Careers at Trade Me
Hot Girls Code’ on thriving in a male dominated industry
Hear from two Trade Me software devs about working in the male dominated tech industry and starting a succesful podcast
Last updated: 9 October 2024
Lola & Aorthi joined the tech workforce as Full Stack Developers at Trade Me in 2020 and 2021, respectively. As most female coders can attest, working in a male dominated industry can have its challenges, so the girls found comfort and support together during regular ‘hot chocolate chats’.
During these catch ups they’d share challenges, experiences they felt were due to their gender, or just opinions as developers working in the tech industry. They found these conversations so useful that they thought: ‘Why not open these conversations up to include more lovely women?”
That’s when they started Hot Girls Code.
We had a chat to find out more about their experience running a popular podcast and as women in the tech industry.
Only 23% of software developers are female globally. What has it been like being a young woman getting qualified then finding jobs in an industry that is so dominated by men?
It can definitely feel a bit intimidating! Especially when you realise you’re the only woman in a meeting, or the only woman in a team. We’ve both had experiences of people literally not believing that we’re software developers or being told that we look like we work in marketing, not engineering. It can be a bit frustrating, but we think an important aspect for us has been growing a supportive network of mentors, role models and peers who can support us when that imposter syndrome creeps in.
What do you love about coding and working in the industry? Do you face the same challenges that females in all male dominated industries face?
Aorthi: I love the balance between logical thinking and creative problem solving. People think coding is really black and white, but there’s a lot of opportunities to be creative in how you design your technical approach and carry it out.
Lola: I think the tech industry is a great place to be because there are always new technologies coming out, and it’s cool to see these be incorporated into products. I also love working as part of a tight-knit team and knowing I have my co-workers to ask for help or have some banter with!
Hot Girls Code speaking at Victoria University’s WitCon (2023)
Both: One of the biggest challenges is feeling like you don’t know enough or aren’t smart enough. One of the main reasons we started our podcast was because we both felt like when we started our careers, we didn’t have relatable examples to learn from and we felt intimidated with how much jargon there was out there. There is a lot of it, and it can feel pretty confusing when you start off! So we started Hot Girls Code to be the people we needed back when we first started out in tech.
We think this is a challenge many women face when they’re in industries that haven’t historically welcomed them - the resources available to help you grow and upskill aren’t always built with you in mind and it lands on you to put in that extra work to utilise them despite their lack of inclusiveness.
There can also be a sense of isolation that comes along with being different from the rest of your peers and it can be a barrier to connecting with teammates or feeling like you belong. And that can have a big impact on both your performance and your enjoyment of work.
What advice do you have for women and especially young women thinking about a career in coding and other male dominated industries?
Take it one step at a time! Tech can definitely be intimidating and we’ve both had our fair share of imposter syndrome. We think the best thing you can do is face one challenge at a time - if you want to learn how to code, pick one coding language and chip away at it (even just 30 mins a day) until you feel more confident. Our podcast Hot Girls Code has loads of episodes that will help - whether you’re just getting into coding, looking for your first internship, or wanting to learn about cool tech topics like AI!
We think women often feel a stronger pressure to be perfect and we can hold ourselves back because we fear we aren’t “good enough”. But if you have a mindset that you’re there to learn and you’re not going to be perfect when you first start out, we think it can help a lot. Improvement > perfection!
Another piece of advice we often tell people is to find your allies and utilise them! You want to work at a company where you feel like there are people there that have your back and want you to succeed. This might be having a great manager, it might be having people in your team that seem like nice people who are keen to help juniors grow, it might just be having people around in the company who are keen to offer friendly advice and help - all of these things can make a big difference! It can also be totally external to the company you work for - maybe it's a meetup group or a group of women that have similar roles to you at other companies, don’t be afraid to reach out and lean on those support systems.
Hot Girls Code. Lola, left, and Aorthi, right.
What do you reckon are the best STEM professions to get into in future? What’s going to be most lucrative?
What a great question! There are lots of different areas in STEM that are going to be increasingly essential going forward. Like cybersecurity, which will only grow more important as more aspects of our lives continue to move online! There’s also so many exciting developments with AI, so that's definitely an area we are watching with vested interest.
We love using AI as a tool to help us write better code and it will be fascinating to see what opportunities arise in the future for careers related to AI. And of course, all those other fields that we haven’t even heard about yet - that’s what we love so much about tech, some of the coolest jobs haven’t even been created yet!
One of your most viral TikToks is about how the majority of the computer industry was female back in 1967 and now only 32% of people in tech are women, women represent only 28% of leadership roles and 50% of women in tech roles leave by age 35. That sucks!
It does suck! What’s often shocking to people is the high attrition rate of women in tech (which just means the high number of women who enter the tech industry, then decide to leave). A lot of people assume that the low proportion of women in tech is a pipeline problem where we aren’t getting enough women studying tech. And that’s part of the problem, but another aspect is the high number of women starting in tech and then deciding to leave.
This points to the problem being due to other issues - like company culture - as opposed to purely a pipeline problem. We hope that with Hot Girls Code we can create a supportive community where women feel encouraged to be themselves and have their experiences validated! When we work together, the challenges don’t feel so scary.
Hot Girls Code speaking at an International Women's Day Event (2024)
How do we sort that balance out and get more women into tech roles? And be honest - are women better coders?
That’s the million dollar question! And it’s a tricky one because there’s no single correct answer here that will solve the gender gap in tech. But there are lots of different things we can try! I think it’s important for companies to experiment with different approaches and share their successes with others so those same outcomes can be replicated across the tech industry. There needs to be more than individual change, it needs to be systemic.
It would be great to see more outreach in schools so that girls from a younger age are aware of the opportunities for them in tech. We’ve seen first hand the impact this kind of outreach can have. For the past two years, Hot Girls Code has spoken at an event run by Innovative Young Minds which gives high school girls the opportunity to learn about a range of career opportunities in STEM. It’s such a fantastic programme and we love the chance to connect with students who are still deciding what they want to do with their lives, so we can show them the opportunities in tech. It’s also really important for girls and women to have role models that they can look up to. So initiatives like mentoring or sponsorship programmes play a big role in supporting women in tech roles.
As to whether women are better coders or not - who can really say! However, historically women have been discouraged or even pushed out of tech, despite the fact that the very first computer programmer was a woman. When women are given equal opportunities to men and we question our unconscious biases, that’s when we see the benefits of diversity. From better products, to more efficient teams, to better financial results, studies have shown how many positive improvements diversity can bring about. Tech is a growing industry that will only continue to become a bigger and bigger part of our lives. As this happens, we have to make sure that we don't allow technology to amplify the existing biases we have in society.
Listen to Hot Girls Code on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
Follow the girls on Instagram or TikTok.
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