This June 23rd we mark the International Women in Engineering day. And this year, we wanted to celebrate it by bringing you the stories of some of the women working as engineers across Wix Engineering R&D sites around the globe.
From ways to engage more young women to pursue careers in engineering, to sharing best career advice and inspiration - Bringing the voices of our women engineers with short and insightful interviews featuring: Ziva Tubul, Viktorija Sujetaite, Viktoria Nosova, Alexandra Seriachenko, Oleksandra Kulchytska, Sapir Hamtzani and Migle Paskauske.
Ziva Tubul, Backend Engineer, TLV
How did you first get interested in technology and engineering?
Since I was little, I’ve been attracted to math and science. So in a natural way it was clear to me that I would continue in the fields of Science and Engineering in my academic studies.
After the "big trip" traveling the world after my military service I went on to study Industrial Engineering and Management (specializing in Information Systems).
What do you do at Wix?
I'm a Financial Engineer, it's a role created by the transition to the cloud world.
The role of FinOps is relatively new. Today, more and more organizations emerging into this world are realizing the need and importance of this role within the organization. FinOps bridges the gap between engineers and budget.
FinOps is basically the necessary connection between the technical departments that design the cloud solutions and deploy them without significant control (usually), the budget that needs to be maintained, and the know-how to explain to management the expenses coming from cloud consumption to make the right allocations.
How do you think we can engage more young women to pursue careers in engineering? What needs to be done?
I believe that the more women there are in the world of engineering and technology, the more women there will be entering the field in the future. Women will inspire more women. And this will help to smash the glass ceiling, more and more.
In addition, I think the education system should encourage girls to choose technological professions and encourage the development of engineering and technological toys for girls. The more that girls that are exposed to technology at a young age, the less afraid they will feel to choose technology as a career path.
What inspires you in your work?
Over the years, I have been accompanied by various people who have inspired me. As part of my development process, my inspiration also changes. And I am nourished time and time again by successful people who are a source of inspiration for me.
My manager, Dvir, is an inspiration to me. He is a leader and a pioneer in our field. The way he approaches every subject, field and problem is inspiring. I also take inspiration from the world of running. My trainer, Michal, is a powerful and professional woman who pays maximum attention to all the details, setting goals and investing all the resources to achieve these goals.
Generally, I’m surrounded by inspiring and successful people.
What’s the best advice you have received during your career?
The best advice I have received over my career is to ask questions based on data research and deep into the details.
Please share your top 3 ways to improve yourself as an engineer (what to read, what to learn, who to follow)
First thing is to always say yes to new opportunities. This positive approach creates new challenges for me.
Initiate, take responsibility and experience new challenges.
Go to meetups\conferences, Read Blogs, Subscribe to professional forums, professional newspapers, use social networks, follow key people in the industry.
What advice would you give a girl or a woman considering a career in engineering?
Look for inspiration through which you will be able to see the visa, find the place where you feel curious and there is a sense of accomplishment. Do not be afraid to try and dare. Believe in yourself, and surround yourself with the people you believe in and believe in you.
Initiate and start doing. In my case, I came to my current position following a project I initiated in my previous role. So I was actually exposed to a new world of FinOps.
Can you share a little bit of what your typical day looks like?
I’m starting the day with checking our cost alerts and daily verification, to verify there is no cost anomalies. My role is across companies and guilds, and with many different interfaces. I have to hold a lot of balls in the air, so my days are very different from each other. My tasks and projects are related to the hosting budget (everything the production runs on). There are days I deal more with new contracts both financially and technologically , days I'm busy with budgeting, and days I'm promoting my projects to improve my domain frameworks/cost-saving projects etc.
Would our engineering world be different if more women worked in it?
I think regardless of gender, each person adds color, uniqueness and diversity.
Viktorija Sujetaite, Mobile Developer, Vilnius
How did you first get interested in technology and engineering?
I have always liked Math and puzzles. But programming was never really brought up as a career choice in my school. I got interested in engineering when I was 15 years old and met students of Computer Science. They changed my perspective about programmers that was formed by pop-culture (e.g. anti-social guys sitting in the basement) and told me how interesting it actually is.
What do you do at Wix?
I’m a Mobile Developer working with React Native.
How do you think we can engage more young women to pursue careers in engineering? What needs to be done?
Introduce girls to programming in a simple, motivating way. Make career opportunities visible - it’s not only “programming” that can be done. There’s also data-science, design, visual effects programming and so many other options. It could also help for female engineers to share their stories with young women - how they started, how it's going and why it’s inspiring. Visibility is key.
What inspires you in your work?
