From creative writing degree to software engineer: my unconventional path to a career in tech

Capgemini Platform Engineer Pi Unnerup has taken an unconventional path through tech — from arriving with an arts degree, to choosing the multi-functional team experience of a start-up. We talked to her about why programming is learned ‘on the job’, the importance of cultivating a personal brand as a woman in tech, and the dichotomy of visibility for female engineers.

What was your route into the tech industry?

As a child, I was STEM-oriented, but as I got older, I decided I wanted to be a writer. I studied creative writing at university but while I was there, I fell back in love with the sciences and specifically with programming. For my dissertation, I wrote a programme to analyse a big body of literature and that’s when I realised, I should perhaps investigate tech as a career path. After my degree, I did two Masters in linguistics and natural language processing, then landed my first job as a DevOps engineer. Some of the best engineers I work with have never been to university. I think of being a software or DevOps engineer as being like a trade. You learn the things that you need for the job on the job, and there isn’t one path or qualification that makes you one — there are so many different paths into it.

What does diversity of perspective bring to the tech industry?

I’m an interviewer and it’s always important to hire people based on merit, but you must make sure that you also consider your own biases to ensure you hire talented people who are different to you. That’s how you build a good ‘anything’ – be it company, piece of software or team environment. If everyone agrees with everyone and everything, that’s an easy route that takes you nowhere really. You’re never going to have a great football team that’s made up of only right wingers. Having a wide range of perspectives, regardless of their demographic is, for me, how ultimately you achieve the best and most well-rounded product.

What moves or roles have you done that have really driven you forward?

A couple of years into my career, I joined a start-up, which is a weird experience because you wear so many hats. I’m a platform engineer but in that role, I was also doing a bit of accounting, event organising and anything else that needed to be done. That experience shaped my career and accelerated me technically, but if you’re going to join a start-up, I would recommend you do it early in your career — when you don’t have kids or a mortgage — because although it’s a fantastic experience, it’s a bit of a risk as well. You never really know where it’s going to take you. It gave me a clear idea of what I wanted to do and what I didn’t, so when I made my next move, I had a clear vision of exactly what I wanted that to look like — and I also had the technical expertise and the background of having done so many different roles. The world was very much open to me at that point.

How important is personal brand as a programmer?

I’m a consultant so I have the privilege of being able to move roles without moving jobs, but each of the roles I’ve taken on has taught me something about what I was looking for in my career. And that has helped me make the decisions that have led me to build what you might consider a personal brand. At the start-up, I got into public speaking because I was asked to do some tech talks to raise the profile of the company, and that really helped me put myself out there as an engineer first and foremost. It’s vital to consider the ‘flavour’ of engineer you want to be and to get involved in your company outside of engineering — that could be GitHub contributions, your public source contributions, or tools you’ve built that you can share with the community. Basically, what do you want to come up when people Google your name? What do the first 10 Google results look like? That’s going to be your own personal brand and you do have to work consciously at developing the skills and opportunities that will support it.

Has being a woman in tech been a barrier in any way?

I was five years into my career before I experienced working with another female engineer. Being more junior and in a minority, I used to be timid in calling out bias or any negative comments that might be made. Now I will just simply ask the person to clarify what they have said and why. I don’t want to say ‘pick your battles’ because it’s not a battle for the most part, but it is about just addressing things as they happen. Now I’m more senior and I work with lots of women engineers and these kinds of things haven’t happened to me in a long time. People don’t discredit my opinions anymore, which certainly happened at the beginning of my career. And when that happens, you feel you have to prove yourself five times over — but then once you do, you’re front of their mind. It’s the dichotomy of visibility. A lot of the time it will be one extreme or another because people are simply so aware of who you are. That can give you more opportunities — you’ll get invited to do interviews or asked to represent your company in some way when they are targeting a female audience and you can choose to do that or not depending on how you feel about it.

Have you had any role models in your career and what did you learn from them?

Generally speaking, there are two types of role models for me — in terms of leadership, it is someone who speaks up for what they believe is right even if it doesn’t benefit them. The other kind is the people on my team who really put everything that they have into what they do. They inspire me to step up and be a better leader or a better role model because in the end, nothing feels as good as helping someone realise their potential.

What do you want to model for young women in tech coming up behind you?

I think the best way to be a female role model is to be a good engineer. When I grew up, my mother would read me books with strong women protagonists, but I think you have to read that stuff to your sons too and not just your daughters. In the same way, it’s equally important to model things in engineering for everyone because it normalises it in the eyes of the next generation of men and women. As a woman, when you enter this industry, people will be aware of who you are, and as you become more experienced and senior, you will become more unique still. But at least for me, it’s been important to be an engineer first and to be a woman in tech second, because being an engineer is what ties us all together at the end of the day.

What do you do every day to invest in yourself?

Early on I built the habit of Googling something or reaching out to find out what I don’t know. When I started out, I used to be so uncomfortable in not knowing what I was doing, but no matter how long you do this job, the industry is so fast moving that you really must have a love of learning and approach issues head-on, even if you don’t know how you’re going to solve them yet. It’s worth having the expectation that you’re not going to know something — and in that way it doesn’t take you by surprise. Every day I just keep digging, looking into things and researching everything. I think I probably watch a YouTube video every single day related to something that I’m doing.

What advice would you give to someone wanting your career path?

Once you’re in this career, there are so many different paths that you can take. There isn’t one career to have, or one thing to have studied, so don’t remain in something you don’t feel serves or suits you, whether that is a role, company, a particular team or even a type of technology. And make sure you don’t get stuck in something so deeply that you don’t want to give it up just because you’ve worked on it for a while either. If you have the engagement, ambition and attitude then you can easily pivot and traverse different technologies or different kinds of teams, careers or companies.