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Career women in computer science

Women in Computer Science: It’s a Hard Problem

There’s this class of problems in Computer Science, called NP-Hard. The short explanation for this, is that these are some of the most difficult problems in the field, where solutions are likely to be exponential in time. One such problem is the Travelling Salesman problem – finding the shortest path on a graph (or a […]

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Career Programming

Medium Term: Tradeoffs and Refactoring

Ages ago, I wrote this post on meeting deadlines – things I’d learned, what had worked. One thing I wrote is about thinking “medium term”: Think Medium Term I don’t hack. I worry, actually, that I literally can’t hack. I can’t fight with something, and be happy with a one line fix labelled “DO NOT […]

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Books Career

Book: Making a World of Difference

Having been a foreigner in both China and the US, I found the cultural observations of this book (Amazon, which is only letting me link the Chinese version – the English version is here though), and the insights into the tech industry interesting. Particularly his time at Apple, and the need to create products out of […]

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Career life WISE women in computer science

And then, Nothing

This guy came on too strong to me, I think he thought it was passionate but I just felt uncomfortable. So I actually physically pushed him away from me. Being a Nice Bloke, he was upset that he had violated my boundaries. And so, I comforted him. This is one of those scenarios that I […]

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Career Programming Social Networking women in computer science

On Building The Things You Want

I think my best reason of why we need more women working in technology can be explained with two websites. OKCupid is a dating site, it’s very successful, and they have a great blog. Part of the premise is that users answer all these questions – it’s very data-driven. The other one is a Spanish […]

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Books Career Education Programming WISE women in computer science

Book: Unlocking the Clubhouse

I’d heard about this book (Amazon) for a long time, but especially since I arrived here – the other women in the office are huge fans, and talked about it a lot. And I kept thinking I would get around to reading it, but no hurry, I’ve read a lot of the research, I think […]

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Career women in computer science

Stories We Don’t Tell

Over the past year, I feel like I’ve been working through the stages of grief about being a women in tech, and I’ve not been blogging because I couldn’t find the words to share the story I wanted to tell. I’ve denied the extent of the problem. I’ve got angry. I’ve bargained. I’ve cried, and […]

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Career life Organization

Achieving the Quasi-Possible, Just About On Time

This Thursday, it will be two months since I arrived in Sydney. I came to work on a specific project, and that project came with a pretty ambitious deadline. I don’t know if anyone, including the person who thought this deadline up, really believed we would make it. But we did, just about. We as a team, […]

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Career Programming

Building Things for Humans

I had a bit of a career crisis earlier this year. I asked myself, when did I become an iOS developer? I did not mean for that to happen. And so I made a plan, where I would diversify, and expand my skills, and explore. There’s are many good reasons not to tie your career to […]

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Career life Organization Relocating travel

How To Leave a Country

For someone who seems to have an incurable fear of forms, I move too often. There is nothing I have found so far that has more bureaucracy than moving, especially if that move requires you to obtain a visa. Dealing with the logistics is time-consuming and stressful, but not hard. Dispose of assets: car (the last tie […]