International Girls in ICT Day: Jia Oblepias, amaysim Philippines
Today marks the International Girls in ICT Day, established by the United Nations International Telecommunication Union (ITU) to celebrate and encourage girls and young women to pursue careers in technology. Here at amaysim, we have Jia Oblepias, who continuously inspires girls and young women in ICT.
Since joining amaysim Philippines four years ago as a Software Engineer, Jia has been passionately working with multiple teams on network provisioning, billing and payments domains using technologies such as Golang, Typescript, NextJS, ReactJS, NodeJS, Serverless and AWS. To unwind and relax, Jia enjoys watching Korean drama series and Japanese anime.
To celebrate and commemorate International Girls in ICT Day, we sat together with Jia to revisit her amazing technology career, her impressive journey with amaysim and her advice to girls and young women.
Tell us about your journey towards your career in ICT?
Months before graduation, the university I attended hosted a job fair and we were encouraged to find a job early on. I guess this is not only customary with my university, but also with others as well. I submitted my resume to all the tech companies at the job fair, and if I can remember correctly, none of the companies called, which made me feel worried. I wanted to have work right after I graduated, just like my friends, and I needed to support my sibling attending college, so I felt that I really had to get this right. It was peer and responsibility pressure at the same time which made me wear my game-face and start to plan.
I asked myself, what do I really want? I wanted to be equipped to become a great software developer, so how would I achieve that? I searched on different job posts of the best companies to work with and took notes on what skills were in demand. My internship was on android development and I could go with that path, but I was open to other opportunities too. I was aiming for a telecommunications company because I heard that the training was great. I curated a list of companies that I think would be a good place to start.
The first batch of companies I targeted didn't work well. Either they didn't call me back or I didn’t pass the initial phone screening. Since it’s job hunting season, I thought that maybe the HRs were selecting the highest grades and titles “laude”. I went on several different interviews and different kinds of exams that didn't result in a job offer. Those experience may have ended in naught but I wouldn't totally call it fruitless. I definitely learned a lot from it and I became better at interviews.
After some months of waiting, I was really surprised and felt that luck had finally turned to my side. I got what I wanted, a job offer! Not just one but two job offers from two great companies and neither of this two were on the original target list. The first was just a coincidence, I heard it from my friend and joined him on a whim for an interview. The second was from a hot fresh job post at a big company that I didn't even know was in the Philippines. Both were research and development positions and I was really happy and at the same time confused because I didn't know which one would be better for me. The first was focused on smart card technology and security, whilst the other was on consumer electronics. Both seemed very promising. After some thought, I decided to go with the smart card and security because it looked more interesting and offered training abroad not bad for a first-timer. And that started my journey in the real world of ICT.
What inspired you to pursue a career in technology?
It all started back in high school when I first had the experience of coding. I can still freshly remember my teacher introducing our class to the blue screen of Turbo C. I got interested in it and I was amazed at how we can create something out of code. One memorable experience was when I was able to create a Christmas Tree after coding a single asterisk inside a for-loop. How fantastic, is that right? And it was building the algorithm that I loved so much. With so few characters you can do so many tricks, like how an asterisk could become a tree of asterisks. Can a $1 be also turned into $1000!? The coding exercises back then felt like solving puzzles or riddles and I loved how it's both frustrating and rewarding.
Another inspiration was my sister's godfather, Ryan Talabis, who pursued a career in technology and I first heard about him from my parents. He was a Physical Therapist turned into a cybersecurity expert. His success in becoming a cybersecurity expert, having a masters degree at Harvard, co-authoring two books from Elsevier Syngress, and speaking to dev conferences around the world inspired us all. My parents thought that maybe I can take on this career too and I thought hard about it. I enjoyed the programming subject in school, love playing computer games and I also heard that the pay is great. In the end, I have convinced myself to give it a shot.
What are the challenges that you faced as a young woman working in ICT projects? And how did you overcome those challenges?
Fortunately, the challenges I faced were not related to ICT being male-dominated. Starting from my college years, the classes I attended were often male-dominated. That's probably why when I entered the ICT world, I wasn’t bothered by it. I wouldn’t even notice how male-dominated the workplace is. I guess I got used to the setup. In terms of approaching men at the workplace, I'm also fine with it. I have a younger brother, had several male friends and acquaintances from high school and college. From the years I have bonded with them I somehow learned a bit of how a boy's mind works. My quick tip on it would be, keep things simple and fun and I'm sure you'll get along with them just fine.
