Woman’s Month is more than just a month of celebrating the women in our lives – our mothers, sisters, daughters and wives. It’s about appreciating everything the previous generations have accomplished, offering us the freedom to achieve what we set our hearts on today. Lucy Whyte, QA Analyst at PayFast, reflects on what it means to be a woman in tech, her journey of developing her skillset and why she loves doing what she does.
I started as a tester by chance, or call it fate if you will, by working as a Compliance Officer in a call centre in Cape Town that sold funeral cover and legal plans. We needed software that could automate leads with an inbuilt phone system. The Director of a Software House (who I thought was just a Client Manager at the time) came to the call center and taught me how to use the system so that I could teach my other colleagues.
We developed a good working relationship, so when I resigned from the call center out of frustration and told him I was leaving, he asked me to meet him at his office the following Monday and to bring my CV along. So off I went, and after a five-minute interview, he offered me a job. He created a position just for me, on the helpdesk, and then from there introduced me to manual testing and sent me on a course to develop the skills I needed for the job.
Growing my career in tech
Unfortunately, that company went under two years after I joined them. Luckily, I was handpicked to join some of my colleagues who were starting their own company. As there were only five of us, I started wearing different hats and ended up as a tester and trainer full time as the company grew. This was where I got fully emerged and gained a passion for this role. However, I felt like an imposter because I never attended tertiary education like my peers around me. Yet, despite this, I happily remained at the company for 10 years.
Continue reading: https://www.payfast.co.za/blog/my-journey-as-a-woman-in-tech/
I started as a tester by chance, or call it fate if you will, by working as a Compliance Officer in a call centre in Cape Town that sold funeral cover and legal plans. We needed software that could automate leads with an inbuilt phone system. The Director of a Software House (who I thought was just a Client Manager at the time) came to the call center and taught me how to use the system so that I could teach my other colleagues.
We developed a good working relationship, so when I resigned from the call center out of frustration and told him I was leaving, he asked me to meet him at his office the following Monday and to bring my CV along. So off I went, and after a five-minute interview, he offered me a job. He created a position just for me, on the helpdesk, and then from there introduced me to manual testing and sent me on a course to develop the skills I needed for the job.
Growing my career in tech
Unfortunately, that company went under two years after I joined them. Luckily, I was handpicked to join some of my colleagues who were starting their own company. As there were only five of us, I started wearing different hats and ended up as a tester and trainer full time as the company grew. This was where I got fully emerged and gained a passion for this role. However, I felt like an imposter because I never attended tertiary education like my peers around me. Yet, despite this, I happily remained at the company for 10 years.
Continue reading: https://www.payfast.co.za/blog/my-journey-as-a-woman-in-tech/
