Aminat Amoo - Data Engineer

In this podcast the students are going to introduce you to Aminat Amoo who is a Cloud Infrastructure Engineer at a start up called Permutive. Aminat got into tech by joining a bootcamp for women with Code First Girls. She works with The Cloud, providing a good platform for the rest of the engineers at her company.
 
Aminat recommends...
Finding out more about Computer Science by watching the Stanford Lectures on YouTube
Checking out social enterprise Stemettes who inspire and support young women and young non-binary people into STEM
Following @data_barbs on Twitter, in particular this tweet which lists real salaries
Checking out nano-degree opportunities at Code First Girls
Listening to the Techish Podcast and the This Week in Tech (TWiT) podcasts

If you know a group of students who would like to interview female role models, please get in touch by emailing podcast@untappedinnovation.com

Likewise, if you know anyone who would be a great role model, let us know by emailing podcast@untappedinnovation.com

Follow us on Instagram @STEMUntapped
Connect with us on LinkedIn @STEMUntappedCIC
Check out our website

Transcript

Intro 00:00

Hello, and welcome to the Stem Untapped Podcast series. We're delighted that you could join us. Research from Microsoft reveals that having a role model was one of the most effective ways to prevent girls falling out of love with STEM subjects. As all partners at Untapped are female scientists, and many of our clients and associates are female scientists, we felt that we had a unique opportunity to map students with a variety of role models of their choice. This way, students can ask the questions that are most important to them, allowing them to gain access into a diverse array of different STEM careers.   In this podcast, the students are going to introduce you to Aminat. she's a Cloud Infrastructure Engineer at a startup called Permutive. Aminat got into tech by joining a boot camp for women with Code First Girls. She works with the Cloud, providing a good platform for the rest of the engineers at her company.

Student Interviewers 00:58

Hello, I'm interested in having a career in physics. But I'm also really interested in like, computer like data and stuff. I don't take it at school. But I'm, I would like to try outside of school. And I want to see what kind of career it would be. Even though I don't necessarily want to do that, in the future, I'd really like to study it outside of school.

Student Interviewers

Hello, I choose the Data Engineering because I want to do Data Engineering in the future. And I'm interested in both maths and science. Also, I don't do Computer Science, but I'm interested in with Computer Science as well. And I love to do coding as something. And then I just want to learn, you know, new things from the Data Engineer. So I chose you.

Aminat Amoo 01:42

So my name is Aminat Amoo, and I'm a Cloud Infrastructure Engineer at Permutive, which is a startup. And we handle a lot of data. So I'm really happy that you guys are interested in data, it's pretty much like it's a future currency. So it's really something cool to be interested in, and will probably influence your lives moving forward, whether you pursue it or you don't. And essentially, I got into tech, it wasn't the most traditional way. So I didn't actually do Computer Science when I went to university, I studied Chemistry. And by my fourth year, I decided to pivot into Tech. So I met someone else who had gone to the same university as me, and she had done a STEM degree. And she ended up being a Software Engineer at a bank. So that was the first time that I realised that this was a career path that was viable for me. And so I went to a lot of tech networking events and tried to learn a lot more about what a career in tech looked like. And from there, I stumbled across an opportunity to join a boot camp that was targeting and essentially marketed to women, and joined 30 lovely women on a boot camp with BT learning how to code. And that ended up getting me into my first role as a Software Engineer at BT. And within that role, I did a plethora of different things. But that also included Data Engineering, so I can give you a little bit of insight on that. And then I eventually after just under two years came into my role at Permutive, which I've been at for the past year now. So I work a lot more with things in the Cloud, and basically providing a good platform for the rest of the engineers at my company to build really cool stuff on top of. So that's a good overview of what I'm doing.

Student Interviewers 03:29

Firstly, I just want to ask what exactly Data Engineering means? And then what do you do in your job?

Aminat Amoo 03:36

Yeah, so Data Engineering, in the context of what I was doing at BT was essentially, the main tasks that I was assigned to doing was building a data pipeline for my company. So we had a lot of data on these, like really big computers that we call servers. And at BT, we were basically responsible for authenticating and accounting network requests. So whenever you needed to connect to the internet, we basically needed to check that you had the correct credentials, or you were using the correct service for you to go on to the internet and do all the fun things that you want to do on the internet. And with that, it produced a lot of data. So all of that data that we were producing on this server, we wanted to make sure that we were storing it somewhere. So I was responsible for building that pipeline to move it from those servers into a Cloud of sorts. So it was a Hadoop Cluster. So we had our own servers, so different servers completely. And we were just responsible for moving it from one set of servers to another set of servers. And part of that can be that you need to clean the data. So sometimes when you get raw data, you don't need all of the bits and bobs. There's only like maybe quintessential bits that you need to get meaningful information from that data. So that was part of the role. And in Data Engineering I think in general, that would be part of your role, making sure that you're only extracting like the more important and meaningful information that can then be used to extract like business relevant or information that your company can actually use to provide a better service. But yeah, that was my main role as a Data Engineer at BT. And I'd say in general, it would be more transportation, creating these pipelines, moving data, and then cleaning that data so that Data Analysts for example, or Machine Learning Engineers can utilise that cleansed and transfered data to get meaningful insights.

Student Interviewers 05:33

So when you're like doing this job, did you design anything like any codes or anything like that.

Aminat Amoo 05:39

So I was involved in somewhat designing the architecture, so the actual pipeline, so deciding what tools we were going to use to get it from one place to another place. But I wasn't doing this all by myself, the really cool thing with working in tech, I think there's a stigma or like a myth about you just being by yourself and just coding away. That's not the case, you tend to work in teams. And different people in your team might have specialised roles. So at BT, we had like a designer or an architect that would specify plans for what the architecture or the platform would need to look like. And then me as the engineer, I'm responsible for like implementing those plans and creating what they've basically thought up but actually bringing it into life. So yes, I can be involved, bring in my own input, like my own opinion, to be like, Oh, maybe we can't use this because of these restrictions. But in general, you'll probably have someone that's like specialised in actually architecting what you are required. And then like, if you can, if you have input, you'll be able to provide input as well. And in that role, I did code. So as part of that there was different software tools that I used. Some of the tools that I was using was Kafka, and something called Flume. And Kafka, you can kind of think of it as like a buffer. So somewhere, you can keep data for a period of time. And then you'd have different consumers. So different downstream applications that can read that data. And then FLume transferred a piece of data from one place to another. So that was the agent that was transferring the data from our servers into a Kafka. And then from our Kafka, we went to another server, which we were using Hadoop at the time. Those pieces of software included coding because we had to configure them. So we had to tell it, oh, we want you to go here. We want you to use this protocol, we want you to do this. So that would involve some coding. And even in my role now, I am also still coding. So yes, I'm in a coding role. 

Student Interviewers 07:41

Why did you choose Data Engineering? 

Aminat Amoo 07:43

In my role at BT, I actually, it wasn't more a choice. It was a project that my team required at the time. And I was quite enthused about it. Because prior to joining BT, I also wanted to be quite involved in data. Like I was mentioning before, data has kind of become the new currency. It's the new it thing, the thing that everyone talks about. And so I wanted to be involved in any of the data that we were doing within that team. So that was the push for me to go into Data Engineering. I was also at the time, interested in AI machine learning because they seem super cool. Like I'm a bit of a sci fi fan. And this science fiction and if you read all that, the idea of like having AI or like intelligent beings really excited me so I was so all in for being part of actually producing that outcome. And that was probably my main drive for Data Engineering, I, I really enjoyed maths as well. And a lot of statistics can be involved with machine learning, and AI. But those were probably my main drivers. But the main reason I got into Data Engineering was because that was the data project within my team. So it felt like a gateway. So if I, if I could start to understand data and start cleaning it and transfer it, maybe I can move more into Data Science, Machine Learning, etc.

Student Interviewers 09:03

What did you study for A Level or GCSE or even University? And how arduous was it? Did it help you with your Data Engineering career? Is there anything you would change if you could go back in time and change your options? 