I want to create and build products that are helpful, good-natured and enjoyable to use. It’s inspiring to think how many people across the globe are touched by something I got to be a part of. That’s why I can’t imagine myself working for some evil corporation making money from user addiction, depression or other dark things.
Also, I’m inspired by the environment of knowledgeable people and continuous improvement. It gives me that extra push keeping up with talented colleagues. And I would get bored doing the same thing every day.
What’s the best advice you have received during your career?
Don’t compare yourself with others based on the duration of experience. People are different in the way they come to understand things, how much effort they put in, or how much they want to be in a place they’re in. I myself have met people with vastly different experiences when I was holding technical interviews. Candidates with just a couple of years of experience could be an entire head above someone who’s been in the field for a dozen years.
Please share your top 3 ways to improve yourself as an engineer (what to read, what to learn, who to follow)
Book - Clean Code by Robert Cecil Martin
Youtube Channel - Fun Fun Function
Learning tool - Codecademy
What advice would you give a girl or a woman considering a career in engineering?
This advice is not “women” specific, just like the career itself is not masculine or feminine. We don’t have different brain wirings that would make engineering a different experience from which a man is having.
The fact is that it’s going to be difficult and require work - do not feel discouraged if you think you’re bad at it. Most of us had the same feeling of helplessness when you’re stuck on a simple-sounding problem. It’s the persistence to solve the problem that makes a person an engineer.
Can you share a little bit of what your typical day looks like?
I get a flat-white with oat-milk at our cafeteria and sit down to read emails and messages. Then I roughly plan my day, also reviewing if I’ve achieved everything I wanted to the day before. Also finishing up on any loose ends. This is usually followed by some meetings or calls to discuss what teammates are working on. My most productive time is after lunch - I try to limit distractions, put on noise-cancelling headphones and code.
Would our engineering world be different if more women worked in it?
In recent years, we’ve come to know that a number of women have been abused, mistreated or overlooked in the game development community. It would be helpful to disperse the “boy’s locker room” mentality in companies like so, with many more women joining.
I also think it would help achieve greater equality of compensation if male to female pay ratio in the industry was similar.
Other than that, it’s difficult for me to say, as I’ve always worked in an inclusive environment together with other women.
Viktoria Nosova, Front-End Engineer, Kyiv
How did you first get interested in technology and engineering?
Even though I come from a pretty technical family, I got into tech pretty late - around 21-22 years old. I got my first bachelor’s degree in a completely different field (linguistics) and was working abroad back then. It all started with my idea to create a blog about my life in China. I started to research how one makes a blog from a technical point of view. That’s how I first learned about HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. At the end of the day, the blog never happened. But, instead, programming and site building became my hobby. After couple of years it turned into career.
What do you do at Wix?
I’m a JavaScript Engineer at Wix Education. I mostly work with JavaScript, Velo, and Serverless.
How do you think we can engage more young women to pursue careers in engineering? What needs to be done?
As I said before, I come from a tech-experienced family. My mom was a software engineer. She was writing on Fortran, then Basic and Deplhi back in the 1990s.. My younger sister is pursuing a degree in Cybersecurity now.
I was lucky enough not to have stereotypes about women in tech because I always had role models like my mom and her female friends, who were successfully building careers in tech. So I wasn’t afraid to start a career in tech.
I feel like showing girls and young women the successfull role models of women in tech should be the main priority. A lot of organizations now have mentoriship programs where female engineers can guide young women in building their future careers in engineering, and I think this is the right direction.
What inspires you in your work?
I love to know that my work makes school tech education more fun and effective and potentially can help to grow a new generation of engineers and tech enterpreneurs.
What’s the best advice you have received during your career?
Never stop learning.
Please share your top 3 ways to improve yourself as an engineer (what to read, what to learn, who to follow)
Book: But How Do It Know? - The Basic Principles of Computers for Everyone. I’ve read this book as additional literature for my university course in Computer Architecture and loved it. Even if you’re a software engineer and not specialized in hardware, it’s helpful to have at least the basic knowledge on how computers work. This book is written mostly for non-engineers - super easy and fun to read, and explains basics of computer architecture in a way that an adolescent would understand.
Learn: Code with Mosh courses (https://codewithmosh.com/). I’m a big fan of his courses. This guy is a great teacher and explains complex things in simple words. (Check out the 3-Parts Algorithms course, it’s amazing).
Follow: here are couple of accounts of female engineers, that I follow. https://twitter.com/una - Una Kravets https://twitter.com/leaverou - Lea Verou https://twitter.com/vixentael - Anastasiia Voitova
What advice would you give a girl or a woman considering a career in engineering?
