According to Girls Who Code, 74% of young girls express interest in STEM fields, but only 26% of IT jobs are held by women. In our Women in Tech series, we look at what drives some of our most motivated employees to pursue successful tech careers. Melinda Weathers is seated across from me wearing a blue CallRail t-shirt, a common clothing choice in the development department section of the open office floor plan. She sips her cup of coffee as we settle back into our chairs. Our conversation easily turns to how she first became interested in technology. "I've always been drawn to it. I played with electronics and construction toys as a kid and even experimented with BASIC programming. In school, I was really interested in math, which led me to join the math team. I loved this type of problem solving, even though at the time I didn't know programming was where I would end up. Melinda attended Georgia Tech where she earned a degree in Mechanical Engineering. “As soon as I graduated, I realized that not all the jobs I applied for were meant for me. I wanted to do programming.
I took extra computer classes in school and was a tech assistant for one of those classes. It's hard to say before you get a job what you want your job to Employee Email Database be. Melinda has a soft voice, so you wouldn't guess she ever competed as a member of the Georgia Tech Sailing Club or played clarinet with the Georgia State Orchestra. We are talking about her first job in a software company in the energy sector where she did Java programming for energy applications. While their programming was engineering-oriented, she was able to write software, which presented a welcome challenge and propelled her forward into the computing arena. “During a job interview, I met a mechanical engineering company and they told me about the software they used.
I realized then that I didn't want to use this software, I wanted to write this software. I really couldn't imagine working in engineering at this point. I never regretted going into IT professionally instead. Melinda describes a second pivotal moment in her career as the moment she decided to switch from writing Java to Ruby on Rails. “I was using Java to work on internal projects for energy companies that no one could see, but with Rails I started working on Facebook apps for the public, so that was a big change. The Java programming I was doing required me to stay a few versions behind the latest version. With Rails, I've always been able to use the latest and greatest. Rails has a great community around it, and I love doing something using technologies that people are talking about right now. After ten years of programming for the energy industry, Melinda made the leap into the world of startups and later co-founded a software consulting firm.