Aminat Amoo 09:17

I know I was doing Maths, English, Sociology. Yeah, I probably can't remember my GCSEs. But my A Levels… I was doing Economics, Chemistry, Maths, and Additional Maths. And I did an AS in biology, and then at university I did Chemistry and… Was it useful? I would say the transferable skills are my problem, problem solving. So whilst coding, there's a lot of troubleshooting and problem solving that you have to go through. And I think I acquired those skills from just studying STEM subjects. I would actually say if I went back, what would I change? I think I would have probably wanted to do Computer Science. In my role, I've still been quite successful in what I do, like I've been able to contribute to my teams and understand things from quite a high level to allow me or facilitate me contributing to my teams. But there are some theoretical or lower level pieces of information that I felt like I haven't quite grasped yet, because I didn't do Computer Science. So Computer Science can be a lot more theoretical, and a lot more lower level. And some of, I feel like some of my knowledge gaps are attributed to the fact that I haven't done that studying. But it's not a requirement for you to go to university to do that, you can still find that information online, there's loads of resources, there's loads of actual university lectures on YouTube, for example, where you can go and get that information. I think Stanford have a really good selection of lectures as well for that. But it would have been quite useful. And the other thing is, what tends to happen, maybe if you do Computer Science degree, you can do like a year in industry. So you can get that experience quite early on, you can get it in your third year, instead of after you leave university. So it probably just helps in terms of just giving you a bit more of an edge.

Student Interviewers 11:10

How many years did you studied for the Data Engineering?

Aminat Amoo 11:14

I didn't stay for Data Engineering. But if you mean in terms of studying for like my role in tech, or like, how long was I in my boot camp, I was in my boot camp for four months. And then after those four months, I went into my role in BT. And honestly, you don't stop learning when you're in tech. So I would even say that it's been two years and four months of learning. And it will continue to be ongoing because tech moves really quickly. Like it grows very fast. When you think about it. When I was in school, we had like Motorolas and flip phones. And now we have these cool iPhones and Android phones that are really, really smart, really sophisticated pieces of technology. And that's over the span of what maybe 10 years. So imagine what will happen in the next decade. And so with that means new software that I'm going to probably have to learn because there's going to be things that I'm doing now that might be automated. And then I'm going to have to be programming the thing that's doing the automating so you're continuously learning in tech, but formal education in tech, I'd say was four months of the bootcamp that I did before I joined BT.

Student Interviewers 12:26

How did you deal with lower grades if you ever got lower than expected or just in your bootcamp, if you ever did worse than you thought you might have? How did you deal with that?

Aminat Amoo 12:36

I definitely got lower grades. I did a year abroad in America and there was an Organic Chemistry class there that was really, really hard. I really struggled. But what I decided to do is to flip it and not see it as a negative. Instead, I would see as an opportunity to grow. So when I was getting things wrong, it was an opportunity for me to go and research that thing and learn it really well. So I found the areas that I failed in I ended up learning better than the areas I kind of was already doing well in because I spent a lot more time and invested a lot more energy in trying to understand them better. So I always see failure as like an opportunity to grow,

Student Interviewers 13:13

Actually we are in Year 11 now, so we are going to go college next year. So I'm wondering how was college life for you? And then what did you do in college?

Aminat Amoo 13:23

For me, I stayed in my sixth form. So it wasn't too much of a transition because I was in the same environment. I think the main jump is probably just the level of the work. To be fair, my first year, so AS is kind of a continuation of what you were doing in year 11 with some more extension. So I think they ease you quite well into your AS levels your first year in college. And again, I was in sixth form. So I felt like the big people in school. And it was really nice to get some kind of some independence as well, you start to see what life will be like, before you go to university, I didn't have to wear a uniform. So we had to wear like business etiquette or business clothes, which was really nice to see how everyone would look once they grow up and go work in the city or, or something like that. And for my friends that moved to other schools, it was like another opportunity to meet new people as well like expand your network and get exposure to like just different ideas. So I think college is always was quite nice. It's a nice like in between before you go off to university.

