net - UK (2020-04)

VOICES
Interview

one of two mothers and all of the maybe

20 women are white. I’ve never been in

an industry like that. It’s so shocking and

I’m reminded of the inequalities daily.

I’m optimistic though. I think it’s going

to change and we’ll see a positive trend.”

Adewusi’s automatic response was to

start solving the problem. She signed up

to a diversity group at the Guardian and

gave an internal talk on how to support

new developers. Soon her days started

filling up with non-technical work. But

Adewusi decided to focus on her job

instead. Her goals for this year include

becoming the best developer she can be,

starting to speak about technical topics

and understandably investing in her

family and personal life again.

She might be stepping back from doing

diversity work herself but Adewusi

encourages others to step up and start

welcoming people without a formal

education into the industry. As she

explains in a post on CSS-Tricks

(css-tricks.com/how-building-in-the-open-

can-change-our-industry/), mentorship is

a fantastic way to contribute to a more

diverse community. It’s another topic

she’s passionate about, as so many people

helped her on her learning journey. She

now mentors other junior developers

herself. “I feel a real sense of happiness

that the challenges I’ve gone through and

the things that I’ve learned are being put

to good use. One of my mentors said that

even if you’ve only been coding for a

month, you can start to help someone

else. That’s so true. You can help others

very quickly – there’s always going to be

someone who is one month behind you

who could benefit from your perspective.”

Adewusi also writes regular Medium

posts and makes short YouTube videos to

document her day-to-day working life

and give other new developers an insight

into her career path. Couple mentorships

with building websites in the open (for

example, by pairing and giving code

reviews or writing approachable

documentation) and anybody can make a

huge difference. For 2020, Adewusi

suggests challenging ourselves to support

at least one person from an

underrepresented group trying to get into

the engineering industry. Change can only

happen if we work on it together. It’s the

only way to ensure skilled developers like

Adewusi are no longer an exception.

Another mentor encouraged Adewusi

to start applying for jobs very early on.

And although she received a lot of

rejections (she competed with a friend on

how many they could get in one day), she

benefited from the conversations with HR

and used the technical tests she was given

to structure her learning. Still, after just

nine months of teaching herself how to

code, Adewusi was accepted on the

Guardian’s Digital Fellowship programme

as an associate software engineer and is

currently working on the Android app.

“The scheme allows you to rotate around

different teams for one year before you

join one permanently,” she explains. “I

feel extremely happy. Every day is

different, I frequently pair with my

colleagues and they let me prepare

conference talks during work hours.”

Even though Adewusi is still very new

to the industry, she’s already given talks

at events like renowned JavaScript and

web conference ffconf. “It wasn’t actually

my choice,” she laughs. “One of my

mentors forced me to attend Global

Diversity CFP Day, a fantastic initiative

taking place all over the world. There I put

together my first talk proposal – on

embracing openness in open source – and

it was accepted to Brighton Ruby. I think

there’s actually a demand for people from

underrepresented groups and also junior

developers to speak.”

Her ffconf talk on what it takes to

become a developer with little time and

money (https://netm.ag/38KNoV9) became

a call-to-action to increase diversity in

the industry. “We have to think about

recruitment in a different way,” Adewusi

urges. “How are we going to affect change

if we don’t let juniors from diverse groups

in the industry? I was really lucky because

I got into the Guardian’s programme. They

were trying to find people from

unconventional backgrounds who didn’t

have a computer science degree or hadn't

done a bootcamp. But just two out of 130

applicants got in and there are so few of

these schemes. Competition is fierce at

junior level, especially in London and in

the final round there were quite a few

PhDs and people already working as

developers. Now I’m the only black

woman in a department of 80 engineers,

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