My Grace Hopper Thoughts

Greetings fellow tech enthusiasts, hungry readers, and beautiful people! This post is a bit overdue but nonetheless necessary because four weeks ago I had the incredible opportunity to go to the Grace Hopper Celebration for Women in Technology (GHC)! For those who don't know what Grace Hopper is, I've compiled some of my favorite pictured memories from the week to give an insider look on the event.

Before the kickoff Keynote on GHC Day 1.

Such inspiring talks! (12,000+ women in tech were in this room).

A snapshot of the INSANELY HUGE 3 day career fair - 

with more free swag than you could ever imagine.

Before the GoDaddy company dinner at Universal!

The final dance party / celebration that felt like a music festival.

Someone asked me what Grace Hopper was the other day and I literally told them it's the "Coachella of career fairs" - I should trademark that.

The squad of awesome girls that I spent most of my time with!

The GoDaddy intern crew after getting dinner together.

In order to fully cover every part of GHC 2017, I've broken down my experience into four different sections:

1. Interviewing / Career Fair
2. Company Events
3. GHC main events
4. Personal thoughts

1) Interviewing / Career Fair

I was incredibly lucky to be given the opportunity to attend GHC for free along with all of the other female interns from GoDaddy last summer. This was my third time going to Grace Hopper, but by far my best experience. In the past I had only gone with Cal Poly which was definitely good for me during the first few years since I didn't have many interviews lined up. But this year, I went into the conference with four interviews already scheduled so it was a bit of a different experience.

I interviewed with Splunk for Sales Engineering, Allstate for Data Engineering, Oak Ridge National Laboratory for Scientific Computing, and Amazon for Software Engineering.

This was by far the most interviews I've ever done in a short period of time, and it was such a great growing experience. To give some background, about a week before the conference I was going through a little bit of a rough time. I was feeling burnt out from engineering and I was worried that my old vision of having a purposeful and meaningful job would fade with the reality of becoming a code monkey for some big corporation. While I think those are definitely valid concerns for someone entering into Software Engineering, I think they might be better explained in an entirely different blog post (maybe stay tuned for my next one!). The good thing that came of these worries though was that I felt a lot less pressure during my interviews with companies. For the first time ever I didn't feel like getting a job out of an interview was something that I needed to do. Instead, I felt like I was the interviewer. I no longer had to impress anyone, I was waiting for a company to impress me.

Initially, I felt the biggest change was the amount of pressure lifted off of my shoulders during my interviews. I was still nervous to a certain extent, but it was nothing like it had been in the past. This really helped me keep a clear head when answering questions. I also felt like I wasn't trying to sell myself to any of the companies in an idealistic way. I figured that I should be honest with them and if they liked me for who I am, that would be a company I'd fit with much more than if I faked it. I felt like I was finally answering and asking questions that were truly genuine and reflected my actual values for my career. Because of all of this there was a definite shift in the way the interviews went this year than they've ever gone in the past, and apparently it was in my favor.

By the second day of GHC, I had received an offer from Splunk. About 3 days after the conference I received an offer from Amazon. I was invited to continue interviewing and be flown out to both Allstate and the National Lab... and I got an offer for another GoDaddy team based out of Kirkland, Washington. I don't say all of this to boast, and I am so incredibly grateful to have gotten all of these opportunities. If there was anything I learned through this interviewing process, it was the importance of being authentic with people who I could be starting a career with. It is just as important to interview a company as it is for them to interview you.

2) Company Events

One of my favorite parts of GHC is all of the awesome company / corporate events. The conference itself has the career fair, tech talks, and speeches from about 9 am until 5 pm every day. But, in the evening everyone leaves the convention center to join companies at fun local places near the conference. I went to an Amazon event the first night at Wonder Works, basically an interactive science museum, theme park type of place. Oh, and it's shaped like an upside down house.

Most of the company events will provide free food, free entry, free swag, and free alcohol to everyone who gets an invite. Getting invites isn't too hard either, I received all of mine before the conference from submitting my resume into the database. But if you just go up to the big companies during the career fair and have a meaningful conversation with a recruiter, you can usually easily get an invite to their event later that night. 

The second company event was the GoDaddy party at Universal Studios. GoDaddy never ceases to disappoint with the great food and free alcohol ;) It was also just really great to spend more time with my friends that I made interning this summer.

3) GHC Main Events

One of my favorite parts of Grace Hopper is getting to listen to the keynote speakers. Some of the most influential women in tech spoke about how they got to where they are, and every bit of it inspired me. I think that was actually one of the main reasons why I was able to overcome some of the fears from a few weeks prior about my career. Hearing some of the crazy non-traditional paths of the amazing women in front of me helped me realize that I am in control of my own future, and making one career decision doesn't have to negatively affect my entire life. If anything, I should try as many things as I possibly can in my career, and then after some time I will create my own opportunities to do what it is that makes me fulfilled. 

Some of the other events at Grace Hopper are the tech talks. At any given minute you can catch a dozen different tech talks about some of the coolest stuff. I was so busy interviewing that I ended up only having enough time to go to one tech talk about Block Chain, so I was a little disappointed I didn't get to catch any others. There were a ton of talks about AI, machine learning, cybersecurity, IoT, leadership, internships, talking to your manager about getting a pay raise.... you name it and I bet they had a tech talk on it.

I think it's so awesome to see these talks at Grace Hopper too just because almost every person who is presenting is a woman. It isn't something that normally crosses my mind when I'm back home, but I don't tend to realize how often the people who are most well known for talking about tech are men. It was really cool to see all of these powerful and intelligent women speak about the amazing things that they had done. It was incredibly inspiring.

4) Personal Thoughts

I enjoyed my time at Grace Hopper so much. I can't thank GoDaddy enough for giving me the opportunity to go and experience such an incredible week. With that being said, I guess now is the time to say that after a very long thought process... I have decided to accept another internship with GoDaddy for this upcoming summer. I'll be based out of the Kirkland, Washington office and I couldn't be more excited! I'm still trying to figure out specific parts of the tech field I am passionate about, but until then I can't think of a better place to discover myself. Company culture and general happiness throughout the work day are just as important to me as the work that I am doing. I know that I will be happy at GoDaddy, and I feel that I've already created such a close family within the company. I'll only be there for an internship this summer, but I'm being open-minded about it being more long term than that.

So, TLDR: I had a ton of interviews and ended up taking the job that required no interview at all! 

It was definitely all worth the effort though. I just can't stress enough how lucky and fortunate I am to be able to have these opportunities. If anyone who reads this wants to know more about Grace Hopper, Women in Tech, or just my general thoughts about life, the future, or meaningful careers - feel free to get in touch with me! My email is jessiejsmith01@gmail.com. I'd love to answer any questions or even just build a bigger network with positive, forward thinking people.

Thanks so much for reading and I hope this gave a little bit more insight into the world of Grace Hopper!

As always, until next time.