Student Interviewers 14:33

Did you do any work experience during A Levels or during studying at university? And if so, did you enjoy it? And how do you become to doing that particular experience?

Aminat Amoo 14:46

Yeah, so I actually didn't do that much work experience. So for me, whilst I was in school , I wasn't like you two who have like got your mindset on like really cool areas. I actually had no clue what I wanted to do. So it took me a really long time to figure out what area I wanted to go into. The only work experience I had was with school I worked for like a week in a Savers. And then in general, I just had side jobs. So I had a role where I was working at Millwall Football Club as a ticket officer, so just helping sell tickets. And then once I was at university, because it can be a little bit expensive, just have extra money on the side, I worked in a hotel in London, just as banqueting staff. So I never had like any relevant work experience associated to the work that I do. But I know that a lot of my friends who ended up going into different industries, when they joined university there tends to be like a career fair. And there tend to be organisations that can help you get that work experience. For example, if you wanted to go into finance, there's things called Spring weeks, and then those things can lead into internships. So what I would advise is when you get to university, I would advise you go to these career fairs. And you find out really early on what you can do in terms of like early career opportunities at different organisations. So you go around the stands and ask them like, I'm in first year, but I would really like to get involved in this. Also, if you want to get involved in Data Engineering, ask them like, Do you have any taster days, so I can come in to your company, and find out what that would look like? So most companies would do some form of a test today. So I would 100% suggest that because it shows a really good initiative and shows like you have a clear interest in in the area that you want to go into. The other thing is, again, the internet is super cool. There's all these organisations online. So like, one of the ways that I got the opportunity for BT was I followed a lot of organisations on my social media. So I use social media a lot. And I was like, why don't I make it productive. So I followed a lot of companies that I thought would be really cool. And organisations that I thought would help me get into tech. And through them, they will always market different opportunities and ways that you can get into tech, I believe there's an organisation called The STEMettes that helps women or girls who are studying STEM subjects, or help women in general, go into STEM, and they always have like different opportunities and different talks. So I would highly suggest doing those things.

Student Interviewers 17:21

In the future what do you want to do with your career? 

Aminat Amoo 17:27

Yeah so I always think in like one to two year blocks, because the job that I might really want or be really passionate about might not even exist yet. So like my future goal currently now is, I'm a Cloud Infrastructure Engineer in my company, but I'd like to become a Senior Cloud Infrastructure Engineer. And that means just taking on more responsibility, chipping in. So you know, when I mentioned designing architecture, I would be a lot more involved in that. I would have to provide more of a nuanced explanation or justification for using certain things. And I would be in a position where I can shape what my team does a bit more. And also, most importantly to me, it is mentoring other engineers that might join my team as well. Because I, in my first role, I had a really great mentor and people that I could work with, that really helped me learn how to code and contribute to my team. So I want to be able to provide that moving forward, like paying it forward in a way. So my future goal right now is to be a Senior Cloud Infrastructure Engineer at Permutive.

Student Interviewers 18:29

So has COVID affected your work at all? Did you have to go into an office? Or how did it work?

Aminat Amoo 18:35

Yeah, so I was at BT, when COVID first occurred. Prior to that it was in person. So I had to move to Ipswich. And I was working in the office with my team, which was quite useful. Because for someone who was learning on the job pairing with people and like people being around, I could just tap someone's shoulder and ask them, Oh, I've got this bug, can you help me? That was really useful. And then once COVID came around, everything went to being remote, which we actually fared quite well, when it occurred. So initially, everyone was like, Oh, it'll just be a week. And then it was like, oh, we'll be there next month in the office. And then, like two years later, it was still working from home. So it was actually quite interesting. Working from home with BT, it wasn't something that had been done before. But we were able to still keep those communication avenues open. So we were using Teams to communicate, and we jumped on each other's calls when we wanted to pair with someone. Pairing is essentially when there's one engineer and they’re like typing (driving is the terminology that we use). And then the other engineer would just describe what they need to do. And the other engineer tends to be more senior or have more experience. But in that way, the engineer who's driving is actually doing stuffs instead of things being told to them and then you're like, oh, wait, I forgot everything you told me but now I need to do this task. So that was what I was doing online. And then with Permutive, when I joined Permutive, it was a remote first company. So it alreadyhad a culture that involved working remotely. And we have a really active Slack. So there's constantly noise. And I've never felt isolated or like I'm not part of a bigger whole. But being remote first doesn't mean we always have to work online. So now the pandemic is basically winding down, we have the option to go into the office. So if you want to, you don't have to, you can be completely remote, but if you want to do, you can go into the office, and then be around everyone else. So that can be really useful when we have big planning meetings, it can be more useful to do that in person rather than remote. But I really enjoy the flexibility of that. So like I like being at home. But also sometimes it's nice to be around people.

