian, queer, genderqueer, trans, POC, differently abled people to say yes to working in tech. I love being with new developers, taking that first step.
- It’s about that moment in the kitchen, when your friend, or mum, or voice in your head tells you “you know what, you deserve this job.” It’s about that moment of taking a risk, of joining the race, of saying yes. My mum built an entire career, an entire life, on that one moment, that one decision.
- She would be especially proud to see the work that I’ve been doing – teaching, encouraging others to say yes to challenges. Unfortunately, she passed away two years ago and didn’t get to see how often I’ve let her bravery inspire me. And so what I am asking you to do is continue her work – I want you to know, that you shouldn’t let the things you don’t know define you. Remember that moment and say yes.
- Thank you