My name is Victoria Sun and I am a
Software Engineer.
Homejoy is a technology company
that focuses on the home services space --
-- so anytime you need a person to enter your home
and provide any kind of service --
-- such as: a home cleaning, or a plumbing, or
handyman you can go on to our website
and you can book it on demand.
A software engineer is  anyone that touches
code
and programs things for your computer.
A Homejoy specifically, I am a
website developer.
So when you type in Homejoy.com --
everything that you see on the page -- that's
kinda what I own here.
All of our backend systems are in
Python,
and all of our front-end stuff is in HTML,
JavaScript, CSS.
At a startup our mentality really is to work fast and
fail fast. So in reality what we do is we ship
a lot of products and a lot of code
and then we come back and kill all the things that don't work.
And then try to start over again.
Right now our average appointment time is 2.6 hours.
I think we should turn on 4, but four is converting at half the rate at 2.
My dad actually did software engineering
so I was exposed to it at a really young age
and I always, like, dreamed about being
a games developer when I was in high
school and
I thought building video games was so much fun.
In high school I studied a lot of
science and a lot of math.
they don't necessarily directly to
issues of for engineering
but they help you learn different kinds
of ways to approach problems and
with
think through things
I went to MIT in Boston. I studied
electrical engineering and computer
science,
which is basically everything that goes
into how your computer works.
I've interned at companies like Microsoft and
Google.
the experiences at my previous
internships taught me a lot about
this career and just exposed me to a lot
of things
in the software universe.
In technology there's a lot of men and
it's very a male-dominated field, and it
can be very difficult because  --
like I'm very girly -- I like my
cardigans and my scarves.
When I first started working in
tech in my first
internships, I was really afraid to act
girly
in the office. I didn't know if I could make friends.  I had female mentors when
I went to Microsoft and
my female mentor she was amazing. She
really encourage me to do all the work
that I wanted to do
and kind of be the person I want to be and just
come and be weird and wacky, and like all my
weird hobbies, and wear my scarves
but still
be able to sit in a meeting that's like almost
all men
and say this is what I do -- I'm really good at
what I do and have them respect me.
Because I know how to build software --
one day I can change my mind and build games. I can build an iOS app.
I can build something for your phone. So
there are so many different kinds of
possibilities.
My advice for young women entering
technology --
is be really true yourself and let your
work speak for itself.
Because, ultimately, they cannot like
ignore you if you do amazing stuff. which
you do, we need women in this field.
It's really important to explore when
you're young
all the different kinds of interest you have and
really find that thing that you're
passionate about, and just go for it.