Student Interviewers 20:47

Which subjects are related to your job?

Aminat Amoo 20:49

Biggest subject would be the Cloud, it says it in the name. So the Cloud, I use TCP. And if you think of the Cloud, it's basically like Google, Amazon and Microsoft have a lot of infrastructure, they have a load of data centres, which are basically places that host massive servers, and they have a lot of that. And it can be quite expensive for a company to come in and try and replicate that infrastructure. So that they're able to provide the same availability, consistency, that the likes of Google, Amazon and Microsoft are. So what they've said is, well, we've already got this infrastructure in place, this is probably more than we actually need for ourselves, we're gonna sell this as a service to your company. So you can come and use the same infrastructure. And we have these platforms. So we have these UIs. And you can literally spin up your own servers, but they'll be virtual servers. So you don't actually need the physical hardware, you will just have the virtual version of that hardware. And that's pretty much what the Cloud is, it sounds really fancy and philosophical, but it's literally just Google, Amazon and Azure saying, Hey, we've got this infrastructure, you can use it… for a price, but you can use it. And I basically work with all of the resources in there. So when you say subjects, the Cloud, I would say is one of the subjects that I use every day. The other thing, I wouldn't say I use maths directly, but I think you kind of use maths in everything you kind of do. So indirectly I use maths to an extent, I use Software Engineering. So I'm coding everyday, like I mentioned before, so something that I use to help build stuff in the Cloud. So in the Cloud, you have the servers, but then the Cloud also has other resources. So for example, if you wanted to build something that's kind of similar to Kafka, which is called a Pub Sub, for example in TCP. Again, it's somewhere where you can store data for a period of time, and then other things can read off of it. If I wanted to create something that's called a topic, which is what you put the data in, the software that I use is called TerraForm. And that basically allows me to write things as code that will eventually materialise as infrastructure in the Cloud. So Coding and Software Engineering, still a part of what I do. This is going to be more of a soft skill. So it's not a hard skill, but actual teamwork and communication is a massive, massive part of what I do. Every day, we have a thing called a stand up. And that's basically where you tell your team like what you did the day before, and what you're planning to do today. So I'm always constantly communicating with my team. And what dictates what I do in a day is basically something called a sprint. And a sprint is basically a period of time where you want to perform or complete a project of some sort. Every day, I'm updating my team about what stage this project is currently at, etc, etc.

Student Interviewers 23:43

What are your typical working hours being a Software Engineer, but also during your study time? And did that affect your social life? How did you balance your work and social life?

Aminat Amoo 23:54

When you say my study time? Do you mean even when I was at university during chemistry? Or do you mean specifically, when I was on the bootcamp learning how to code?

Student Interviewers 24:03

Both. Did the hours differ much?

Aminat Amoo 24:05

I'd say with university it's a bit different. So you would have lectures at different times in the day, so it's not like a block of time. Sometimes I would have two hour lectures in the morning, then I'd have nothing to do and then I'd have something in the afternoon then nothing to do. So it's kind of more sporadic the hours. And then also, even though you didn't have anything in your timetable to do there's always like something that you had to learn or like some piece of work that you want to study or an exam that you wanted to prep for. So I think university is a bit more consistent. It feels like you're constantly needing to study. If you're really organised, you can create your own timetable. So you can choose to like leave those gaps during the week but then on the weekends, you can do all the work that you needed to do. So it's a bit more flexible with university. With my first role at BT my hours were probably I believe it was like maybe nine to five. So I had the typical nine to five hours. The only thing is, once things went remote, and in my current role, it's quite flexible, there's more of an outlook of, as long as you do the work that's required by you the hours that you actually do them in aren’t definitive, you don't have to do a nine to five, for example. I could have spent four hours doing this piece of work, if it only took me four hours, and I there was nothing else for me to do, there was nothing else for the team to do, you likely wouldn't have to do the rest of the day. But in general, my stand ups would always be in the morning at around 930. And then from there onwards, outside of any meetings, it's flexible, in terms of how you do your work. I do work for a startup so this can be quite different. If you're in a more corporate environment, they might be a lot more structured and say you need to be here, from this time till this time, and then they might be a bit more strict in terms of the actual hours you compute. So some companies keep track of the hours that you do. And then you have to stick to those hours to make sure you're in line with your contracts. But for my current company, it's not like that, they just trust you to do the work that you say you're gonna do, which is really nice. It makes you actually feel like an adult, and your company trusts you, which is always a nice feeling.

Student Interviewers 26:18

I want to ask, who inspired you in your life?

Aminat Amoo 26:22

It might be cheesy, but my mom was probably like the biggest role model to me. So like my mom came from Nigeria, and she came and she had like four kids. And she sacrificed everything, basically, to make sure that they were in a position to have the opportunities that I've had in terms of going to university and joining a boot camp and, and getting into tech. So like a big drive for me, a big part of my motivation is like just being in a position where I can help my mom and like, let her relax and go back and be sitting on a beach and just really relaxed and not have to worry about anyone else. That's a big motivation for me. Another role model is someone that I worked with at BT, my first role, it was a Software Engineer, and she was a woman and a woman in tech. So when I joined BT, and I walked into the office, it was just men. All I could see was men, there was barely any women. And then I could see why they created a boot camp to get more women into the company because there were barely any. But she was one of the few women that was working at BT. And she was just killing it. She was just great at her role. And I was at a point where I was like, I want to be that I want to be amazing at what I do, I want to be a really good Software Engineer. And she really took the time to pair with me and teach me things as we were doing projects. And I really appreciate that, which is why eventually I want to be a Senior Engineer and help do the same for others. But those are two personal ones. I don't think I have any, like public figures that I would say are role models. It's just been the people that have been in my life that have really helped inspire me to do the best that I can.

Student Interviewers 27:54

Are there any like moral implications involved with being a Data Engineer?

Aminat Amoo 28:00

The main one that I can think of in any role associated with data is one where someone's data is being misused, or that they're not aware of the way that their data is being used. I think GDPR… a big reason why GDPR has come in. So like it's data protection, essentially, to ensure that our data isn't being misused isn't stored in random places companies actually know what data is available on you. Like that was brought in after like there was a big scandal with Cambridge Analytica and Facebook. I don't know if you guys saw that. So I think in general, in the world of data, it's the misuse of personal data and ensuring that you keep your company to account and ensuring that they are following the best practices when it comes to personal and user data. So for example, at my company right now, we're going for a specific kind of certification, which is called SOC 2 certification. And it's basically essentially a way of telling other companies that we work with, hey, look, we are great with data, we look after the data or we're following the practices that regulators say that we should be following. And this is like our little badge to show that we're doing that. So I think it's important that if you want to join a data company, that they have something like that, some kind of regulatory or a certificate that shows that they're compliant when it comes to data practices.

Student Interviewers 29:27

As I said before, I want to be a Data Engineer. I'm just wondering, how much do you earn in a year? 

Aminat Amoo 29:33

I think these are good questions to ask. If you want to get a well paid job you can and just make sure that you do research the salaries in the areas that you're going into. So then Data Engineering, I think in the first few years, you should, depending on what kind of company you're joining, you could be earning again between maybe £30k to £40k when you just start out. But as you move, move on off and go into more of a mid-level role, you should be expecting maybe £40k+, £40k to £60k, if not more. It more depends on your projects. And if you're able to describe and explain to the people that are hiring you your thought process and you're able to translate that, then world's your oyster, honestly,

Student Interviewers 30:19

In your workplaces, or in your college in your university, how did you feel about being a woman in that?

