For the past year, I’ve been very focused on building Femgineer into a business. Spending my time teaching courses and workshops both online and offline at General Assembly, HackBright, incubators, technology non-profits, and now at Duke University. I’ve also been hosting forums across the country to address sensitive topics that are holding people back in their careers in tech, and speaking all over the world about product development, startups, and software engineering. Having done all of this, I’m not tired, but more energetic than ever because this is only the beginning!
I did all of these projects to solidify the vision I have for Femgineer, which is to provide educational services for those who are already in the tech industry looking to level up in their careers. We aim to help people develop a deep mastery in technical skills and leadership roles with the central theme being product management. Given this focus we are not aiming to be an incubator, accelerator, or ed-tech company, but to rethink adult education starting with the tech industry.
The vision stems from the major gap that I’ve experienced over my 9+ years of being in the industry; there are a lot of resources for people who are just getting started either in a technical or product role. Hacker schools and bootcamps have popped up both online and offline. While the do produce high quality talent, there are those who have been in industry for awhile who want to dig in deeper. Unfortunately, there aren’t many programs for them.
Even a graduate degree in Computer Science is centered mostly around learning how to do research. While research can be a catalyst for product development, it still doesn’t help people understand how to commercialize technology, and build products.
Hence, I’ve noticed that people in tech struggle with staying ahead of the curve. A software engineer or product manager already has a pretty grueling a day job, which doesn’t leave a lot of time to explore the latest languages, tools, and trends.
Many people have aspirations of one day working for a startup, becoming a team lead, or want to pursue their own ideas. But they feel like their skills are just out-of-date, and their isn’t a clear path to advance themselves that wouldn’t take countless hours and a lot of self-promotion.
At this point in time, self-learning is the best option that most have. It takes time and a lot of discipline to be a self-learner, but there are nuances that can only be learned from a seasoned practitioner who has been working in industry. Unfortunately, many tech industry veterans focus on building their own companies and products, leaving them with little time to build a strong pipeline of skilled professionals with deep domain expertise.
Not having a lot of options in terms of concrete training programs for people who are in tech makes it even harder to keep with the pace of the industry and level up in their careers. Too often people’s skills become obsolete within a relatively short period of time, or they get frustrated, choosing easier paths, resulting in high turnover.
That’s why at Femgineer our goal is to focus on helping tech professionals who have been industry for awhile (1+ years), who maybe finding it hard to level up in their careers, because they don’t have advanced training needed to build products, scale systems, manage projects, and lead teams.
We have stayed ahead of the curve by keeping up with the latest trends, and using our learnings to build products for startups and big companies we’ve been actively involved in such as Mint.com, BizeeBee, BuyVite, ResultCare, Adobe, HP, Intuit, and Sanmina.
Our expertise spans web, mobile, and product management, working to build both remote and in-house teams.
Now we’re sharing our knowledge with the community of tech professionals across the world.
We’re placing an emphasis on product development, which is why the first course we launched this year was Lean Product Development. It brought in a diverse group of students: product manager, product marketers, entrepreneurs, and engineers, all focused on learning how to validate an idea, and build a product. We’ve had 3 iterations of this course this year alone, with 30+ students.
We also have a philosophy when it comes to education, which is that people learn best from seasoned practitioners, who teach highly interactive classes. We also encourage students to learn from each other by participating in groups through hands-on activities. Finally, we provide ongoing mentorship even after a student has completed a class to motivate them to stick with practicing their new skills.
While our vision includes a mission to support and encourage women into technical and leadership roles, it is not the sole purpose of Femgineer. As I see it, there have been an unfortunate number of incidences this year that have raised eyebrows, and caused people to talk a lot. However, I still fundamentally believe change only happens when you’re inclusive, educate, and act everyday to make change in the community. I want to showcase and strengthen technical and product minds in tech. To clear up any confusion in who we service, Femgineer openly welcomes both men and women to all its events and courses, and will continue to do so.
I’m excited to forge ahead with a group of talented instructors aiming to educate eager and earnest students across the world. With the ultimate goals of changing the way talent is cultivated and refined in order to foster innovative teams and create digital products.
