December 8, 2018
Women Techmakers Hamburg to moinworld
Hi I am Florian. I was already a part of the community when it just started out as the Women Techmakers Meetup. I think Diversity is important in any field and I like contributing to making a change. I am a software developer and have been interested in computers since I was a child of around 5 years old. The first topics that caught my interest were computer game, which then made me want to learn more about computers in general.
My way into software development
I did have a little computer science at school but all of my programming knowledge was self taught. The resources for that I found online. At first the motivation was how to make my computer faster for computer games. Later on with the rise of the internet I wanted to find out how to create web pages and I did together with friends that had the same interest.
After I finished the Realschule in northern Germany I took the chance to get a Fachabitur by taking a Berufsfachschulausbildung specialized on computer science. In regards to what I wanted to do later it turned out to be the right choice as we learned how to code professionally at that school. We also had to do a six week internship which was hard to find. After talking to most companies the phone book displayed I ended up getting an internship at a small software development company. After the internship I continued to work there as a student job. After highschool it was no question for me that I wanted to complete the path that I had already been on with a university education at the HAW. Looking for another student job I applied at eSailors IT Solutions which now is also a partner of moinworld. My tasks there started with software quality assurance, manual testing of software and test automation. The company then also wanted to build mobile products and I got the chance to be on the team of five people who build the first mobile products for the company. What I liked at my job was that I was involved in the complete product development process from ideation to defining the target group to iteratively adjusting the product to the users needs. Of course I was the one writing the code and other team members had the other roles but I was part of the discussion and the team.
In general I love my job as a software developer
because..
- I think it enables me to work on our future
- I learn something new everyday
- I can create solutions that help other people
- it is not hard to find a well paying job
- I have flexible work hours if I want
- I can work from anywhere
My reason for supporting moinworld
The only thing I don’t like is that everywhere I go I see only a small part of the world represented. In my work or in my studies I have seen women struggle with the dynamics of being the minority. I believe that the work we are doing with moinworld is important. At our events I can experience too, how it is like to be a minority with the luxury situation of course that I am not the one having to learn something scary. Currently I am part of the moinschool team where we are teaching digital product development to highschool girls. We want to spread our efforts to younger girls as they have their career in front of them. What we see is that they have everything it takes to be leaders of our digital future. All they need is empowerment and self-esteem, since our society still tells them that those future roles are not for them.
At the moment I am self employed. We are developing on the idea to build a consulting company out of moinworld for our students to gain practical experiences and also apply the knowledge that is in our team to help companies succeed.
Hope to see you soon at one of our events!
Florian Bauer