From Vet to Engineer: How Svetlana Joined IT

I’m a switcher, I’ve started my professional path as a veterinarian. After graduation I worked as a vet for some time, however, I realized very quickly that that was not what I actually wanted to do in life.
I had many friends and acquaintances who worked as developers, and I decided to try myself in this area.

Learning the basics of object-oriented programming, I quickly understood that development would not be my final choice. So it happened – once I tried testing, it was clear to me where I would like to realize myself.
So I started to learn. I studied on my own with the help of books and online lessons. I also had a great opportunity to ask questions to my friends who worked in IT. Learning was half of a quest; a real challenge was to find a job with no experience. Nevertheless, after some time I found myself in a Ukrainian product company, where I worked for a year. And then I joined Sigma Software as a Junior Test Engineer. Now I occupy the position of a Middle Test Engineer.

It may seem that testing is not a technical profession, but it also implies a technical background. The further you move in the profession, the more technical content it has. A test engineer needs to understand how to work with SQL databases, how to test API, know the basics of web development, etc. A test engineer needs to understand how the solution works, otherwise, it is impossible to grow in testing.

Sometimes I can feel the lack of technical education. Facing new and unknown tasks is always difficult because it can be incomprehensible what to grab onto and what to start learning. However, as time passes, you learn to cope with such situations. I continue to communicate with colleagues and learn from their experience, and often turn to online courses. During my entire work, I haven’t faced any prejudice among colleagues and customers. I work on a project where half of the team are girls.

Although, there are still noticeably fewer girls with technical education than boys. This is probably because society still believes a girl cannot succeed in STEM, and can’t cope with technical tasks. It happens that the family, or even the fear of being a black ship, forces girls to make the choice in favor of a non-technical specialty. It seems that every year this fact becomes less visible: today girls are not so inclined to forward the expectations and turn more to themselves – what do they want from life, from their future profession.

If you have a strong desire to work as a technical specialist – try it and don’t be afraid. Men and women can equally master the intricacies of any profession, including a technical one. With due diligence and interest, everything will work out.