Be ready to learn for your whole life, and don’t be afraid.
Can you share a little bit how your typical day looks like?
Since I’m from Ukraine and there is a full-scale Russian invasion in my country at the moment. My typical day might look slightly different from non-Ukrainian engineers.
I wake up around 8-8:30 am (sometimes from air raids and sometimes a bit later because we had air raids all night) and have breakfast and coffee. Due to evacuation, I was working from Turkey and Poland the last 3 months. But now, I returned to my parents’ home in the south of Ukraine and work from home (good news: no commute and family around, bad news: missiles).
I usually work till around 2 pm, then have lunch and a 25min nap (try these power naps, they refresh the brain better than a cup of strong coffee). Sometimes instead of a nap, I have a workout, which works great for me too.
I’m working till 7 pm and then code for an hour or two for my university assignments or pet projects. Then I have dinner with my family and procrastinate on social media for a bit.
Since I’m moving around a lot, I don’t have one typical scenario for the weekend. One weekend it’s volunteering for the humanitarian organization in Krakow, another one - moving to another city. I also spend my free time organizing tech conferences at Google Developers Group Ukraine and getting my second bachelor’s degree in software engineering.
Would our engineering world be different if more women worked in it?
I think every industry, not only engineering, would only win from better diversity. People with different life experiences bring different points of view to the product, which makes it better and more user-friendly for different groups of people.
Alexandra Seriachenko, Front-End Engineer, Be'er Sheva
How did you first become interested in technology and engineering?
My mom told me a story - when I was almost 2 years old in 1994, I came with her to work to visit (she was on maternity leave, and yes, in the former USSR you could take 2 years). They had a computer (one of the big old ones) and she let me sit in front of it. Somehow, I clicked on some stuff on the clipboard and a game popped up!
I got my first computer when I was 12, but I wasn’t familiar with the world of coding yet.
As I went from middle school and then to high school, I found out that I enjoyed both computer science and biology lessons.
When I needed to decide which Bachelor’s degree major I preferred to do, naturally, I chose Computer Science with a specialization in Bioinformatics.
What do you do at Wix?
I started as a FED in Wix Bookings BO team and became a tech lead after a year or so. When the reorganization of Bookings happened, I started managing the BO FED team in the Catalog and Calendar group.
Now I’m one of the lucky ones moving to Wix Amsterdam. So I’m back to being a FED in the Catalog team and enjoying every second of it!
What inspires you in your work?
Quality, for both the dev side and the users’ side.
I really enjoy seeing users using the products that I’m developing and giving amazing feedback (Excellent calendar anyone?).
It is also a joy to know that a fellow developer needed to add something to your code, and it was clear and easy for them to do!
That is what being a successful developer is for me.
What’s the best advice you have received during your career?
I will split my answer into 2 parts:
Code-wise - always think ahead for the day after your feature. The day a junior dev will join your team, the day a bug may be found in the area of your code and someone will need to debug it, the next phase of the feature. Do things that will make your coding life easier in the future, especially if it only adds a small effort needed today.
Career-wise - believe in yourself, and know that not everyone has to agree with you. Always be open to hearing other opinions (even if you do not agree with them), and if you still think your path is the one that needs to be paved, you should come with the research and facts to support it.
What advice would you give a girl or a woman considering a career in engineering?
Work hard, believe in yourself, and do not be afraid to say what you think, especially if you have research to back it up! Point to the places that need to be fixed (in a nice way, this will help you rally support).
But as you work hard, also make sure to have time for yourself, travel, and enjoy life! Balance is the key to surviving in the High Tech world :)
Oleksandra Kulchytska, Backend Engineer, Dnipro
How did you first get interested in technology and engineering?
I have been interested in computers since elementary school. My mother used to work as a programmer at a large industrial enterprise company and sometimes she brought me to her job, so I had the chance to see with my own eyes the old server machines the size of a whole room and the first PCs. Inspired by my mom’s example, I chose the Applied Mathematics faculty at my university.
What do you do at Wix?
I’m leading a team of backend developers in the Ecom Platform group. We are responsible for orders and the payments domain. Our mission is to let different verticals within Wix and external partners benefit from our platformized APIs when building their custom eCommerce solutions.
How do you think we can engage more young women to pursue careers in engineering? What needs to be done?
IT is one of the most fast-growing industries. Each year we have a larger-than-before demand for talented and motivated engineers. And I believe that we are already mostly past the times of a cliche that software engineering was not for women. We need to tell young girls (and adult women as well!) that they are capable of engineering roles, given enough motivation, practice and open-mindedness.