One of the challenges I faced was stepping out of my comfort zone. Words in my head said, "I haven't done that yet, so I'm not sure if I can". I often skipped spike tasks, refactoring or migrating to new tech tasks, and especially doing presentations. I don’t mind exploring but I always feared that I might not be able to make it work, or I might do something wrong and be sacked. One of the things that helped me overcome my fear was my teammates - they made me realize that I have nothing to fear because I am not alone and I can get help if get lost. I also learned that stepping out of my comfort zone is always a good thing because it offers a lot of opportunities to expand my learning. It always felt so rewarding in the end. I was able to see new ways to do things, learn how stuff works under the hood, understand what I was doing wrong, and how to improve it and as a bonus - gain confidence. And it’s always the moment that I felt stronger than I think.
Another challenge I faced was the idea of never-ending learning. Technology changes and evolves so fast. Some technologies are easy to catch but some have a steep learning curve, and with so many things all together, it can be overwhelming. It disrupted the lazy idea in my head that I read from a data structure book which was, “code it well and you can relax at the beach”. My younger self thought that I was tricked! Even if I code it well, I can never relax at the beach. I have to study forever and the thought of me chasing technology felt so wrong.
There was a turning point. As I worked and stayed in ICT, I realized that we're all working towards the same goal. We're all lazy and we all want to relax at the beach. All the new techs are created to fix a problem or to improve a situation and I noticed that most new techs are focused on automating or offloading repetitive but important tasks. Jumping on to cloud development and the continuous deployment bandwagon felt like a huge change for me but it absolutely made things so much easier and less stressful. Before, I viewed deployment as a minefield, one wrong step and KABOOM! - goodbye teammates, nice knowing you all. With the day-to-day tasks made easier and automated, all the troubles of setting up new configurations, learning how to create templates and refactoring were outweighed by the benefit. Now, I am a changed person and I have started to continuously learn.
How has amaysim supported you on your successful engineering journey?
At first, I knew nothing about AWS, docker, makefiles, how the continuous deployment is set up, how cloud development works and etc. amaysim helped me move from being a learner to a contributor. Ever since day one, managers and my teammates have been super supportive. When I first applied here, I didn't have any experience with the technologies that they are using and all I have was just myself wanting to learn. I have zero experience in Golang, but when I said I wanted to learn and use it, they put me in a team that does Golang projects. In that team, even if it is male-dominated, they welcomed me and I never felt judged as a woman. If there's anything, it must be the great culture of the amaysim.
Here in amaysim, everyone is asked for their opinion and no one is silenced or chastised when talking. All are welcome and this helped me a lot in my journey of resolving my insecurities and self-doubt. I felt that I'm not invisible, that I am indeed a part of the team, and that my thoughts and ideas are welcome and equally important.
When it comes to self-advancement, it is encouraging to see that amaysim is not gender-biased. The Engineering head of the Philippines, Joyce Avestro, is a woman. The head of delivery, Denisse Dimatatac, is a woman. The tech lead in the team I belong to, Liberty Estrella is a woman. And there are a lot more in top positions. With these, amaysim solidifies by example how gender is not an issue in the technology world and for a young woman like me, it gives me inspiration and strength to move forward.
What advice would you give to girls who are considering a career in technology?
To all the girls out there, if you enjoy coding and you want to leverage technology to build a better world, go ahead and pursue this path. Do not associate it as a career most suited for men. If you feel like you’re not enough, fight through it. Let your passion and your goal take over. Don’t let the negative ideas consume you. You are stronger than you think you are and no couple of boys or set of unbelievers can weaken you if you’ve secured your resolve. Just learn to trust yourself, focus on your goal, follow your heart and be happy!!!
If you're still not sure, it helps to get a wider view of others journey in ICT. Check out blogs or social media posts of women in tech but be careful and weed out the toxic ones. I enjoy reading the blog of Pauleen Narvas and one of the things I admire about her is how she celebrates wins big or small. Technology can be overwhelming sometimes, learning or creating something no matter how small it is and considering it as a win will help you see that you’re accomplishing something and this will make you more pumped up to learn.
I also found the book "Lean in" by Sheryl Sandberg an interesting read. It's an eye-opener for me because I haven't observed or I haven't thought much of any gender-related issues at work until I read this one. Try to pick it up if you have a chance.
All the best and good luck to all of you!!!
Special thanks to our editor and curator Toby Hede and Jamiel Virata.