Meet Samantha Wirasinha

Meet one of our very own developers Samantha, a Software Engineer here at Expert360. She’s one of our newest recruits, analytical and thorough and interested in travelling the world, her dog Yuki and testing her hand at any sport she can. Read on to find out more about Sam

What did you think you’d be when you grew up?

I guess I always had dreams of becoming some sort of professional sportsperson. I played 6 different sports a year at school and when I wasn’t doing some sort of practice I was at home watching sport on the TV. However my dreams were squashed when I realised that my passion for sport didn’t quite match my skills! From that point on I think I assumed that I would probably end up in a business related field like my parents.

How did you get into Tech?

I got into tech a bit later in life after a career in Market Research. I worked in Market Research for about 6 years but always knew it wasn’t quite right for me. At my final Market Research job I was working for a company in London which worked with TV ratings data and as part of my role I had to query and format data from some really large databases. I found that I really enjoyed writing the SQL and Visual Basics macros required for this task. At the time I also had a couple of friends who were developers and loved it. So when the time was right and I was moving back to Australia I thought it was time for a fresh start and just started doing online courses and part time in person courses. Before I knew it a tech start-up had approached one of my instructors for candidates and suddenly I had a job. The rest is history as they say!

Is there someone in Tech who inspires you? Why do they inspire you?

There isn’t a single person but actually quite a few people and they’re all people I have worked with every day. Over the years I have worked with and currently work with some amazing people. People who are thoughtful about their approach to problem solving; who always seem to have time to help you even when they are facing a serious deadline; who are calm in the face of tech disasters; who find the perfect balance of caring for people, product and tech; who are just really adept at explaining seriously complicated ideas.

And then there are the women in tech. I am constantly floored by some of the women I meet working in tech. Working in tech as a woman definitely has it’s challenges but there are some women you meet who just stomp all over these challenges and it really is inspirational. I once met a mother who spent her maternity leave switching careers into tech. I was exhausted switching careers — let alone having a baby to look after at the same time! There is also a really great community for supporting women and diversity in general in tech and everyone who participates in this, whether it’s men or women, inspire me. I think we should all strive to make tech more inclusive because without diversity we lose so many different points of view that could be so key to moving our field forward.

Do you have a favourite programming book or resource?

I don’t have a single book or resource that I would say is my favourite. When I learn I like to jump around and have a look at many resources. There are a lot of video courses I’ve done on Egghead, Treehouse, Udemy and others — they typically break lessons up into these bite sized 5 minute packages which feels a lot more achievable to me than approaching a text book. There is also typically a forum where you can ask questions or see where other people have run into trouble. When I was first learning I also really enjoyed using interactive learning tools like Codecademy. I’m definitely someone who learns by doing and seeing examples so the interactive nature of Codecademy was great for learning language basics.

What have you liked so far about learning Elixir?

Having only worked in one programming job before coming to Expert360 I always felt like my tech knowledge was pretty narrow and I didn’t really know how this knowledge translated into working at other companies. Learning Elixir has shown me that, like spoken languages, once you know one language it becomes much easier to pick up other languages. It’s syntactically very readable and has similarities to Ruby which is the first language I knew. However being a functional language it’s a completely different paradigm to object oriented programming which has been really interesting to learn about. Also pattern matching is something I haven’t seen before and I think it’s a really neat way to approach logic.

If someone was thinking about switching over to Tech, what advice would you give them?

My advice would be to do it! 100%! It has been the most rewarding decision I have made in my life — well that and deciding to do an exchange at university — but that’s another story. I think that thinking about doing it is the biggest step and probably the biggest indicator that you will find it really rewarding. Even if you don’t end up as a developer there are so many different paths you could take — you could end up in product management or UX or you may even just use this new knowledge to innovate in your current role. It’s pretty clear that tech is going to continue to infiltrate our lives so any additional knowledge you have in this field will only be beneficial.

From a practical point of view I would also say that when you are learning just hang in there. There were times when I was learning where I just felt so overwhelmed and wondered how I will ever understand enough to make this my career — believe me there were tears when I was first learning! Just know that you are not alone if you feel like this. But you will get there if you just keep pushing through, asking questions and googling things you don’t understand. The secret to developing is understanding that nobody actually has all the answers because it is changing and evolving so much each day and every company’s tech stack is so different. As a developer you are constantly googling, reading docs and asking people for their thoughts, opinions and help. And one of the biggest battles is realising that this is ok and actually a large part of the job!