What inspires you in your work?
I like the feeling of accomplishment when some complex feature I was involved with reaches production and starts to bring real value to our users. It’s like putting missing pieces into a complex puzzle to create a beautiful picture.
Also I enjoy day to day communication with my colleagues, sharing knowledge and learning from them.
What’s the best advice you have received during your career?
I highly recommend the TED speech by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg.
She shared 3 main messages for women leaders:
Sit at the table. Don’t be afraid to get the frontline positions, make yourself visible.
Make your partner a real partner. House work and child care should be equally shared between partners in order to provide equal opportunities in a career.
Don’t leave before you leave. Do not sacrifice your professional growth in favor of personal goals like parenting. You can achieve a lot in work while moving towards your life goals and there are a lot of good employers who will support you in that.
Please share your top 3 ways to improve yourself as an engineer (what to read, what to learn, who to follow)
Learn by practice. Theory is good, but hands-on work is better.
Attend professional events (meetups, conferences, hackathons) to find new inspiration and learn from other people’s experiences.
Always look for a challenging position. You won’t grow doing familiar things.
What advice would you give a girl or a woman considering a career in engineering?
I appreciate the IT industry because of its fairness: it’s only your professional skills that matter, you can reach any role if you set it as a goal and constantly learn for and strive towards it. So go ahead and try it :)
Can you share a little bit of what your typical day looks like?
My role includes both technical and managerial aspects. I’m involved in organizing work processes, building plans, helping my team to resolve obstacles and build a great product together.
So my work day may consist of various activities: conducting / attending meetings, coordination of work within the team, code reviews, working on technical designs, monitoring production, handling requests from different verticals or product support, and sometimes - my favorite part - coding :)
Would our engineering world be different if more women worked in it?
I believe that the engineering world will benefit from fresh brains whatever their gender is :)
Sapir Hamtzani, Front-End Engineer, TLV
How did you first get interested in technology and engineering?
In school, I remember myself trying to be the best at my studies, learning was very important to me and I worked really hard.
When the time came to choose the major studies in high school, I had no doubt that I would choose “Techem” - it is considered one of the hardest tracks, yet as a person who always thinks one step ahead, I knew that a technological diploma would be helpful in the future.
I like the development world and the idea of solving problems and trying to find the best finding solutions. After three years in the army as a combat fitness officer (yes, no iIntelligence unit), it was clear to me that I was going back to the tech world and that I was able to be part of this world.
P.S. My older brother is also a software developer and I can’t say that looking at him did not drive me to go for it as well - if he can do it, so can I!
What do you do at Wix?
I started as a Velo developer in a student position, now I’m a fulltime Frontend developer with the ecom group (the best one).
How do you think we can engage more young women to pursue careers in engineering? What needs to be done?
I think that as a start we need to break the stigma that being part of the engineering world means sitting behind the computer all day. Women in this world can combine and fit in so many varied positions that require thinking, management skills, presume work in a dynamic, creative and interactive environment - and develop solutions to significant problems.
The way to achieve this is by having women give lectures in schools and academies, show that women can have lives, family, hobbies and still do amazing tech work, which can also add to your personal development.
In addition, Wix is a great place to visit on a tour for students, to see how many women work here and the variety of roles we have in a tech company.
What inspires you in your work?
As a developer, I'm amazed by the things we can create and build with a couple of lines of code. To see something that I develop being used in the real world and helping our users is very satisfying. Moreover, people who work with me inspire me a lot. Looking at what amazing and wonderful things others develop can give me the drive to be better and always try and progress myself.
What’s the best advice you have received during your career?
Never try to solve problems in a rush and when under stress (unless the world depends on you), it never works. As a developer our day to day work is also about solving problems and in order to succeed we need to stay peaceful and always think before we act.
But I think the most obvious but very important piece of advice is to never give up and do whatever you can to achieve your goal. If there is a job you wish to get, do not compromise with less! Success depends on you.
Please share your top 3 ways to improve yourself as an engineer (what to read, what to learn, who to follow)
Always ask why and don’t take things obviously, in our world there’s a reason for everything we do and it’s ok to ask questions. And if you don’t feel satisfied - google it! You will see how slowly you start to learn new things and enrich your knowledge.
Sign up for newsletter(s) of the things that interest you. It's nice to once a week get a summary of what the news is, what’s about to come, and read about ways to improve your work.
Code review - get one or even just look at other people’s code, it is a great way to learn new ideas and ways of how to improve your code.
After a period of time, try to read about or take a class on something new that might interest you. It can be a new programming language or a software technique.
What advice would you give a girl or a woman considering a career in engineering?