Aminat Amoo 30:26

Yeah, I think sometimes that can be a feeling of imposter syndrome when you're a minority in a room. So even when I was doing chemistry, loads of men or boys end up doing a STEM degree, so physics, chemistry, they tend to be quite male dominated fields. So you do sometimes end up being in the minority. And when you don't see people like you, you sometimes start to question like, should I be here? So I think I definitely had some impostor syndrome. But then again, having role models around and seeing people that were like me, and seeing that they were succeeding was like a big push me to say, well, I can 100% do this. And no consensus, or no prejudice is gonna stop me from doing it, if anything is started to push me and become a motivator. So like, if I was going to be discounted because of my sex, or my race, or the background I came from, because I was working class, if I was going to be discounted for those things, it gave me a drive to be like, Well, I'm ready to prove you wrong. And, and so that's like, again, I like to flip things. So even though internally, sometimes I had a bit of impostor syndrome, I wanted to flip it and see as an, again, an opportunity to prove that I am good at what I do, and I deserve to be here. The only thing I would say is don't shouder the representation on yourselves. Don't take that on, you don't represent every woman, I'm not going to represent every black woman that you've ever met. We are all very unique. We're not a monolith. So I, I also had to keep that in mind, like I am my own person, I can't represent every black woman there is on this earth. And it's not fair for that responsibility to be pushed onto me. So once I changed my mindset about these things, I think that helped a lot. And also just being vocal. Don't be scared if you feel like you're being discriminated against. Or if you feel like you have impostor syndrome, you have line managers. So I have a manager, someone who I can talk to you about these things.Don't internalise them and allow them to eat away at you. Sometimes speaking, your thoughts can sometimes make you realise actually, that that thought doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense that I think I don't belong here. I'm good at what I do. So I do belong here. That would be my advice with those things.

Student Interviewers 32:39

Would you suggest to us who wants to be a Data Engineering in the future? Any social media accounts we can follow? Or any anything like boot camps?

Aminat Amoo 32:50

Yes. So I did mention the Code First Girls boot camp, the only reason I will mention that, again, is because they have different tracks. So they have a Software Engineering track, but they also have a Data track. So that means for my boot camp, there was loads of different women and they wanted to do different things, but we had one track. With this, it will be a lot more specialised. So you might not spend as much time on the web like we did. You might spend more time on specific subjects that are associated to Data Science or Data Engineering, which I think would be really useful. Unless if you wanted to do bootcamp. Podcasts, it's not specific to Data Engineering, but a good podcast just to get a good idea of what's happening in tech for me, I would listen to Tech-ish, which was quite interesting. It wasn't just tech in terms of like, very low level, there was also the business aspects of tech. And if you wanted to start your own business in tech, that was a really cool podcast to listen to. And they would cover like, general affairs, like things that have happened recently, which I found quite useful. And then there was another podcast, which is called TWIT, so This Week In Tech. Again, it was quite useful just to get an understanding of what's going on in tech. So they cover a range of things. It could be like Google, and they were recently trying to bring in a product or a service called FloC. And they were just analysing what that looked like and explaining what it is. So I found that useful for keeping up with recent events in tech. 

Yeah, a really, really big thing for me has been social media and following different tech companies and going to networking events, like that's how I learned a lot about what my area in tech or what I do looks like. So I highly recommend that. And the other thing is, if you want to understand, because obviously I'm a Cloud Infrastructure Engineer, so I can only give you one point of view, but the way I found out about different areas was again, YouTube was really cool. They have loads of different people who do “a day in my life” as a Software Engineer or “a day in my life” as a Data Engineer. I think those videos can be really interesting and giving you like an idea of what you would do day to day. And then most of these people on YouTube will have like a video explaining how did I get into this? The pros and cons of being in this area in tech. I recommend watching them they can be really, really useful.

Outro 35:15

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