A career in IT? Not only a thing for men! Tech departments are still in the hands of men in most companies – this also applies to us. It’s therefore even more important to focus on the performances of female techies and to encourage interested women to join this career path. This is why we want to look at our female colleagues of the area Tech & Product and introduce them to you:
Leslie
Product Designer
Leslie has been part of our team for 3,5 years now: When she first joined the company, she was the first product designer in her team. She is now working together with 15 other product designers, frontend and backend engineers and one (female) product manager in order to realize ideas of trends and wishes of customers for the online marketplace:
I’m creating prototypes of mutual created ideas, which we are testing on real customers in order to validate their functionality and user friendliness. After several iterations and adaptions, we migrate the new feature to the marketplace, where we test its performance with A/B-tests and predetermined metrics.
Leslie especially values the diversity of our company: The work with colleagues from all over the world with different backgrounds and cultures as well as with cross-functional teams, who are located within an agile matrix structure. She also points out that gender is totally irrelevant within our company – it’s up to the performance, the abilities and expertise of each individual – and recommends other women to just go their own path:
I can only recommend to make your own experiences and blank out possible prejudices. In the tech field work as many different characters as in other professions. I personally like working with my male colleagues, since we are treating each other very respectfully. Each of us has his or her own competences and is playing a part in the team – gender doesn’t matter here.
Kathrin
SEO manager
Kathrin is part of the team for more than 3 years now: She started her journey with us as a trainee in team SEO, which back then was located in the area online marketing. Meanwhile, she is a SEO manager and, together with her team, part of our area Tech & Product.
Her task is mainly to make the marketplace more present in search engine results through targeted website optimization and improving the user experience. Specifically, she deals with the conception of content projects, features, and the analysis and monitoring of ongoing projects in order to evaluate the effectiveness of measures and uncover further potential for improvement. Kathrin values her work with us as well:
What’s special to me is, among other things, the opportunity to try things out for myself and take on responsibility, as well as being able to work on diverse tasks and a wide variety of projects, while interacting with different people. My work always stays varied and you learn a lot. I also like the open and friendly atmosphere: people support each other, work together to find solutions and have fun.
Kathrin pities that the percentage of women in tech is still quite small, but has a lot of great advice coming from her own experiences:
Unfortunately, the tech area is still dominated by men, SEO is no exception. However, it never bothered me personally: I was the only woman in my team for quite a while, but the gender topic never came up. Of course, I would find it great and wish for more women to find their way into tech, especially to add their perspective to the area which is still minted by men. It is also important to bring together the different perspectives, ideas and approaches in order to reach the best possible outcome.
I more or less „slipped“ into tech: Originally, I gained my bachelor’s degree in German and English studies. That’s why here’s my advice: Be curious, try new things and don’t rule out the possibility of a career in tech before trying it. If you’re interested in these things, believe in your strengths and don’t let yourself get distracted.