First of all, try to understand what interests you - software engineering, devops, bi, and more. If you are not sure, just search online or talk to people, see what they’re doing and might find a connection there.
Next, understand what you need to learn in order to be hired (degree, bootcamp , courses, etc) and just go for it! There’s no doubt that it can be hard at the beginning, but it will be worth it in the end. And just get inspiration from other women - if they can, so can you!
Can you share a little bit of what your typical day looks like?
Usually it starts with a daily meeting where we go over our tasks for the day and give a status update. I'm a developer, so I’m quite dependent on the task I do - whether it is about diving into the code or working on a design for a new feature. If I am stuck with something, usually taking a coffee break with something sweet can be quite helpful :) And basically, I'm the owner of my time and I have the flexibility to arrange and schedule my tasks (one of the most important advantages in our job).
Would our engineering world be different if more women worked in it?
In my opinion, men and women are both an integral part of the engineering world, we are all important to its success and equal in our contribution, we can all without distinction invent and develop life-changing things and make our mark.
Migle Paskauske, QA, Vilnius
How did you first get interested in technology and engineering?
I got interested in technology during my senior years in high school. I really enjoyed IT lessons where we tried to build small applications. It helped me make a decision to pursue a Bachelor’s and then a Master’s degree in Computer Science where I've gotten to like Software Engineering even more.
What do you do at Wix?
I'm a Guild Manager at the QA Guild. A Guild in Wix is a group of people who share the same area of expertise. So for each track such as QA, front end, back end, product management, UX, etc. there’s its own Wix guild.
Guild main purposes are:
Make sure people are doing professional work – teach them and keep them up-to-date with all new methodologies and approaches.
Maintain any shared tools/FW's/libraries the Product Teams will need for their day to day such as automation FW's, UI libraries, tools, etc.
Be responsible for the professional growth of the people in the guild – challenge them and make sure they are progressing with their career.
Help the Product Teams move fast and smooth – allocate help and support if needed.
How do you think we can engage more young women to pursue careers in engineering? What needs to be done?
I think we need to start at an early age and show them inspiring role models. I think it is important to form an attitude from childhood that despite your gender, race or anything else, you as a girl are capable of achieving anything you dream of. I really wish that more young girls would join coding / robotics classes for kids.
Nowadays we have a lot of events dedicated to girls / women of all ages to join the tech industry so I think that all of us could play our role here as a parent, partner, mentor, role model or as a friend. We can encourage and empower women to try themselves in IT and especially encourage the girls in high schools.
What inspires you in your work?
The best inspiration for me is to see people from my team succeeding and to see when the hard work pays off.
What’s the best advice you have received during your career?
“If somebody offers you an amazing opportunity but you are not sure you can do it, say yes – then learn how to do it later!”.
Please share your top 3 ways to improve yourself as an engineer (what to read, what to learn, who to follow)
Read & Practice:
Read the good old good books such as: Clean Code by R. C. Martin and Pragmatic Programmer by A. Hunt and D. Thomas
Read more. Read the books around your area of interest (there are many good books around all specialties: QA, automation QA, front end, back end, data, AI, ML, etc.).
Try to practice as much as you can
2. Explore & Stay curious:
Explore in the field as much as you can, spending as much time as you can spare. Technologies are changing fast so it is important to stay on top of the game by knowing what is happening around. There are plenty of conferences, meetups, blogs, podcasts where you can get at least a sneak peak into the new things for you! Find communities in your city or bigger online groups and become a part of them!
3. Mentorship:
During my entire career in IT I saw mentorship as one of the key factors for success.
Get mentorship in the field you are interested in. It will help you to get some answers, move forward and set and achieve ambitious goals.
Become a mentor. Once you feel confident with your knowledge - help others. It will give you much more than you can imagine.
What advice would you give a girl or a woman considering a career in engineering?
Go for it!
Can you share a little bit how your typical day looks like?
Probably I will spend around half a working day or more in different kinds of meetings (it can be related to products, strategy, people, problems, etc.). The rest of the day will be dedicated to strategic / planning work or it will include some hands-on work on one of our products :)
Would our engineering world be different if more women worked in it?
For sure we would have more women as leaders in IT. We are now on our way to attracting more women to IT and I'm very thrilled to see what it will look like in upcoming years. :) If you are a girl or a woman who’s considering a career in IT - join us and we will achieve a lot of interesting things together!!
Thank you so much Ziva Tubul, Viktorija Sujetaite, Viktoria Nosova, Alexandra Seriachenko, Oleksandra Kulchytska, Sapir Hamtzani and Migle Paskauske.
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