Vanessa Flores
I’m Vanessa Flores, a Mexican-American first generation college grad. I grew up in the Chicago area surrounded by my Mexican culture; the music, the food, and the deep family roots have always been around me. My friends and classmates looked like me and had a similar upbringing; that was no longer the case as I went off to college and later tried landing my first professional role.
How I Got Started
I graduated in May 2016 with a Master’s in Information Technology and Management. It took me almost 3 years to land my first developer role as an iOS engineer. With the help of a few people I was finally able to start building the connections I was missing having not grown up with the cultural capital others are lucky to have. They can be difficult to find, but there are people out there who are willing to take a chance and go above and beyond to help others. Although not everyone I was connecting with was able to offer me a job, they were willing to offer me an introduction to someone else who was equally as helpful, which I found just as valuable and was extremely grateful for. Two and a half months after having my first coffee chat, I started my first day as an iOS engineer for a tech company in Chicago.
I was excited to join the team and everyone seemed welcoming. It quickly became obvious though that I was the only one there who looked like me. At the time of my hiring, I was the only Latina engineer and there were very few other women engineers. Although I have a technical background, I was the only one on my team without a CS degree, and as an iOS developer, I consider myself to be self-taught.
What’s Next For Me
During my year at Vivid Seats, I was able to attend LTX Fest, a conference held in San Francisco and Oakland, CA for Latinxs in the tech industry. Here is a short article I wrote about it. I had never been surrounded by so many hardworking, driven, successful, and inspiring Latinxs. How was I not going to get pumped by the energy there? It was the first place I could truly be my whole self; a Latina, a software engineer, family-oriented, a weird mix of introverted and extroverted, and many other things. I didn’t have to be or act “assimilated”. After leaving the week-long conference, I returned home brainstorming ways I could not only introduce the young Latinx communities around Chicago to the opportunities careers in tech have to offer, but to also provide them with the professional experience and cultural capital they would need to land their first jobs.
Five months later, Covid-19 happened and I found myself unemployed. It became clear to me that this was my opportunity to dive into my long list of projects and ideas I had been compiling. At the top of my list is to keep improving my skills as an iOS engineer. Priority #2, start striving toward putting together an academy where Latinxs in the Chicago communities can discover and pursue a career in tech (such as engineering, product management, design, or marketing), without running into financial barriers or having to put their lives on hold like they would in a traditional bootcamp.
So how do I get from priority #1 to achieving priority #2? Step 1, start this blog and continue posting about my experience getting into tech and my job search process and strategies. Step 2, blog about the new skills and habits I’ve picked up while leveling up as a software engineer. Step 3, get a YouTube channel up and running doing a deeper dive on my developer habits and finding people to pair program with to share the learning experience.
What are the benefits, you ask? Accountability to keep practicing my craft, learning to develop a mentor/mentee relationship, building instructor skills and confidence, and best of all, providing content for others to benefit from. There are a lot of different versions of me. Now, I get to restructure my identity so I can show up for my life in a way that feels good and allows me to pay it forward.
Follow along with my journey on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube!