Here is my advice: stop proving someone that you deserve and good enough to work in the field, you want to work in. Let other people live with their stereotypes for the rest of their lives. Don't let anyone's complexes and roles in their heads to rule your life.
Olha LinkedIn: @olha-trostianchuk
Project Manager | Technical Lead at Stakelogic
🎤 Hi, сould you introduce yourself?
Hi everyone! My name is Olha Trostianchuk, I'm a 27-years-old girl from Ukraine and probably have a ton of facts to share; will try to choose some more close to the conversation topic: IT specialist with QA, programming and management experience, 7.5 years in the industry, graduate with a degree in computer science, crazy traveler (30 countries on 3 continents), avid reader (I can read even walking).
🎤 What are you working on?
In general, in the last 4 years I'm working in the Swedish product company, supplying backend development and providing leadership on the backend team.
🎤 What work experience do you have?
Being a 0-experienced student after some programming only for university tasks, I've started at the beginning of 2013 as an Automation QA on a very interesting and ambitious project for saving traffic for Android OS. After gaining real production experience and after closing the project (after ~1.4 years), I've passed the interview to the backend developer position in an investment banking project. That experience was not as exciting as I expected and the programming part was so small compared to writing accompanying documentation and meetings, that in 6 months I've switched to full-time Android apps development. Mobile development was part of my life for 2 years, before I got an invite and passed a series of interviews to join current company.
🎤 How did you get into your field?
I cannot say, it's an easy way. I've graduated from a technical lyceum, that specializes in preparation for technical universities. After exams for math and physics*, I've gone to the National Technical University of Ukraine (Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute) and in the middle of the third year with huge support and luck, I found my first job. Here is a moment, when I replaced bet for huge luck to the huge effort. *one detail: I don't like this subject and never succeeded in it in university
🎤 What stack of knowledge is needed to become a good professional in your field?
This question is still raising controversies on many forums, social networks and is used for manipulation on any fast-get-IT courses. The point is: my field in general meaning (IT) is very wide, including embedded engineering, software development, quality assurance, data science, natural language processing, even technical management, and so on and so for. And to become a good professional in any of these fields, from my point of view, you should start from some technical degree.
🎤 Describe your first project and what is your role in it.
It was Android application used for the generation of network traffic and verifying responses; its main goal was to test another Android application, responsible for saving traffic in case of the same requests. My role was in that first application, to support it, add more test suites and analyze test failures on different OSI levels (in different network protocols).
🎤 What difficulties did you encounter along the way?
I feel I'm a lucky one. The harassment things, that are under focus for the last years, did not touch me the way they punched a lot of others.
One of the main difficulties was in my head - I never felt successful and smart enough and always was in a long run to some unachievable ideal of a technical specialist (that can learn a new language in a weekend, can design social network during lunch, and is good in the cloud technologies/data science/backend/complex DBs/*add your option* on the same high level.
After I stopped blaming myself for non-productivity and long progress (I mean, what a hell is long? It was never "long" for any of my employers and nobody said that I'm not smart enough for something), the life became easier for me. I stopped waste time and energy on non-beneficial and grueling doubts and got more time for actions supporting my goals and wishes.
🎤 It is somehow a general notion that women find it hard to deal with STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). Have you ever come across someone with the same thought process? If so, how did you deal with the situation?
I've faced rather a curiosity to my job than serious barriers, caused by numerous stereotypes in society that women's place is not here and I'm an exception. I've even got "free advises" to find a husband and to go programming for smart purses and accessories (when I said, that the investment banking project is boring from a development perspective and to start writing more code I'm switching to Android). These cases were quite often 3-4 years ago. As long as these thoughts and nonsense cannot affect my path, I never spend time breaking someone's opinion by trying to prove that they are wrong. I don't think, really versatile and well-educated people of the 21st century will segregate the professional options for you by your gender.
Here is my advice: stop proving someone that you deserve and good enough to work in the field, you want to work in. Let other people live with their stereotypes for the rest of their lives. Don't let anyone's complexes and roles in their heads to rule your life.
🎤 What do you think, how we can help support the movement of women in STEM, Business and Activism?
One of the basic actions is to raise awareness and be transparent about these fields from the inside. We cannot decide for them - but we can show the choice. We cannot learn for them - but we can point to educational materials, share our passed activities to gain experience, we already got. We can (and I think, should) even describe our failures, to show that it's not the end of the world.
🎤 What advice would you give young women interested in a career in your field?
Start from the beginning. Go to technical university - offline or online. I'm not talking about a diploma, I mean obtaining about fundamentals for this area, that will help to understand, where to move next.
You're free to decide, is it good advice or it's a too long way for you.
I believe that 1-month-long commercial programming courses are not enough (usually it's enough only for its owners, to get fast money) and nowadays it's possible to find online universities and well-formed programs with computer science basics, covering most areas, you may need on work.
🎤 What are your career aspirations?
In a few words, for today, 2020, my working aspirations include ideas to be an architect of large systems and to work on a side of the social network's algorithms. In addition, 2 continents and more than a hundred countries will not visit themself. And the pilot's license will not get itself, so I have plenty of work.
🎤 How do you balance your study, work, hobbies, and personal life?
Not always very good. Sometimes the workload is so high, that I need time to complete all urgent tasks before normalizing the schedule. However, I don't let this period to go infinite and always take vacations from time to time. When borders were open, we made 3-4 small trips abroad and 1-2 long vacations.
Now, I'm building my relax on silent periods - not opening social networks and just reading non-fiction books.
Almost every day I make short walks in the forest nearby; my neighbors walk their dogs, I walk me :)
In addition, almost always I have some handcrafting hobby just for handcrafting, without a higher purpose. The nearest time I'll make a shoe shelf.
🎤 What IT books, resources, and blogs do you read and recommend to others?
I use and recommend https://leetcode.com/ 🔗 for periodical simple programming training.
For news - https://www.linkedin.com/feed/ 🔗 - after I've subscribed on the people, whos experience is important to me; have a subscription on https://stackoverflow.com/ 🔗.
What is a really out-of-box source of knowledge - the local dev community with tons of technical discussions, which I follow, and in case of any unknown thing - I search and read. Based on this experience, I'd like to advise you to find your local communities and to keep an eye on their activities.
In general, books and some specific sources always follow my working focus.
🎤 What’s the best way to keep up to date with what you're doing?
Facebook: @olha.trostianchuk
LinkedIn: @olha-trostianchuk
English 
Ukrainian